Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep

by Jason Henderson

  Misty went up and ran her hands along the limbs. “There’s stuff in the sleeves … and the knees.”

  Gabriel’s dad grinned. “Yeah. Exoskeleton. Processor in the helmet gives you assisted walking.”

  “Good for the moon?” asked Peter.

  “Don’t answer that,” Nerissa said. “So now that you’ve seen them, grab two. We have a sub to catch.”

  21

  GABRIEL FOUND HIMSELF at a loss for what to do on Nerissa’s bridge. It was bigger than the Obscure’s bridge, with twice the stations and room to breathe, but all the stations were manned and for once he was just ballast, weight to be carried. Nerissa stayed at her spot in front of the view screen, and Gabriel watched with her for a while. He looked back at the crewmen working away at their stations. Jaideep was at a nearby console, and Gabriel dropped his voice. “What are you carrying on this ship? I mean, if we need to defend ourselves?”

  “A heck of a battering ram.” Nerissa tilted her head toward the nose of the ship.

  “Torpedoes?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, those, too.”

  “Pincers?”

  “Some.”

  Gabriel stuck his hands in his pockets. “Would you do me a favor and use those? If there’s trouble?”

  Now she turned and looked at him. “What do you mean, if there’s trouble?”

  “I mean it would go a long way, with anyone, if we didn’t use explosives. Knock ’em out, but for heaven’s sake we should try not to … you know, murder anyone.”

  She bit her lip. “Gabriel, what do you think you’re doing right now?”

  “I’m just—”

  “This is my ship.” Nerissa turned back to the screen. “We use whatever I say we use.”

  He tried to speak several times more in the span of a few minutes. He wanted to change the subject, to ask her what else she’d been doing for the past year, but finally he realized she wasn’t having it and gave up. He went into the study where Peter and Misty were.

  Peter was at the edge of a loveseat, bent forward and intently studying a tablet with schematics of the rover. Misty was at the table with a sketchpad and pencil, working at what Gabriel thought was a picture of the Lodger from the tank. The one that had first been inside a biplane.

  Misty put down her pencil. “What’s going on out there?”

  Gabriel shrugged and sat. “I was getting in the way.”

  “How much longer is it?”

  “About an hour.”

  Peter put down the tablet. “I can’t look at this anymore. Do you think there’s a galley? This thing’s gotta have a kitchen.”

  Gabriel pointed. “Through that hatch, through three more hatches, up two. Just aft of center.”

  “Anyone want anything?”

  Misty stretched. “Soda. Something with caffeine. Extra points if it’s not the Nemo brand.”

  “No one likes my soda,” Gabriel moaned.

  “Eh, the seaweed lasagna was great, but the soda needs work,” Misty said.

  “Done.” Peter disappeared through the hatch.

  Misty looked out the window at the ocean. “Was it true, the thing you said to Nerissa, that your mom and dad knew you were bringing a crew?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, it’s true that I had Zinoman tell them that if they had a problem with it they should speak up.”

  She put her hands on the table. “You get it, right?”

  “Get what?”

  “The thing is, what Nerissa does, what you do, it means making all these decisions. We talked about what I thought about lying.”

  “I know, I know,” Gabriel said.

  “Nerissa just wants to make sure you’re ready. I mean, forget what I feel bad about. You risk so much, and you think you know what you’re doing, but you can’t know everything. You can’t. I think she wants you to do good, and she doesn’t want to see you suffer any more than you have to. But to her that means you shouldn’t be saddled with people you have to be in charge of.”

  Gabriel looked at the table. Everything Misty said was true. “It’s too late now.”

  “But that’s not it. You’re not your sister. Nerissa wears her isolation like a badge. You’re different,” she said. “We’re not just your crew. We’re your friends. And that means there’s nothing here you’re going to have to go through alone.”

  * * *

  An hour later and a hundred and fifty miles from the location of Nemolab, Gabriel and Misty stepped out of the air lock, lumbering down the roughly textured hatch at the back of the rover.

