Abyss

by Greig Beck

  Sam turned her face to the sun, letting it warm her cheeks as she inhaled the salty air. She savored it, as where she was going darkness ruled twenty-four hours a day.

  A thick cable pinged overhead and she opened her eyes to follow its tightness over the side. The Alvin had a twin called Theodore that was already down deep.

  They were aboard the survey ship, the 400-foot Archimedes, a few hundred miles out from Acapulco and just on the edge of the trench. Her friend, Chloe Taylor, was in the Theodore, working, like her, for Nexxon to assess the effects on sea life of their seismic soundings.

  Sam had only taken the role on the understanding that the findings in their final report were packaged and delivered unvarnished – if there was proof of adverse effects, she wanted it known and not whitewashed, massaged, or erased entirely.

  Nexxon had agreed, with one proviso: if there were adverse effects, she gave the corporation time to make changes to their blasting operations before they were publicized, and potentially penalized by having onerous changes forced upon them, or worse, their work canceled altogether.

  She had agreed; after all, fair was fair. And, besides, there was no gag order, so if they tried anything, she’d just have a little fireside chat with the media.

  She turned back to the Alvin, sitting in its cradle on deck. Today, they were descending to a depth of just on 2400 feet, and just on the cliff edge of the trench. Once down in those inky depths, they’d hover a dozen or so feet from the bottom, and simply watch and wait.

  At the bottom, and even on the way down, they were to do a biomass count of organisms, using multiple sensor equipment arrays – basically, they’d be looking and listening to everything that went on down there.

  Sam had been down before, numerous times in fact, and though it was a lightless, alien world where they were going, she never felt concerned. The trench was different, and always filled her with awe and a little trepidation.

  The trench was a void of nothingness, an abyss, and a place of myth and mystery. Scientists actually knew more about the surface of the moon than they did about what lay at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches.

  At just on 23,000 feet, the Middle America Trench wasn’t even in the top ten when it came to depths, but it was still a dangerous place of crushing water. At the very bottom, there’d be a strange and seemingly barren world comprised of endless plains broken by the occasional lump of a manganese deposit, sitting atop the mud and slime like unused cannon balls. There were also beds of silt, hundreds of feet thick and so fine they’d be like quicksand.

  Many of the trenches had giant sea fans, tubeworms, crabs, mollusks and other creatures that had evolved an ability to live and thrive in those forbidding depths.

  Whales could also dive deep, but not to the utmost bottom. Giant squid, monstrous gape-jawed and needle-toothed creatures of the deep also inhabited the abyss.

  And then there was also the occasional bloop. Sam’s lips quirked up into a half smile; “the bloop” was the name given to anything and everything that was inexplicable that they heard from down in the depths. And there was also “the smudge” – that was the name for the unidentified shadows on deep sonar. Experts had theorized it could be everything from a coalesced school of fish, massive whale, or unusually big colossal squid. Or maybe it was just something else that they hadn’t encountered yet.

  Sam smiled dreamily; it gave her a little fluttery feeling in the stomach; sort of half fear and half excitement. Her scientific mind dearly wanted to be down in the trench one day and actually spot something unexpected or never seen before. But her human mind never wanted to find out what that weird bloop sound or smudge was.

  She needn’t worry, she told herself every time they dived. The Alvin and Theodore DSVs were basically waterborne tanks. Each of the two vessels weighed in at seventeen tons, and had a two-inch thick titanium sphere pressure hull. The DSVs had two robotic arms, fitted with mission-specific tools, and the updated compartments allowed for two scientists and one pilot to dive for up to twenty-four hours down to 15,000 feet.

  The Alvin had even more surprises – underneath the superstructure there was a coffin-shaped pod that contained an ADS, or Atmospheric Diving Suit. It was a one-person articulated submersible of anthropomorphic form – in layman’s terms, it was a suit of armor forged from titanium-aluminum alloy. The suit allowed the wearer to leave the Alvin in water up to a depth of 3000 feet, while maintaining an internal pressure of one Earth surface atmosphere. It had extremely articulated pressure joints for a range of movement, and its own heat, light and air supply.

