The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  With that exception, though, Coffey now understood that these guys worked well together, even if it wasn't the same way his team did it. Above all, he respected the way Brigman held them together, he understood that the way to work with these guys was to work with Brigman.

  He understood it now, that is. He asked himself: Why didn't I see it sooner? Before I hurt morale by saying what I did? Before I shut down Brigman and pissed him off completely there in the moonpool? I don't miss things like that. I don't make mistakes like that. Am I slipping?

  Coffey couldn't help but think of his hands. If he took his hands from the railing, right now, would they tremble again? Nobody would see it if they did. Not in this light, not through the suit. But he'd know.

  Hell, he wasn't afraid to know it. So he was trembling a little - so what? This was a tense mission. This had implications far beyond a little jungle work, a little bit of strategic excision of key enemy personnel. If he blew this one, it wouldn't lead to a few deniable problems in a minor country. A lot more was at stake. Peace, for instance, and no matter what civilians thought, a good soldier like Coffey loved peace; he risked his life in order to preserve it. Win the little wars so there's never a big one. Use your small M-1 in Central America so nobody puts down an artillery barrage on Dallas or Denver. Trembling hands didn't mean his judgment was impaired. And it hadn't been a mistake to do what he did back at the moonpool. No sir, that wasn't bad judgment, that was good judgment. He had to get control, had to make sure they knew that this was not a civilian operation. Had to make sure they weren't asking questions and prying into things they shouldn't know about. What if this operation had to go on to Phase Two? The less they knew, the better.

  Now the Brigman woman had the sub in sight. There were procedures to follow. Coffey knew the procedures. His judgment was right on the button. "Cab One, radiation readings?"

  "Neutron counter's not showing very much."

  That was one instrument's report. Now another. "Wilhite, anything?"

  "Negative. Nominal."

  So reactor containment integrity had not been compromised. They could go ahead. "Just continue forward along the hull."

  "Copy that, continuing forward," said the Brigman woman. "You just want me to get shots of everything, right?"

  Damn right - just take pictures. I don't want you doing anything. "Roger that, document as much as you can, but let's keep moving. Remember we're on a tight time schedule."

  "Copy that."

  Now Flatbed was in position as they moved along the length of the sub. It looked bigger than the Titanic, they were so close. Coffey tried not to let himself feel anything about it, seeing it lying there on the ledge, lame and helpless. He refused to imagine himself in the captain's position in those last moments when he knew his men were gone, when he knew they were going to die. Coffey had never lost a man. But he knew that it could happen, knew that sometimes things went wrong that were completely out of your control. And then you'd be there, still alive, your men still alive, but knowing they would soon be dead, knowing there was nothing you could do to save them. But you could still fulfil your mission. You could still do your duty. That's what made your death mean something that you still did your duty right to the end.

  Bud watched the sub go by. After the number of times he had scanned the outside of Deepcore, searching for structural flaws, he knew a nightmare when he saw one. The hull had obviously been flexed and twisted metal plates that should have been snug were enough out of line that the joints were clearly visible and uneven in width. You could drain spaghetti in this thing, it had so many tiny gaps. It didn't take a barn door to let air out and water in.

  It was Coffey, though, who knew what he was looking for. His voice came over the speaker in Bud's helmet. "That's the midships hatch. You see it, Cab Three?"

  Hippy was on it. "Roger, I see it."

  Bud didn't wait for Coffey to issue orders. He could tell from Hippy's voice that he was scared and distracted - probably imagining himself inside a cracked can like this sub. Enough to spook even somebody who wasn't as paranoid as Hippy. So Bud had to get him back to the job. "Yeah, well just get around so you can shine your light on the hatch."

  "Check," said Hippy. "Then I just hang with these guys, right?" Hippy's voice was more businesslike. The edginess was gone. It was Coffey's show again.

  "Right," said Coffey.

  "How do you want me?" asked One Night. She sounded a little nervous, too. She could pilot Flatbed in her sleep, but she'd never had to drop off a team of sailors at a broken-down sub before.

