And once again they waited.
“Here goes,” Julie said.
The scrubbers had returned to their job of providing clean air, but the air was so hot that David breathed only when he had to. Glowing streams of magma filled the porthole screens.
3
THE ALARM NEARLY DROWNED OUT THE whirring of the engines. But in a second, David saw the glowing smokers up close, ready to toast the sub, quickly vanish from the portholes as the sub finally arced upward. Then the sub made a sharp tilt to the right as Julie banked it, giving it all the juice she could.
There were no cheers, no exultations over a close call, because it was still anybody’s guess as to whether they could clear the vent field with enough leeway to avoid frying the sub’s systems. Because if that happened, they’d probably drop down to the field and bake.
All they did was sit silently and hope that the power of the engines and the angle of the bank would suffice. Please, David thought, let it be enough.
A few more moments, and the sub kept arcing away. But now David saw Julie level it off, keeping the engines at full throttle.
Then—a gift—the pinging stopped. The temperature still read dangerously high—a couple of hundred degrees outside—but now it started falling steadily.
David turned to Julie, feeling, as he often did, that persistent pull toward his ex. Sometimes breaking up with her seemed like the dumbest thing he had ever done. Or did she break up with him? Even that they could not agree on.
“You did good.”
“Could have gone either way,” she answered. Only then a small smile. “Like I said, I’m old-school. When in doubt, reboot.”
“Or kick the tires.”
A small laugh from both of them now that the threat of what would have been a quick and intense death had passed.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
“You got it,” Julie said.
And they sat amid the colorful lights, the air finally beginning to cool, both glad to be alive.
When they arrived back at the lab, David slipped out of his suit, clammy from the heat and humidity that, no matter what the scrubbers did, always somehow filled the submersible.
A crew worked at the front of the small sub, removing the pressurized sample cases. The material was good only as long as the temperature and pressure remained constant.
Julie said a few words to the lab crew, and then came over to David.
“I’m going to follow these inside. In case there are any questions.”
“And there will be. I’ll make sure engineering starts taking the sub apart to see what the hell went wrong.”
Julie turned and looked at the vehicle that nearly cost them their lives. “Age, probably. What is it? Tech from ten years ago?”
“Maybe earlier. This lab has stopped being a UAC priority.”
She laughed at that. “It would be one if it was on Mars.”
“Or Europa.”
She looked at him when he said that. David knew from their discussions that there were many things about this project that no one, not even the various scientific teams working on it, were aware of. But he and Julie also knew that it had a number of hidden goals way beyond economical desalinization and deep-ocean aquaculture.
And one of those goals was squarely centered on the frozen moon of Europa.
Frozen, that is, until you penetrated a few thousand feet of ice to the open sea below. Where, as any planetary geologist or biologist could tell you, anything might await.
“Okay, then. You go with the samples. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He watched Julie return to the team while he waited for the engineering head to arrive.
Chief Engineer Ozzie Stern, a thin, wiry man who, as far as David could remember, never smiled, listened while David described the sub’s failure.
Then Ozzie took a deep breath. “I keep telling you, David. These subs, I mean, jeez…” He shook his head. “How can you expect to keep them running? They’re all way beyond a full overhaul. If you want my opinion—”
David smiled. “Not sure that I do….”
No smile came back from Ozzie. “They should all be junked. Every damn one of them. Maybe used for parts. Put in some damn museum.”
“Good. Glad you got that off your chest. But what can you do for now”—David put a hand on Ozzie’s shoulder—“is to make sure that what just happened doesn’t happen again.”
“I don’t know. I’ll look. We’ll do our best. But no promises.”
“Got it. That’s all I can ask.”
David started to head toward the Bio Pod, but a few steps away he stopped and turned. “Oh, and if you can have them ready by, say, tomorrow, that would be just great.”
Ozzie shook his head like some disapproving father.
But as David walked away, he knew that the sub’s problem—at least the engine issues—would be solved by then. Ozzie was moody as hell, but he never disappointed.
The Biolab, the most secure area of the Ballard research station, could only be accessed by a select few teams at the station. Everything that went on here was, for lack of a better description, top secret.
David put his palm up for a scan, then entered his password. It all seemed a bit excessive.
As he walked in, he could see the teams already working feverishly. A trio of screens showed the bacteria-filled water magnified to the point where the samples looked like distant star systems.
Only here the “planets” whizzed madly around each other, pulsating.
Except this wasn’t really life. What was happening here, what was happening in the whole ecosystem of the hydrothermal vents, was really something else. You could almost call it anti-life. Organisms that could make food out of poisonous chemicals, and then provide that food to other organisms.
The bacteria took the poisonous sulfurous water and thrived on it, turning it into food that nourished the giant tube worms and ultimately fed everything that lived in the superheated world of the vents.
So many questions remained. Which was why Ian Kelliher of the UAC funded this station: he wanted answers. But apparently he also wanted more than that from this work.