  “Everyone copy?” Gabriel spoke into the microphone at the edge of his helmet, his boot landing in soft earth at the bottom of the ocean.

  Beside him, Misty held up a thickly gloved thumb. “Copy.” Her face was lit all around by tiny lights inside a large green helmet that curved like a conch shell at the back. Like Gabriel, she looked like some kind of robot, with her armored chest and mechanically assisted limbs.

  The hatch silently closed behind them as Peter sounded off. “Copy.”

  “Copy,” came Nerissa’s voice from the Nebula, a massive dark obstruction hanging above them, stationary in the water. “We’ve got you on camera, and your systems in the rover look normal.”

  “Thanks,” Peter answered. “So far I’ve only driven this thing about sixty yards, but she handles okay.”

  A slight chuckle. “You dry?”

  “As a bone, Captain Nemo.”

  “Copy that. Now, there are thermal pockets all along the floor here, guys, so be ready to move if…”

  “If what?” Gabriel asked.

  “You know, if it opens up.”

  “The floor?”

  Nerissa came back, “Yeah, if the floor opens up and … lava comes out.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Copy. We’ll collect the samples and hopefully, you know, that won’t happen.”

  Gabriel and Misty turned away from the back of the rover and faced their objective. Gabriel switched on a lamp on his shoulder, and it cast a wide, bright beam through the water, lighting the way.

  “It’s amazing,” Misty whispered through the mic.

  “Yes, it is.” About a football field away, a cluster of tall, natural columns of earth and coral-like structures thrust up. Out of stovepipelike mouths in each, plumes of dark smoke poured into the ocean. The Black Smokers were one of the most mysterious phenomena of the sea, only discovered in the last fifty years. Some were short, and some reached twenty feet high with masses of something that looked like crystal clustered around.

  “I thought thermal vents were just seams in the ground.”

  “Well, sort of.” Gabriel walked steadily, rotors in his knees sounding and making it easier to take long strides. Clouds of sea dust sifted around his legs, and he watched white crabs that would never see the sun scamper away. “But the Black Smokers are more than just heat rising from the center of the earth. They react with the local flora, causing the columns you see and forming a strange habitat.”

  “You’re lecturing again.” He could see Misty’s smile through the helmet.

  “Well, we did say this was an educational tour.” He flexed his arms. They were slightly cool, even though he knew the temperature in the water here had to be near boiling. The suits were working perfectly. Then it started to warm up fast.

  After about five minutes of walking they came to some smaller smokers, a cluster about Gabriel’s height. He stood at a distance, watching the smoke. “You starting to feel it?”

  “Yeah, it’s hot.” Crabs skittered around, and small creatures that looked like crawdads moved backward around the smoke. Every creature had long antennae that picked and poked at the air. “What are the red-and-white plumes?” She pointed to masses of long, strawlike structures about half an inch wide that curved around the top of the smokers.

  “Those are tube worms,” Gabriel said. “These kind only grow here, getting nutrients from the smoke and the matter that is burned up in the heat. They grow and they grow, a
nd they’ll remain in place for hundreds of years.”

  Misty pulled a sample collector jar out of a pouch at her waist. She popped it open, and the lid acted as a spoon as she cautiously approached the white crystals. “I’ll get a bit of the vegetation.”

  “Sure, leave me to chase a crab around the place.” The heat grew more noticeable as they came closer. “Move fast and low.”

  Gabriel saw a crab moving sideways around the base of the smoker and crouched. He had collected crabs before. He put his hand down, blocking the tiny white creature’s path, and it immediately darted in the opposite direction. It smacked into the rim of his jar and bounced away. Okay, so he was out of practice.

  He glanced over to see Misty, who had dropped to her knees to scoop some crystals off the side of the smoker. A halo of red-and-white worms surrounded her helmeted head, clinging to the side of the column.

  Gabriel found another crab and performed the same maneuver as before, and this time the crab darted right into the jar, and he closed it with a satisfying click.

  “I’ve got my sample.” Misty stood up, backing away as she put the jar in her pouch. “Let’s go.”