  "Just hold above it," said Coffey. She maneuvered into position. It was time to go. But nobody moved, not the SEALS, not Bud's divers - not until Coffey gave the word. "All right, A-team."

  That was all the SEALS except Coffey. Wilhite, Schoenick, and Monk unhooked their short whip-umbilicals from the central manifold of Flatbed. They were on their own breathing mix now. They had also unhooked from the direct voice connection through the umbilicals but this didn't mean they had to rely on the short-range, erratic UQC. They'd be too spread out through the Montana, with too much steel and water between them for the UQC to be of much use. Instead, they carried automatic spoolers that played out disposable fiber-optic thread. It was so thin you couldn't see it in the water but that very thinness made it so you could carry miles of it on a spool no bigger than a coffee cup. Each diver would drag a slender strand of light behind him, like a spider spinning a web. Then when they got back to Flatbed, they'd hook up with their umbilicals and leave the network of fiber-optic thread behind them in the sub. It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than letting divers go off without being able to maintain contact. Their voices were clearer on F-O than any of their other underwater systems.

  Almost as important, though, was the psychological effect. UQC could fade; you never felt more alone than when you heard other people's voices breaking up and finally fading out completely, while you were alone in the water, surrounded by darkness in every direction. But with the thread, you didn't have just their voices. You felt a physical connection, as if you were part of them and they were part of you.

  Bud watched them go, trying to see if they did anything differently from the way he'd do it. In a minute or two he'd be going with his own men into another part of the sub. And even though Coffey had sent his men on the most dangerous and sensitive part of the job, that didn't mean Bud's divers were going to have a tea party. No matter that Coffey himself would be with them. Bud was still responsible for his crew. If there was anything to learn from watching, he had to learn it. Besides, the more eyes you had on a job, the safer it was. When you're wet and deep, you pay attention every second till the job is done.

  Hippy glided Cab Three closer to the hatch area, making sure not to let his lights slide away from where they were needed. Finally he was as close as he could get without interfering with Monk's team.

  Monk's voice came over the speaker. "Stand by on the ROV."

  That was Hippy's job. He looked over his shoulder at Perry, who was in the lockout chamber at the back of Cab Three, babysitting Little Geek, which was hanging there over the hatch. There was water directly under it, like a miniature moonpool. The air pressure inside Cab Three held the water out.

  "Perry, stand by on the ROV," said Hippy. He couldn't help thinking about all the potential radiation locked up in missiles inside the Montana, not to mention the hot fuel in the reactor. He was sending Little Geek into the jaws of hell. He reached back and patted the ROV's tough yellow hide. "Sorry about this, little buddy. Better you than me, know what I mean?"

  Then Hippy nodded and Perry dropped Little Geek through the hatch into the water. Perry fed out a length of tether, but Hippy was already looking at the screen that gave him a Geek's-eye-view of the sub, steering Little Geek with the control box like a sluggish videogame, heading toward the Montana's hatch. Little Geek would serve as a self-propelled flashlight and guardian angel all the way.

  The SEALS took off the deck cov
er and started working on the outer hatch. It came free with little trouble, like a clam opening its jaw. No surprise in that. It was the inside hatch where, if there were any survivors, there'd be a radical pressure difference that would make the hatch hard to open. Monk swam down into the narrow escape trunk that connected the outer hatch with the inner one. He pressed his helmet against the inner hatch and banged on the metal with a wrench.

  There was no quick hollow ringing the way there would be if there was air inside. Just the thunk, thunk that meant there was water at equal pressure on both sides of the hatch. Of course. Any hope of survivors had been foolish all along, they all knew that. Still. There were sometimes miracles, weren't there?

  "It's flooded," Monk reported. He tucked the wrench into its clasp on his tool belt and took hold of the wheel on the hatch. "All right, I'm opening her up."

  This time there was a little resistance - there was bound to be a tiny pressure difference on a hatch that fit this tight, if only because opening the hatch caused a slight enlargement of the interior space before the seal was broken. Like opening a refrigerator.

