Corvales respected his opinions and submissions. He had a whale of a problem for him now. But his mind had always worked quick. By the time he returned to the bridge, he knew what they needed to do.
He took his time. They didn’t have much. He knew Corvales liked it that way to get it at one briefing. Neither he nor the Captain liked to repeat matters, if they could help it. Besides, Corvales’s mind worked as fast as his. They were from two separate worlds and different in many ways, but there was this ship and her might, her astonishing might that brought them together. Working together, they might soon have to bring her to bear it.
“Recommendations?”
“I think we ought to head to surface. Catch these bastards at whatever stage they are at. We’ll catch them off guard. A surreptitious afternoon surprise attack. Come upon them from the west. Sun in their eyes. Our SEAL contingent sent out on the Zodiacs to board the friendly and the hostile. We’ll come in close behind, low in the water, decks awash, but our surface gunners ready. They’re too close to our friendly now. If we fire torpedoes on her we could take the Starr with her. Sneak in beyond. Get a good visual for the SEALs and for our gunners. Egerton thinks he can fool the foolers. Con the con men. So to speak, sir.”
“Our friendly down here?”
Olgelby breathed deep. This was the question he knew was coming. The one uncertain factor. Factor X in his equation. Corvales sometimes waited too long. If the man had a weakness, this was one an enemy could possibly exploit.
“With all due respect, sir, it’s been over 90 minutes. Skipper, 45 was our, that is, their, max. I don’t think they made it. At least, we have to play the odds. Three lives probably gone compared to a whole group topside, our documents aboard the Starr, our mission.”
“Our main mission was down here. A hostile at the vent—”
“Skipper, as we already know, we can take care of the one behind and the one above.”
He needed to repeat himself after all. As they palavered, he was certain his captain and he knew what they left unsaid. Mitch Corvales wanted to protect the scientist, to rescue her and the others. They had become his responsibility. He wanted to bring his people back alive.
Olgelby took a deep breath mightier than before. He looked away for a minute. He thought he saw a fly buzz out of the bridge down toward the upper head. The same one as when they left port. Maybe he was mistaken. He kept calm. He stayed professional. He fingered his insignia, a habit many officers enacted when nervous. He took on his Brahmin air of a Renaissance courtier’s panache of nonchalance. He knew there was no other way; and he knew his captain knew it. He glanced back to look at the man straight on. And straight on he gave it to Corvales, the only way for a captain of one of the most powerful fleet ships of the line, a captain facing a major decision to get it.
From before recorded time, captains out on their watch at sea have had to reckon such decisions concerning their vessels and their actions without benefit of consultation from superiors. From the age of the Revolution, American naval commanders have brought great credit upon themselves, their crews, the navy, and the United States.
“We have no way to go in after them. We can send the robots for a quick look on video undersea telemetry VH-LF. But that will only be a few seconds and—”
“And this, this thing hovering there will probably destroy the opening anyway.”
That was the opening Olgelby hoped for. He wasn’t all the way there yet, he knew; but he had his opening. He should soon be able to close the sale. He took a deep breath. He went to his next step.
“We have ways. We could get one through. If she fires on us …” Members of the scope crew looked up. Clearly command knew something about the impossibility of torpedo launch effectiveness under deep depth turning possible. Or was there some new weapon? They knew of our own Top Secret deep sea launch platforms, but even the new projectiles launched from them couldn’t sustain those enormous pressures more than two or three hundred yards at best.
Ogelby continued. “We’ll dispatch decoys and fire from platform Zeta Alpha. Even the pressure-encapsulated torpedoes will never make the distance of course. They’ll implode. But the shock wave should give them a start. Then, close to surface, as I think she will follow, we can eliminate her.”
“The same shock wave could reverberate along the opening crack, shut down the vent. Then it would be we who eliminate any chance—”
“I think, skipper, that they—”
“You think they’ve used up all their chances already.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
There was another of those long Corvales pauses. One good thing about them. When the decision was made, it was made. Olgelby noted now it was his captain who took a long breath, acquired that at-once far away and near look in his blue-gray eyes, then looked back. When he did, the man looked tall again, and once more appeared to peer down at him.
“I presume you have coordinates in.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Sonar, bridge.”
“Sonar aye.”
“Keep your harmonics in pulsed time, Mr. Egerton. We don’t want the hostile to perceive we’re on to her. Can you do it? It’s a ways up there, Mr.”
“I think so, Captain. I’ve just got to stay an algorithms sequence ahead of her.”
“X0.”
“XO aye.”
“Do it!”
His signature on the invoice, Olgelby picked up the ship’s communications microphone.
“XO to all hands. We are preparing to surface. Begin procedures. Stay alert. We expect hostile action below and above. Maintain battle stations. Maintain beta red.”
“Surface!”
“Surface, aye.”
The gargantuan metal tube carrying 200 men turned. Her nose poked up, up toward the surface and the sky. Turbines creaked. Turbines turned. Bilge water exploded from her dive tanks. Slowly she began her upward journey. The special tanks filled with air, the excess waters rushing out the sides.
