Sea Station Umbra

by JOHN PAUL CATER

  “Hope Bowman didn’t count on that ROV coming back, Marker,” he said. “You know, you’re a mad genius in a diving suit but I think you just saved us. Thank you.”

  Awkwardly, he held up an arm and I slapped it down creating a loud clang through my suit.

  We floated for minutes above the ROV waiting to confirm its disconnect.

  “Hey, Marker, my HUD clock says it’s 1602 hours and we’re still alive. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sure if I remember what that is but I’m willing to give it a try.”

  After purging the bay, we racked our suits and began to climb the ladder into the pantry. Before I could reach up to open the hatch, it unlocked and dropped down missing my head by only inches.

  Bowman reached through and gave us a hand into the pantry room now lit with brilliant fluorescents.

  “Hey guys you saved the station. Thank you. I’ll never be able to repay you for that.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” said Saunders, standing behind him grinning from ear to ear.

  Looking confused, the Chief tilted his head.

  “Is Saunders really a French name, Chef?”

  “No,” he snickered, “not really. But I was once a French Chef and I used that a lot.”

  Their interchange of humor signaled to me a relief of tension in the station. Even Bowman was changed: he laughed off the loss of the Sea Rover as unavoidable and then excused himself to start preparations for the cable transfer trip. I did notice though that our discovery of the monopole weighed heavily in his mind. He didn’t want to leave it unattended for fear of more accidents on future missions. In addition being a scientist, he felt it was a great find: an extant theoretical entity worthy of further investigation. I even heard him mention that it exhibited black-hole properties and its physical proximity really bothered him.

  Walking with him back to the core, he suggested we stop by the mess for coffee. The Chief had never refused coffee and I was game so we all grabbed a mug and sat discussing plans.

  Bowman’s plans had changed by our discovery and its threatening implications but he still had to move the station by tomorrow. TPCI and FRMS divers were heading out shortly to start pulling in sensors and another support crew of maintenance divers would be working on the tractor wheel spoke repair. In his mind, he was set for the move.

  Then he asked about our plans.

  At the top of ours, a simple plan was to sleep for hours in our rooms away from anything loud, traumatic, or wet.

  Bowman agreed and apologized not realizing that we had not yet slept since arriving. His assignment to us before sending us up to our racks was to return with a solution for the monopole mystery: should we leave it, ignore it, take it with us, or even report its discovery to headquarters.

  Another loud crash and jolt interrupted me from my sound sleep throwing me from my bunk. From outside my door I heard the klaxon echoing through the hallway. Awaiting Ivy’s message I flipped on my bunk light and checked my watch. It was 10:35 p.m. in my mind but 2235 hours station time. I had slept for six hours and surprisingly I was alert and rested but my body ached all over from muscling around in the Exosuit.

  “Station alert! Station alert!” Ivy loudly announced. “An object has impacted the crawler’s structure under Pod Bay 3. Impact under Pod Bay 3. Station dome integrity unaffected. Repair crew requested. Report immediately to your stations.”

  Chapter 15. The Whale-Ship

  Here we go again, I thought. I threw on my jump suit and rushed into the hallway to find the Chief and three other crewmen rubbing their eyes looking around and waiting for more information from Ivy.

  “At least we’re not flooding,” said the Chief standing near the Ivy console.

  “Think we should go see what happened, Chief?”

  “What? Can’t hear you over the klaxon.”

  “Think we should we go down into the chaos again?” I screamed.

  “Yes, I think should we go down into the chaos again, dummy,” he said mimicking my tone. “It’s our mission, isn’t it?”

  In the mess hall, seven crew members were seated around a table wiping coffee and mug shards from the floor. As we poured ourselves a cup and sat with them, the ominous buzzing finally stopped.

  Looking around the table, I recognized Williams, Norris and Alvarado, and was quickly introduced to Castro and Turnbull. Two others seated with them were identified as Broyles and Simon, repair divers from the support crew. They had all just returned from retrieving and stowing the sensor array and repairing the tractor wheel and were warming up with coffee when the station shook.

