400 Minutes of Danger

by Jack Heath

  09:40 When he turned to look, the lion was prowling back and forth near the edge of the waterway. It looked like it really, really wanted to eat him—but was struggling to figure out how to do so without getting wet.

  It wasn’t alone. The roar had summoned other lions. Several females—slightly smaller, no manes—were walking towards him. There were even a couple of cubs that might have looked cute under normal circumstances. They had big paws on skinny legs and round, curious eyes. But they were almost as big as Brad, and he could see them licking their chops as they prepared to devour him.

  09:15 He was safe on this side of the water, but not for long. The walkway was only five or so metres to his left. Soon the lions would realise that they could get to him by crossing it. This would also put them between him and his only escape route, the two gates—which were probably locked anyway.

  However he looked at it, he was going to be eaten.

  ‘Help!’ he screamed. ‘Somebody help me!’

  08:40 His voice echoed around the darkness of the zoo. If the guard with the tranquilliser rifle was within earshot, he gave no sign.

  The huge male lion—he must have been almost three metres long from nose to tail—was edging closer to the water. He sniffed it, perhaps wondering whether to take a dip.

  Brad threw another water balloon at him. The lion darted backwards, amazingly fast. When the balloon exploded, none of the droplets landed on the beast.

  08:10 He took his eyes off the lions just long enough for a quick peek into his backpack. He’d started with almost a hundred water balloons, but after the fall from the viewing platform and the lion’s teeth, only six or seven were left intact. He couldn’t hold off the animals for much longer.

  But maybe they were giving up. One of the females was walking away towards the long grass.

  Brad was finding it hard to breathe. He waited to see if any of the other lions would follow.

  07:50 They didn’t—and the female had turned around again. Her shoulders wiggled.

  She wasn’t leaving. She was taking a run up. She was going to try to jump over the moat.

  As the lioness broke into a sprint towards the water, Brad chucked a balloon at her. It exploded right in front of her paws, but she didn’t miss a step. She was braver than the male. If she managed to jump over the channel, Brad was dead.

  07:30 He dropped the backpack and dashed along the fence line to the gate. It was his only hope now.

  Pop! Pop! It sounded like gunshots. Brad was too panicked to work out what that might mean. He kept running towards the two gates, desperately hoping that at least the closest one was unlocked.

  He reached the gate and grabbed the steel handle.

  It wouldn’t turn.

  07:10 ‘No!’ Brad screamed, rattling the gate. He was trapped.

  He turned in time to see the lioness launch herself over the moat, soaring with paws outstretched and wicked claws extended. She crash-landed less than gracefully beside the fence, and immediately turned to run after Brad.

  He couldn’t open the gate, but maybe he could scramble up the fence out of reach. Brad grabbed the chain-link and started to climb—

  07:00 Too late. The lioness slammed into him and closed her jaws around his head.

  Brad found himself staring down a dark gullet and choking on hot, fetid breath. A sandpapery tongue was pressed against his cheek. An enormous tooth was lodged inside his ear. He couldn’t breathe. But the beast didn’t bite down. It just held him, breathing slowly and deeply.

  She was snoring.

  06:40 Strong hands gripped the lioness’s jaws and pulled them apart. Brad fell back, his head free. Something warm trickled down the sides of his neck. There was no pain, so it took him a moment to realise it was blood. In the moonlight he could see two tranquilliser darts sticking out of the lioness’s hind leg.

  ‘Come on!’ a woman’s voice yelled. Not the security guard. Someone else.

  06:25 Brad stumbled towards the gate—it was open now, the severed bolt glowing red. Something hot had sliced through it, just like with the fence.

  05:50 His rescuer—a tall woman in a balaclava—dragged him through both gates, out of the enclosure, and slammed them shut. She pulled a coil of climbing rope off her belt and tied it through the chain-link, holding the gate closed.

  The lions ran across the walkway, trampling their unconscious sister in their desperation to get to the gates. They pounded on the first gate with their paws, but it was designed to open into the enclosure. Even with the bolt sliced in two, they couldn’t push it open. And if they somehow broke through, Brad hoped the rope would stop them from getting through the second gate.

