Prehistoric Beasts And Where To Fight Them

by Hugo Navikov

  “Sea Legs has a dedicated camera on the winch and a dedicated crew member watching the monitor. Now pay attention, or I’ll cut the goddamn cable myself.”

  SORRY, MICK.

  Mickey took a deep, cleansing breath and let his frustration leave his body along with the carbon dioxide. “All good, Sean. Now why don’t we act like you’re Doctor Muir, the scientist, not the psychopath, okay? How are the instruments reading?”

  ALL ARE GO.

  THE LIFT FEELS EVEN.

  GO FOR IMMERSION?

  “Go for immersion,” Mickey said, and relayed the command over the shared comm to the winch crew, Sea Legs, and Sharkasm. He put his hand over the microphone and said to Holly and Popcorn, “Thanks for coming over here. I need you to monitor his vitals—and the submersible’s, too.”

  The geeks smiled. Holly said, “We could’ve done that from Sharkasm, Chief.”

  Mickey had shared their smile, but now it quivered and disappeared. “This whole mission is cursed. I know you science types don’t go for sailors’ superstitions, but I want you near me, here in the command center. I don’t want to lose contact with you on the science boat.”

  “Chief Luch,” Popcorn said, as usual unable to address him casually, “if you think you’re going to lose Sharkasm, don’t you have an obligation to bring the entire crew onto Sea Legs and this ship?”

  “I don’t think anything, Orville. I feel.”

  “I see. And, by definition, feeling is subjective experience lacking specific quantitative content.”

  “Sure.” Mickey tapped into the camera feed on Slipjack and the winch. Nothing looked particularly sinister—but then, everything had gone smoothly with Kat’s final dive until the damaged part of the cable came about. But there was nothing to be gained by thinking about that now. “Just tell me what you see, dinosaur-wise, and if something’s going haywire with Sean or the submersible, okay?”

  “Roger that,” Popcorn said, sounding as much like a seafaring cove as he would a superstar rapper.

  I hate everybody, Mickey said, and took another deep breath. How cleansing it was, he couldn’t say, but at least he could concentrate again without dorks tempting him to throw himself overboard.

  ***

  The world outside Ocean Vengeance darkened quickly. The extra weight allowed Spit to descend much more quickly than had the other submersibles trying to pull off this trick of reaching the bottom of Challenger Deep.

  Unlike those missions, however, Sean Muir didn’t give a rat’s ass about historic dives—he was going down to keep Kat’s death from being in vain, to confirm his theories with his own eyes, and to kill whatever he needed to kill to stay out of a prison where he never should have been in the first place.

  Kat’s death had not been his fault. Slipjack must have introduced some flaw into the cable sometime during the manufacturing process, a flaw which became apparent only once it was unspooled. How the little freak did it, Sean couldn’t begin to guess; he knew only that he, Sean, had had nothing to do with it. They had tested the cable in every environment under the sea—freshwater, saltwater, laboratory conditions mimicking the PSI it would encounter at the bottom. No matter what the water conditions, the cable had remained coherent. It spooled back wet but completely operational.

  There was no explanation except that Slipjack, wanting to get Sean out of the way to fulfill his pathetic dream of romancing Kat, had induced some split in the cable, every inch of which had been run through the harshest conditions before going on the giant spool. They did test the whole thing—there was nothing wrong with it at all. How Slipjack did what he did remained a mystery.

  He put the whole thing out of his mind for now. He had descended amazingly quickly to the dysphotic zone, which monsters passed through on their way to kill near the surface. He typed:

  WE’RE MAKING REALLY GOOD TIME.

  Mickey responded, “We sure are. I don’t know how fast we’ll be able to haul you up with the liquid inside the sphere, but it’ll be a hell of a lot faster than we could do without it.” Because it would kill you in the most painful way possible.

  Almost involuntarily, Mickey’s eyes flitted to the winch monitor: nothing untoward there, Slipjack and his team watching the cable carefully—very carefully—as it unspooled, in position to stop the winch before any flaw got to the point where the cable couldn’t be respooled and Ocean Vengeance brought back up.