  As soon as it was open, Monk pushed himself back out of the escape trunk and beckoned to Little Geek. Hippy saw him on his video monitor as if he was looking right out of Little Geek's eyes, and at once he maneuvered the ROV into the hatch. Hippy might be warm and dry in street clothes inside Cab Three, but he was still the first one into the sub. What did he care where his body was? When he was flying Little Geek, wherever the ROV went, that's where Hippy's soul was, living inside the machine.

  Flatbed moved on, following Cab One along the hull. Lindsey had seen Coffey's charts of the sub's layout, but even without that she would have recognized the great hatches of the Trident missile tubes as they slid by under the front bubble of Cab One. They looked to her like the cages of silent wild animals, waiting in utter immobility until someone flung open the door. Then they would hurl themselves out, teeth bared, slavering, to lunge and tear at anything in their path.

  Coffey, of course, was paying attention only to the job. "Looks like a couple of the hatches have sprung, but the radiation is nominal. The warheads must still be intact."

  Yes, the wolves still have their teeth. "How many are there?" she asked.

  "Twenty-four Trident missiles. Eight MIRVs per missile."

  MIRVs - Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles. Warheads that went up together but found their own way home. Eight times twenty-four. Sixteen times twelve. She'd done enough binary math at MIT that the number rolled right out. "That's a hundred and ninety-two warheads." This sub could fling its fires at a hundred and ninety-two cities. Probably every city over a hundred thousand in the Soviet Union, with a few left over for more creative targeting. "And how powerful are they?"

  Coffey didn't answer. Coffey never did when he didn't think you had a reason to know the answer. So it was Schoenick, waiting with Monk outside the midships hatch, who said, "Your MIRV is a tactical nuke, a hundred and ten kilotons nominal yield. Say five times Hiroshima."

  Pop, no Moscow. Pop, no Leningrad. Pop pop pop, no Kiev, no Volgograd, no cities left in Russia. "Jesus Christ, this is World War Three in a can."

  Coffey shut it down right away. "Let's knock off the chatter, please." So Coffey didn't want anybody thinking about what these warheads meant. Lindsey wasn't surprised. The military male couldn't bring himself to think of the consequences of those missiles any more than the average teenage boy was capable of taking responsibility when his dick exploded on target. But if these went off, there wouldn't be anybody left to argue about paternity.

  Hippy watched the video camera to make sure Little Geek didn't bump into anything, but he kept checking the radiation counter, too. This was like walking into Three Mile Island. He kept wincing as he passed through the heart of the Montana, heading for the engine room. As if through any door he might suddenly meet the monster he most feared.

  Little Geek showed a screen full of pipes and machinery, for all the world like a grotto of stalactites and stalagmites. The engine room. Hippy hardly noticed. He had his eyes on the gauge.

  "Getting a reading?" asked Monk.

  "It's twitching but it's below the line you said was safe." As far as Hippy was concerned, the only time radiation was really safe was when the gauge was still as a rock.

  "Let's get in there," said Monk.

  Sure. Right. It's your balls.

  Wilhite and Schoenick followed Monk down into the escape trunk to the dark corridor beyond. From then on, Hippy alternated between leading and following. Inside a compartment, Monk would lead the way, directing Schoenick and Wilhite in their inscrutable tasks as Hippy held Little Geek like a narrow-beam lantern over their heads. Then, when it was time to move through a hatch into another room, Monk would beckon and Hippy would glide on ahead, flying Little Geek into the strange new territory. He was right down there with them, like a big brother who was stronger and tougher, leading the way into danger, then stepping back when he was sure it was safe, so the younger, weaker ones could pretend they were having an adventure. Just follow me and you'll be OK. Even if I might be leading you into hell.

  As Cab One led them toward the bow of the sub, the real damage came into view. Above them was the trailing edge of the sail, big as a three-story building, looming overhead. Flatbed moved along the floor of the ledge where the sub rested, while the men on its back surveyed the ravaged metal where the Montana had hit, then scraped along the canyon wall.

  There was an enormous break where the bow had nearly torn away from the rest of the sub. "Set it down right here," said Coffey. "There's a breach in the pressure hull. That's where we go in."

