The Swarm

by Frank Schätzing

  From now on everything had to happen as quickly as possible. Bohrmann had asked for the ship to be slowed right down so that they could investigate a site he'd identified using data from the multi-beam echo-sounder and the video-sledge. Beneath the Sonne there was a large field of hydrates. Taking a sample meant releasing a monster that appeared to belong to the Jurassic age of deep-sea science. The video-guided grab – a pair of metal jaws weighing several tonnes – was scarcely the most sophisticated piece of technology. In fact, it was probably the crudest, yet most reliable way of wresting a chunk of history from the seabed. Opening its maw, it bit into the sediment, and tore out hundreds of kilos of silt, ice, fauna and stone, which it then deposited at the feet of the scientists. The sailors had named it T. Rex. As it dangled from the A-frame, jaws agape, ready to plunge into the sea, the similarity was striking. A monster in the service of science.

  However, as with all monsters, the grab was powerful, but lumbering and dumb. Inside its jaws were floodlights and a camera, enabling its handlers to see where it was heading before they let it off the leash. That was impressive. But the dim-witted T. Rex was incapable of stealth. No matter how carefully you let it down – and there were limits, since it took force to penetrate the seabed – it created a bow wave that frightened away most creatures. As soon as their finely tuned senses detected it, worms, fish, crabs and any other organism capable of rapid movement escaped before it pounced. Even the more up-to-date instruments gave advance warning. The bitter words of a frustrated American scientist summed up the situation: 'There's plenty of life down there. The trouble is, it sees us coming and steps aside.'

  The grab was lowered from the A-frame. Johanson wiped the rain off his face and entered the control room. A crewman was operating the joystick that moved the grab up and down. He'd spent the last few hours steering the video sledge, but he still seemed focused. He had to be: staring at hazy pictures of the seabed for hours on end had a hypnotic effect. A moment of carelessness, and a piece of equipment that cost as much as a brand new Ferrari would be lost forever.

  Inside the control room the light had been dimmed. The monitors cast a pale glow on the watching faces of the people sitting and standing in front of them. The rest of the world no longer existed: there was only the seabed, whose surface they studied like a coded landscape in which every detail held a message.

  Outside the cable slid over the winch.

  The water looked as though it was going to spurt out from the monitors, then the metal jaws passed through a shower of plankton. The screens turned blue-green, then green, then black. Bright dots – tiny crabs, krill and other creatures – sped away like comets. Watching the voyage of the grab was like seeing the opening credits for the original Star Trek series, but now there was no music. It was deathly silent in the lab. The figures on the depth gauge were changing all the time. Then the seabed flashed into view, looking like a lunar landscape. The cable stopped.

  'Minus seven hundred and fourteen metres,' said the man at the controls.

  Bohrmann leaned over. 'Don't do anything yet.' The monitor filled with mussels. They liked to colonise hydrates, but now they were hidden by a mass of wriggling bodies. Johanson had a strange feeling that the worms weren't just burrowing in the ice but were eating the mussels in their shells. He could see jaws shooting out and ripping off chunks of mussel flesh, which vanished into the tube-like bodies. There was no sign of the white methane ice under the siege of worms, but they all knew it was there. Bubbles rose up from the bottom, with tiny shimmering fragments – splinters of hydrate.

  'Now,' said Bohrmann.

  The seabed rushed towards the screen. For a moment it looked as though the worms had risen to welcome the camera, then it went black. The iron jaws buried themselves in the methane and clamped shut.

  'What the hell… ?' gasped the man at the controls.

  The numbers on the panel were turning rapidly. They stopped briefly, then sped on.

  'The grab's broken through. It's sinking.'

  Hvistendahl pushed his way to the front. 'What's going on?'

  'This can't be happening! There's no resistance!'

  'Pull it up!' screamed Bohrmann. 'Quickly!'

  The man jerked back the joystick. The counter stopped, and the numbers started to decrease. The grab rose upwards, jaws clenched. Its external cameras showed the vast hole that had opened. Swollen bubbles surged from inside it. Then a stream of gas gushed out, hitting the grab and engulfing it. Everything vanished in a seething whirlpool.

