Beyond the Ice Limit

10

AS THEY APPROACHED the Ice Limit, drifting icebergs began appearing in the southern ocean, and Gideon found their deep-blue color and sculptural beauty to create one of the most amazing sights he had ever witnessed. He stood at the rail, watching the ship glide between two gorgeous bergs, one with a hole in it, a kind of ice-arch through which the morning sun shone brightly. It was November 20, which Gideon reminded himself was spring—the weather equivalent to April 20 back home—but the air was surprisingly warm and gentle, the ocean utterly calm. It looked nothing like the “Screaming Sixties” he had heard about, so named because at sixty degrees of latitude, the earth was fully girdled by ocean; the winds blew incessantly around the globe, raising enormous seas that circled the planet and—with no land to arrest their course—growing ever bigger and bigger.

But this was anything but screaming. The ocean was a mirror that reflected the stately forms of the icebergs drifting northward from the glaciers of Antarctica, shed during the spring calving season.

In an effort to orient himself, Gideon had spent some time examining the charts in his briefing book. They truly were in the middle of nowhere. The tip of South America was six hundred and fifty miles northwest, the Antarctic Peninsula two hundred and fifty miles to the southwest, and the closest land—Elephant Island—a hundred and forty miles west. No, that wasn’t quite right: the chart in his briefing book did show a speck of rock, a glacier-covered peak thrusting from the sea less than a hundred miles from their position, called Clarence Island.

He breathed deeply of the fresh, clean, salty air—and then felt a presence approach from behind.

“Calm as a millpond,” Alex Lispenard said, leaning on the rail beside him and gazing across the iceberg-dotted sea, the breeze stirring her long brown hair, her profile etched in the golden sun.

Gideon took a deep breath. “They told me it would be rough.”

“There’ll be plenty of that, don’t worry.”

The ship had now slowed to almost a stop, and Gideon could feel the faint vibration of the deck as the engines began to work first one way, then another.

“Feel that?” Alex asked. “That’s the dynamic positioning system being activated. We’ve arrived. The ship will hold a steady position from now on, right here, no matter what the currents or winds do. You’ll feel the azimuthing jet stopping and starting from time to time.”

Gideon nodded. Staring down at the cold, blue-black water he felt a shiver, thinking of what lay beneath his feet, thinking that he’d be going down there—almost two miles. It filled him with dread.

“Yeah,” said Alex, “it’s right below us now, I guess.”

“Not exactly below,” said Gideon. “We’re about half a mile offset—for safety’s sake.” He knew this from all the cramming he’d been doing in his briefing book. He had also dined a few times at the captain’s table, where Glinn and Garza also frequently sat, and he had picked up a lot of information about the project that way as well. But he still felt uninformed, and it annoyed him.

He checked his watch. “Walk you down to the briefing?” he asked.

“Sure.” He felt her body moving next to his as they descended the companionway to mission control, the electronic nerve-center of the ship.

They were early, but Glinn was already waiting on the briefing platform, flipping through a sheaf of papers. During the voyage south, the man had continued to heal, almost miraculously, before Gideon’s very eyes. Far from the once-crippled figure in a wheelchair, now he no longer needed even a cane to support himself.

Glinn motioned for Gideon to join him on the platform. Reluctantly disengaging himself from Alex’s warm grasp, he stepped up.

“What is it?” he murmured.

“I might need some assistance in this briefing from the EES slacker in chief,” Glinn replied.

“How do you know about that?” Gideon demanded. But Glinn’s only reply was a wintry smile.

The seating area in the center of the room began to fill with the more senior members of the ship’s crew and scientific personnel. It was an impressive space, oval in shape, crammed with high technology. The walls were covered with giant LCD screens, most of which were now dark. These screens could supposedly display feeds from a host of underwater cameras, Deep Submersible Vehicles, ROVs, satellite downlinks, shipboard radar and sonar, GPS and chartplotters. There were rows of computer workstations and large, sweeping consoles festooned with dials, buttons, keypads, and small LCDs, along with so much else that Gideon could hardly keep it straight. Mission control looked like it came straight out of a science-fiction movie.