  04:40 The woman examined the scratches on the sides of Brad’s head. They were starting to sting now. He wondered if anyone would believe they were from a lion’s teeth.

  ‘You’ll live,’ the woman pronounced. ‘If I were you, I’d get out of here.’

  A curl of grey-blonde hair had escaped from her balaclava. She wore a dark-grey skivvy under a utility harness bristling with gadgetry. Her black boots had thick soles that made no sound as she moved. Brad noticed she was missing a ring finger on one hand.

  04:20 Was this one of the thieves the security guards had been talking about? Apparently she had cutting equipment, and an animal tranquilliser.

  ‘Who are you?’ Brad demanded.

  ‘I’m no-one,’ the mysterious woman said. ‘I never saved you, you never saw me, you don’t know anything about me. Got it?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Brad said.

  ‘Correct,’ the woman said. Then she stepped backwards into the shadows and silently disappeared. It was like a magic trick—there was no apparent escape route, but she was gone nevertheless. Whoever she was, she was more than a common thief.

  03:45 Torches flitted between the trees in the distance. The security guards were coming. Brad ran up the winding path away from the lion enclosure, puffing.

  Soon he found himself back at the locker room. He opened the door and peered in.

  ‘Icky?’ he whispered.

  01:00 There was no response. The gap between lockers was empty. Icky had probably fled when Brad distracted the guard.

  Brad made his way to the circular hole in the fence. The metal had cooled now. He peered through. The backup for the security guards didn’t seem to have arrived yet. He scrambled through into the shrubbery and then stumbled onto the highway.

  He looked around at the flickering streetlights. He was out of the zoo. He didn’t know who that woman was, or why she had saved him, but he knew this:

  00:00 He and Icky were not friends any more.

  IRON-WILLED

  40:00 ‘You have forty minutes of air,’ Tak Zobel said.

  ‘Starting now.’

  He attached the helmet to Iresha’s exoskeleton and activated the seals around the rim.

  ‘Depending on how fast and deep you breathe, of course,’ he added. ‘You also have fifty minutes of battery life.’

  ‘Great,’ Iresha said. ‘Those extra ten minutes when I have power but no air might come in handy.’

  39:20 She always made jokes when she was nervous. Zobel didn’t laugh. He was checking the helicopter’s flight path over the ocean on a wall screen.

  Iresha sat down. ‘I hate space suits,’ she grumbled.

  ‘It’s not a space suit,’ Zobel said, without looking away from the screen. ‘It keeps pressure out, not in. It’s the exact opposite of a space suit.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ She gestured at the exoskeleton. ‘Boots, gloves, face plate. I feel like a walking tank.’

  She was exaggerating. The material was much lighter and more flexible than she had expected—which made her think it wouldn’t offer enough protection. She would be crushed by the massive forces below. Or she would freeze to death. Or run out of air.

  Zobel raised an eyebrow. ‘Would you rather go to the bottom of the ocean without the exoskeleton?’

  38:45 ‘
I’d rather not go at all,’ Iresha said, and then immediately felt guilty. This was an important mission. People were counting on her.

  Fortunately, Zobel didn’t seem to hear her. ‘This very exoskeleton has been in service since 2040,’ he said. ‘Dozens of people have worn it, with no fatalities. It can take two hundred megapascals of pressure and temperatures of up to a thousand degrees Celsius.’ Iresha blinked. ‘You think it will be hot down on the seabed?’

  ‘I think you should focus on your mission.’

  38:20 Iresha stared out the window of the helicopter. Lightning flashed on the horizon. A small tornado was churning up the water in the distance.

  ‘What’s that island?’ she asked, pointing. It was a mountainous peak surrounded by forest. A coliseum-like ruin stood at the base, wreathed in mist.

  37:50 ‘Artificial landmass, built by a madman,’ Zobel said. ‘He’s long dead. The island has no bearing on your current mission.’