  That could be a ruse, though. Just looking like he was taking care.

  Oh, for God’s sake, man—you sound just like Sean now. Cut it out.

  He nodded at his own thoughts and said to Holly, “How we doing? Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “All systems seem to be working fine. The temperature is at the low point one would expect below the euphotic zone, but the submersible hasn’t picked up the heat signature of the hydrothermal vents yet. It’s not close enough.”

  “All right, good.”

  “You know, it’s funny,” Popcorn said, making Mickey and Holly turn their heads. “The Bentneus expedition, the Muir expedition—neither one ever made it all the way to the bottom. The 1960 Trieste dive as part of Project Nekton is still the only vessel to touch the very deepest part of Marianas Trench, the others ending in failure and tragedy.”

  “Yeah, hilarious,” Mickey said. “That really helps alleviate my sense of doom. Thanks.”

  “I offer that merely as an obser—”

  “We get you, Popcorn,” Holly interrupted. “Maybe just work on your social interaction skills after we get done with this mission, ’kay?”

  “I roger you,” he said, and returned to observing the logical computer readouts and the submersible’s thermosensitive-camera monitors, things that made sense.

  Holly didn’t have a whole lot to do at this point, Popcorn being in charge of science-related computer operations and there being nothing unknown yet to identify via her database uplink.

  Nothing to do but wait.

  Her blood ran icily through her system. She dared not speak it out loud—and was surprised a veteran mariner like Mickey had done exactly that—but her thoughts were clouded, too, by a pervasive dread of what would happen before they got back to shore.

  She had watched the shark feeding frenzy along with everyone else, so she amended her thought:

  If they got back to shore at all.

  ***

  At the winch, Slipjack McCracken watched every inch of the cable unspool. It was moving faster than he would have liked, what with Ocean Vengeance descending full of that heavy-as-water breathing fluid. But he could still keep up. He called Vanessa over to watch while he splashed in eyedrops every ten minutes or so. The salty air felt like it was burning right through his eyes. It was counterintuitive (actually, Slipjack’s thought was “didn’t make a thimbleful of piss’s sense”), but salt-rich air could sometimes actually be more damaging than salt water, because of the constant wind adding to the salt’s corrosive effect.

  Slipjack paused, the Visine bottle still poised over his left eye. Something was floating inside his brain. There was something with the air, the salt air …

  “Chief, come in. Mickey, come in.”

  “Copy, Slipjack. What do you want?”

  “Do any of the geeks have a magnifying glass?”

  “A what?”

  “A magnifying glass. You know, like Sherlock Holmes.”

  Popcorn said, “In the Conan Doyle stories, Sherlock didn’t actually use—”

  Holly cut him off and said to Mickey, “I’m sure we have one, but it’s on Sharkasm.”

  Slipjack heard her. “I think I know what caused the cable to come apart during Kat’s dive! I need a magnifying glass, like, right now.”

  “We’re in the middle of a goddamn dive, Slipjack,” Mickey said, his black mood not getting any lighter with the winch chief’s going over ancient history.

  “Exactly! Sean—Doctor Muir—whatever—could be in danger. Serious danger.”

  “Oh, and that would le
ave you heartbroken.”

  “Chief, I think I’ve realized what happened to Kat—”

  “You and Sean happened to Kat.”

  “Goddamnit! Shut your face and get me a magnifying glass unless you want another disaster on your hands, you goddamn mook!”

  He’s serious, or he’s a really good actor, Mickey thought, and covered the mic again to say to Holly, “We can’t exactly send a jolly boat over to Sharkasm in the middle of a dangerous dive. Can you guys check all the drawers? Somebody’s got to use a magnifying glass for maps and charts and shit.”

  Holly, Popcorn, and every crew member within hearing started pulling open drawers and rifling through cabinets. It took about twenty seconds to find a huge glass, five inches across at least. “Got it!” Popcorn shouted.

  Mickey called to Holly, “I’ll take it to Slipjack—you mind the comm.”

  “Roger that.”