“How are the samples looking?” asked David, standing behind Julie.
She bent over a microscope, choosing to examine the bacteria colony in the traditional way rather than with the 3-D screens.
“Great. The best we’ve had. I mean”—she straightened up and turned to David—“we’ve had good samples before, but they were always further along in the process.” She pointed to one of the screens. “See that cluster there? Never really caught that before. The bacteria coming together and making a small colony. As if exchanging information before they—Hey! There, look.”
David watched a cluster explode apart.
“They do that over and over. It has to serve some purpose before they begin producing the by-product that feeds the worms.”
“Almost like—” David caught himself. The idea was too outlandish.
But Julie prodded him. “What? What were you going to say?”
“Almost as if they were exchanging DNA information. Like strands of the helix coming together, matching up. Crazy idea.”
But Julie shook her head. “No, not so crazy. I mean, what else can we compare it to?”
David looked up at the computer monitors above each of the screens. “A lot of data coming in.”
“Yes. It’ll take weeks to analyze it all. Then we can let these bacteria begin their life cycle, and track that. But—for the first time—we will have monitored them from the very beginning.”
“Great. I’ll go give the boss a report. He’ll be pleased.”
“Maybe tell him about the subs? Drop a hint we could use some new ones.”
“Oh, yeah. He’d love to hear that. I think I’ll tell him right after he mentions he’s pulling the plug on this whole project.”
“Maybe just one new sub?”
Sharif Aziz, one of Julie’s team, lo
oked up. “And maybe a few more bacteriologists. I’d like to get some sleep one of these days.”
“Sleep?” David said. “What’s that?”
They laughed. A good sound, David thought as he turned away and headed to his office, where a report to Ian Kelliher—head of the United Aerospace Corporation—had to be filed. Hooray, the fun part of the day was over.
4
THE SCREENS ON DAVID’S DESK SHOWED VARIOUS newsfeeds covering the wonderful state of the surface world.
Every day seemed pretty much the same: always a scattering of skirmishes and near wars across the globe as people fought over the planet’s dwindling resources. Politicians made promises, or threats, sometimes both simultaneously. Some corners of the Earth now seemed to be in constant turmoil as factions tried to assert their power over each other.
Then, there was Mars. A world away. “The Bright Red Hope,” as described in UAC promotional material. David had to wonder: Did people really buy into that? That somehow the Red Planet, so far away, could offer hope to this world?
The UAC didn’t, on the other hand, talk much about the Ballard sea lab. After all, while great strides have been made toward desalinization, making clean water more affordable and more readily available, the process still remained, for most of the planet, prohibitively expensive.
Such a simple matter, removing salt from water. It would be interesting if such an easy solution played a key role in the death of the late, great planet Earth. The water planet…and everyone on it dying of thirst.
But you could search all of the UAC’s official literature and find nothing about the work going on in the undersea lab. Only Kelliher and handpicked members of his board received David’s classified reports. And though David didn’t care much for Kelliher or his methods, he did believe in what they were trying to do here. If they showed some success, it could lead to saving life on Earth.
And were they close? Hard to tell. Breakthroughs seemed to loom around each corner—amazing discoveries, incredible possibilities. But he knew that Kelliher wanted—no, demanded—more than simply discoveries and possibilities. He wanted concrete results that the biological processes the lab explored down here could actually work.
David rubbed his eyes. After the last trip to the new vent site, he felt fatigued, tired from the stress, the exertion—or maybe simply exhausted by all the responsibility.
But Kelliher wanted his damned report right away. Well, at least it would only be a one-sided conversation.
David flipped a switch that activated the camera above the central screen above him. He hit some keys, switching from the live newsfeed to a screen on which he could access the entire lab’s database.
He entered his password, then opened up the directory, named by Ozzie Stein, whose Munich roots were showing. Wurm.
“Evening, Ian. I hope this report finds you in good spirits. I see, by the way, that work on Mars is moving right along.” David smiled at the camera. “Someday you’ll have to arrange a visit for me. Down here, we’re also keeping busy. And some interesting things have been happening. But first—”
David touched the floating keypad, and an image box appeared in the corner of the screen. “The subs are giving us a problem. I know you said that there was nothing you could do now. I know—funding’s tight. But, well, you see…Julie and I were nearly killed this morning thanks to a malfunction in one of the subs. Ozzie is looking all the subs over, but it’s simply a matter of age. If you could—I don’t know—but if we could get just one sub built to our specifications, well, it might save a life in the near future.”
Always the sales pitch. Like a beggar asking for a handout. How many times had David done this, and how many times had Kelliher counseled patience?
“If you could, Ian, just see what you can do. We’re very close down here, very close. So a new state-of-the-art submersible could make a big difference.”
And that was all true enough, David thought.
“Okay, now to the good news. We’ve successfully recovered early samples of the Dermatasporangium bacteria, at what looks like a primary stage of what Julie calls their ‘grouping’ process. We captured it all, and it will tell us a lot more about how they begin producing food and supporting the tube worm colony. But that’s not all—”
David touched some more of the holographic keys floating to his side.