  37:25 Except as a rescue site if this all goes horribly wrong, Iresha thought. She prodded the screen wrapped around her wrist, marking the island’s location on her map.

  Zobel had a heavy brow and a tattoo on his sinewy upper arm—a faded picture of a church organ. She’d only met him twice before. The first time had been when he came to her school, reviewed her test scores and declared her a perfect candidate for the high-value minerals diving program. The second time had been in training, when he had taken her through the features of her wrist screen and her Heads Up Display, or HUD.

  In these two meetings, Iresha had decided that Zobel was humourless and very old-fashioned. He would not tolerate questions about the Government’s methods, and he was the only adult she had met who still shaved his chin.

  Iresha had been told that she was lucky to have been assigned such an experienced and hard-working handler. Her feeling was that if Zobel was so great, he should be the one doing the dive. But adults tended to do non-physically demanding jobs—maintaining vehicles, designing living spaces, training recruits. The dangerous work was done mostly by kids, who had better reflexes, healed more quickly and were less vulnerable to pressure sickness.

  No-one called it ‘dangerous’, of course. They called it ‘challenging’. Iresha was looking forward to her twentieth birthday, when she could apply for some of the safer jobs.

  ‘I don’t know what the visibility will be like down there,’ Zobel said, ‘but you should be able to find the shipwreck by its magnetic signature. Once you reach it, you’ll need to take scrapings from the hull at several different points, to see if it’s worth hauling up.’

  36:40 ‘Don’t we already know how much iron is in it?’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t know how hard it will be to separate it from the carbon.’ Zobel shrugged. ‘I’m not a chemist. I just do what I’m told. So should you.’

  Iresha sighed. ‘So I take the scrapings. Then what?’

  ‘You transmit the data to me. The computer will tell me whether or not the ship is worth salvaging. If so, I’ll lower the hooks down and you can fuse them to the hull. Then you can just disconnect the weights from your boots and swim back to the surface. I’ll pick you up. Job done.’

  36:10 Iresha ran through all the steps in her mind.

  ‘OΚ,’ she said finally. ‘When do we reach the drop point?’

  35:50 Zobel checked his phone. ‘In thirty-five seconds, if you trust the computer.’

  No-one but Zobel would say that. Everyone else, including Iresha, had total confidence in the algorithms that controlled every aspect of life. This helicopter had no pilot. The onboard computer was connected directly to the electric motor, keeping the aircraft’s speed, altitude and direction steady despite the wind. If the clock said they would arrive in thirty-five seconds, they would arrive in thirty-five seconds.

  But Zobel didn’t like machines. Iresha knew he used to fly planes in the air force. Maybe that was why he didn’t trust a computer to do the job properly.

  ‘Will it hurt?’ Iresha asked, trying to keep her voice as steady as she could.

  ‘The jump?’ Zobel asked. ‘No. You won’t feel a thing.’

  35:15 The helicopter stopped so suddenly it was as if it had hit a wall.

  The door beeped. Zobel pushed a button and turned a handle. The door slid open, letting in the fierce wind and the freezing cold—

  But Iresha couldn’t feel it. The exoskeleton kept it out. She couldn’t even hear the thunder or the helicopter’s whirling blades through her helmet. She could only hear Zobel because of the speaker built into the lining of the face plate.

  34:55 ‘Good luck,’ Zobel said. ‘The whole world is counting on you.’

  That was an exaggeration. Plenty of other kids were searching the ocean for iron deposits. No-one was depending on Iresha specifically. But she knew the work was important. Without iron, there would be no more steel. No helicopters, no wind turbines, no railways, no tall buildings, no ambulances. It would be like going back to the eighteenth century.

  Iresha walked over to the open door. She wasn’t cold, but she could sense the wind tugging at her. The tornadoes on the horizon looked closer than before. The choppy ocean roiled far, far below. Plastic debris bobbed on the surface, the chunks too small and degraded to identify.

  34:25 ‘Go,’ Zobel told her.

  Iresha didn’t give herself time to overthink it. She jumped.