  Greenland Sea

  A few hundred kilometres north of the Sonne, Karen Weaver had just stopped counting. Fifty laps of the deck. She kept running up and down, careful not to get in the scientists' way. For once she was pleased that Lukas Bauer didn't have time to talk to her. She needed exercise, but the possibilities on board a research vessel were limited. She'd tried the gym, but the three exercise machines had driven her crazy so she was running instead. Up and down the deck – past Bauer's assistants, who were working on float number five, and past the crew, who were hard at work or standing in groups, watching her, suggestive comments on the tip of their tongues.

  Puffs of white breath rose from her parted lips.

  Up and down the deck.

  She'd have to work on her stamina. It was her weak point. She made up for it in strength, though. Her body was like a sculpture: impressive muscles and glowing skin, with an intricately tattooed falcon between her shoulders. Yet Karen Weaver had none of the bulk of a female body-builder- in fact, she'd have made a perfect model, if only she had been a little taller and her shoulders less broad. A small, sinewy panther, she lived on adrenaline. Her favoured habitat was the edge of the abyss.

  In this case, the drop was 3.5 kilometres. The Juno was sailing over the Greenland abyssal plain, an expanse of seabed beneath the Fram Strait, from which the cold Arctic water flowed south. The basin between Iceland, Greenland, the north Norwegian coast and Svalhard was one of the planet's two main water pumps. Bauer was interested in what was going on there – and so was Karen Weaver, on behalf of her readers.

  Bauer beckoned for her to join him. With his bald head, huge glasses and pointed white beard, he resembled the cliché of an absent-minded professor more than any other scientist she'd met. He was sixty and already slightly hunched, but indefatigably energetic. Weaver respected people like Lukas Bauer. There was something almost superhuman about them. She admired them for their will.

  'Take a look at this, Karen,' he called, in a clear voice. 'Incredible, isn't it? The water here is surging downwards at a rate of seventeen million cubic metres per second. Seventeen million!'' He beamed at her. 'That's twenty times the volume of all the rivers on Earth.'

  'Dr Bauer.' Weaver placed a hand on his arm. That's the fourth time you've told me that.'

  Bauer blinked. 'Really?'

  'And you still haven't got round to explaining how the floats work. You're going to have to talk me through this, if you want me to do your PR.'

  'Yes… Well, the floats – that is to say, the autonomous drifting profilers – they… Oh, but you know all that already, don't you? It's why you're here.'

  'I'm here to make computer simulations of the currents, so people can see where the floats are going, remember?'

  'Of course. Dear me, you can't possibly know… You don't even… Well, I'm a bit short of time, unfortunately. There's so much to do. Why don't you watch for a while and then-'

  'Dr Bauer! Not again. You promised to tell me how they work.'

  'Certainly. You see, in my articles, I-'

  'Dr Bauer, I've read your articles but I trained as a scientist and even I barely understood them. Popular science is supposed to be entertaining. You've got to write in a language that everyone can follow.'

  Bauer looked hurt. 'My articles are easy to follow.'

  'For you, maybe – and the two dozen others working in your field.'

  'Now, that's not true. If you read the text carefully-'

 
'No, Dr Bauer, I want you to explain it.'

  Bauer frowned, then smiled indulgently. 'If any of my students were to talk. . . But they wouldn't dare. They're not allowed to interrupt me – I leave that to myself. He raised his skinny shoulders in a shrug. 'But that's life, I suppose. I can't refuse you anything. I like you, Karen. You're a… Well. . . You remind me of. . . Oh, never mind. Let's take a look at this float.'

  'And when we've done that, we'll talk about your findings. I'm getting enquiries.'

  'Where from?'

  'Magazines, TV programmes, institutes.'

  'How interesting.'

  'It's not interesting, it's normal – publicity's logical outcome. Do you even see the point of PR?'

  Bauer grinned mischievously. 'Perhaps you'd like to explain it?'

  'With pleasure – it'd only be the tenth time. But first, you're going to talk to me!

