Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  “Well, there is something down there,” Chiffrey said, “and I’d really like to know what. Any ideas, Malcolm?”

  “Everywhen,” was all he said.

  “Pardon?” Chiffrey gave Malcolm a look, half puzzled, half intrigued.

  Malcolm, still uneasy, replied in a soft voice, “Not time as a river, more like one big circular now. Hard to explain, but I’ve been wondering about it. Lately.”

  “Good, keep on wondering, but does this have anything to do with our new neighbor down below?”

  Malcolm looked startled. “Who?”

  “The dome, Malcolm, the big bright round thing we saw on the video, which is now directly below us.”

  “I thought you meant…Okay, think of time as more of a place than a flow, and places are all flow, but without sequence. I mean, there’s really only one ‘place’ and one ‘time’ and it’s everywhere and everywhen.”

  “Is this something you read about?”

  “A while back yes, but it’s just been somehow happening with me more, lately I mean directly, direct experience. Like it’s the way things are. Really are.” He rubbed his eyes a few times, then continued. “Sometimes I get just a glimmer but, now and then, so strong that, it’s like I’m dancing in between the spaces. Everything’s mostly space after all, you know, the whole song…”

  Malcolm looked up finally and must have noticed the blank expressions on everyone’s faces, because he slowly, and with a rare sense of gravity, said, “Okay, if the dome can access and influence even some of what underpins the basis of what we take as a universe of matter and energy, then all that’s happened, from things and people slipping in and out of the matter stream, to the way people have become—to the way even I am now—might seem not only possible, but inevitable.” He paused and shut his eyes tightly as if he were trying to keep all light out, before finally saying, “Because it doesn’t defy the laws of how things are, but is the ways things are. We’re just blind to it.”

  Chiffrey looked around and said. “Well, that’s a lot to consider. Agreed, we should be open to new ideas.”

  “I studied this stuff once!” Malcolm said, suddenly breathing hard.

  “A class and a half in theoretical physics. But when you were only fifteen, so impressive.”

  “How did you…what?”

  “Relax,” Chiffrey said. He shrugged his shoulders. “We did background checks on everybody. Routine protocol for the security clearances that all of you were given, to one degree or other.” He put his a hand out, but Malcolm shook his head and backed away.

  “Sorry, Malcolm. I wasn’t discounting what you presented, only I didn’t really understand it. Maybe you can run it by me again later.”

  Malcolm spun around and left without another word.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Chiffrey said, looking after Malcolm as if at a missed bus. He turned back to Penny and her father. “So, we all need to keep our minds open, and now it’s your turn, because I got a little theory of my own.”

  “Not another dump of gibberish, please,” Penny said.

  Chiffrey’s smile returned. “I’ll keep it simple. If there’s life inside that thing, the dome, then just because it’s in the sea, doesn’t mean it’s from the sea. Or at least from our sea. Might have arrived fairly recently, and we might have even witnessed the event, but didn’t have all the numbers at the time to do the math.”

  “I’m not going to start guessing,” Penny said, “so what on earth is your point?”

  “‘What on earth,’ indeed. With the capabilities we have all seen demonstrated, plus the initial radar jamming, and a landing site well chosen to evade detection, if you add it all up, it is literally unearthly. E.T.”

  Penny burst out laughing. “Extraterrestrials! I don’t believe I’m hearing this! Especially from you. You’ll lose your commission if you pass that on.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, either, and certainly not saying I’m convinced yet, but, you know, ‘when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  “Good quote,” her father said, “but in this case, your conclusion is far from being elementary. We really have not eliminated all other possibilities, have we?”

  “If not, I’m ready to hear the rest. For now, the possibility that this is our first visitor from the stars does not seem any more incredible than some of the other alternatives I’ve heard bandied about.”

  “One of the few things we agree on, then,” Penny said.

  Chiffrey smiled, cocked his head to one side, and looked at her. “Now it’s time for practicalities. We don’t have the option of using the ROVs any more without being resupplied again and that takes time and carries risks. We feel the next step is your minisub. The Bluedrop.”

