by Alten-Steve
Jonas moved the joystick forward, and his fourteen-foot Glider began its descent. D.J. followed him with the steel cable in tow. They were cruising at a thirty-degree angle, looping downward in a slow spiral.
Within minutes the sunlight faded to a deep shade of gray, and then... total blackness. Jonas checked his depth gauge: a mere 1,250 feet. Descending in the required prone position of the Abyss Glider felt strange to Jonas. If not for the harness, his body would have slid forward until his head collided with the interior tip of the nose cone. "Relax and breathe," he whispered to himself. "You've got a long way to go."
"Everything all right, Taylor?" Dr. Heller's voice over the radio had an air of insinuation. Jonas recalled Frank was assigned to monitor the two pilots' vital signs. He must have noticed Jonas's heart rate increase on the console's cardiac monitor.
"Yeah... I'm fine," he said. He took a deep breath, tried to focus on the nothingness before him, fighting the urge to turn on the spotlight. Using the spotlight now would only waste the sub's batteries.
Strange sea creatures began to appear before his eyes, glowing softly as they swam through the dark. "Abyssopelagic animals," Jonas whispered to himself, saying the technical name for these unique groups of fish, squid, and prawns. Jonas watched as a four-foot culper eel opened its mouth as if to swallow the nose cone, hyperextending and unhinging its jaws, revealing vicious rows of needle-sharp teeth. Jonas tapped the glass. The eel darted away in silence. He looked to his left. A deep-sea anglerfish circled nearby, an eerie light appearing over its mouth. Jonas knew the species possessed a rod fin that actually lit up like a lightning bug's tail. Small fish would mistake the light for food and swim straight toward it, right into the angler's wide-open mouth.
Jonas hadn't noticed the cold creeping up on him. He glanced at his temperature gauge. Forty-two degrees outside. He adjusted the thermostat to heat the pilot's capsule.
And then it happened, a wave of panic that jerked Jonas right off his stomach, slamming his head against the inside of the pod. It was a feeling comparable only to being buried alive in a coffin, unable to see, unable to escape. Sweat poured from his body, his breathing became erratic, and he found himself hyperventilating. He reached for the two pills, then, afraid of an overdose, flicked on the exterior lights of the sub.
The beam revealed nothing but more blackness, but it served its purpose, to reorientate its pilot. Jonas took a breath, then wiped the sweat from his eyes. He turned down the heat, the cooler air helping.
D.J. was calling him over the radio. "What with the light, Doc? We have strict orders."
"Just testing to make sure they work. How're you doing back there?"
"Okay, I guess. This damn cable's all tangled around the mechanical arm. Kind of like my telephone cord gets."
"D.J., if it's a problem, we should head back—"
"No way, Doc. I've got it under control. When we get to the bottom, I'll flip around a few dozen times and unwind." D.J. laughed at his own joke, but Jonas could hear the tension in the younger pilot's voice.
Jonas called up to DeMarco. "Al, D.J. says his cable's twisting around the mechanical arm. Can you do anything topside to relieve some of the pressure?"
"Negative. D.J.'s got the problem under control. We'll monitor him. You concentrate on what you're doing. DeMarco out."
Jonas looked at his watch. They had been descending now for forty-five minutes. He rubbed his eyes, then attempted to stretch his lower back within the tight leather harness.
The capsule was cramped, it reminded Jonas of the time he had to submit to ninety minutes' worth of MRIs. The massive machine had been situated only inches above his head, the sword of Damocles waiting to crush his skull. Only the red glow from the Abyss Glider's control panel gave his a sense of direction, keeping him from insanity. Jonas felt the telltale signs of claustrophobia creeping up again, but this time he fought the urge to flick on the 7,500-watt searchlight. His eyes moved over the damp Lexan interior of the pilot capsule. The water pressure surrounding him was over 16,000 pounds per square inch. He stared out into the blackness, felt a shiver of fear come over him. He was dropping below 34,000 feet — deeper than he'd ever gone before.
Jonas felt a slight trace of vertigo, which he hoped had more to do with the rich oxygen mixture in the submersible than with his medicine. His eyes moved from the inky water to the control panel readouts. The outside ocean temperature was thirty-six degrees... and rising! Thirty-eight, forty-two.
