Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller

by David Lyons

  “Come on, take a peek,” Palmetto said.

  Boucher bent over and looked in. “It’s a good thing you watch your weight.” The diameter of the hatch as well as the closeness of the quarters required that all who journeyed to the depths in this transport be on the slim side.

  “Is it safe?” the judge asked.

  “It’s state-of-the-art,” Palmetto answered. “It has the most upto-date equipment, and its maintenance is impeccable.”

  “Is it safe?” he repeated.

  “It’s as safe as possible at forty-five hundred meters below the sea. That’s almost three miles. Let’s go see your quarters.”

  They walked back toward the bridge. Mae was standing at the rail gazing over the open sea.

  “Mae, what are you doing?” Palmetto asked. She turned and faced him with a frown.

  “I was thinking about my experiments. I’m allowed time for that, aren’t I?”

  He turned to Boucher and said, “Don’t let anyone catch you mooning over the ocean. That’s not done here.”

  “An oceanographer can’t look at the ocean?” Boucher asked.

  “Depends how and why,” Mae said. “It all started on this ship after dinner one night. We got into an argument—no, a discussion—of Robert Frost’s poem ‘Neither Out Far Nor In Deep.’ We feel our mission is to avoid the mediocrity that the poem criticizes. We look both far and deep in our research and try to avoid the seduction of the shallow glance. It’s tempting to stand here and get lost in the sea’s mystique. It hypnotizes, and that’s a luxury we can’t afford.”

  “I should read that poem again,” Boucher said.

  “There’s a copy in your quarters and about a dozen other places aboard,” Mae said. “It’s a constant reminder to us.” She looked at the sky. “We’re going to get some rain and I’ve got work to do. I think we should all get below.”

  CHAPTER 16

  BOUCHER SHARED A SMALL cabin with Palmetto and two other scientists, both at work somewhere else on the vessel. The early arrivals had chosen the upper bunks, denoting territorial rights by dumping their duffels on the beds.

  “I’m going back to the lab,” Palmetto said. “Are you going to be okay here?”

  Boucher stowed his bag under the bed. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “When do we get where we’re going?”

  “About twenty-four hours from the time we left port; midmorning tomorrow, we’ll be over the Carolina Trough. There are preparations and checklists for the sub. We’ll start those about five in the morning. Life at sea begins early. But you have the rest of today to relax. Take advantage of it. I advise you to eat and drink sparingly. There’s no crapper in the sub, and we piss in bottles. The less you have to expel, the more popular you’ll be with your crewmates. Our descent will take us about four hours; we’ll have a couple hours on the ocean floor, and the same time to ascend. We’re talking about ten hours in close quarters. Sounds like a lot, but it goes fast. Believe me, it will be the most fascinating day of your life.”

  “I didn’t say I was going.”

  Palmetto nodded and left.

  Boucher lay down on his bunk, his hands folded under his head. He stared at the lattice of springs that supported the mattress above him and wondered what the hell he was doing here. He didn’t ponder the question too long, realizing that lying prone was not the best position to be in at this stage of a landlubber’s first ocean voyage. He felt the advent of seasickness and decided to go back up to the main deck. The rain had stopped. For two hours he stared at the horizon; maybe not out far nor in deep, but at least not over the side. When he got his sea legs, he was all over the ship like a spider crab. He asked questions, was given answers, and found his enthusiasm growing. Conscious that his were the only idle hands on board, he didn’t spend too much time with or ask too many questions of any one person, and by late afternoon, he’d met the entire crew and research contingent. The Beagle carried a crew of thirty-six and a scientific team of twenty-four. The ship had been in port for repairs to the submarine’s mechanical arm, and the personnel had not dispersed. Still, Boucher was amazed that they were able to prepare for this mission with as little notice as they’d been given.

