Beyond the Ice Limit

8

A BIG AUTUMN sun rose over the distant Nobska Lighthouse and Vineyard Sound, casting gold across the water as they came out on deck early the next morning. A stiff breeze blew in from the east, kicking up whitecaps across the harbor and the sound beyond.

The A-frame crane had moved two DSVs out of the hangar deck and onto the fantail. To Gideon they looked stubby, even cartoonish; almost too small to fit a human inside, let alone everything else. Alex had told him to wear tight-fitting but warm clothing. She was dressed in a sleek tracksuit of dark blue with white racing stripes, which hugged her muscled legs, rear, and torso in a way Gideon found most distracting. He, on the other hand, was dressed like a slob in jeans and a long-sleeved undershirt.

Glinn and Garza were standing together when they arrived. Glinn was dressed in a black turtleneck and pants, a thin, even spectral figure on the windswept deck. Garza wore a suede jacket with the collar turned up, his salt-and-pepper hair stirred by the wind.

“Right on time,” said Glinn, approvingly, coming over with an outstretched hand and giving Gideon a shake. “Are you ready to go deep, Gideon?”

“I wish you’d told me I was going to be piloting a Yellow Submarine.”

“To what end? It would only have worried you. These DSVs are idiotproof.”

“So Alex tells me.”

“She’s an excellent instructor. You’ll do fine.”

“But I thought my job was to be your expert on nuclear explosives. Surely you could have hired an extra sub driver.”

Instead of answering, Glinn patted him on the shoulder in a way that Gideon found patronizing. Gideon glanced at Garza for an explanation, but the engineer was, as usual, silent and unreadable.

“You’ll be driving George, and I’ll be in Ringo,” Alex told him. While Glinn and Garza watched, Alex gave him an external tour of George, pointing out and naming the various parts—cameras, strobes, viewing ports, CTFM sonar, sail lights, current meter sensor, emergency identification strobe, emergency homing radio, lift propellers, rudder and ram propeller, underwater telephone transducer, collecting basket, and robot arm. “The ladder goes up to the sail hatch,” she explained. “It’s pretty simple—just climb up and lower yourself inside, using the two grab bars. The personnel sphere is five feet in diameter. I’ll get into Ringo and we’ll communicate through radio, do a dry run on deck—and then get lowered into the water.”

“Should I climb up now?”

She nodded. “Just lower yourself into the chair. On a hook just above your head you’ll find the communications helmet; put that on and toggle the switch on the lower right. Wait for me to talk. You don’t have to press a transmit button—it’s full duplex above water. Underwater, the range of actual conversation is limited to five hundred meters. Beyond that, there’s only communication using digital sonar—text and synthetic voice only.”

He nodded, trying to follow it all.

“Okay, up you go.”

Gideon climbed the ladder, grabbed the bars, and lowered himself into the sphere. Someone shut the hatch and dogged it down as he settled into the lone chair and put on the headset.

The interior of the sphere was almost completely covered with electronics, screens, panels, buttons, and dials. The forward viewport was directly in front of his face, and there were left and right viewports as well as a downward-looking port. A small console to his right contained a keypad, a joystick, and a few emergency buttons in little cages that could be flipped up. Everything was illuminated dimly in reddish light.

A moment later Alex’s voice came in. “Gideon, you read?”

“Loud and clear.”

“I’m going to go through every console and screen, from left to right.”

For the next sixty minutes, she proceeded to describe everything in the sphere in excruciating detail, until Gideon despaired of remembering it all. At last she concluded with the joystick panel.

“This is really all you need to know,” she said. “The joystick works like any normal joystick: forward, back, port, and starboard. The more you push it in any one direction, the faster the sub will go. But it’s always on fine autopilot control, which means it will correct any mistakes you make. If you push the stick forward to enter, say, a hole in the side of a ship, it will automatically steer you through the hole, touching nothing. It will navigate you down tight passageways without touching any walls. It will keep you from grazing the bottom or striking underwater obstacles. The autopilot takes its cues from you, but then handles the details itself. It won’t enter a space too small for it, and it won’t obey if you direct it into the seafloor or a cliff.”

“Is there any way to shut it off?”