The meeting hour arrived and a hush fell over the murmuring group. Looking out, Gideon recognized many faces: Captain Tulley, as colorless, respectable, and duty-bound as they came, sitting in the front wearing an impeccably pressed uniform; and next to him Chief Officer Lennart. Gideon had come to like her quite a bit: she reminded him of a Nordic goddess, a giant blonde, but with a down-to-earth personality, someone who, when off duty, appreciated dirty jokes and seemed to have an endless store of them. She had a low, resonant laugh that was truly infectious and a subversive, bad-girl attitude. At the same time, she had a distinct Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, becoming scarily professional when on duty and projecting an almost supernatural level of competence. Directly behind the captain and chief officer sat the ship’s chief engineer, Moncton, and the security chief, Eduardo Bettances.

And then, sitting in the back behind a scattering of scientists and technicians, was Prothero. He had forgotten Prothero’s first name, because nobody used it, especially Prothero himself. The man slouched in his chair in his usual faded T-shirt and jeans, Keds propped up on the chair in front, face partially hidden under an unruly mop of black curly hair. A tall, pretty Asian woman sat next to him. Prothero’s pale, moon-like face and receding chin with a silly tuft of hair seemed to float in the dim light of the instrumentation, his large eyes and lips glistening with excessive moisture. In every way, Gideon found Prothero to be an off-putting dude. Normally Gideon was attracted to nonconformists, but Prothero had met his friendly overtures with complaints about his berth, the ship’s lack of computing power, the lousy speed of the satellite Internet connection, and a host of other grievances, almost as if Gideon were the responsible party. Prothero was the expedition’s sonar specialist, said to have the largest collection of recorded cetacean communications and “songs” in existence. He was rumored to be deciphering their language. He never, however, spoke of this to anyone—at least, not so far as Gideon knew.

Glinn cleared his throat. “Greetings,” he said in a cool voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived on the target area. Let me welcome all of you to the Ice Limit.”

He paused for a smattering of applause.

“To be precise, we are at the shifting boundary of floating ice that surrounds the Antarctic Continent, at the edge of the Scotia Sea, about two hundred and fifty miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The wreck of the Rolvaag and the target object both lie in about thirty-five hundred meters of water more or less below us, in an area of the seafloor called the Hesperides Deep. Our position is 61°32′14″ South, 59°30′10″ West.”

Nobody was taking notes; it was all in their briefing books.

“As the Antarctic spring progresses, we will begin to see more and more icebergs start to calve in the warming waters. They offer much spectacle and little or no danger. The true danger here is the weather. We are in the Screaming Sixties, and even though it is spring, we will probably experience high winds and heavy seas from time to time.”

He walked slowly across the platform, then turned. “Our mission objectives are simple. We will study this alien life-form with the single goal of identifying how it is vulnerable in order to destroy it.” He paused, the emphasis on the last phrase hanging in the air. “We are not here to satisfy our own curiosity, to benefit science, or to enlarge our knowledge. We’re here to kill it.”

Another dramatic pause.

“Our first objective in the coming days will be to recover the two black boxes from the Rolvaag, which will contain vital information about the sinking of the ship, as well as video feeds of the meteorite in the hold and the actions of personnel on the bridge and other spaces in the last minutes of the ship’s existence. We will also map and survey the wreck—and the entity itself.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Gideon saw Prothero shift in his chair, flinging one leg over the other, his face propped up by one hand.

“The fact is, since arriving, we have already come face-to-face with a confounding mystery.” Glinn turned to one side and an LCD panel behind him popped into life, displaying a false-color image. “Here is a sonar image of the wreck of the Rolvaag, which we have just scanned in twenty-five-meter resolution. It’s rough, but you can see the ship is in two pieces on the seafloor, about fifty yards from each other. Tomorrow we will undertake an initial survey dive in a DSV.”