  A pleasant surprise that no one had told him about was the ship’s small but adequate gym. There was no one around, his boxers and T-shirt looked enough like gym clothes, so he stripped and gave the rowing machine a workout. Closing his eyes, feeling the rhythm of the vessel as it cut through the sea, he imagined himself as a member of an Olympic scull crew. Had there been a way to harness the energy he expended rowing, he was sure he could have contributed to the progress of the ship. It was late afternoon when he returned to his cabin, timing perfect. He was first to shower and dress and was lying on his bunk in exactly the same position Palmetto had left him when he returned.

  “Have you been there all day?” Palmetto asked.

  “What else did you expect me to do?”

  Dinner was served at six sharp: steak and potatoes. He ate half and pushed his plate away.

  “You don’t like it?” Palmetto asked.

  “It’s delicious,” Boucher said, “but I can’t eat a lot tonight. Busy day tomorrow.”

  Palmetto smiled. “What made you decide?”

  “The Robert Frost poem. I read it in the cabin. I’ve got a chance to look far and deep. Chances like that don’t come often.”

  Evening for the crew of scientists was not that much different from a night at home. Some read, there were several board games and DVD movies, and of course there was conversation. Though the passenger list frequently included guests from all walks of life, a federal jurist was a first and Boucher was the focal point of conversation. All were interested in the same question he had asked himself earlier—what was he doing here?

  “I had to bust Mr. Palmetto out of jail. Next thing I know, here I am,” Boucher said. It got a laugh.

  “Judge, it’s time to wake up.”

  Palmetto had given him a gentle nudge. Boucher opened his eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Just after six. We made good time. We’ll be coming up on our diving site in about an hour.”

  “What about the sub?”

  “It’s ready. See you on deck. I’m going to give Mark a call at the Institute and let him know we’re here.”

  Rexcon’s communication buoy bobbed on the choppy Atlantic surface. It was linked by cable to a monitor on the ocean floor where their surreptitious discovery had been made and charted. Sensors placed on the sea bottom were still retrieving and transmitting data to the buoy, which sent it by satellite to the corporate communication center in New Orleans. The buoy could also receive transmissions sent by any ship within a fifty-mile radius, and warn home base of any suspected poachers. It was in this manner that the call made by Bob Palmetto was captured and beamed up.

  Bert Cantrell was copied on all communications from the ocean communication buoy. He saw the name Palmetto in the message and about fell out of his executive office chair. When he regained his composure he rushed into Perry’s office.

  “I just found Palmetto,” he said.

  “You’re shitting me,” was the response from Rexcon’s CEO.

  “He’s on the research vessel Beagle. Take a guess where it’s going.”

  “I don’t have time for guessing games.”

  “It’s headed for the Carolina Trough, the site of our methane hydrate field.”

  Perry stood up from his desk. “What did I tell you? I knew he was going to start poking around. What do you think he’s doing?”

  “They’ve got a submarine on that ship. Knowing that Palmetto is aboard, I think they plan to take the sub to the floor. He’s probably going to look for samples. He does that and gets the word out, we’ve got complications.”

  “We have to see that doesn’t happen,” Perry said. “Take care of it as you see fit.”

  “You know what you’re saying.”

  “I said do it.”

  Cantrell returned to his
office. He had his own orders to give.

  The sub was out of its hangar and had been moved on its tracks toward the stern and the crane. Boucher was hustled into it, his two deep-sea companions waiting. Mae sat in the pilot’s seat.

  “You didn’t tell me you were in charge of this,” Boucher said to her.

  “You may call me Captain,” she said. “Sit there,” she commanded. “That’s your monitor. You see what we all see. That’s your porthole. You have to get your forehead right against that pad to see out. That’s it.”

  As she spoke, the hatch above them was lowered and sealed. She continued. “We breathe our own air, over and over. This”—she pointed to a stainless steel tube just over a foot long—“is our CO2 scrubber. It takes the carbon dioxide out of our exhaled breath, and traps it with the CO2 absorber. We’ve got oxygen tanks here.” She patted them. “They’re essential to supplement our own air. Here’s our air quality monitor. Too much CO2, I open the tank and add oxygen. Toilet procedures have already been explained to you. Here’s your bottle. I won’t peek, promise. Here we go.”