“Our experiments on creating an artificial skin modeled on the tube worm’s exterior covering continues to be successful. The hemoglobin content, which you know is high in the worms, is still far removed from human hemoglobin. But we think, if we can track the progress of the bacteria, we can see where it diverges from human hemoglobin.”
David took a breath. He wasn’t sure he was going to tell Kelliher the next bit. But maybe, just maybe, it might allow some more funding to flow.
“I’ve sent you the experiment vids. If you get a chance—I know you’re busy with Mars—but take a look. We think we’ve made a bit of a breakthrough, and by using the bacteria to regulate the artificial worm skin’s development, we think we will soon have a key piece of the puzzle. We might actually be able to create a new form of synthetic skin that can self-replicate, along with a way to create virtually limitless human hemoglobin.”
David watched the image and vid files upload, and in a second they were on the UAC’s Palo Alto system, also securely locked.
“We’re close. So close. And as you know, if we crack this, well, you understand the next prize.”
The next prize. There was one that David had never believed in. But now? It all looked possible.
“Okay, Ian. Call, if you like, when you digest all of this.” Knowing that Kelliher rarely called. Things were much too busy in the UAC for the company head to actually call the deep-ocean station. “That’s it for now.”
David gave the camera one last smile, and then, with a wave of his hand, the news returned.
As David lay in bed, almost sleeping, he heard a knock on his small cabin door.
“Yeah? Come in.”
Julie opened the door a crack. “Oh, sorry. Thought, well, you’d still be up.”
“That’s okay. What’s up?” David immediately noticed that Julie’s face seemed tense, her eyes narrowed. She also had to be exhausted, because she tended to linger at the lab stations. Especially after what they’d brought in today….
“It’s something that just happened. Is happening, really. One of Sharif’s team. It’s something we both approved, no biggee.”
“You look—I don’t know—confused.”
A bit of a smile. “Yeah, you could say that. Want to get up? Come and look. Better than talking about it.” She took a breath, and David had that feeling that something was about to occur that would change things.
Still dressed, he slid out of his bunk and followed Julie back to the lab pod.
Three other biologists stood around Sharif, who sat before a trio of tanks, all monitored with cameras recording everything.
David walked up to them. “What do we have?”
Sharif turned back to him, his eyes wide. What was it that had the normally placid Sharif excited?
“It’s what we’ve done before, David. With the bacteria samples. But we never had them at this early a stage. So—”
“Hold on,” Julie interrupted. “Start at the beginning, Sharif.”
Sharif took a breath. “In there—we started as soon as you brought the samples back.” He pointed to the three tanks, all with a variety of sea life swimming about, looking not much different from any aquarium’s installation. “Every animal in the tank has a series of microtransmitters either embedded or attached to its body. In addition, the 3-D cameras catch all their movements and heat registers.”
Julie turned to David. “Our standard SOP. We injected some of the creatures with bacteria, and in other specially regulated tanks, we simply introduced the bacteria into the environment.”
“It didn’t matter,” Sharif said flatly. “Either way, it just…
didn’t matter.” He hit some keys and the live feed from the tanks disappeared from the three screens, replaced by recorded images from twenty-eight minutes ago. “Look at the crab. He’s one we injected. He just froze up. We thought we had killed him. Now—okay, this is weird. Watch this.”
As David looked on, the crab seemed to raise its arms in a move that almost seemed to suggest a sudden surge of power. Then, with a breathtakingly fast movement, it somehow kicked itself off the bottom and latched onto a silvery blue fish nearly four times its size.
David watched the claws make short work of cutting into the fish, sending a spray of blood and guts into the water.
But the pieces of the fish didn’t last long there. As if they’d been waiting, other creatures in the tank swooped in, sharklike in their speed and determination, until in seconds not a bit of the fish was left.
“Wow.”
“Wow, indeed,” said Julie.
David leaned closer to the screen. “Am I crazy, or did that crab change? The claws somehow—”
Sharif nodded. “They’re bigger. Yes, they’re bigger! In minutes.”
David looked around at the other animals. “And the others in the tank—”
Sharif froze the images and tapped the screen directly in front of him. “Check out the baby barracuda. Normally hides behind that chunk of coral over there, trying to stay out of the other fishes’ way. Not after we introduced the bacteria.”
David watched as the small barracuda, missile-like, jetted right at a much bigger fish, drilling into it. Like the crab, it was all over in a matter of minutes.
“You have got to be kidding me. And for the animals not injected?”
Sharif actually grinned at that. “That’s the most interesting thing. For some, it didn’t matter whether they were injected or just came in contact with the bacteria in the water. They all reacted pretty much the same.”
Sharif let the images begin rolling again, and it grew impossible to keep track of the animals as some moved swiftly to destroy the others until, at the end, only a handful remained.
Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 2