  Mickey grabbed the magnifying glass from Popcorn and double-timed it to the aft of the ship, where the winch was letting out cable at a rapid pace. He put it in Slipjack’s hand, and the winch chief immediately put it above the unspooling cable with his eye right up to the glass.

  “Before I get pissed—even more pissed—tell me what’s going on, Slipjack.”

  “I ain’t a scientist, but I just had a You Ricky moment.”

  Eureka, you dummy, Mickey thought but just said, “Is that right? Is it something like, ‘Hey, I just found evidence that Sean Muir murdered his wife after all’? ’Cause if it is, I do not want to hear another word. I’m about to stick the two of you in a lifeboat and let you fight it out to the death. Then I’m gonna kill whoever wins.”

  “Naw, man, there’s a hairline crack in the cable. I can see it go by as the cable advances. We got to stop the whole thing.”

  “Why would there be a crack in the cable … unless you put it there.”

  “What? Why would I do that?”

  “Revenge, because you think Sean killed Kat.”

  “Would everybody please stop saying that? It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Yeah, I hate that son of a bitch because Kat and me was in love. But I’m not gonna throw my life away on a skirt! I’m not a murderer—hell, this shows nobody murdered nobody! Look for yourself!”

  Mickey took the magnifying glass from Slipjack’s reddened hands while not taking his eyes off the winch chief’s. Slowly he bent and looked through the cable passing through his field of vision.

  “I don’t see anything, Slipjack.”

  “You don’t know the cable good enough,” Slipjack said. “Look right in the middle, where the seam is? Then look just below it. There’s a narrow crack right below it—it ain’t quite even, see?”

  Mickey did see. “All right, what does it mean? And if you say one goddamn word about Sean Muir doing this, I’ll call Sea & Air Rescue to come and pick up a certain crew member who somehow got his jaw broken.”

  “It means that nobody did a thing to this cable. It’s a flaw in the cable’s own self—the whole damn thing has a crack running through it, start to finish, I bet.”

  Mickey stood again and handed the glass back to Slipjack. Then he said, “That cable was inspected, all 40,000 feet of it, before we left port. There was nothing wrong with it. It went through the saltwater test with every science and engineering team member watching it. That took hours, and they had magnification equipment like nothing you’ve seen. They pronounced it to be completely without any flaw, and they sure as hell would’ve noticed a hairline crack running through the whole damned thing. Care to explain that, Mister Winch Chief, the only person to have continuous access to this cable since it left the shop?”

  “Toro and Vanessa had access to it, too. But they didn’t do nothing to it, neither.”

  “I’m getting short of time and patience, McCracken.”

  “The iron armor did fine in the saltwater tests, and it was spooled when it was still wet, right?”

  Mickey just waited, not saying a word.

  “Right is the answer to that. But when it gets exposed to the sea air, the salty-ass sea air, it’s still a little wet and the strong wind out here blows just enough corrosive crap to make the iron oxidate—”

  “Oxidize.”

  “You lost your mind, man? Who gives a shit! What I’m saying is the combo of moist iron combined with salty wind starts a crack as the cable unwinds into that wind. Enough crack, enough strain, and it’ll open like a zipper.”

  “But just on our expeditions.”

  “What?”

  “This shit didn’t happen to Bentneus when he went all the way to the bottom. No problem with the cable whatsoever.” He shook his head and turned to go back to the bridge and the mission.

  But Slipjack got ahold of his shoulder and spun him back around. Before Mickey could even clench a fist, Slipjack shouted in his face, “Sean and Kat developed this cable! It’s patented! It ain’t the same as what Bentneus used, man!”

  Mickey’s anger and desire to engage in imminent violence slid away like raindrops on a window. In their stead was fear and dread. It wasn’t Slipjack who damaged the cable when Kat got killed. It wasn’t Sean, either, despite his trying to get Mickey to believe he was a murderer or just a garden-variety psychopath.

  The whole goddamn thing was an accident.

  “Slipjack, I …”

  “Yeah, whatever—I’m stopping the winch—you get in there and call this shit off!”

  “You know you’re giving up millions of dollars with this. We both are.”