“Not directly—that’s the whole point. If necessary, control of your DSV can be transferred to the surface, however. Now: do you see those two red buttons under the flip-up cages? The one that says EMERGENCY EJECT will jettison your titanium sphere, which will rise fast to the surface. This has never been tested and the rapid rise might kill you, so don’t do it. And the EMERGENCY BEACON activates your beacon if you get into trouble.”

“What’s the point of an emergency eject if it might be lethal?”

“It’s a last resort. Okay, ready for the wet run?”

“No.”

“The crane’ll pick up your DSV, put it in the water, and release it. You’ll begin to sink automatically, controlled by the autopilot software. Normally, there would be two hundred pounds of iron ballast aboard to rapidly take you the two miles down to the wreck. But the water here is only a hundred feet deep or so, so that won’t be necessary. The autopilot will bring you to a halt ten feet off the bottom. You wait and do nothing until I tell you what to do.”

“Yes, Captain.”

He felt the sub being hoisted, then swung out over the water. Then he was lowered, ever so gently, until blue water appeared in the viewports. And then, with a clank, the sub was released and began to drift downward. Running lights came on automatically, front, astern, and below. He could see bubbles ascending around him. The water was murky, but in a few minutes the bottom began to take shape. As promised, the sub slowed and came to a hover about ten feet above a bed of waving kelp, in dark-green water. There was a soft hiss of warm air. Gideon didn’t like the feeling of claustrophobia. He almost could feel the press of water above him, the thickness of it in the air he was breathing.

And then, twenty feet in front of him, he saw the other yellow sub drift down and come to a halt, its running lights winking at him.

“Gideon, do you read?”

“I read.”

“Why don’t you start by getting a feel for the joystick. Move it forward, sideways, and back, and see how the DSV responds.”

“How do I go up and down?”

“Good question. You see the thumb toggle on top of the joystick? Forward moves you up, backward goes down. Go ahead and play with it while I watch and comment.”

Ever so gingerly, he pushed the joystick forward. A faint humming noise sounded and the sub moved, very slowly.

“You can be a little more aggressive. The autopilot smooths out any sharp motions you might make.”

He gave it a bigger push and the sub moved forward faster.

“You’re coming right at me, Gideon. Try a turn.”

Instead of turning, Gideon toggled the sub up and it went up and over her sub, then he toggled back down and the sub settled just above the layer of kelp. He pushed it sideways and the sub went into a smooth turn. In a moment Alex’s mini sub reappeared in the viewport.

“Gideon? How about learning to walk before you fly?”

Her instructional tone was beginning to irritate him. He accelerated toward her, then toggled up again; but this time his coordination was off and the sub went almost vertical, climbing sharply toward the surface.

“Toggle down.”

He pushed the toggle down, but accidentally pushed the joystick forward as well. The problem, he began to realize, was that the sub’s response wasn’t as instantaneous as a car’s; water gave everything a sluggish, delayed effect. And now he was heading straight for the bottom—fast.

“Oh, shit.” He pulled the toggle and joystick back, but in his panic overcompensated once again and gave it an inadvertent twist. The sub slewed around like a corkscrew before coming to an abrupt halt—unbidden—just above the kelp. A small red light was blinking and a genteel alarm was sounding; on the main control screen a message appeared:

He watched as the numbers counted down.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

Alex’s cool voice sounded in his ear. “Well, Gideon, congratulations. That was the most remarkable display of ineptitude I have ever seen in a DSV. Now that you’ve gotten your teenage ya-yas out, want to try again? This time as an adult.”

“If you weren’t yammering in my ear all the time,” he said angrily, “I might have pulled it off. Bloody backseat driver.”

Alex’s cool voice came through. “Keep in mind that our conversation, and everything we do, is being closely monitored in mission control.”

Gideon swallowed his next comment. He could just picture Glinn, Garza, and the rest assembled in the control room, listening and frowning with deep disapproval. Or perhaps laughing. Either way he felt annoyed.

“Right.” The seconds had now ticked off and the screen read:

He eased the joystick forward and the sub moved slowly in a straight line; then he executed a gentle turn, came back, and halted.

“There’s a good boy,” said Alex. “Nice and easy.”

Gideon almost thought he could hear a faint snigger sounding in his headset.