Beyond the Ice Limit

11

THEY TOLD HIM the descent would take forty minutes—if all went well. Gideon, strapped into the DSV known as Ringo, fought back a growing sense of unease and claustrophobia as the submersible was lowered into the water.

He’d had a right good argument with Alex when he’d asked her to assign the recon to him instead of herself. Nothing had worked—wheedling, cajoling, demanding: even telling her to fuck off. In the end, though, he hadn’t needed to go to Glinn—she’d taken the matter to him herself, and Glinn had endorsed Gideon’s request. The whole incident had left her furiously angry, and that pained Gideon—especially since he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be the volunteer guinea pig.

The surface of the ocean was visible through the forward viewport, rippled by the breeze but otherwise calm. He could feel the faint swing of the DSV as it entered the water. In a moment the submersible was under, with glistening bubbles swirling around the viewport, and then he was staring into the infinite, sun-speared depths.

He took a deep breath. He tried to take his mind off the fact that he was going down into the blackness beyond—almost two miles deep.

“Ringo, do you read?”

“Loud and clear.”

Gideon’s mission-control contact was Garza, who, although he wasn’t exactly the warmest human being, was one of the most competent. For that, Gideon was grateful.

“We’re going to hold you at a depth of twenty feet while we go through the in-sea checklist. You ready?”

“So far, so good.”

While the DSV hung in the water, still on its cables, Garza ran through a checklist, telling Gideon to flick one switch, read a second dial, turn on this pump and turn off that one, while he confirmed that all systems were go. Finally, Garza said: “Ringo, ready to release in one minute.”

The procedure, Gideon knew from the topside briefing, was to release the DSV into the water, where it would sink straight to the bottom, drawn down by its iron ballast. At the bottom, the weights would be jettisoned, giving the DSV neutral buoyancy. Because acoustic or electromagnetic communications between the DSV and ship at a depth of two miles were impossible, for this first dive Ringo would remain in contact with mission control by a wire cable, which would unspool as the DSV descended. If the cable broke—apparently, this was a common occurrence—the autopilot would automatically take over and bring Ringo back to the surface. The cable would carry all of the DSV’s operations, video, and sonar data to mission control, so that if anything started to go wrong they would know it in real time.

“Release in ten seconds.”

Gideon listened as Garza’s voice counted down in his headphones. Then he heard a muffled thunk and felt himself begin to sink. He could see small particles in the water drifting upward past the viewports at a steadily increasing rate. The surrounding sea began to darken: from light blue, to blue, to a deep indigo.

“All systems green,” came Garza’s neutral, reassuring voice, every two minutes.

Now the viewports had faded into black. Occasionally something—a bit of particulate matter—would flash through the DSV’s running lights, moving upward as the vehicle sank.

“Take a deep breath, Gideon. Your vitals are starting to rise.”

He realized he was breathing fast and shallow, and he could feel his heart racing. They were monitoring his vital signs, of course, and he knew this incipient panic would not look good. He made a supreme effort to regulate his breathing, calm himself down, telling himself this was far less dangerous than crossing Seventh Avenue at rush hour.

“Better,” said Garza.

Gideon checked the clock—Jesus, it had only been seven minutes. Thirty-three more to go. One screen showed a continuous sonar image of the seafloor below, and he focused on it to distract himself. The image gradually grew clearer. Two brighter images began to resolve themselves, representing the two pieces of the Rolvaag on the seafloor. To the west of the wreck he could see the strange, ever-shifting, pixelated cloud of sonar return that cloaked the place where the meteorite had landed.

Twenty minutes. He glanced around, refamiliarizing himself with the controls, then checked the depth gauge, continuously reeling off his depth. Two thousand meters, two thousand ten, two thousand twenty…

The sonar image of the wreck continued to sharpen. But the sonar cloud to its west was, if anything, getting bigger and blurrier.

Thirty minutes. He was almost there.

“Slowing descent to fifty meters per minute,” said Garza.

Gideon felt the change. Or perhaps it was his imagination? Now he could see the Rolvaag in detail on the sonar screen. It lay on the seafloor, torn in half, with a debris field scattered around it. Both pieces of the ship—each one impossibly huge—were lying on their sides, at an angle of perhaps one hundred and twenty degrees. Other than that, the seafloor extended flat in all directions—except for an area about a hundred meters in diameter at the spot where the meteorite was estimated to have landed, which was still just a blurry, shifting cloud of pixels—random sonar return.

The wreck grew until it filled the sonar screen, and still kept growing. He could see the DSV was aiming for a spot on the seafloor perhaps fifty meters from the ship’s stern.