  “Forget it!” Penny yelled, then brought her voice down. “That doesn’t make any sense, after all the stuff you’ve been saying about how this might be hostile.”

  “The clock is running, is why,” Chiffrey said. “I made a strong case to my people that we needed more time, but the decision was to go ahead. There is an urgency about this, and they don’t see us making any progress.”

  “Things take time,” she said. “And bees sting. Remember?”

  “Time, yes, but we may be running out of it.”

  “You keep saying that, but why?” she asked. “I don’t see the urgency.”

  “Let’s watch some of the video from the Honey Pot again, and I’ll show you. Think I can get this running if I can find it. Here it comes.”

  They watched the several minutes of video again. The swirling light was dazzling, the colors all over the spectrum. Penny was sure the sound had overwhelmed the microphone in the same way a large waterfall can. It must have been deafening. When the playback was over, Chiffrey stood pointedly in front of the monitor.

  “Our first assumption was that this was either some kind of natural phenomenon or an accident. Now we don’t think so. We’ve had warships disabled without a fight. Wait. Hear me out, please. Picture that capability, and add to it the kind of power we just saw in the video. From what my science team tells me, there was an unimaginable amount of energy being expended. They can’t say how, but I wasn’t happy when I heard ‘beyond nuclear.’ And yes, the possibility exists that this power could be directed. ‘Vectored’ was the word used by one of the best theoretical physicists in the world. Do you understand the implications of that? I’m not saying that I believe that is about to happen, but the results would be horrendous if that force were directed at a city. My point is that we have no idea how to protect against it. I’m sorry, but this is no longer just the pursuit of knowledge. It’s a matter of national defense. Maybe even our survival as a species.”

  Her father shook his head. “What we saw in this video is certainly powerful, I’ll grant you, but I saw nothing hostile.”

  “We are playing with fire. Real fire.” Chiffrey tapped the monitor screen. “You saw it.”

  “Then why the hurry to jump down its throat?” Penny asked.

  “Because waiting may be even more risky. They’ll give us more time and any resources we need, if we go down in the Bluedrop.”

  “Blackmail.”

  “No, it’s not,” Chiffrey said. “They are giving us a carrot and a stick. I’ll go with the carrot, because I believe we have the best shot at getting to the heart of this, and we’ll lose that chance with the stick, because they’ll be the ones carrying it. If the heavy guns are called into action, and that’s not just a metaphor, they might make it hostile, just as you feared. We have a responsibility here. A window is open for us, but we have a few days at best.”

  “I suggest we let this all sink in a bit,” her father said, “and resume our discussion later.”

  Penny looked at him. “‘Sink’ is exactly what I’m afraid of, if we rush this.”

  CHAPTER 43

  At his request, Penny met Andrew in his cabin to fill him in on the latest development
s. They were now waiting for Chiffrey, who was supposed to have joined them twenty minutes ago.

  “Do you really want to take a bullet for this guy’s agenda?” she said. “I don’t like the way he’s herding us into doing his work.”

  “We’d do about the same even if no one else was involved,” Andrew said.

  “But there is real risk here.”

  “That’s always true.” He looked down as if waiting for his thoughts to clear, like silt from muddy water. “Have a feeling. Can’t explain it, don’t understand it yet, but somehow all my life’s tied up in this.”

  “That’s quite a statement. What about everyone else?”

  “Can’t demand anyone stay, won’t demand they leave. Door’s still open.” He put the full force of his personality and will behind his next words. “We’ll still have enough crew, but if it comes to it, I’ll go on alone.”

  She had no idea he felt so strongly about it and was about to say something when Chiffrey finally knocked. Andrew called him in and he entered, his usual saunter absent. He smiled, but she could feel the tension behind those gleaming teeth. Now what, she wondered?

  “Sorry. I was on the horn. Bad news. One of our ships on the perimeter has been disabled.”