  'But that won't do,' said Bauer, in agitation. 'We've got floats to lower, and then I mustn't forget to-'

  'Keep your word and talk to me,' Weaver said sternly.

  'But, Karen, my dear, you're not the only one getting enquiries. I'm writing to scientists all over the world. They ask the most outlandish things. One just emailed to ask about a worm. Imagine that – a worm! He even wanted to know if the methane concentration was higher than usual, which, of course, it is… But how was he to know? I'll have to-'

  'I can deal with all that. I'll be your co-conspirator.'

  'As soon as I've-'

  'That's if you really like me.'

  Bauer's eyes widened. 'I see. So that's how it is, is it?' His drooping shoulders shook with muffled laughter. 'That's exactly why I never married. It's constant blackmail. All right, then, I'll try harder, I promise. Now, let's get going. Come along!'

  Weaver followed him. The drifting profiler was dangling from the boom above the grey surface of the water. It was several metres long and protected by a supporting frame. More than half of it was made up of a thin, shiny tube, with two spherical glass containers at the top.

  Bauer rubbed his hands together. His down jacket was several sizes too big for him and made him look like an exotic Arctic bird. 'We drop the float into the water,' he said, 'and it bobs along with the current. Think of it as an enormous particle of water. There's a vertical drop beneath us – the water is sinking, as I said… Well, you can't see it sinking, of course, but it's sinking nonetheless. Now, how can I explain this?'

  'Try avoiding jargon.'

  Right. It's actually very simple. The point is, water doesn't always weigh the same. Warm fresh water is light. Salt water is usually heavier than fresh water. The saltier, the heavier, in fact – there's the added weight of the salt to consider. On the other hand, cold water is heavier than warm water because its density is higher. So water gets heavier as it cools.'

  'Which means the heaviest water is always cold and salty,' Weaver put in.

  'Very good.' Bauer seemed pleased with her. 'So, water doesn't just flow in currents: it moves up and down in layers. The coldest currents are on the seabed, warm currents are on the surface, and deep-water currents are somewhere in between. Of course, warm currents can travel thousands of kilometres on the surface before they reach colder regions where they start to cool down. And as the water cools-'

  'It gets heavier.'

  'Indeed. So, the water gets heavier, which makes it start to sink. Surface currents turn into deep-water currents, or even bottom-water currents, and the flow direction changes. It's exactly the same the other way round, but the water goes upwards, from cold to warm. That way, all the major currents are continuously in motion. And because they're all interconnected, there's a constant process of exchange.'

  The float was lowered to the surface of the water. Bauer hurried to the railings and leaned over, gesturing impatiently for Weaver to follow. 'What are you waiting for? Come on, you'll get a better view from here.'

  She stood next to him. Eyes glowing, Bauer was gazing out to sea. 'Imagine if there were floats in every single current!' he said. 'Just think how much we'd learn.'

  'What are the glass spheres for?'

  'They keep the float suspended in the current. There are weights at the other end too, but the key to the whole thing is the cylinder in the middle. All the equipment is in there. Electronic controls, microprocessor, power supply. And it's neutrally buoyant. Isn't that amazing? Neutrally buoyant!'

  'I'd find it even more amazing if you told me what that meant.'

  'Oh, yes. Of course…' Bauer tugged as his beard. 'Well, we had to think about how we could get the floats to- You see, it's like this: fluids are practically incompressible. That is to say, you can't compress them any further. Water is the key exception. You can't, er, squish it much, but it's possible. So that's what we do. We compress the water in the cylinder so there's always the same amount in there, but sometimes it's heavier and sometimes it's lighter. So the weight of the float can be varied without changing the volume.'

  'Ingenious.'

  'It certainly is! It can even be programmed to do it by itself – compressing, decompressing, compressing, decompressing, sinking down and rising up – without us lifting a finger. Clever, don't you think?'

  Weaver watched the tube sink into the sea.

  'It means the float can travel independently for months and even years, transmitting radio signals, while we track it and reconstruct the speed and the movement of the current. Off it goes.'

  The drifting profiler had vanished.

