Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  He looked unhappy. “I wouldn’t want you to misunderstand, Gunny,” he said. “But we’re sacrificing everything we came here for.”

  Beekman knew that. A substantial number of the experiments weren’t even running. Specialists had been pulled off their assignments and put on the rescue operation. Worst of all, Wendy was on the wrong side of Deepsix, her view of developing events limited to what she could see through her satellites. The mission was turning into a fiasco. “I know,” he said. “What would you have me do?”

  “Call it off.”

  Beekman was shocked. “What?”

  “Gunny, I’d like to see those people out of there as much as anybody. But the scoop is a long shot at best.” He was quiet for a minute, apparently thinking how he was going to defend the indefensible. “Can I be honest?”

  “You always have been.”

  “The chance to watch this thing close up, it’s too much to let get away. Gunny, the truth is, it’s worth a few lives, if that’s what it takes.”

  Beekman was surprised at his own reaction: Bentley was not necessarily wrong. From one point of view.

  “Let it go,” he continued. “You know what’s going to happen: Something’ll go wrong, the operation won’t work, they’ll all die anyhow, and we’ll be left looking like idiots because we came all the way out here and got nothing.”

  “Mark, what would you have me do? We can’t just write them off.”

  Bentley was quiet for a long minute. He knew. He understood it was not an easy decision. “I think they’ve been written off. By events. Somebody needs to point that out to Marcel.”

  Beekman felt a terrible weariness creeping up his insides.

  “I’m not the only person here who feels this way, Gunny. It’s not just me.” He held out his hands. “Look, if there were a decent chance of getting them off, I’d say go ahead. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I’d be willing to go along with it. But this isn’t a decent chance. It’s a gesture. And that’s all it is. It’s being done so when we go back, Clairveau can say he did everything he could. You know as well as I do that you can’t make this work.”

  “I think we can,” he said.

  Bentley continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “We won’t have another opportunity like this. Not in our lifetimes. Maybe not in the lifetime of the species.”

  Beekman didn’t know what was right.

  “How the hell are we going to explain this when we go home?” demanded Bentley. “No we didn’t save them, and no we didn’t see the event. We were there, but we were busy.”

  Beekman wondered how authority on Wendy ran in such a case. Beekman was the project director, charged with ensuring that they made maximum use of their time and resources to record and analyze the event. Marcel was the ship’s captain.

  “Talk to him. Clairveau’ll listen to you.”

  XXVIII

  I’m always interested when a large-scale project is successfully completed. My own research shows that, in any organization numbering more than twenty-two people, no single person can ever be found who completely understands what’s going on.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, Gone to Glory

  Hours to breakup (est): 44

  Pindar and Shira climbed into a shuttle and watched the launch doors open. Outside, a few hundred meters away, they could see the assembly. It looked like a group of unconnected narrow tubes, running absolutely parallel, stretching unbroken in both directions. “Here we go,” said the pilot. They glided quietly forward and, to Pindar’s intense excitement, moved past the enclosing bulkheads and sailed into the night

  The patch over the pilot’s pocket read BOMAR. “Klaus,” he said stiffly by way of introduction. His manner implied their presence was inconvenient. He was short and heavyset, with a Canadian accent Pindar thought he looked like a man who never enjoyed himself.

  But the truth was Pindar barely paid any attention to the pilot He was captivated by the alien structure, its parallel tubes reaching toward infinity, vanishing finally in the stars.

  Behind them the big luxury liner began to move. It accelerated, drew away, and its vast bulk dwindled and disappeared. It was, he knew, headed for the asteroid. Bomar advanced on the assembly, turned along its flank, braked, and coasted to a stop.

  “Okay,” he said. “You two are on.”

  It was an electric moment. Pindar activated his e-suit. Bomar checked him, adjusted something on his back, and then looked at Shira. “Looks good,” he said.

  “Don’t we get a go-pack?” asked Shira, eyeing the thruster harnesses stowed in the utility locker.

  “Negative.” Bomar’s somber features softened with amusement. “You don’t need one. Just do what you’re supposed to and don’t fall off.”

  “Right,” said Pindar. His own voice seemed to have deepened somewhat.

  Bomar opened the inner hatch. “Keep one foot flat on the metal at all times while you’re on the thing. Okay?”

  “Absolutely,” said Shira.

  “This is not something to smile about. Please get it right the first time. I don’t want to have to do a lot of paperwork.” He exhaled and looked like a man who wasn’t used to accommodating amateurs. “They got your next of kin?”

  That question had been on one of the forms. “Yes,” said Shira.

  “Keep it in mind while you’re out there. All right, let’s go.”

  Shira and Pindar had arrived at Station One. There was no brace there, nothing to hold the shafts together. They were 320 kilometers from the asteroid, the rock that had provided the counterweight to whatever space station had once been attached. Their assignment was simply to climb on board, select the correct shaft, and mark it.