  Penny raised an eyebrow, ever so slightly. “Propeller sheared off again?”

  “No, all the electrical systems are out, including the ones needed to keep the engines going. They’ve increased the perimeter another five kilometers as a result, but they’re not taking it well.”

  “So they got the message this time,” she said. “And now?”

  “I talked them into waiting until we send the minisub down.” He looked at Andrew. “It’s a go.”

  “And how did you manage that?” she asked.

  “Simple. We are virtually dead center over the object and we’re fine. One of their ships gets a little too close, but still miles from here, and zing, it’s out of action. I couldn’t begin to explain just why we have an edge, but we are absolutely their best shot and they all know it, now.”

  “I don’t like this at all,” Penny said. “We get dangled down there like bait, and they lurk outside and see what happens.”

  Chiffrey threw up his hands and looked upwards as if beseeching the gods. “What is it with you? First you want us to wait until you get here and give you a clear field, and now you’re mad because you get your wish. Feels like I’m damned if I do and—”

  “We get the point, Lieutenant,” Andrew said. “Another ship disabled, so the situation has changed. And?”

  Chiffrey nodded. “We have our chance. We’re cleared and will have any backup we require. But if we don’t act now, the only other option is that the Navy and other forces will take over completely.”

  “How we go is still our call,” Andrew said.

  “Of course. But keep the fact close at hand that if their ships keep getting disabled, eventually they’ll see no other option except to try to soften up the target.”

  “Wait,” Penny said. “You told us before we had a clear field!”

  “I know what I told you, but things changed, and I don’t make all the decisions. We’re not operating in a vacuum, and not everyone has your priorities. Truth to tell, probably no one else has.” He smiled. “Listen, isn’t this the chance you’ve been waiting for? If we can pry open that clam down there, even just a little, maybe we can find out what we’re dealing with, and then maybe no one will get hurt. We all want to see what’s underneath that last wet rock, now don’t we? Hopefully it’s just innocence itself.”

  “And what if it’s not?” she asked.

  “If it is dangerous, and even if it doesn’t mean to be, just leaving it there to wreak mayhem later is not an option. The word from higher up is that this is now considered a threat until proven otherwise. They’re giving us a chance to supply the ‘otherwise.’ If we can’t, they will have to respond in a way commensurate with the situation. Not necessarily with force, but that will probably become their only option, in my opinion. I need to tell them you will go down there.”

  “We already agreed on that,” Andrew said.

  “Good. From what I hear, the Bluedrop is one of the best deep-sea minisubs around. And the depths here are well within its specs.”

  “It still seems far too risky,” Penny said, “especially after what happened to yet another of your invincible Navy ships.”

  “Sugar, they don’t belong to me.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Drop the goddamn banter.”

  He shrugged up his eyebrows as if giving her the stage, so she took it.

  “I want this to succeed as much as you, but I don’t want anyone to get hurt because we rushed in to appease some panic-stricken, clueless decision maker at a desk somewhere.”

  “And your alternative?”

  “We should use remote devices exclusively. Go out and get replacement parts for our ROVs, even if it does take a little longer. The Navy must have excellent ROVs. Why can’t we use theirs? Sending people down there is insane.”

  “There is a risk to going back out of the circle,” Chiffrey said. “We don’t know if we could get back in, and we’ve just seen they can’t come to us. We don’t know if Navy ROVs, which I am sure are excellent, would violate the immunity we seem to have. They might have the wrong scent, so to speak.”

  Penny laughed out loud. “Are you serious? ‘Scent?’ You have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Correct, almost. I don’t know why the Valentina has, for lack of a better term, immunity, although I strongly suspect the transceiver has something to do with it, though as far as I can tell, no one here has been able to discover a single thing about it. For our immediate purposes, it doesn’t matter if we know why, we should not risk compromising it. You remember what happened when the Navy used their gear? Everything toast. Maybe even repairing your own gear with new parts would mess things up. Who knows?”