  “Any idea what happened out there just now?” I asked as Williams returned with a fresh mug.

  Swallowing a sip, she paused before she answered.

  “I have no idea but there was a pesky little sperm whale calf in the distance clanging echolocations. Could have bumped into the station. Not too unusual lately. But no. Everything went like clockwork. We’re ready to move… unless that impact damaged another wheel.”

  Broyles and Simon nodded in agreement.

  “It’s not a hard fix but takes time with all the safety hoops we have to jump through especially dodging that damn glowing spot and the downed ROV,” Simon offered.

  “Hey, Marker,” the Chief asked, “ready to visit Chef Saunders again?”

  “Oui oui,” I replied, “He’ll be so glad to see us. Wonder if he’s restacked that pallet.”

  “Probably. Let’s go find out,” he said chuckling.

  “Oh Lieutenant, would you please notify Bowman that we’re going out to investigate? I know you guys are tired since you just came in. Drink your coffee and warm up,” I said rising from the table.

  “Sure, Marker,” she said, “and we thank you for that. Seems like the water was colder this time out. Really chilled us all to the core.”

  We downed our coffee and went back to the kitchen. Calling out for Saunders, the Chief wandered back to the pantry.

  “Guess he’s in the rack. It’s late,” he said. “Nobody here.”

  Seconds later he yelled, “Oh, crap! It has been restacked.”

  I rushed back in time to see him with one motion lift the pallet’s corner as Saunders did tumbling food cartons and boxes everywhere.

  “Ready to do this again, Marker?”

  “Yep. Same as before. Let’s do it.”

  Without the urgency, this dive was going to be much less stressful even though we were diving into another mysterious situation.

  For the first time I exited the bay before the Chief. I couldn’t see him behind me but I knew he was there by his rapid breathing sounds over our suit-to-suit intercoms.

  Leaving the bay, I turned downward toward the base shining my floods onto the most confusing sight I had ever seen. Waiting for the Chief to catch up I stared down upon a conundrum, an enigma that I was not ready to see. From what I could gather at my distance, I was nearing something resembling a huge animatron with a sperm whale’s body and large fluke but with a thick clear plastic bubble where its face should be.

  Moving in beside me he exclaimed, “Holy cow! What in the world is that? A Trojan whale?”

  “Now is not the time for humor, Chief. Let’s approach it and see if it moves.”

  “Really Marker?”

  ”Yes, I want to peek into the cockpit. It looks disabled: void of life.”

  As I slid up to the cockpit and looked in, Briscoe moved over its outer skin toward the large stationary fluke. Inside the creature’s head, which I now deemed to be a vessel was a large tubular room with three seats facing outward toward me. My most horrifying discovery was seeing three individuals slumped back in their seats immobile with their eyes and mouths gaping wide in horror like they died gasping for breath. There was no motion at all; even their chests showed no breathing movements.

  Studying the scene, I realized that I was observing the inside of a foreign ship. Not only were the three occupants oriental males, the writing on the signs
and displays throughout the cabin were in hieroglyphic-style symbols that I assumed were Chinese or Japanese.

  “Hey Chief, come look in here. Tell me what you think.”

  He propelled back to my side and faced the bubble.

  “My God, Marker, it’s a spy submarine. Those symbols are like the markings I found on Edwards’ crashed SeaPod. Something has been watching us but not sperm whales. They must have been tracking our divers pulling the probes and got caught in the monopole’s grip.”

  He pointed back toward the monopole.

  “From the looks of their direction of impact they had just passed over it when their ship went down.”

  “Just like our SeaPods.”

  “Yes, exactly like our SeaPods but those Jonahs didn’t know how to reboot their whale.”

  It took a few seconds but I laughed at his morbid humor even though he wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “Well done, Chief. Keep looking.”

  Turning away, I shone my floods forward on the crawler base as he returned to the whale-ship. At the point where the whale head hit the crawler’s thick hull there was no damage to anything other than the black hard-rubber flange surrounding the bubble. It was torn back all the way to the acrylic bubble. Had it peeled back another inch the bubble seal would have broken flooding the interior with tremendous pressure. Maybe that would have been a more humane death for them than slowly asphyxiating in an oxygen-free tomb.

