by Jake Bible
The Black Sea. Yeah, that feels an appropriate comparison. It stretches out as far as any of us can see. Beyond this cave, there is nothing – just a huge expanse of inky water. It’s eerie; on the surface you have the horizon to help you judge distance, but here there is nothing, making it both daunting and claustrophobic at the same time. The nearest analogy I can think of might be looking into the vast depths of space. A strange sense of vertigo overtakes me, and for a moment, I feel like I’m floating. I reach out and grab the nearest thing to me, which happens to be Janos.
“Dr Stoker,” he says and stops me from pitching forwards. “Are you all right?”
I nod and swallow hard, but can’t trust myself to speak. Not yet, anyway.
We begin our descent one after the other. As usual, Nik goes first, declaring the climb a piece of piss – lots of hand holes in the pitted surface. Janos hangs back with me, and I’m a little miffed. Has he been told to keep an eye on me? I won’t lie – his solid presence is a comfort, so I don’t complain.
Nik is right; the climb is pretty easy, and before long we are all standing on that strange beach, staring at the sea. The air has a briny tang to it, and the glowing bacteria forms thick mats on the rocks nearest the shoreline, outlining the seashore in phosphorescence. Brendan stoops down and cups his hand in the water before swilling a little in his mouth. I’m not sure how wise that is, but I’m not here to stop him.
“Yep. Salt,” he says. “And warmer than I was expecting. Could be there's some hydrothermal activity down there.”
“In a sedimentary cave system?” Fi asks. She doesn’t do much to disguise her disdain. I don’t think she likes Brendan all that much.
“Depends,” I say, feeling the need to defend my fellow scientist. “The upper part of the system is sedimentary, but if this body of water is deep enough, it could just be overlaying a geologically active zone. It isn’t unheard of.”
“But that would mean it could be thousands of feet deep.”
I shrug. “It could be.”
“How long do you think it has been isolated from the surface?” Nik asks.
Again, I shrug. “I don’t know. They were fracking Jurassic shale, so in theory, we could be looking at, what, one hundred and sixty million years?”
Marcus lets out a low whistle. “One hundred and sixty million? Are you serious?”
“Well, I’m not a paleobiologist… but yeah, we could be.”
“So, if anything is living in there, it could have been cut off from the rest of evolution for nearly two hundred million years?”
“Yeah.”
“If anything is living in there,” Fi says.
“Actually, the chances of there being something in there are pretty good,” says Brendan. “If the presence of bacteria indicates this system is still biologically active, there's no reason why not. Samples from other such isolated bodies of water indicate that life is quite capable of thriving independently of the outside world. Take Lake Vostok, for example. They went looking for bacteria and found fish.”
“You think there might be fish in there?” Marcus says.
“Could be.” Brendan grins, and I can’t help smile. His enthusiasm is infectious. “Who knows?”
Predator X is available from Amazon here