For a moment, fully expected, even men on their tenth tour felt disorientation. Soon enough, however, she reached her angle of ascent. She climbed through the murky depths of the sea. Up. Up. Up.
“Captain, X0. Sonar.”
“Bridge aye.”
“She’s firing, Captain. Two fish. One on course. My God. Deep depth and still coming. Captain, how—Jesus. One imploded. Prepare for shock wave. Second on course. My God. Still coming; but it’s imposs—”
“Helm. Bring about 1.2° on my mark. Steady. Evasive maneuver Alpha-Charlie. Fire decoys. Weapons. Do we have a lock?”
“Helm, 1.2° AC aye.”
“Weapons. Lock in 5 to 7 seconds. Come on. Come on.”
“Locked!”
“Rear torpedo. Fire 5. Fire 6.”
“Five away. Six away.”
“Decoys heading true. Second hostile fish following decoy. Our fish on targ—Good God Miss Mary.”
“Say again.”
“Bridge, sonar. She imploded from pressure. But, but—”
“Go on. As you were, Mister.”
“At implosion, something of her or the shock wave, or the enemy fish still going … she’s gone into the vent. She tried to evade. She tried to evade. She’s disappeared into the vent.”
“Understood.”
“Captain.”
“Report.”
“Captain. I’m no longer reading any significant opening at the vent line.”
There was a long, sick silence, the silence surrounding the soul when the body dies and before it realizes it is due to quit its vessel and the earthly realm.
“Captain?”
“Acknowledged, sonar. Vent closed down. Mark the minute.”
“Mark the minute, aye.”
One thing he gave Corvales credit for. When there was nothing else to do, he went on t
o what could be done.
“Sir, what shall I—”
“Impact.”
“Impact?”
“Impact, at this time.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Alert the SEAL commander. Briefing in eight minutes. They need to gear up.”
“Sonar?”
“Aye, Captain. I make it sixteen seconds. Eight. Five, 3, 1.”
They felt as much as heard the explosion. The ship was quiet for a long time. Then Thomas Olgelby spoke to his skipper.
“Mitch. They were gone nearly an hour ago. It’s just as well. No one else can ever, we’ve seen that hell. Mitch. Captain.”
“Steady as she goes, X0. You run the SEAL briefing. I don’t want anything to go wrong with our rescue mission topside.”
“Copy that, Captain.”
The submarine climbed. The whales, sounding again, passed her like cars on a divided highway. Down they prowled, in search of sharks and squid. The man-made cetacean climbed through the sea, hunting more dangerous game.
Jennifer didn’t feel the hand pull her out of the comforting womb of the ocean’s depth, out of range of Poseidon’s sirens singing their songs under the sea, to her, calling her to come to them. Somehow she had part of a mind left to know something happened.
She saw the city beneath the sea. She had gazed upon its jewels gleaming from the sun-fed water’s reflection’s glory, as a woman’s diamond floating to the bottom of a pool. Sapphires, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, beryls, agates, and mermaids and mermen, beautiful women, handsome men swimming up to her with their arms open. How welcoming. How comforting.
Suddenly it disappeared in the shimmering sparkle of the water’s edge above her.
She coughed. She wheezed. Pain washed over and through her. “Why? Why?” Wheezed she. Coughed she. “It was so beautiful.” Coughed. Wheezed. “So beautiful.”
“Come on, Jennifer. Come back. That’s it. Keep coughing. Breathe. Jesus. You’re hit. We’ve got to get this suit off. It’s only going to keep you cold. Here. Oh hell, I’ll cut it off. Damn. I’ve got to get you a blanket.”
Who had done this to her? Who had taken her away from her journey in the sea to find Susan and live in that beautiful diamond city forever? The voice was … she had been with him once. A long time ago. She heard him return. Hear. Smell. Taste. And pain. In spite of it all, in spite of herself, she came around. Damn, it hurt. Pain. From the depths of her pain she knew. She thought. She was.
Alive! She was alive! Still alive!
“I’m alive.”
“Yeah, that’s OK. Here. Couldn’t find a blanket. Piece of an old canvas behind that tool box. It’ll do for now.”
“I’m aliv—Oh God, that hurts.”
She turned on the side that didn’t hurt. She vomited. Water effluent that no land creature should ever take inside her body projected out, blasted through every orifice-passageway of her pharynx—mouth, nose, ears, yea, even her eyes. Out again and again in waves matching the waves of the ocean’s rhythms.
“Jesus. Come on baby. You need to do this, but we need to get below. They haven’t come back to the stern but they will soon.”
Gasping, vomiting, wheezing, her side splitting. God why didn’t he let me die? “Oh God. It hurts. Throw me back.”
“Easy baby. Easy. Get it out. But do it soon. Or take a break. We got to get below.”
“Who? Allen? Allen, it’s you. Oh God. Allen, you bastard. Why didn’t you let me die? It was so beautiful. Oh God.”
She started to hit him. Instead she fell into his arms. She stank a smell of stink he had not smelled on another human being. It was offensive. But to him she smelled sweet as the pure waters that would wash away her dirt. His brown arms encompassed her white body, and he held her, her matted hair, her nostril-stink, and his heart swelled, so great was his love for this woman. Her eyes poured water again, but this time from the depths of her soul and not out of the ocean deep.