  “How do they get in and out of the whale, Chief? Find anything back there?”

  “Possibly. I found a smooth seam half way back that looks like it could be a wide hatch door. Maybe into a small floodable bay. Can’t tell until we open it.”

  “Next question,” I said, “Can we fit that thing into one our docking bays?”

  “Yeah maybe into Pod Bay 2, since the SeaPod’s gone. Diagonally maybe.”

  “So what’s its length? About twenty-five feet nose to tail?”

  “About that, I’d say.”

  “Biggest diameter?”

  He stretched out his suit’s arms to reach across the bubble.

  “Measures about six feet across at the head.”

  “Good. Let’s remember that when we get back. Bowman will surely want to bring it in.”

  “Right. Ready to head back?”

  “Yeah,” I laughed, “Only if we can avoid the Chef. I just hope he hasn’t restacked that pallet yet.”

  We completed the dive and reentered the bay without any interference from the monopole. That surprised us and told me that its field was still contained around Pod Bay 2. I made a mental note of that to tell Bowman.

  The mess clock on the wall showed 2355 hours or five till midnight as we entered the hall from the pantry. Saunders was nowhere to be found and the kitchen was dark but thoughtfully he had left a few MRE packs out on the counter.

  We grabbed them, headed to the microwave, and waited as they heated.

  “When are we going to tell Bowman?” Briscoe asked.

  “As soon as he shows up.”

  “Shouldn’t we tell Ivy we’re back?”

  “No. She’s tracking us right now with biosensors remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “Big sister in the sky sees all, knows all.”

  Removing our MREs at the oven’s beep, we picked a table and sat down to eat but before I could take my first bite, Bowman entered the mess asking questions.

  “What did you find out there? Williams thinks it might have been a sperm whale impact. It was tailing her all afternoon.”

  “Well, she’s right, Dr. Bowman, but it was an Oriental whale,” said the Chief.

  He cocked his head then stared at him inquisitively.

  “Now, Mr. Briscoe, I know the cetacean genus fairly well but I’ve never heard of an Oriental whale. Explain.”

  “Did you ever see the movie Jaws?” he asked.

  “Yes. I remember seeing that when I was younger. Scared me to death. I had trouble building my sandcastles by the ocean while watching for Bruce, that animatronic shark. Scary movie.”

  He paused then asked, “But what does that have to do with an Oriental whale?”

  “That’s what crashed on the crawler’s base under Pod Bay 3. An animatronic whale with three Oriental pilots aboard, probably Chinese.”

  Previously bending over our table, he sat down and leaned in close to us.

  “Are you telling me there’s a whale-looking submarine crashed into our base? With Orientals inside?”

  “Yes that’s exactly what we’re telling you, Dr. Bowman,” Briscoe answered. “But they’re all dead or at least they look dead. I think they passed too close to the monopole and it disabled their ship, powered it down. They appear to have suffocated in an airless cockpit without power for the fans and CO2 scrubbers.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, “What a horrible death.” He shook his head with his eyes cast downward. Suddenly he jerked upright.

  “Chinese? What in the hell are they doing around here? They must be spying on our operation. Can we bring their whale-ship into a docking bay? I have to find out what they know and what they’ve seen.”

  “It’s a possibility but what are the dimensions of the empty Pod Bay 2?”

  “Well it’s a quarter-pie shaped slice receding thirty feet under Quad 2, seventy-five feet around the outer wall with a twenty-foot-wide Pod Bay door, and twelve feet wide at the smallest inner wall by the ladder. It’s pretty big. Can it hold that thing, Mr. Briscoe?”

  “Yes sir. Given those dimensions, it can. But how can we raise it into the bay?”

  “Use two SeaPods one on each end. Grasp it in the manipulators and raise it as a team. Maybe use a third if you need to depending on it buoyancy. I’ll pilot that one. We have to get that thing on board before we leave. Think you can do that before we pull anchor at 1900 hours, seven p.m. your time? We always travel under the cover of darkness; hiding the floating laser beacon buoy and all.”