  'And where's it heading now?'

  'That's the question.'

  Weaver looked at him intently.

  Bauer sighed resignedly. 'I know, I know. You want to hear about my work. Goodness me, you're tenacious… Very well, we can talk in the lab. But the findings are unsettling, to say the least.'

  'People love to be unsettled. Haven't you heard? Jellyfish invasions, scientific anomalies, people going missing and sinking ships. You'll be in good company.'

  'Do you think so?' Bauer shook his head. 'You're probably right. I'll never understand what publicity's about. I'm only a scientist.'

  CONTINENTAL MARGIN, Norwegian Sea

  'Shit,' Stone groaned. 'It's a blow-out.'

  On board the Sonne, everyone in the control room stared at the screen. All hell seemed to have broken loose on the seabed.

  Bohrmann spoke into the microphone: 'We've got to get out of here. Full speed ahead. Tell the bridge.'

  Lund ran out of the room, and Johanson chased after her. Suddenly everyone on board was running. Johanson skidded on to the working deck, where sailors and technicians were shifting cold storage tanks under Lund's lead. The winch cable quivered as the Sonne accelerated.

  Lund saw him and ran over.

  'What was that?' he yelled.

  'We hit a gas pocket. Look!'

  She pulled him across to the railings. Hvistendahl, Stone and Bohrmann joined them. Two Statoil technicians had gone to the far end of the stern and were standing under the A-frame, peering down.

  Bohrmann was gazing at the taut cable. 'What the hell is he playing at?' he hissed. 'Why hasn't the idiot stopped the winch?' He hurried back inside.

  At that moment the sea started to bubble madly and white lumps shot to the surface. The Sonne had reached full speed. There was a clunking sound as the video-grab's cable tightened. Someone raced across the deck towards the A-frame, waving wildly. 'Get away from there!' he yelled to the pair from Statoil. 'Run!'

  Johanson recognised him. It was the first officer, the Sheep-dog, as the seamen called him. Hvistendahl swivelled round, gesticulating. Then everything happened at once. A foaming, hissing geyser engulfed them. Johanson saw the outline of the video-grab rising through the surface of the water. An unbearable stench of sulphur filled their nostrils. The Sonne's stern sank, then the metal jaws shot sideways and sped through the air like a gigantic swing towards the topside. The second of the two technicians saw it coming and flung himself down. The other man froze, then took a tentative step
backwards and stumbled.

  The Sheep-dog sprang forward to pull him to the ground, but the metal jaws crashed into the man and sent him flying into the air. He fell back to the deck, skidded along the planks and lay still.

  'Oh, God,' Lund gasped. 'Please, no.'

  She and Johanson ran towards the motionless body. The first officer and other crew were kneeling beside him. The Sheep-dog glanced up. 'Don't touch him.'

  'But I-' Lund began.

  'Call the doctor.'

  Johanson knew that Lund couldn't bear to be inactive. Sure enough, she walked towards the grab. It had nearly stopped swinging. Mud dripped from it on to the deck. 'Open it!' she shouted. 'Get whatever's left into the tanks.'

  Johanson looked down at the sea. Bubbles of stinking methane were still fizzing up to the surface, but gradually subsiding. The Sonne was charging away from the scene. The last chunks of methane ice floated to the surface and disintegrated.

  With a loud creak the grab opened its jaws, releasing hundreds of kilos of ice and sediment. Sailors and scientists crowded around it, trying to plunge the hydrate into tanks of liquid nitrogen. Johanson felt useless. He went over to Bohrmann to help collect the lumps. The deck was covered with small, bristly bodies. Some were twitching and writhing, but the majority hadn't survived the rapid ascent. The sudden change of temperature and pressure had killed them.

  Johanson picked up a clump and examined it closely. Dark channels criss-crossed the ice, strewn with the corpses of worms. He turned it back and forth until its crackling and cracking reminded him that it needed to he conserved. Some of the other chunks were even more riddled with holes, but the real work of destruction had clearly taken place beneath the tunnelling. Crater-like breaches gaped in the ice, covered with slimy trails.