Beyond the Ice Limit

21

BY THE TIME Gideon reached the exobiology lab, Glinn was already deep in conversation with Antonella Sax, the lab’s director. They were bent over a stainless steel box with a glass top, in which the root-like tentacle he’d retrieved—remarkably thin and long—lay sealed inside. Four other technicians were busy in various corners of the spacious but crowded lab.

Glinn motioned him over. “Dr. Sax is explaining what she and her team plan to do with this specimen.”

Gideon had not had much contact with Sax, who was a short, stocky, serious woman with brown hair pulled back tight, glasses, about forty—smart and all business. He shook her hand and she turned back to the coiled tentacle.

“What we have here,” Sax said quietly, “is humanity’s first real example of exobiology. That is beyond outstanding. But it presents all kinds of challenges. For example, under normal circumstances we’d be running the most painstaking and meticulous sterile procedures possible. But we don’t have time for that. We need to know as much as we can about this thing, as fast as possible. Quick and dirty. The more we know, the better we’ll be able to prepare.”

“No quarantine procedures?” Gideon asked. “We don’t want an Andromeda Strain event.”

“The fact is, the ship itself is a kind of quarantine—the ultimate quarantine. Before we return to port, we’ll incinerate this thing and any other parts of the creature we bring up, then sterilize the lab.”

Gideon hesitated. He was still in shock, dazed from what happened to Alex, and he found it hard to focus. “Do you feel the ship is at risk from any sort of disease or microbes this thing might be carrying?”

Sax looked at him, brown eyes clear. “In a word: yes.”

“This creature is already exposed and open to the ocean,” Glinn said. “So whatever microbes it might be carrying are already present in the environment.”

“What I find remarkable,” said Sax, “is that this specimen reached the surface, where the pressure is about four hundred times less, intact, with no obvious alteration. Normally, when you bring a deep-sea specimen up to surface pressure, it completely falls apart.”

“So this thing can live at all depths?” Gideon asked.

“A reasonable inference.”

Sax went on to describe the plan of research, starting with sections of the specimen for various scans and examinations—frozen, microscope, SEM, TEM, histological. Also, she said, CAT scans, MRIs, electrical impulse tests, microbiological and biochemical analyses. “We don’t know what this is,” she told them. “Plant, animal, or something else entirely. We’re not sure what it’s made of. Does it have DNA? Is it even carbon-based? The most elementary questions still have to be answered. But by the time we’re done, our tests will tell us about its anatomy, nervous system—if it has one—the flow of fluids and electrical impulses, its cellular energy cycles—assuming it even has cells—its biochemistry and molecular biology. But for the time being…” She shook her head. “It’s like landing on an unknown planet.”

“Then we’ll let you proceed with all haste.” Glinn turned, indicating for Gideon to follow him. Once out in the hall, and alone after turning a corner, Glinn halted. “There’s something I want to talk to you about—in confidence.”

“Of course.”

“Back there in the meeting, I squelched speculation on Lispenard’s last words.”

Gideon took a deep breath. “I noticed.”

“There’s something profoundly disturbing about them, and I don’t want a lot of speculation about it.”

“You’re…um, you’re referring to the timing?”

Glinn looked at him steadily. “Prothero is working on that, and I do believe it has to be some kind of glitch. No: I’m referring to what she said. The meaning. Let me touch your face.”

Gideon said nothing. She had spoken those words to him, or something very similar, the night they had spent together. My God. Was it just last night?

“I said it was some sort of rapture of the deep. But I don’t believe that’s true. The sphere was crushed immediately. And at two miles down, there’s no ‘rapture’—death at that pressure is absolutely instantaneous. In listening to those words…I sense there’s real meaning in there, not some random, crazy utterance of a failing brain. This is something…” He paused. “Something beyond our understanding.”

He turned his piercing gray eyes on Gideon. “This is a line of inquiry that you and I will pursue, quietly—just the two of us. I know, Gideon, what Alex’s death meant to you. I know this isn’t easy. But I also know this anomaly is something you won’t let drop until you get to the bottom of it. Prothero is working on the timing glitch. I want you to keep tabs on what he’s doing—and make sure rumors about anything he might discover aren’t disseminated haphazardly. We’ve lowered a camera to the seafloor and placed it about two hundred yards from the creature. We’re going to be watching it twenty-four seven.”

“All right,” Gideon heard himself say.

Glinn looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Then, with the briefest of nods, he turned and headed back in the direction of mission control.