  “Yes sir, we’ll try. Mind if Marker and I finish these wonderful MREs first?”

  He stood ready to leave and glanced back.

  “Yeah in your wildest foodie dreams.” Laughing he left the room.

  We sat finishing our meals and discussed a retrieval plan. As we brainstormed, I told the Chief that I remembered seeing some flotation slings and balloons in one of the bays but I couldn’t remember which one.

  “Yep, I’ve seen them too. They’re in Pod Bay 1 by the Exosuit racks,” he said. “Now you’re going to tell me you want to lift the sub with balloons and then shove it into a bay with a SeaPod? Is that the idea, Marker? Huh?”

  “Basically, yes,”

  “Quit goin’ genius on me, boy. You’re beginning to make me look dumb.”

  At first, I thought he was angry but then the grin climbing his face gave him away.

  “So do you think it’ll work. Chief?”

  “You do realize you’re going to need some high pressure gas tanks to inflate those big balloons at a thousand meter depth.”

  “Yep about 1500 psi tanks. Those will give a 600 psi differential pressure inside the balloons. Way more than enough to inflate them for our use. We’ve got those strapped to the walls in the Pod Bays for refilling the Exosuits. We even have tanks like that in the SeaPods just need a long hose.”

  “Oh stop it, Marker. You win. Let’s go do it.”

  I took several hours for us to rig SeaPod 1 with the balloon-tethered slings, air tank and hose but only minutes for the balloons to overfill and slip away from the underbelly of the whale-ship disappearing into the darkness above our heads. My plan had failed miserably.

  “Next idea, genius boy?” the Chief asked over the SeaCom pointing his suit’s floods into my SeaPod’s cockpit.

  “Well let me try to lift it with the manipulators, Chief. I have no idea how much that thing weighs or how much this pod’s thrusters will lift but I’m willing to give it a try. Hopefully its ballasts are near empty.”

  I could swear I saw him roll his eyes t
hrough his thick face bubble and then he sighed into the intercom.

  “Now Marker I thought I taught you better than that but I’m willing to give it a try. Come on down here. I’ll help slide your arms around it. But don’t make any sudden moves. You barely know how to drive that SeaPod.”

  He was right. I had just self-taught myself how to maneuver the pod during the minutes spent diving down to him but it was a simple joystick control, something I was accustomed to in my prior mini-sub dives. I felt comfortable but was still cautious navigating around with the pod.

  “Be right there,” I said.

  Soon I was hugging the whale-ship from above at its midsection waiting for the Chief’s inspection of my manipulators’ positions. He had climbed on its back to check my grip when I accidentally bumped the joystick toward me.

  Suddenly with a loud groan, the whale-ship lifted up and away from the crawler base with the SeaPod rising from the ocean floor.

  I had to look twice when I saw the Chief in his Exosuit still riding the whale-ship with his legs clamped tightly into side fin ridges and his pincers gripping the manipulator arm like a saddle horn.

  “Yee-haw!” he wailed as he hung precariously on its back. “Whale-ship rodeo time.”

  I had to cover the microphone to keep him from hearing my laugh but I knew he had been in worse situations and never flinched. At worst, he would float off the back and settle gently to the floor.

  “Sorry Chief,” I said. “I accidentally bumped the reverse thrusters.”

  “And I accidentally blew my suit’s ballasts, Marker. Take me back to Pod Bay 2 and open the door. Let’s get this fish into a bucket. This will be one whale of a story.”

  As we slowly approached the door, traveling at the pod’s minimum speed, I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to open the closed Pod Bay door from the outside. At our current rate and momentum, we would crash through it in seconds.

  Thinking back to our arrival, I remembered the answer just as the intercom crackled Ivy’s voice.

  “SeaPod 1, you and your cargo are on course for a perfect docking into Pod Bay 2. Reduce speed to one-quarter knot. Careful with clearances.”