He turned.

“Now here is another sonar image of the area, two hundred yards to the south.”

Another image appeared on the LCD panel. This one was odd—blurry, a vague, almost fog-like swirl of colors.

“This is a sonar image of the life-form that we believe has grown from the so-called meteorite seed dropped on the seafloor.”

A silence.

“But there’s nothing there,” said a technician.

“That,” said Glinn, “is the problem. There’s nothing there. Not even the seafloor is visible. The sonar signal is simply vanishing as if into a black hole, and what small return we’re getting is stochastic and constantly shifting.”

“Is something wrong with the sonar system?” said the technician.

Prothero sat up, his abrasive voice loud in the room. “No, there isn’t, as I’ve said repeatedly. I’ve checked and triple-checked it.”

“Well,” Alex joined in, “it seems to me the likeliest explanation is equipment malfunction—”

“Hey, hey, hey, there’s no equipment malfunction,” came the querulous reply. “It’s all working perfectly. I’m tired of being blamed for this.”

“Any idea, then, what’s happening?” Alex asked politely.

Listening, Gideon’s dislike of Prothero went through the roof.

“How would I know? Maybe there’s a vent spewing clouds of suspended particulate matter, like clay, into the water. Maybe there’s a small erupting undersea volcano. I’m sick of these questions.”

Gideon spoke up. “No need to get your knickers in a twist, Prothero. Alex is asking legitimate questions.”

Prothero laughed loudly. “Oooh, the white knight comes to rescue the damsel in distress.”

Gideon, feeling the blood rush to his face, was about to respond when Manuel Garza interjected: “No one is blaming anyone. We’ve got an enigma on our hands, which tomorrow’s recon mission will solve. So let’s focus on that and keep the discussion civil.”

Prothero gave an audible snort and went back into his slouch.

“Regarding the recon,” Glinn went on, “we’re going to keep it simple. One DSV will go down to photograph the target object, along with doing a quick photographic and sonar survey of the wreck so we can get a better idea of its position on the seafloor. Extracting those black boxes will be critical.”

He paused.

“We’ll be doing this recon tomorrow. It took us a month to get down here, and there’s no point in wasting any time. Alex Lispenard, as DSV chief, will assign the mission. Any questions?”

There were none.

“That’s all—thank you very much.”

As the room was emptying, Glinn laid a restraining hand on Gideon’s arm, indicating he should stay. When everyone had left, including Garza, he leaned over. “Give Prothero a wide berth.”

Gideon felt a swell of irritation. “He had no business attacking Alex like that. He’s a jerk and I called him out on it.”

“And you were humiliated. You’ll never win a nasty exchange with him. His IQ is forty percent higher than yours.”

Gideon laughed. “Really? You’ve got all our IQs memorized?”

“Of course. Now, about the recon. As I said, Alex will be assigning the mission. And she’ll want to do it herself. Your job is to convince her to let you do it. If necessary, I’ll order her to let you.”

“Me? What the hell do I know about driving those DSVs? This is a bit too important for a honeymoon dive, don’t you think?”

“A baby could drive those DSVs. But here’s why I want you: I sense this recon is more dangerous than people realize, precisely because we don’t know what’s down there. Why can’t we see it on sonar? That’s very disturbing.”

“So you’re saying I’m expendable? I thought my nuclear knowledge was priceless to you.”

“You’re not, and it is. I never thought I’d say this, but you’re…lucky. You get yourself out of the most amazing scrapes.”

“Despite my low IQ?”

“Perhaps because of it,” Glinn said drily.

“How reassuring.”

“Listen to me carefully, Gideon. I want you down there, seeing things firsthand with your own eyes. You said you needed to be convinced this thing is dangerous before you’d lend your expertise—this is your chance. Besides, the more you know about what we’re dealing with, the more you understand, the more useful it will be when the time comes to build—and position—the bomb that will destroy it.”

And with that, he nodded his dismissal.