He spoke into the mike on his headset. "Here we are, D.J."
"You're about to enter the tropical currents, Doc. It's gonna get very hot as we pass above the black smokers. Hey, can you see that cluster of tubeworms down there?"
"Where?" Jonas focused hard but could see nothing.
"Two o'clock," said D.J. "Wait, the haze from the black smokers must be blocking our view."
Jonas felt his heart pounding through his ears. The layer of haze from the black smokers! It resembled a thick cloud of air pollution hanging above a steel plant, except that in the trench the heavy mineral deposits formed a ceiling above the sea floor. That's why the white image had disappeared before his eyes seven years ago. Camouflaged by the darkness, the mineral deposits and black smoke had obscured his view!
"Taylor!" Heller's voice shattered his thoughts. "What's going on? Your cardiac monitor just jumped off the scale."
"I'm okay... just excited." Jonas looked at his digital temperature readout as it continued climbing. Fifty degrees, sixty... and still rising. Eighty-five. They had fully entered the warm layer of the canyon, heated by the hydrothermal vents.
"Doc, switch on your searchlight. You need to avoid direct contact with the water spewing out of those big chimney stacks. It's so hot it could melt your sub's ceramic seals."
"Thanks for the warning, D.J." Jonas flipped the switch, revealing the tops of dozens of chimneys, some thirty feet high. Black smokers. Jonas knew the strange geological formations well. As the superheated water from the hydrothermal vents shot upward from the earth's mantle, they deposited sulfur, copper, iron, and other minerals along the sides of the seabed cracks. Over time, the cooling deposits left chimneys that resembled skinny volcanoes, rising high above the ocean floor. The water billowing out of these towering stacks was black from its high sulfur content, earning the name black smoker.
Jonas maneuvered his sub between two of the smoking towers, his visibility virtually eliminated as he passed through the murky layer. His temperature gauge rocketed past 230 degrees, and then he was through, the 7,500-watt searchlight cutting a path through the now-clear black water.
Jonas Taylor opened his eyes wide, awestruck by the view. D.J. was right. He had entered a different world.
THE BOTTOM
Jonas adjusted his midwing, decreasing his angle of descent. He hovered twenty feet above the seabed and slowed, waiting for D.J.
Spread out before him were row upon row of giant clams, pure white and glowing, each over a foot in diameter. There were thousands of them, lying in formation around the vents as if worshipping their god. The searchlight picked up movement along the bottom, vent crustaceans, hundreds of albino lobsters and crabs, glowing in the darkness of the abyss, all completely blind.
Jonas knew that many species of fish living in the dark sea depths made their own light by means of chemicals called luciferins or through the luminous bacteria that lived in their bodies. Nature had endowed the species with white skin and a luminescent glow to attract prey and locate each other.
Life. The amount and variety within the trenches had shocked scientists, who had incorrectly theorized that no life form could exist on the planet without sunlight. Jonas felt awed at being in the Challenger Deep. In the most desolate location on the planet, nature had found a way to allow life to exist.
Next to a patch of giant clams and mussels, Jonas could see a magnificent cluster of massive tubeworms, flowing like clumps of spaghetti in the warm currents. Pure white and fluorescent, except for t
he tips, which were blood red. Twelve feet long, five inches thick, in groups too numerous to begin to approximate. The tubeworms fed on the bacteria in the water. In turn, ellpouts and other small fish fed off the tubeworms.
A bizarre food chain, located at the bottom of the world, a world existing in total darkness. What species is at the top of this food chain? wondered Jonas. Giant squids? Undiscovered genera? Seven miles down, separated from 16,000 pounds per square inch of water pressure by a few inches of alloy, Jonas now felt thankful that he had been wrong about the Meg's existence.
Jonas slowed the AG II. He could see the bright glare of the second sub's searchlight approaching from behind. He picked up the radio. "You can take over from here, D.J."
D.J.'s sub slowly "flew" around and ahead of Jonas, careful to maintain sufficient distance. The two aquanauts wanted to remain within sight of once another, but didn't want Jonas to get caught in D.J.'s trailing cable.
DeMarco's voice came over the radio. "The canyon wall should be to port, approximately one-five-zero feet."