“Slowing descent to twenty meters per minute,” said Garza. “Gideon, Ringo’s lights have a reach of about a hundred meters. You’ll be able to see the Rolvaag in visible light through the downward viewport at any moment now.”

“Roger.” Gideon kept his eye fixed on the viewport.

“The autopilot will bring you to rest on the seafloor,” said Garza. “Then the DSV will automatically blow the ballast tanks to achieve neutral buoyancy, and the autopilot will bring you up ten meters. Hopefully the action won’t throw up too much silt, but if it does, you’re downcurrent from the ship and you will remain stationary until the silt clears away.”

“Understood.”

So far Gideon had done nothing but monitor the screens. Gazing through the viewport, he could now see the details of the bottom approaching, faint in the DSV’s lights. It was smooth mud with a few scattered depressions and some unrecognizable pieces of debris. The wreck itself was still out of view.

The DSV settled down ever so slowly, the bottom coming up to meet him. The muck of the bottom obscured the view out the lower port, and he shifted his gaze to the left and right viewports. To his right, with a start, he realized he could see the dim form of the Rolvaag’s stern, with two gigantic, mangled screws affixed to what looked like pods. The crumpled hull, split along riveted seams, extended on into the blackness.

“Ready to blow tanks,” came Garza’s voice through the communications wire.

“Roger.”

Now he felt a series of jolts, and a cloud of silt rose up to obscure his view. The DSV ascended briefly, then became stationary again. The viewports remained completely obscured by silt, which was reflecting the headlights back into the DSV, making it bright inside.

“We’re waiting for the silt to drift downcurrent,” said Garza.

Within two minutes, the silt had cleared away. He was, as Garza promised, about thirty feet off the bottom. Now he could see the Rolvaag in more detail, still faint and at the edge of the spotlights’ penetration. Strangely, there was no sign of any deep-sea life, no fish or sea creatures around, and nothing on the ocean floor save scattered bits and pieces of debris.

“Ringo, the DSV is yours. Begin recon.”

“Roger that.” Gideon’s briefing had been very specific: to pass over the length of the wreck at a height of twenty meters, from stern to bow, then make a second, sideways pass. The DSV was pre-programmed to do a complete photographic, sonar, and magnetic survey. All he had to do was pilot it, making sure to steer clear of any snags—not that it mattered, since Ringo’s autopilot would avoid them anyway. Then, in phase two of the recon, he was to make his way toward the site of the meteorite and see what the sonar cloud was all about—whether it was a cloud of silt, seafloor venting, or something else.

Gingerly moving the joystick, Gideon turned the DSV to face the ship’s stern, then pushed it forward. With a smooth motion, the DSV hummed along at a slow pace. He maneuvered the mini sub to a higher altitude above the seafloor. Gradually the stern came into sharper view, each of its two giant screws larger than his entire vessel. He increased altitude, the DSV responding with the brief delay he was now used to. He made continuous adjustments to keep the path steady and even.

“Proceed to the predetermined waypoint,” said Garza.

A chartplotter on the main screen showed the waypoint in x-, y-, and z-axes, and it took only the merest nudging for the submersible to reach it, at which point he came to a halt.

“Commence survey.”

Again the DSV needed almost no help from Gideon, who only had to push the joystick slightly for the craft to follow the predetermined survey line, smoothly and expertly. The whole thing was pre-programmed and Gideon began to feel that his presence was more or less optional.

As he cruised about fifty feet above the wreck, Gideon became even more impressed by its enormous size. They had told him it was bigger than the Empire State Building, and now he was experiencing just how true that was. It went on and on, the warped hull sliding past. He passed the superstructure, then the bridge, lying on its side, crushed and scattered about the seafloor in great wrinkled heaps, with all kinds of cables draped about. One bridge wing stuck up from the hull, its windows shattered.

Odd, thought Gideon, that there were no signs of life around the wreck—no fish moving in and out, no plant growth. The entire place seemed dead. But that would be explained, perhaps, by the great depth and lack of light.

He reached the spot where the hull had split, the great riveted plates of the ship ripped apart, the petaled pieces of metal warped outward. Clearly, an explosion inside the hold had torn the ship in half. And in the space between the two halves of the ship lay a huge, rotten pile of debris, a gigantic tangle of split timbers and metal struts, which he assumed must be the remains of the “cradle” for the meteorite.

Suddenly he had a jolt: he could see, lying on the seafloor just outside one section of the hull, an oblong shape that—as he peered more closely—was all too obviously a human corpse. It was missing its head and both of its arms. And as he continued scanning the slowly passing view, he saw another folded shape nearby that, too, was a body. This one was not only headless and armless but missing one leg as well. Apparently, the limbs had been torn away by the force of the explosion that sank the Rolvaag.