  For a moment she was weightless, and the exoskeleton really did feel like a space suit. Her stomach churned as she spun. She was wearing an anti-emetic patch on her shoulder—vomiting in her helmet could be fatal—but she was still nauseated by the fall.

  34:00 Wham! Zobel had lied to her. She did feel the landing. But it wasn’t painful. It was like jumping face first onto a firm mattress.

  33:25 She didn’t float at all. The weights in her shoes dragged her down immediately. Within seconds she was completely submerged in the black ocean. The layer of plastic rubbish on the surface blocked out most of the daylight.

  Iresha touched her wrist screen and the HUD lit up in her face plate. It listed her current elevation, the external temperature, the exoskeleton’s battery life and the amount of air she had, all falling. The only thing rising was the pressure. 50 mPA. 60 mPA. 70 mPA.

  32:30 The ocean floor was too far away to see with the naked eye, but her HUD drew lines across it that made it visible. She could see underwater hills, cliffs and deadly pits. When she reached the bottom she would have to move carefully. One tear in the suit could kill her. She would be crushed like a grape as the water flooded in.

  And there it was—the shipwreck. Detecting the magnetic metals in the hull, her HUD sketched out the buckled bow, the cracked deck and the smashed portholes. It lay on its side across a deep crack in the seabed. The crack was two or three metres wide. Hopefully Iresha wouldn’t have to cross it.

  But she had a bigger problem. The ship looked further away than she had expected. She checked the map. Yes—it was almost a kilometre from here.

  31:20 She landed on the ocean floor with an inaudible thud. Mud swirled around her boots.

  ‘Zobel,’ she said. ‘You must have dropped me in the wrong place.’

  ‘Say again?’ His voice was distorted. The seawater muffled the signal.

  ‘The wreck is more than nine hundred metres away from me.’

  ‘That’s impossible. The currents are slow today. There’s no way they should have carried you so far off course during your descent.’

  ‘I’m looking right at it,’ Iresha said. ‘I’m telling you, it’s almost a kilometre away.’

  30:30 ‘Well then, you’d better hurry. Only thirty minutes of air left.’

  Iresha had been hoping that he would tell her to abort the mission and head for the surface. But there was no point saying so. Heart rate increasing, she shuffled towards the shipwreck.

  Bones crunched underfoot. The ocean had once been full of life, but not now. It had absorbed too much carbon from the atmosphere, which had killed the small fish. Witho
ut small fish to eat, the large fish had died out. Now the seabed was a graveyard.

  29:25 Iresha paused, listening. She wasn’t imagining it—something was humming. A rumbling sound, so deep that it was almost beyond her range of hearing. It was like standing right next to a wind turbine.

  She kept walking, checking the readouts on her HUD. All the statistics looked OK. Her instruments were functioning normally. The sound must be coming from outside the suit. But where?

  26:00 She looked around. There was nothing down here. Just her, some old bones and a wrecked ship.

  Could a machine inside the ship still be running? Surely not. It had sunk in 2017. Even if some device inside had survived the water damage and the impact against the ocean floor, surely the power source would be completely drained by now.

  This thought made her glance at the battery life display on her HUD. Thirty-five minutes left. Enough, but not as much as Zobel had said.

  23:05 Soon she reached the wreck. It was huge up close—more like a fallen skyscraper than a sunken ship. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be on board when it started to go down. The records said everyone had survived, but she didn’t see how that could possibly be true.

  22:45 The crack in the ocean floor beneath the ship was wider than she had guessed from her landing site. Five metres, perhaps six, with only darkness in between. She couldn’t jump across that. She would have to take all her sample scrapings from this side.

  She dug the testing kit out of her pouch. It wasn’t especially high-tech. Just two transparent panels, a simple laser and a metal device, like a curved cheese grater with a handle.

  Iresha touched the side of the cruise liner. She couldn’t feel anything through the glove. The ship was so big it demanded reverence. She could almost sense the soul of it.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ she said. Then she started scraping the grater thing across the hull.