  They were lifted, then swung away from the stern and lowered into the water. Still attached, they floated for an instant. With the radio phone, Palmetto announced they were ready. Boucher watched through his porthole. It was about the size of a snorkeling mask and, with his head pressed against it, felt like one. He saw the bubbles as the sub submerged. They sank into water that seemed bluer below than it had on the surface, but that began to change. It was like a sunset on a cloudy day. The water became darker and darker till it was black.

  “I’m testing the lights,” Mae said. Shafts of illumination cut through the void for only an instant. Test successful, the lights were extinguished to conserve energy. The black void was total, then suddenly Boucher saw what looked like a heaven filled with stars: pinpoints of light flashing on and off.

  “Phosphorus,” Mae said. “We’re about a thousand meters down.”

  “That was fast.”

  “We told you. Time passes quickly on the way down, especially on your first trip. It’s the return that can seem slow. You can keep looking, but there won’t be much to see till we’re on the bottom. Relax. If you want some music, there’s a CD player, a headset, and a collection of disks. It’s a diverse collection, a little bit of almost everything.”

  The head of Rexcon’s research team received the approval he’d prepared for. With great care and expertise—for which he congratulated himself—he had planted detonators in the subsea soil to prepare the essential element of the process they were employing, the blasting of the surface of the ocean floor. His orders were relayed by phone. He recognized the voice of Bert Cantrell. His orders: “Detonation approved. Proceed.”

  CHAPTER 17

  WE’RE APPROACHING THE SEABED,” Mae said. “Depth sixteen hundred meters. I’m switching on the outside lights.”

  All eyes were on the three separate monitors as the ocean floor seemed to rise up to meet them. There was no visible sign of life. What the shafts of light revealed could have been barren desert, but for what looked like bubbles floating a few feet above the surface. Then the bubbles began to change shape. Mae maneuvered a light at one and it vanished, then reappeared in a different color, a translucent pink. Boucher watched as two of the bubbles made contact and became one; whether one popped or the two merged, he couldn’t say. He turned to his porthole and as he did a transparent squidlike creature over three feet long fluttered in and out of his field of vision, inches away from the shell that protected them from the crushing pressure at this depth.

  “We are on the side of the Carolina Trough,” Mae said for Boucher’s benefit. “It’s pretty flat right here, but there’s a steep drop off our starboard side. Ready for a little prospecting, Bob?”

  “You bet.” As fascinating as the marine life was, the prospect of finding the energy source that had absorbed him for much of his adult life meant more.

  “Do you think we’ll find any at this depth?” Boucher asked.

  “Lake Baikal is sixteen hundred meters at its deepest point. If the Russians found hydrate at that depth, we should too,” Palmetto said.

  But after an hour, they’d found nothing—except of course some of the most extraordinary life-forms on the planet, including flatworms the size of a man, one of which crawled all over them, blocking portholes and covering them with a slime that distorted vision till it peeled off and floated away like a sheet of cellophane.

  “I’m going to descend, climb down into the trough a ways,” Mae said. “What do you think, Bob, another thousand meters?”

  “Might not take that much. I never really expected to be able to just pick methane hydrate up like shells on the beach, but now that we know it can be done, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  It took them almost another hour, and the discovery was credited to Mae.

  “Bob. Over there. Lower right-hand corner of your monitor, maybe twenty yards away. Do you see those mussels and tube worms on that mound?”

  “Yes. They use methane like a food source. The tube worms may be connected to the hydrate too.”

  “Okay, I’m heading over there. It’s right on the edge of that ledge, but there’s enough space to set down. We’re going to park on the ridge,” Mae explained for Boucher’s benefit. “It’s easier to use the arms when we’re at rest, and easier to get the sample into the vacuum chamber invented by none other than your illustrious submariner, Bob Palmetto.”