“Come on. Let’s get below. They’ll see us here sooner or later. They’re all over the bridge and prow.”
“Where?”
“The poop deck. There’s a false entry to the engines. Delores thought it would be a good place to store excess items. The good part is, they won’t know about it, won’t go there for a while. Come on. You can vomit your guts out down there all you want. You’re in a temporary rest phase now. You’ve got a few more heaves in you. I’ve got to take care of that wound. Here, let go of it. I have it. That’s it. Man, carried that sucker all this time, even when—come on, baby. Hold on. I’ll carry you. Don’t worry. We’ve been lucky so far. Just a little while longer. That’s all we need. Easy, now. Easy.”
“Allen …”
“I know baby. I know. Easy now …”
Delores figured it out before she asked Susan the question.
The membrane gossamer but thick, tough wall reflected a red hue against red yellow background. It was like that van Gogh painting where all yellow swirls fill against a night. Only the swirls were lines and swirls of rectangles and curls changing red and yellow and red again. Great waves of white snow, triangle and tubule shapes floated in and out of the keening membrane, for it vibrated with a harmonic tone none had before heard, a far roiling thunder off the distant high mountain peaks, but closer. These creatures great, small, tiny, huge bounced off yet somehow penetrated the solid wall. Tubules of rust-red creatures found and squeezed through the wall as some fictional vibrating time-traveler from the future. Fecund waves of twisting and turning filigreed-topped tubules redder yet than others appeared before their eyes and seemed, as by osmosis, to enter the deeper wider fire halls and hot searing bubbling caldrons.
These and more, an astonishing teeming sulfur, methane, phosphorus, selenium, and silicon fire of locomoting entities that were not there, then were there, then were not there again.
“We’re inside, aren’t we? We’ve somehow been taken inside it.”
“Somehow it maintains inside itself a temperature conducive to allowing its progeny or womb-kept life-forms to be fit for both environments; its outer, thick membrane has some kind of anatomic and physiologic and chemical make-up to allow it to exist in both environments. It is a daughter, or rather, mother, of fire, birthing sons and daughters of fire, water, air, and magma. Then, there is a way the creatures work through the membrane with some difficulty, apparently, and, in some cases, with ease. It is not osmosis, not exactly. It’s some other process. I need to observe more, conduct some experiments. It’s so awfully gorgeous.”
“This is it, isn’t it? This is where life is created. All mother’s womb.”
“Another great womb. The great womb of life on earth. Look, Delores, Hodges. These walls, these teeming tubules, the other hordes of—they’re not there really. Suddenly they are. Then, somehow, they dance within her, and extrude out, somehow. Into the cauldron-fire to become ore-living creatures but alive with DNA, like any creature we know, like the first of all creatures ever, this process for, for four billion years, more maybe, has been the same. Until we arrived. It’s where it all began. And now we have returned. And then to bubble out. It’s so awful gorgeous.”
Hodges gazed at the chronometer. “Susan. Delores. It’s a fine gorgeous and true living laboratory. But in twelve minutes we’re going to be fodder for it if we don’t figure out how to get out of here, and return to our part of the world above the sea.” Hodges realized at once the double entendre. They had to get out.
“Delores. Hodges. I’m not sure we can. No. Listen. There is something. This creature is huge. Larger than the Nebraska. It must have taken her centuries, eons, of, well, living down here. But how does she survive? Do you see what I’m getting at? When she gives, God it’s not birth, it’s something else, generating of generations, a genesis they then supply somehow her nutritive needs.”
“You mean, we’re her prey? She’s going
to eat, that is, absorb us?”
“Jonah inside the whale.”
“Yes. That’s it. Unless we can … there’s one more thing. She came to us. She, what word. Sensed. She knew.
In some way we may, will, never know, she sensed. She knew.”
Though it was the hottest place in the near cosmos other than the sun, chills ran up and down the backs of the people in the puny vessel inside the maw of the great mother-reaper creature from before time itself.
“Come and see. The answer is simple. We must get the whale to vomit up Jonah,” Susan said.
“Commander.”
“Commander, aye.”
“I’ve got another blip.”
“What?” Delores said. She was astonished. They were amazed. None knew what to say. Hodges continued. “Sonar still working by damn.”
“A rescue effort?”
“By what? Wait. Computer memory signature matched. Damn. It’s our old enemy. Knocking at our door. And following the currents this way. Holy God!”
“What was that?” The women asked almost as a chorus, so close for a moment Susan glanced over, expecting to see Jennifer. But it was Delores; for the first time since she had known her, she appeared as just another frightened woman in a tough spot. How quickly the rough-edges military officer reduces to the quivering schoolgirl, Susan thought. For there had been such a vibration vibrating somewhere even their captor, even in this super-heated environment of continuous explosions, shook in a manner uncommon.
Delores turned. She saw Susan looking at her. At once, she tried the hard veneer, to return the bearing of the military professional.
Deeptide Vents . . . of Fire Page 19