  Sam had trialed one of the ADS suits in a NASA testing tank, and found it weird in that it was like being in your very own body-shaped submersible. Even though the watery world was only separated from the wearer by the titanium skin of the suit, she couldn’t help feeling a little claustrophobic when she’d worn it. Still, given the chance, she’d love to try it out in the depths.

  An additional twelve million dollars had been spent on upgrading the Alvin design. One of her favorite aspects of the new design was the bubble dome. The material it was made from was called borosilicate glass, which packed into itself and compressed in such a way that the deeper they went, and the more pressure that was applied, the stronger the glass got. Theoretically, they could go to the bottom of the Challenger Deep – the deepest known part of the seabed, 36,000 feet and counting – except the Alvin’s titanium hull wouldn’t survive.

  In an emergency, if Alvin got stuck underwater, the crew could release the occupant dome of the submersible. Then the glass and titanium sphere would rise to the surface uncontrolled, like a bubble of steel.

  The downside was that the upgraded submersibles needed an attached cable for the deeper drops – they needed to be dropped down and reeled in by the crew aboard the Archimedes, so no free maneuvering.

  Wade poked his head from the hatch. “Hey Sam, let’s run a systems check, we’re going over the side in twenty.”

  “Yo.” She grinned, saluted and headed over to what would be their world for the next eight hours. Alvin was still in its cradle, but the sling was now attached and it was hooked to the lift crane, ready to be maneuvered over the starboard side of the Archimedes. On the port side a similar crane was slowly hauling in cable as Chloe and her own armor-plated bubble were on their way back to the world of light and warmth, just as Sam and her team were getting ready to drop into the one of eternal night.

  She joined Andy McCarthy who stood squinting in the sunshine, and probably making a hundred more freckles appear on his already speckled face. Andy was the youngest of both teams, and at twenty-eight, and with his complexion, he was a poster boy for the emerald isle. Though he was a little quirky, he was a brilliant geologist who was a font of knowledge on deep-sea oceanography. Together they watched the cable reel in.

  “Baton change time?” He grinned.

  “Yep, so suck in the vitamin D, Dr. McCarthy.” She put an arm around his slim shoulders.

  “Are you kidding? A few more minutes in this sun and I’ll begin to blister.” He pulled up his suit.

  “Hurry up, fellow Alvin-o-nauts.” Wade poked up again. He had been working in a t-shirt with his thick sweater thrown over one shoulder. Regardless of the heat in the sunshine, he pulled it on before ducking back down. Though the DSVs were heated, they usually kept the thermal exchangers off until they really needed them as they burned up battery power. Inside, as they descended, it could get damned cold until they were turned on.

  Andy followed Wade into the Alvin and Sam eased herself in next. Just before she ducked down she sucked in a last lungful of fresh sea air.

  Get ready for hours of body odor, ozone and oil, she thought.

  Sam dropped into her seat in the bubble cockpit. Except for the viewing areas of the bubble, Alvin was basically a fortified computer. Banks of electronics were everywhere, leaving little space for luxuries like ergonomics – three small seats were jammed in close to each other, with one on the
left still vacant.

  She immediately reached forward to start running through her personal checklist of items. Though Wade would be the pilot, everyone crammed into the armor-plated diving computer had operational jobs to do. Everything from the sonar, depth, pressure, temperature, and object and geology proximity all needed to be monitored. Where they were going was as deadly and foreign to them as an alien planet.

  Wade checked the link to the robotic claws, retested the ADS and escape pod links and got green lights across the board.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we are looking good. Checking comm. link.” Wade lifted the handset, and opened the mic.

  “Skipper, this is Alvin I, do you read?”

  There was a click as the deck picked up the comm. link.

  “Loud and clear, Alvin; great day for a dive. What is your status?” Captain Douglas replied matter-of-factly, but Sam knew he’d be listening intently. He was a no-nonsense man, of large frame and silver hair. He’d seen it all, and only rested when everyone was back on deck, and not thousands of feet below him.