  Not the kind of door a diver hoped to enter. Too many jagged metal edges where you could cut yourself or, even more dangerously, a hose. Too many snags to catch your pack or a hose and pull something loose. A careful diver plain wouldn't go in there. As the forty-year-old hat diver on Bud's first rig told him, there's old divers and there's bold divers, but there ain't no old, bold divers.

  But Bud's people had worked salvage before. They knew how to be careful in an unpredictable area. It was still a risk, and Bud didn't like it, but that's what the triple pay was for. "Let's go, guys," said Bud.

  Coffey led the way into the narrow wound in the side of the sub; in the shadow of the lights from Flatbed and Cab One, it looked like a mouth, grinning malevolently. Bud, Catfish, Jammer, and Finler followed him.

  Inside, it wasn't as scary their lights dispelled the shadows. There were rows of bunks, twisted and disheveled. "This is the forward berthing compartment," said Coffey. He sounded impersonal he was just noting their position on the charts, nothing more. But to Bud, this was a place where men had slept. The bedding hung from the bunks like the lolling tongues of dead dogs. Papers floated in the gentle eddying currents caused by the divers' movements. Letters that would never be answered. Paperback novels that would never be finished. Photos of girlfriends who would shed a few tears and then marry somebody else.

  If they were tempted to linger, Coffey wouldn't let them. "This way," he insisted.

  Bud knew that if he had been distracted by what they were seeing, so would Catfish and Jammer. "Take it slow and stay in sight," he told them. "Watch for hatches that could close on you, or any loose equipment that could fall." The last thing he needed was for them to get spooked. "We ain't pros at this. We got nothing to lose. Let's just take it easy."

  "OK," said Catfish, "but it looks bad, chief."

  They all knew the plan - get to the attack center, where Coffey had to find some top-secret stuff and get it out. They'd memorized the plans, but it was different when the lines on paper became corridors and companionways, hatches and bulkheads. Coffey swung up a companionway toward the attack center, the others followed behind him, pulling themselves up the railing of the stairs. Once sailors had slid down these steps with their feet hardly touching, most of their weight on their hands as they skidded down the rails. Now it was hand-over-hand
up the railing, against the resistance of the water. The sub wasn't designed to be traversed this way. It was awkward, and the steps weren't much help.

  The watertight door had buckled. It wouldn't open. "It's jammed," said Coffey. "Give me a hand."

  Bud moved in to help. Even working together they couldn't budge it. They didn't have the leverage. "Jammer," said Bud. "Bring that pry bar over here."

  Jammer and Bud squeezed in around Coffey. They could never have fit in that space if they'd all had to stand on the steps. But they were floating free, and so there was room. They felt rather than heard the vibration of the squealing hinges as they wrenched at the door; then it gave way, suddenly, flying open. The suction of the door's movement pulled something large through the door, right at them, like a huge animal that had been poised on the other side, waiting to pounce. Only it wasn't an animal. It slammed Jammer's shoulder, and when he turned to look at what had hit him, he found himself staring into the face of a young officer.

  The ensign seemed unmarked, uninjured, but his eyes and mouth were open wide, as if he was surprised by his own mortality. Jammer froze there, staring. Bud and Catfish and Finler weren't much better off. It was Coffey who reached past Jammer and pushed the ensign's body out of the way.

  "All right, we knew we were going to see this," said Coffey.

  His words brought them back to their senses. His tone of voice shamed them a little, made them determined not to let this throw them. They followed him into the control room, but they were all a little dazed. Dad saw this all the time, thought Bud. He saw guys he knew get blown to bits. I can take this.

  But it wasn't their being dead that was getting to him. Bud kept thinking of them drowning. He felt it like a pain in his chest. He knew what it felt like. His lungs had sucked water that time when he was a kid. Only when it happened to him, there'd been somebody there to pull him out, to press the water out of his chest and let him live again. These guys weren't so lucky. The ocean got them and they'd never breathe air again. Like Junior. Carried down to the bottom, pressed down by the heavy merciless hand of the sea.