Jesus.

“I see human remains down here,” he said.

Garza’s calm voice came back. “We see them, too. This is not unexpected. Carry on.”

“Roger.”

He swallowed. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? And why hadn’t they mentioned this in the briefing? Other than the violence done to them by the explosion, both corpses seemed remarkably well preserved, which, he figured, must be due to the great depth.

Now he could see the blunt bow approaching.

“Nearing waypoint two,” said Garza.

As he passed the bow, the water suddenly became dark again, the seafloor almost too far away for the headlights to reach.

“Reaching waypoint two.”

Once again the DSV came to a smooth hover.

“We’re going to make a second pass,” Garza said, “to the north and offset from the ship along its deck side. Proceed to waypoint three.”

For this scan, the DSV would be close to the seafloor, scanning the wreck sideways. Gideon maneuvered to the waypoint and began the scan.

This was more dramatic, driving only thirty feet above the seafloor, looking at the wreck sideways. Because the two pieces of the ship were lying on their sides, Gideon was now looking down on the decks, which had been slightly accordioned by the impact with the seafloor.

“What’s that?” Gideon suddenly asked. He could now barely make out a thin, thread-like line, lying on the seabed and twisting off into the darkness.

“We see it,” said Garza. “All right, slow down. Divert from the pre-programmed path and get closer to it.”

Gideon eased the DSV over until it was positioned about ten feet above the thing. He peered at it through the viewport. “Is it a wire from the ship?” he asked.

“No,” said Garza. “It’s too long. Get a little closer, please.”

Gideon worked the joystick and the DSV lowered to within five feet of the cable. It was smooth, featureless, pencil-thin, and the same gray color as the seafloor it was lying on. Now that he was closer to the bottom, he could see other, similar cables lying on the seafloor, some partially buried, some appearing and disappearing in the muck, all snaking off in one vague direction into darkness.

“Did you notice they’re all heading in the direction of the meteorite?” said Gideon. “I’d like to follow these.”

A brief silence. “We don’t advise that,” said Garza. “Finish up the survey; we can examine it later.”

“My survey of the Rolvaag is complete. Since I have to go that way anyway, I’d really like to follow these.”

More silence. No doubt they were conferring topside, out of his hearing. “Very well,” said Garza. “Go slow and do not—I repeat—do not enter any cloud of silt, if there is one, or approach any venting structures. Stay well away from anything that looks unusual or unnatural.”

“Roger.”

Gideon turned Ringo and began following the narrow snake-like cables lying on the seafloor. For some reason they gave him the creeps.

And then, through the forward viewport, Gideon could see a large, indistinct, looming form start to take shape.

“Do you see that…?”

“Yes,” said Garza in a clipped tone. “And we’re losing you in the sonar cloud.”

“But the water is totally clear.”

“We see what you see.”

Gideon instinctually slowed the DSV to a crawl. His sonar screen dissolved into a wash of noise. However, the submersible’s headlights now picked up the form ahead, outlining it with clarity.

“Oh, my God,” he murmured.

Looming ahead out of the darkness was a gigantic, tree-like thing: a grotesque, ribbed growth rising from the seabed, with a fissured, bark-like surface. It towered so far above him that the top of it disappeared into blackness, out of the range of his lights. It went on and on and on.

“Go no farther,” said Garza, but Gideon had already stopped the DSV.

There was silence topside. Gideon stared. The loose bundles of cable he’d followed ran along the seabed until they reached the vast growth, combining together and running into its base like a root. Gideon could see a vast number of other, similar appendages converging in from other directions as well, going into the base of the structure.

“Holy shit,” Gideon said.

Garza spoke again, his voice uncharacteristically tense. “Time to return to the surface.”

“I’m going closer.” Gideon eased the joystick forward.

“No, you’re not.” A message popped up on the DSV control screen:

CONTROL TRANSFERRED TO SURFACE

The craft stopped responding to the joystick. He heard a clang as the iron ballast was released and the sub began to rise.

“Hey—!”

“Sorry,” said Garza. “We’re bringing you up.”

But now Gideon was rendered speechless as the submersible rose and the enormous size of the thing became fully revealed. He was rising at an angle, away from the tree, and just when its central trunk started to divide into what appeared to be clusters of branches, the thing disappeared into the murk, out of range of his lights.

“Thirty-nine minutes to surface,” came Garza’s tight voice.

As blackness reasserted itself around the viewports of the DSV, Gideon could only imagine the consternation now taking place in mission control.