  “We have green lights across the board, and will run a pressure test,” Wade said.

  “Okay, Wade, standing by for your word on lift. Out.” Douglas closed the link.

  Wade, not having yet buckled in, rose from his seat and went to the large titanium hatch at the rear top of the bubble. He pulled it closed with a solid thunk. He then spun the wheel, until there was a hydraulic hiss and green lights indicated all the locks had been engaged and the seal properly effected. Only then did he crawl back into the bubble.

  “Hold your ears, people.” He pressed the air release that increased the pressure in the capsule. Though this was nothing like the pressure of the depths, it was enough to allow Alvin’s systems to check hull integrity and let them know if there was a leak anywhere across its skin.

  “How we doin’, Sam?” Wade asked.

  Samantha watched as all the integrity lights remained green. She nodded with satisfaction. “We are all green, and good to go.”

  “Excellent.” Wade rose again. “I’m going to open the hatch for five more minutes. So if anyone needs to take a bathroom break, do it now, or hold it for the next eight hours.”

  Sam grinned. “I can report that bowels and bladder have no unusual pressure.”

  Wade turned. “Seriously, anyone wants to suck in their last gulp of fresh air, better do so now.”

  “I’m good,” Sam said as she checked more instruments, and then opened a screen in front of her that showed their grid pattern for the day’s drop. They’d be moving along the trench ledge. So far between the Alvin and Theodore DSVs, they’d mapped and analyzed twenty miles of deep seabed.

  It was hard to argue that the seismic poundings weren’t having an effect, as there seemed to be little sea life left that used sound and vibrations for hunting or communication. Most other creatures who lived in that depth were represented, and they’d even encountered a giant squid on a previous drop, so her mind was still open.

  “Quad 34 – very close to the trench ledge. Going to be interesting,” she said without looking up.

  Andy hm-hmmed as acknowledgment, while continuing with his own pre-dive analysis. “Every time we peer into the heart of darkness, something else is revealed to us.”

  She looked up and grinned. “That sounds almost poetic.”

  “You’re welcome.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Andy McCarthy, Sagittarius, wine lover and bon vivant.”

  She bobbed her head. “I like it – the saying, not the dating-dot-com spiel.” She chuckled.

  The radio crackled to life. “Wade, you there?”

  Sam picked up the mic. “Taking a sunshine break, Captain. Can I help?”

  Douglas cleared his throat. “Uh, we got something on the sonar, coming up fast …”

  Sam frowned. “Say again; you mean the Theodore is coming up fast?”

  “No, it’s something coming up underneath Theodore. Big signature; could be a whale. It’s still very deep.”

  “Around here?” Sam’s mouth turned down in disbelief. “Can’t see it, Captain, no whales for a hundred miles in any direction.” She tilted her head for a second. “What does Chloe say?”

  “No word yet; we’ll keep you informed.” The mic closed.

  She turned to Andy who was now staring back at her. “Might be a whale,” Andy said. “Maybe things are even better than we expected.”

  She nodded. “Let’s just hope it’s not a sperm whale; those bad boys can give a DSV a nudge if they’ve a mind too.”

  They both turned to watch the cable that was bringing the other submersible to the surface. Water ran from it, and Sam imagined it being ice cold as it came from the dark depths. By the look of the coils, they were still quite a few hundred feet down, and at least five minutes from surfacing. Hopefully, Chloe would get a good look at their deep friend, and maybe some cool pics.

  Her stomach fluttered – the smudge.

  Nah, she wiped the thought away.

  Sam checked her watch – Chloe and her team in Theodore were due up in three minutes, twenty seconds. They’d have time to wave at each other before her team in Alvin would be lifted over the side. She wondered if the leviathan would still be there then.

  She blew air through pursed lips, and checked the onboard cameras. They could record still images, video and stream live footage. All of it stored to disc, with storage space in the gigabytes.

  “I have a good feeling about this drop,” she whispered.

  Andy turned to her. “Why’s that?”