  Shira was not a classic beauty. Her ears were a little big, her nose a little long, and the e-suit handicapped her by pressing her rich brown hair down against her scalp. But she was nevertheless attractive in a way he couldn’t formulate. She was self-possessed, methodical, seemed quite adroit at laughing at herself. And perhaps most enchanting of all, she showed no apprehension whatever about going outside. “Come on, Pindar,” she said, picking up her utility pack and throwing it across one shoulder. She led the way into the airlock. When the inner hatch closed she turned to him. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  Pindar tried not to roll his eyes. He felt much the same way but could never have brought himself to say it.

  “You ever been outside before?” she asked.

  “No. Yesterday was the first time.” The training exercise. Prior to that, the opportunity had risen only once. He’d had a chance to put on an e-suit and stand on the hull of a ship in flight during an adventure tour, but he’d passed it up for an evening of poker.

  The assembly stretched across the overhead monitor, its relative motion reduced to zero. Bomar had matched course, speed, and aspect.

  “Opening up,” he said.

  The hatch slid upward. Shira was wearing shorts and a white blouse with gold-rimmed breast pockets. She looked as if she were primed for a tennis outing.

  She caught him staring. “You’re laughing,” she said.

  He looked down at his own garments: tan slacks and a black pullover. He wished he’d thought to bring work clothes, something old that he wouldn’t care about if he ruined. The Star had offered jumpsuits to the volunteers, but he hadn’t been able to find one in which he felt comfortable. “I think we’re a bit overdressed for the occasion,” he said.

  The assembly was almost close enough to touch.

  Shira moved past him to the lip of the airlock and simply allowed her forward motion to carry her across, as she’d been taught. No jumping, no sudden exertion. She caught hold of the nearest shaft, smiled back at him, and brought her magnetic boots into contact with the next tube below.

  Pindar followed, thinking how this was the first alien anything he’d ever touched, how he’d be telling his grandkids about this in another half century. It was a big moment, and he was enjoying himself thoroughly.


  He reached Shira’s shaft and let his boots connect. “Okay, Klaus,” he told the pilot. “We’re clear.”

  “Strange feeling,” said Shira.

  He looked back the way he had come and saw Morgan, a vast cobalt arc split in half by sunlight. Even though it was still at a substantial distance, he could feel its weight. Its mass, he recalled. Use the proper terminology.

  Deepsix, floating directly ahead at the end of the assembly, was white and blue and vulnerable. Lunch, he thought. Not much more than a snack for the monster that was moving in on it.

  Shira touched his arm. “Let’s find our shaft.”

  The shuttle drifted alongside.

  Using the spacecraft as a guide, they climbed up. Shira led the way. At the first two steps, she paused, looked down through the shafts, shook her head, and moved on. The third try was golden. “Okay,” she said. She backed away to get a better look. “This is it. No question.”

  Pindar joined her, saw four shafts line up with the one he was standing on. He produced his squirt gun and splashed yellow dye on the metal. “I dub you Alpha,” he said.

  “You guys sure now?” asked Bomar.

  “Of course,” Shira sounded annoyed.

  Beekman was unable to make up his mind. He stood near Marcel, uncertain whether to demand that they forget this fool’s errand and return to the mission they’d come there for, or inform him that there were some malcontents and not to worry, that Beekman would handle it, but that the captain should be prepared for complaints.

  The hours were slipping away, and their magnificent opportunity was dwindling. Bentley and several others were watching, waiting to see whether he would act.

  Lori’s voice was providing periodic updates from the various teams. In addition, the conversation from the lander cabin had been put on the speaker. The AI reported that all stations on the target shaft, the one they’d designated Alpha, had been successfully marked.

  Marcel looked up at him. “So far, so good.”

  “Yes.” Beekman looked directly into his eyes. “It doesn’t sound as if our ground team has much confidence in us, though.”

  “I think I prefer it that way,” said Marcel, glancing around at the technicians. “Provides extra incentive. I think everybody here would like to prove them wrong.”

  Maybe not everybody, Beekman thought.

  Marcel looked into his eyes and frowned. “What is it, Gunny?”

  “Nothing,” said the project director. “Nothing that won’t wait.”

  Canyon recognized an emotional situation when he saw one. They were still sitting on their island as the day crept forward, waiting for the water to go down, waiting to launch an almost hopeless search for the whatzis that had been washed away.

  But they didn’t want to talk to him. No matter how gently he tried to frame his questions, How does it fee] to know so many people are rooting for you?, and If you had all this to do again, is there anything you might have done differently?

  “Nobody wants to be rude,” Hutch told him, “but I just don’t think this is a good time for an interview.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I understand how you feel. But if you change your mind, if anyone does, please call me. Okay?”

  He was sorry about their situation. And he would have helped if he could. Sitting quietly, staring at the displays of the approaching giant, of the vast sea that surrounded the tower, he understood their frustration. He almost wished he’d followed his father’s advice and gone into engineering.

  He decided he’d try again when they got closer to the end. His superiors at home were pressing him to acquire what they were referring to as an exit interview with MacAllister. “After all, he’s the one everybody knows.” But Canyon trusted his own instincts on this one. It was the two women who packed the emotional impact, who would bring tears to people’s eyes around the world. Especially Hutchins. Slight of stature, quiet, almost elfin in appearance, there was much of the girl-next-door in her. And Canyon knew if he could get her to agree to talk during the final hours, as he was sure he could, he would give the public an emotional jolt like nothing anyone had ever seen before. If Hutch wouldn’t cooperate, Kellie was another possibility.