Jonas followed D.J. along the ocean floor until he could see the vertical wall of the submerged mountain range, known as seamounts. The subs entered a valley surrounded by high walls. It was as if God had lifted the Grand Canyon and submerged it under seven miles of ocean. Jonas was traveling back in time, knowing the seamounts were at least 200 million years old. He maneuvered within the gulley, keeping D.J.'s sub within sight.
"Doc, it's a bit rough ahead, so hold on," warned D.J. AS if on cue, Jonas felt his tail section begin wagging like a dog's tail. "We may have had another landslide down here."
"I hope you're wrong about that," Jonas said. "Can you see anything up there?"
"Not yet, but I've picked up the damaged unit's homing signal on my radar. North along this gulley. You'll see," said D.J., "the valley will open up again. The UNIS had positioned itself about sixty feet from the canyon wall on our left before it broke down."
Jonas looked to his right. Sure enough, the seamounts disappeared, revealing more black ocean. On his left, the canyon wall still loomed tall, disappearing upward, well beyond his view.
Jonas saw the red blip appear on his console screen.
"There it is!" D.J. said after a long silence.
The shell of the destroyed UNIS looked like a piece of scrap metal buried beneath several rocks. D.J. positioned his sub well above the remains, shining his spotlight over it like a streetlamp. "It's all yours, Doc. Go ahead and take a look."
Jonas moved closer to the UNIS, floating into the light of D.J.'s sub. He aimed his own spotlight at the shattered hull and drifted past it to the other side. Something's different, he thought, looking at the debris around the base. It's moved.
"You see anything?" D.J. asked over the radio.
"Not yet," Jonas said, straining his eyes for a glimpse of something white. He moved closer, peering into the rocks. And there it was!
"D.J., I can't believe it! I think I've located that tooth!" Jonas could barely maintain his excitement. He extended his sub's mechanical arm, aiming the claw above the eight-inch white triangular object, then lifting it carefully out of the mound of sulfur and iron.
"Hey, Doc." D.J. was laughing hysterically.
Jonas looked at the object he had traveled seven miles down to obtain.
It was the remains of a dead albino starfish.
THE MALE
Terry Tanaka, Frank Heller, and Alphonse DeMarco nearly fell out of their chairs in uncontrollable fits of laughter. Jonas could hear them over the radio. For a moment, he seriously considered ramming his submersible into the canyon wall.
"I'm sorry for laughing, man," said D.J. "Hey, wanna laugh at my stupidity? Take a look at my sub's mechanical arm."
Jonas looked up. The steel cable had wound in a dozen chaotic loops around the six-foot mechanical limb, so much so that the arm was barely visible beneath the cable. "D.J., that's not funny. You've got a lot of untangling to do before you can free yourself up."
"Don't worry. I can handle it. You work on clearing those rocks."
"Taylor!" DeMarco's voice burst from the radio. "Maybe you thought you saw a sixty-foot starfish..." Jonas could hear Terry's high-pitched laugh.
Jonas lowered the mechanical arm, trying to focus on the task at hand. He felt his blood boiling, beads of sweat dripping down his sides. Within minutes, he had managed to clear the debris from the UNIS.
"Nice job, Doc." D.J. was slowly revolving the mechanical arm in tight counterclockwise circles. Gradually, the steel cable began freeing itself from around the extended appendage.
"You need some help?" asked Jonas.
"No, I'm fine. Stand by."
Jonas hovered the Abyss Glider twenty feet off the bottom. Masao had been right, all of them had. He had hallucinated, allowed his imagination to wander in the abyss, violating a major rule of deep-sea exploration. One mistake, one simple loss of focus, had cost the lives of his crew and his reputation as an aquanaut.
What was left for him now? Jonas thought about Maggie. She'll want a divorce, no doubt. Jonas was an embarrassment. She had turned to Bud Harris, his own friend, for love and support while Jonas had built his new career on a hallucination. Today's return dive into the Challenger Deep in search of evidence of the Megalodon's existence would make him the laughingstock of the paleontologist community. A starfish, for Christ's sake...
Blip.
The sound caught him off-guard. Jonas located his radar. A red dot had appeared on the abyssal terrain, the map indicating the source of the disturbance was approaching fast.