  “If we can get a shot of any whale in deep water, it’d be awesome. But if it’s a blue whale, we could be one of the few in the world to actually see this massive beastie in the wild.”

  “Oh, okay, fingers crossed.” Andy didn’t sound impressed.

  She nodded. “Everything crossed.” She opened the mic. “Captain Douglas, any update on our big friend tagging Theodore?”

  There was nothing for a few moments.

  “Still coming,” Douglas sounded distracted, “and closing. It’s now on an intercept course with the DSV.”

  “Then crank it up,” she yelled.

  Immediately the winches were put into high gear, and they whirred and spat water in an arc above the rig. As Sam watched, the cables went from being drum-tight to suddenly slack, as if there was weightlessness on the end rather than a seventeen-ton submersible, before the weight kicked in again.

  One of the deep dive protocols was that no one was to interfere with a DSV’s line of communication while it was coming to the surface. Sam ignored it and opened the link.

  “Chloe, do you read me, over? Chloe?”

  Each submersible had a video screen comm. link and Alvin’s burst into life. Chloe’s face, glowing ghastly green from the console, filled the screen momentarily. But she was turning about. Behind her there was darkness, and the vid-link looked to be the only screen that illuminated her.

  “It’s coming back – it hit us, and it’s coming back.” Her eyes were wide and round.

  “Chloe, what is it? Is it a sperm whale? Orca? What’s happening?”

  Chloe turned back and leaned closer. Her face looked wet, and her eyes glistening. “It can still see us; it’s tracking us, following us all the way,” she whimpered.

  “Jesus. What is it? Please tell me.” Sam’s confusion began to turn to agitation as she picked up on her friend’s fear.

  She heard a man scream: “Here it comes again.”

  Chloe’s eyes bulged from terror. “Shark!”

  Sam half turned. “What did she say …?”

  There was an explosive impact, and the screen began to jerk about as if the Theodore was in a hurricane. Then there was the terrifying sound no submariner wanted to hear: the scream of bending steel following a rupturing hull. The screen shut off as the link was broken.

  “Chloe!” Sam yelled.

  “Fuck me,” Andy whispered.

  The winch hauling in Theodore jerked hard li
ke a game fisherman hooking a marlin. Then it started to clank and groan as it fought against an unbelievable weight. Whatever had struck the Theodore seemed to be pulling back on the cable now.

  Sam watched as crewmen ran to the rig and locked the winch down, stopping it from feeding any cable back into the ocean. The priority was to stop a potentially damaged Theodore slipping back into the depths.

  Immediately the crane jerked. With the sound of tortured metal, the boom started to bend, the hardened steel obviously no match for whatever had hold of it.

  “Let it go,” Sam breathed. She eased upright, not able to take her eyes off the crane. “Let it go, let it go, let it go.” She chanted, or perhaps prayed, as she began to turn, getting ready to launch herself to the hatch. She knew she could do nothing, but she needed to be out there on deck.

  She spun just as Wade appeared. “What the hell is going on?”

  The passage was too narrow for the two of them to pass each other and she was blocked. Sam pointed.

  “Something has hold of the—”

  Metal screamed like a million banshees as the entire ship lurched to the side.

  “Shit!” Sam threw her arms out.

  People yelled, anything not secured on deck began to slide, including crewmembers. The ship continued to tilt, and Sam reversed herself back to her seat. The crane that held Theodore started to rip free from the deck.

  “We’re losing her!” Sam could do nothing but watch as her friend in the submersible was about to be dropped.

  “We need to,” Andy yelled. “Or it’s going to pull us over.” He threw his belt over his shoulders to keep upright in his seat.

  Alvin started to swing out of its cradle. A klaxon horn began to blare, over and over, deafening, raising the tension level and making it hard for any of them to think straight.

  In the next moment, with the sound of rending steel and a cannon blast, the entire winch pulled free from its moorings and skidded and bumped its way to the side of the ship. Instead of bouncing over, its legs and cabling acted like a grappling hook and caught in the side railing.