  Gabriel still crouched in the silt when the worms near Misty’s head fluttered and—they couldn’t move, could they? But they were! “Misty, watch out!”

  She looked sideways as a handful of foot-long white worms broke free from the column and wriggled through the air, landing on her shoulders. One of them landed on her helmet, clapping itself along her faceplate. “What the…?” She brushed at it, but it held there as she brushed at it again, stepping away as if to escape.

  Gabriel ran, or tried to run, to her side, the rotors helping him to a slow plod. “That’s amazing. I’ve never heard of them doing that.” He reached out with his glove and grabbed one of the tube worms on her shoulder. It flexed under his fingers like a piece of thick white pasta, and then it curled up and latched onto his fingers.

  “I’ve picked one up.”

  “What are you seeing?” Nerissa asked in his ear.

  “Tube worms, but they’re being … aggressive.”

  “Get out of there.”

  “They don’t bite.”

  “Gabriel, crazy things happen. Move.”

  A cloud of the creatures let loose from the column and undulated through the water, landing on his shoulders. “Come on.” He started to move back. “We’ve got scrapers in the rover, we can peel them off…”

  And then he heard a hiss. Water was evaporating on his glove as the creature there glowed, moving around his palm and wrist. For a brief moment he saw its underbelly as it moved. A long, thin seam had opened up along the side of the worm, and inside, brightly burning matter made water molecules explode. It clamped on his hand and started to burn.

  “Argh.” Misty swiped at her shoulder. “This thing is burning me.”

  “Yeah, it’s got my hand … They’re burning through the suits.”

  They started to move as quickly as they could, making long jumping strides along the ocean floor. The things were burning through the way the bulbs of the Lodgers did. No: These were the bulbs.

  Misty yelped, and he looked over to see that there was vapor coming off her faceplate as the worm worked its way along the glass. A red glow shone on her face from the underside of the worm.

  He didn’t hear but saw a crack form in her faceplate. “Stop.” He took her by the arm.

  “We have to go—”

  “We won’t get anywhere if they melt through our faceplates,” he said urgently. That would cause water to rush in and drown them instantly. The same if the worms burned through their suits. They were just asking to let the water in if they didn’t get rid of these things.

  The worm at his hand was making his fingers numb with heat, and he grabbed it with his other hand, ripping it away and hoping it wouldn’t take a chunk of his glove with it. He immediately brought it up in an arc, still burning. Gabriel slapped it against the worm on Misty’s faceplate, and water exploded all around them. The worm on her helmet tore itself away, twisting into the darkness.

  “Now run.” The burns were all over his suit now—he could feel them on his shoulder, back, and legs.

  As they came within yards of the back of the rover, a bright seam opened up in the floor about ten yards in front of it. “Heat!” Peter shouted. The ground moved beneath them and made the rover shake as a boiling wave of heat blew against the vehicle. “Hurry up, Captain.”

  “Rover, we are reading massive heat surges in your suppressors,” Nerissa’s voice came on the mic. “Your engines won’t take that for too long. You need to move off so we can collect you.”

  “He needs to collect us first.” Gabriel ripped a worm from his knee. He squeezed it and then tore his fingers away from it as it blazed like a torch and fled. “Open hatch.”

  “I’m opening the door.” The rear door of the rover started to come down, and Gabriel and Misty climbed onto it before it was even all the way open, tumbling through water into the air lock.

  “Close it, close it.” Gabriel landed on his shoulder on the floor and came to his knees. “We’re clear.”

  The hatch closed and Peter started to drive, the big wheels outside the portholes kicking up a storm of sea dust.

  Misty gasped as a worm at her hip sizzled, and he saw the fabric of her suit bubble. “Scrapers.”

  “We need tools,” Gabriel called to Peter. “The tools in the back of the cockpit. Blow out the air lock, double-time.”

  “Blowing the air lock,” Peter said.

  There was a moment of silence and then … nothing. The vents in the back should have opened to pump water out, but nothing was happening.

  “Peter?” A worm at Gabriel’s chest started to burn through and he could feel the heat at his sternum, heat that undulated with thousands of the worm’s tiny movements.