Blip. Blip, blip, blip...
Jonas felt his heart racing. Whatever it was, it was big!
"D.J., check your radar," commanded Jonas.
"My radar... whoa, what the fuck is that?"
"DeMarco!"
Alphonse DeMarco had stopped laughing. "We see it too, Jonas. Has D.J. attached the cable yet?"
Jonas looked up, the sub's mechanical arm was twisting wildly, attempting to free the last loops. "No, not yet. How big would you estimate this object to be?"
"Jonas, relax. I know what you're thinking. But DeMarco says you're probably looking at a school of fish."
Jonas watched the radar, unconvinced. The object appeared to be heading straight for them, as though the subs were a homing beacon...
"D.J., stop twisting!" commanded Jonas.
"Huh? I'm nearly—"
"Shut down everything, all systems. Do it now!" Jonas shut off his sub's power, the 7,500-watt searchlight going dark. "D.J., if this object is a Meg it's homing in on the vibrations and electrical impulses from our subs. Kill your power!"
D.J.'s heart raced. He stopped twisting the mechanical arm. "Al, what should I do?"
"Taylor's crazy. Attach the cable and get the hell out of there."
"D.J...." Jonas stopped speaking, his eye catching a massive object circling less than five hundred yards away.
It was glowing.
THE GLOW
D.J.'s searchlight flickered off, dropping a cloak of darkness around the two submersibles. Jonas couldn't see his own hand now, but he could feel it shaking. He kept it close to the power switch for his own light.
The object came into view, a vague, pale glow circling back and forth within the overwhelming blackness. It was sizing up its prey, gliding silently five hundred yards from the subs, gradually closing.
Jonas felt his throat tightening.
There was no doubt. Jonas could see the conical snout, the thick triangular head, the crescent-moon tail. He estimated the Megalodon to be a good forty-five feet long, 30,000 pounds. Pure white. Fluorescent, just like the giant clams, just like the tubeworms. The beast turned again, remaining parallel to the canyon wall. Jonas saw the claspers: a male.
D.J.'s voice whispered across the radio. "Okay, Professor Taylor. I swear to you, I'm a believer. So what's your plan?"
"Stay calm, D.J. It's sizing us up. It's not sure if we're edible. No movements, we have to
be careful not to trigger a response."
"Taylor, report!" Heller's voice ripped through the capsule.
"Frank, shut up," whispered Jonas. "We're being watched."
"D.J.," Terry's voice whispered over the radio.
D.J. didn't respond. He was mesmerized by the creature before him, paralyzed with fear.
Jonas knew they had only one chance; somehow they had to make it past the tropical layer into the frigid open waters above. The Meg couldn't follow. Jonas noticed the sub had begun to heat up on the hot silt floor of the canyon. Dripping with sweat, he watched as the glow of the male's hide grew larger, brighter. Jonas caught a glimpse of a bluish-gray eye.
The monster turned. It was coming straight for them.
The massive creature bloomed ghostlike in the pitch black. Mouth agape, rows of jagged teeth.
Jonas ignited the searchlight, blasting 7,500 watts into the nocturnal eyes of the Megalodon. The male whipped its head sideways to the right, a bolt of lightning disappearing with a flicker of its tail into the darkness.
D.J. screamed over the radio. "Holy shit, Doc—"
The concussion wave created by the fifteen-ton creature plowed into the two submersibles. D.J.'s Glider twisted and spun, tugging on the steel cable. Jonas's ship was swept against the canyon wall, striking tail-first, crushing the sub's twin propellers.
The Megalodon circled from above, diving down toward the crippled AG II, now lying upside down against the base of the seamount. Jonas opened his eyes as the approaching glow filled the capsule. The monster's thick white snout lifted, the upper jaw pushed forward, exposing multiple rows of razor-sharp seven-inch teeth. Jonas closed his eyes, actually registering a millisecond of gratitude that his death would be delivered by the pressure change and not by the hideous teeth of the creature.
At the last moment, the Megalodon broke from its attack, whipping its body around in a tight circle, away from the sea floor. The wall of water created by the movement of its massive tail tossed the powerless submersible over and over again, until it finally settled itself right-side up against the canyon wall.