  Boucher looked up from his monitor at the man sitting so close to him.

  “I did manage to do something beneficial with those twenty years,” he said.

  “He’s being modest,” Mae said. “He’s got thirteen patents on deep-sea mining equipment and he’s donated royalties on all of them to the Institute. Okay, we’re on the bottom. Extending arms.”

  The controls were levers and handles below the principal monitor at her station. The elbow joints of both arms were flexed and the titanium appendages reached straight out as if offering an embrace. Then the “hands” dropped, fingers pointing down. They were lowered to the ocean floor. The fingertips raked the bottom to feel the surface. It was rocky sand, not too hard-packed, near-perfect consistency for collecting samples. The arms were lifted, turned, and placed over the grayish lump that lay on the surface. It looked to be about the size of a volleyball. The fingers were manipulated to form a claw and lowered over the object. The claw was tightened, fingertips digging into subsea soil.

  “Are you sure that’s methane hydrate and not just a rock?” Boucher asked.

  “It’s too soft to be a rock. See how the claws scraped it? Definitely methane hydrate. It’s a piece that broke off the mound where the tube worms are feeding. Grab it,” Palmetto said.

  The fingers closed. The hands were raised. The clump was bigger than a volleyball. It was almost two feet in diameter.

  “Hot damn,” Palmetto said. “We beat the Russians with that one. Their sample was just over ten pounds. This one is twenty if it’s an ounce.”

  “Worth the trip?” Mae asked.

  “Mae, a new industry is beginning with this sample. The world has a new source of energy that will last us for centuries.”

  “If you’ve known it was here, Bob, why have you waited till now?”

  “You want to help with that one, Judge?” he asked Boucher. “Go ahead. She has a right to know.”

  Boucher spoke, his low monotone almost hypnotic in their tiny egg resting on the deep-sea floor.

  “Mr. Palmetto invented a process for the extraction of methane hydrate twenty years ago. His discovery was stolen from him, and several people involved were murdered. He’s been keeping a low profile until recently, out of concern for his life.”

  “That’s just a part of the answer, Mae,” Palmetto said. “We can’t afford to be dependent on imported crude oil any longer. The whole damned Middle East could go up in flames tomorrow and the world crisis would be devastating. We must develop this energy source that’s r
ight at our doorstep. It can’t wait. I found out those who stole from me are planning to utilize my process and they don’t appreciate the dangers. I’ve made substantial improvements in the last two decades. They do something stupid and it could set this viable source of energy back another twenty years. I must make it known what’s here and how we can safely exploit it.”

  No one spoke. Keeping the devil from this deep blue sea would demand restraints that had not always been imposed, at least not uniformly, in this field of human endeavor.

  For the next several minutes, the arms were manipulated with almost surgical precision, placing the sample in the container designed for this purpose. Actually, the sample was too large and pieces broke off as it was stowed, but finally it was in and the vacuum container was closed. Uniform pressure would be maintained as the sub rose to the surface.

  Mae was in the process of returning the mechanical arms to their locked position when the sub was blasted off the subsea surface. Its front end rose up as if it were trying to stand, then it fell over backward. The three inside were thrown back and landed in a heap on top of each other. Whether their concussions were from hitting their heads or from the sound waves, which sped through water faster than through air, the three were knocked unconscious. They tumbled over and over, down and deeper into the Carolina Trough, reaching the limits of pressure their tiny cocoon could withstand, before the sub stopped.

  Boucher regained consciousness, of a sort. He thought he had opened his eyes but was unsure. He could see nothing, not a single indicator light from a single piece of equipment. He thought he was moving his fingertips, but was unsure of that too. He could feel nothing. Of one thing he was sure: he was thinking, therefore, if Descartes could be believed, he was still alive. But for how long? How long had he been unconscious? He tried to breathe but could take only short, shallow breaths. The oxygen was running out, carbon dioxide building up.