  “Uh, air lock is malfunctioning.” Peter’s voice was agitated. “I think the controls have been damaged by the heat.”

  A worm flared at his other knee and Gabriel cried out in pain, dropping, scraping at it with his fingers. “Look for a manual override.”

  “I’m trying. All the auxiliary functions are offline.”

  “We are sending down cables to grab the rover,” Nerissa said.

  Gabriel fought to find the worms as Misty writhed next to him in her own battle. He saw one behind her neck and grabbed it. “Here, can you get this one?” He wriggled his head at the back of his shoulder and she grabbed it, dropping it into the water. In his earpiece, Nerissa was saying that mechanical cables were coming down to grab the rods at the top of the rover and haul it up to the Nebula’s own dive room, but—

  “There isn’t time,” Gabriel insisted. “We’re trapped in the air lock, and these things are going to burn through our suits.”

  He managed to get the worm free from his knee and saw that a piece of fabric came with it. The inside lining was still there but if that ruptured, water would rush all the way up to his helmet. And he would drown, right here in the back of this vehicle.

  The worm in his hand bounced back and landed on his face, burning. The helmet started to bubble as red flame filled his eyes. What are you?

  A crack sounded in his ear as the glass began to rupture in front of his mouth.

  Calm, calm, take the energy flowing through your body and push it to your brain.

  “Peter, stop, try restarting. Shut everything down and try restarting.”

  The vehicle lurched to a halt and Gabriel and Misty flew forward in the water, slamming against the bulkhead. “Restarting, aye.”

  “Belay that!” Nerissa again. “Restarting the rover will take five minutes. Gabriel, do you have that much time?”

  Burning and bubbling before his eyes. “No.”

  “Peter.” Nerissa’s voice was calm and smooth. “Look for Transfer, uh…” A few moments of thought, apparently. “Transfer Control. Select it, and tell me when you do.”

  The helmet cracked more and Misty
screamed, “Come on!” as she tore away a worm, taking a chunk of the outer suit fabric with it.

  “Guys?” Gabriel called.

  “Transfer Auth Code?” Peter shouted. “I got a dialogue box!”

  “OS188.”

  “OS1…”

  “88!”

  Peter shouted, “Okay, okay!”

  A moment later Nerissa came back. “We have control of the rover. Blowing out air lock.”

  Water began to rush out as air came in, generators roaring all around them. When the water came down around Gabriel’s ankles he called through the wall and into his earpiece, “Okay, we’re standing in two inches of water here; you can open it.”

  “Opening air lock,” Nerissa called, and the iris between them and the cockpit flew open. Peter turned around in the driver’s seat as they tumbled in. Gabriel and Misty tore off their helmets.

  “I’m sorry.” Peter shook his head. “I couldn’t blow the air lock…”

  “Hey, you entered the code at the right time.” Gabriel grabbed a pair of huge metal brushes. “Best you could do.”

  Misty tore off her suit and crawled out in a pair of shorts and a tank top as Gabriel did the same. They threw the suits, still smoking with worms, into the air lock. Gabriel hit a button next to Peter’s head, and the iris closed as the suits began to turn the water on the other side to steam.

  As the Nebula hauled the rover up, Gabriel spoke through the intercom. “Quarantine this vessel as soon as we’re out of it.” Outside, the smokers were receding in the distance as the Nebula’s underhull drew near.

  Misty sat down and shook her fists in front of her face. “Is anything down here not going to try to kill us?”

  “It’s the bottom of the ocean!” Peter yelled. “We pick the worst friends.”

  Nerissa called to Gabriel through his earpiece as they all climbed out and crew members ran over to look after the vehicle. “When you’re ready, come up to the bridge … Something you need to see.”

  “What, something else?”

  “Something on the sonar.”

  When they reached the bridge, the Nebula was still moving away from the Smokers, but Nerissa was pointing over a small ridge into a valley beyond. As they moved toward it, they could see the valley was only about a mile wide. “If you look on the infrared, you can see the seepage here.”