  “I ain’t givin’ up nothing! There’s no way he’s gonna be able to lure the dinosaur to the surface if the cable splits! We got to cut our losses, Chief!”

  Mickey hesitated a moment—Sean “cutting his losses” meant the rest of his life would be spent in prison—but had to agree with Slipjack that they needed to stop immediately. Life was better than death, no matter where you spent it, wasn’t it?

  ***

  Breathing the perfluorocarbon liquid, heavier than air but suffused with oxygen, gave Sean Muir a pleasant feeling, like the relaxation of being high on pot mixed with the absolute clarity of perfect wakefulness. It was still dark outside the bathysphere, but the illuminated snow of detritus made him feel like he was inside a Currier & Ives Christmas card. However, he still remembered to check all his instruments and knew the exact sequence in which he was to execute the (he hoped) Gigadon-attracting measures. All was well—

  He felt very heavy for a moment, then returned to normal. The snow outside seemed to be falling more quickly than before. He checked his depth. The number remained unchanged at 27,455 feet.

  Ocean Vengeance had stopped descending. It was dangling, completely still, more than five miles below the surface, yet almost two miles above where he needed to be. “Spit. Come in, I Spit on Your Grave. This is Muir.” The whole thing was kind of redundant for him to say, since his comm line was dedicated to communicating only with Mickey, who was of course on Spit.

  “Copy, Sean. Let me—”

  “Why am I stopped? Are you aware that the submersible has stopped? I’m too far up to shoot the missiles or even give Gigadon a whiff of heat.”

  “I’m the one that stopped you, boss.”

  “What? Well, get me going again!”

  “There’s a problem with the cable, Sean. It’s developed a hairline crack, and Slipjack thinks it might cause the cable to lose integrity and snap, just like … um, just like before.”

  “Slipjack said this.”

  “Roger.”

  “Restart the descent, Mick. Slipjack is trying to keep me from my goal.”

  “I saw the crack with my own eyes. It’s too dangerous. We’re gonna have to pull you back up.”

  “Jesus, Mick, you know what that means.”

  “I do, boss, but you could very likely die if that cable splits.”

  “I’ll take that chance. Restart the goddamn descent.”

  “I can’t, Sean. It would be, at best, negligent homicide. That’s t
wenty years in prison—”

  “That’s where you’re sending me, you son of a bitch! Forever!”

  “I’m sorry, boss, I really am …” This was followed by the click of Spit’s comm mic being turned off.

  That heaviness hit Sean again as Ocean Vengeance was tugged back up toward the surface. No, no, NO! NO! NO!

  He was in full panic mode, now, with no idea what to do. He couldn’t go back without Gigadon, without that big monster’s head on a pike. He couldn’t go back to prison. That would truly be worse than death.

  His pleasant high now thoroughly extinguished, he scanned the instrument panels, the various locks and switches and circular levers, looking for anything that could help him. Finally, his eyes caught sight of a code-locked glass door, striped yellow and black to indicate danger:

  CABLE RELEASE

  Death would be better than going back to prison.

  If they brought him back up now without Gigadon, he would go back to prison and likely never leave, since “chomos” didn’t exactly receive the best treatment from their fellow prisoners.

  Or maybe he would go to Death Row for killing forty-five fishermen, which definitely felt like an accident to Sean. Maybe it wasn’t an accident. He couldn’t tell anymore and it made no difference right then. Death Row might happen even if he did manage to bag the dinosaur. But prison was certain if he didn’t.

  He would descend to Gigadon. He would tempt him, somehow, to follow him.

  He punched in the code—his four-digit birthday (security on that switch not a high priority during a dive)—opened the glass door, and yanked down on the lever inside.

  Suddenly he felt lighter … and the snow of a million dead sea creatures slowed down, then actually seemed to rise in relation to Ocean Vengeance.

  He was descending again. Free-falling, really, although the density of the water kept his acceleration nominal. He would drift to the bottom, the liquid filling the bathysphere acting as extra ballast to cast him down, down, to the lair of Nothosaurus, of Megalodon … of Gigadon.