  “You’re stretching too far,” she said.

  “The less we change, the better, and you know that’s true. It’s the same reasoning that was used, by you among others, to not bring any of my people on board here. We don’t want to wake a sleeping dragon.”

  “Well, you might, if you go down there.”

  Andrew smiled at her. Yet, she realized, he was not opposed to using the Bluedrop.

  “Look,” Chiffrey said, “we don’t have weeks to repair, and replace, and reconfigure. Malcolm tells me the parts to fix your own ROVs are mostly custom, one of a kind. And guess what? We sent a message to your institute, the Point. Your people tell us that their spare parts have also been pilfered. The ones we need are gone, all of them. According to them, it would take weeks to make replacements. Weeks, in my experience, usually translates as months.”

  “Where did you get this?” Andrew asked.

  “The reason I was late. The Point contacted my people. We have a good liaison now. There probably will be a message waiting for you on the bridge. Sorry to drop it on you out of the blue. Unfortunately, Captain, there’s more.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “Mary Sims took leave of Jack for a day and paid a visit to the Point. Just before the parts went missing. We have witnesses that place her in the area where the spares and supplies for the Bluedrop were kept. She spoke with someone there, someone she knew, and stayed there after that person went to lunch.”

  “She stole them?” Penny asked. It all started to make a warped kind of sense.

  “Not proven yet,” Chiffrey said, “but looks that way. We have to think she disabled the ROVs here before she left. Probably just dumped the parts overboard.” He sighed, slowly letting out his breath. “I got to know her a little. Sweet girl, but it soon became clear she was carrying a torch for Ripler. And after the incident, that torch seemed to burn a little brighter and a lot stranger. Right? She would have done anything for him. No surprise when she elected to return to help with his care.”

  “She’s not the type to steal and scheme,” Andrew sa
id.

  “I agree.” Chiffrey said. “The only thing that makes sense to me is that Mary was manipulated by Ripler. Even after he went crackers, he could be extremely persuasive and compelling. In some ways, more than ever. I believe he has a kind of hold on her.”

  “Works for me,” Penny said, “but why disable the ROVs? Jack championed them at the expense of the Bluedrop every chance he got.”

  “So I heard,” Chiffrey said. “Maybe it was sort of a ‘if I can’t have them, no one will’ kind of thing. He broke his own toys rather than let someone else have them. Where is Matthew these days, by the way?”

  “He’s keeping busy, but still recovering,” Penny said. “Leave him be.”

  “If you hear anything new,” Andrew said to Chiffrey, “update me immediately.”

  “You have my word. But we do need to step it up. We don’t have spares here, we don’t have them back at the Point. We don’t have time to make new ones. The Bluedrop is our only ride. We go with what we have now, or we go home.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?” Andrew said.

  “It’s me, Malcolm. Um, news, Captain.”

  “The missing parts?”

  “Ah, no, but more.”

  “Come in,” Andrew said. “What’s happened?

  Malcolm glanced around the small cabin as if looking for something. His gaze finally alighted on the deck, but as if he were looking straight through it, down into the sea. “The sonar works again,” he said.

  “Didn’t know it was broken.”

  “I mean the dome. We can see it now. It’s…perfect.”

  The was a brief silence when no one even seemed to breathe, then Chiffrey quietly asked, “You can see the whole thing?”

  “Perfectly round. Huge. Four hundred and ninety-six meters in diameter, about three hundred high.”

  Chiffrey made no attempt to hide his elation and almost hugged Malcolm, but instead announced, “The welcome mat is out.”

  “You’re a fool to count on that,” Penny said.

  “Sorry, can’t argue with you now. There are some people I need to contact. First, I’m going to have a quick look of my own at this thing on sonar. If you’ll excuse me.” As he was leaving, however, he turned and said, “Sure, I don’t know for sure, but this thing becoming visible just as we arrive will lend us even more credibility with the leash holders up the line. So let’s use the opportunity while we can.”