  As to the others, he didn’t much like Nightingale, and he was afraid of MacAllister. You never quite knew what he might say.

  Hutch made a premature effort to land them at the tower, but the water was too deep and the currents too swift. So she turned away and retreated to another hilltop, and they waited another forty-five minutes, watching the tide run back to the northeast.

  The second effort succeeded. She got down, and they piled out into hip-deep water. First they made a careful inspection of the tower, assuring themselves that the capacitors weren’t there somewhere, missed by Kellie and Hutch in the preliminary search.

  Then they waded out toward the south. They’d divided the area into parcels and they tried to work within their assigned boundaries, tried to be methodical. We’ll stay on this side of a line between the tower and that tree over there. It wasn’t very efficient, but it worked to a degree. The real problem was that the search area was immense.

  Nightingale and Mac brought with them a conviction that the units could nevertheless be found, probably because they thought this was their only decent chance at survival.

  The land was not as flat as it had seemed. The depth of the water varied, up to their ankles in some places, .over their heads in others. The current was strong and, in deeper areas, consistently threatened to knock them over. Hutch had arrived with no illusions about their chances. Left to herself, she’d have put all her money on the sky scoop, gone to Mt. Blue, and spent the remaining time surveying the hexagon. But she was tired, and she was not up to arguing with two males who probably already thought she’d made an inadequate effort when there had still been a chance.

  She’d expected Nightingale and Mac to give up fairly quickly because of the amount of effort required to maintain the search. And the sheer size of the search area. But as the hours passed, their determination, or their desperation—it was difficult to know which—grew. They moved farther and farther south of the tower.

  Kellie, who was teamed with Nightingale, seemed to have become resigned. She stayed close to her partner, worked hard, plunging her hands beneath the surface constantly to examine one suspect rock or another. But Hutch could see that she had no real hope of success, could see it in the way she paused occasionally while they rested to look out over the vast expanse of running water, sometimes gazing north, no doubt wondering whether the capacitors might somehow have gotten on the wrong side of the tower. Or were fifty kilometers away. She could hear it also in the listlessness of her voice. And who could blame her?

  Once they thought they had one of them, but it turned out to be something much like a turtle shell.

  When it got dark, they quit. They were exhausted, annoyed, frustrated. They were aching from pushing against the currents and constantly bending over. The knowledge that the capacitors might be within a few meters at any given time had made it impossible to give up. But finally they crawled back to the lander, hauled themselves into the cabin, took turns cleaning up in the washroom, and collapsed into their seats.

  The water was starting to rise again anyhow. Hutch took them up.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” said Marcel.

  “Go ahead.”

  “First, am I correct in assuming you’ve given up looking for the capacitors?”

  Hutch glanced around. They all nodded.

  “All right. I want to move you to high ground for the night.”

  “Okay.”

  “For the moment, there’s nothing more you can do. Tomorrow, I’d like to persuade you to go to even higher ground.”

  “Mt. Blue,” she said.

  XXIX

  We are all afflicted with a Lone Ranger syndrome, a belief in the masked stranger who arrives well armed at dawn and settles problems in a straightforward simplistic manner. The character, whose origi
n stretches back to the twentieth century, owes his longevity to the fact that he connects with our most primal impulses, and represents the way we truly would be, if only we could. That we cannot results not only from a lack of courage and ability, but also because the world is simply not built that way. When the night is dark and the storm closes in, one had best be prepared to help himself. Because as surely as the stars wheel overhead there will be no one else, masked or otherwise.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, Introduction to The Last Mythology by Eve Shiu-Chao

  Hours to breakup (Est): 42

  They locked down for the night atop a ridge in a howling blizzard not far from Bad News Bay. The ground shook constantly. Hutch slept off and on. She and Kellie both spent time listening hopefully to operational reports from the small armada overhead.

  They heard Janet Hazelhurst issuing crisp directions to the Outsiders, who were getting ready to remove what they called the Alpha shaft from the assembly; they heard John Drummond’s team working out the details of getting everything pointed in the right direction, and Abel Kinder debating the location of the pickup site with Drummond: “It’s easier to get here, but the weather looks doubtful, so we need to go farther north.”

  They heard Miles Chastain and the shuttle pilots planning their assignments. In the early-morning hours, Marcel came on to give them details, the coordinates and altitude and timing of the pickup. “We’ve moved it slightly,” he said. “But not by much.” Rendezvous would occur in precisely twenty-five hours and eleven minutes, mark. Three hours after sunrise day after tomorrow. “At 10,276 meters.”

  “Ten thousand two-seventy six?” said Hutch. “What happens if we come in at seventy-five?”

  He laughed. “You’ll be fine, but I’m serious about the precision of this. At its lowest point, we expect the center of the scoop will be at seventy-six. The mouth will be fifty-three meters in diameter. The lander, at its widest, is about fifteen meters. That means you have nineteen meters leeway on either side.”