“I wish I did know better.”
“Breakfast at oh five thirty, remember; then we go to the DSV hangar and prep. See you then.”
And she was gone.
He sat down on the bed with a sigh. He also had a ton of work to do: files and documents to review, a computer to set up and get networked into the ship’s system. And he couldn’t go to Glinn and argue himself out of the dive—not after three martinis, smelling like a drunk.
He stretched out on the bed, hands behind his head. Alex’s faint perfume remained in the air and he inhaled it, feeling another surge of longing. What was wrong with him? He should be pissed off at the way she’d humiliated him, but instead it seemed to be having an altogether different effect.
Alex, he decided, was right about one thing: he had better get himself under control or this was going to be a very long voyage indeed.
8
A BIG AUTUMN sun rose over the distant Nobska Lighthouse and Vineyard Sound, casting gold across the water as they came out on deck early the next morning. A stiff breeze blew in from the east, kicking up whitecaps across the harbor and the sound beyond.
The A-frame crane had moved two DSVs out of the hangar deck and onto the fantail. To Gideon they looked stubby, even cartoonish; almost too small to fit a human inside, let alone everything else. Alex had told him to wear tight-fitting but warm clothing. She was dressed in a sleek tracksuit of dark blue with white racing stripes, which hugged her muscled legs, rear, and torso in a way Gideon found most distracting. He, on the other hand, was dressed like a slob in jeans and a long-sleeved undershirt.
Glinn and Garza were standing together when they arrived. Glinn was dressed in a black turtleneck and pants, a thin, even spectral figure on the windswept deck. Garza wore a suede jacket with the collar turned up, his salt-and-pepper hair stirred by the wind.
“Right on time,” said Glinn, approvingly, coming over with an outstretched hand and giving Gideon a shake. “Are you ready to go deep, Gideon?”
“I wish you’d told me I was going to be piloting a Yellow Submarine.”
“To what end? It would only have worried you. These DSVs are idiotproof.”
“So Alex tells me.”
“She’s an excellent instructor. You’ll do fine.”
“But I thought my job was to be your expert on nuclear explosives. Surely you could have hired an extra sub driver.”
Instead of answering, Glinn patted him on the shoulder in a way that Gideon found patronizing. Gideon glanced at Garza for an explanation, but the engineer was, as usual, silent and unreadable.
“You’ll be driving George, and I’ll be in Ringo,” Alex told him. While Glinn and Garza watched, Alex gave him an external tour of George, pointing out and naming the various parts—cameras, strobes, viewing ports, CTFM sonar, sail lights, current meter sensor, emergency identification strobe, emergency homing radio, lift propellers, rudder and ram propeller, underwater telephone transducer, collecting basket, and robot arm. “The ladder goes up to the sail hatch,” she explained. “It’s pretty simple—just climb up and lower yourself inside, using the two grab bars. The personnel sphere is five feet in diameter. I’ll get into Ringo and we’ll communicate through radio, do a dry run on deck—and then get lowered into the water.”
“Should I climb up now?”
She nodded. “Just lower yourself into the chair. On a hook just above your head you’ll find the communications helmet; put that on and toggle the switch on the lower right. Wait for me to talk. You don’t have to press a transmit button—it’s full duplex above water. Underwater, the range of actual conversation is limited to five hundred meters. Beyond that, there’s only communication using digital sonar—text and synthetic voice only.”
He nodded, trying to follow it all.
“Okay, up you go.”
Gideon climbed the ladder, grabbed the bars, and lowered himself into the sphere. Someone shut the hatch and dogged it down as he settled into the lone chair and put on the headset.
The interior of the sphere was almost completely covered with electronics, screens, panels, buttons, and dials. The forward viewport was directly in front of his face, and there were left and right viewports as well as a downward-looking port. A small console to his right contained a keypad, a joystick, and a few emergency buttons in little cages that could be flipped up. Everything was illuminated dimly in reddish light.
A moment later Alex’s voice came in. “Gideon, you read?”
“Loud and clear.”
“I’m going to go through every console and screen, from left to right.”
For the next sixty minutes, she proceeded to describe everything in the sphere in excruciating detail, until Gideon despaired of remembering it all. At last she concluded with the joystick panel.
“This is really all you need to know,” she said. “The joystick works like any normal joystick: forward, back, port, and starboard. The more you push it in any one direction, the faster the sub will go. But it’s always on fine autopilot control, which means it will correct any mistakes you make. If you push the stick forward to enter, say, a hole in the side of a ship, it will automatically steer you through the hole, touching nothing. It will navigate you down tight passageways without touching any walls. It will keep you from grazing the bottom or striking underwater obstacles. The autopilot takes its cues from you, but then handles the details itself. It won’t enter a space too small for it, and it won’t obey if you direct it into the seafloor or a cliff.”
“Is there any way to shut it off?”
“Not directly—that’s the whole point. If necessary, control of your DSV can be transferred to the surface, however. Now: do you see those two red buttons under the flip-up cages? The one that says EMERGENCY EJECT will jettison your titanium sphere, which will rise fast to the surface. This has never been tested and the rapid rise might kill you, so don’t do it. And the EMERGENCY BEACON activates your beacon if you get into trouble.”
“What’s the point of an emergency eject if it might be lethal?”
“It’s a last resort. Okay, ready for the wet run?”
“No.”
“The crane’ll pick up your DSV, put it in the water, and release it. You’ll begin to sink automatically, controlled by the autopilot software. Normally, there would be two hundred pounds of iron ballast aboard to rapidly take you the two miles down to the wreck. But the water here is only a hundred feet deep or so, so that won’t be necessary. The autopilot will bring you to a halt ten feet off the bottom. You wait and do nothing until I tell you what to do.”
“Yes, Captain.”
He felt the sub being hoisted, then swung out over the water. Then he was lowered, ever so gently, until blue water appeared in the viewports. And then, with a clank, the sub was released and began to drift downward. Running lights came on automatically, front, astern, and below. He could see bubbles ascending around him. The water was murky, but in a few minutes the bottom began to take shape. As promised, the sub slowed and came to a hover about ten feet above a bed of waving kelp, in dark-green water. There was a soft hiss of warm air. Gideon didn’t like the feeling of claustrophobia. He almost could feel the press of water above him, the thickness of it in the air he was breathing.
And then, twenty feet in front of him, he saw the other yellow sub drift down and come to a halt, its running lights winking at him.
“Gideon, do you read?”
“I read.”
“Why don’t you start by getting a feel for the joystick. Move it forward, sideways, and back, and see how the DSV responds.”
“How do I go up and down?”
“Good question. You see the thumb toggle on top of the joystick? Forward moves you up, backward goes down. Go ahead and play with it while I watch and comment.”
Ever so gingerly, he pushed the joystick forward. A faint humming noise sounded and the sub moved, very slowly.
“You can be a little more aggressive. The autopilot smooths out any sharp moti
ons you might make.”
He gave it a bigger push and the sub moved forward faster.
“You’re coming right at me, Gideon. Try a turn.”
Instead of turning, Gideon toggled the sub up and it went up and over her sub, then he toggled back down and the sub settled just above the layer of kelp. He pushed it sideways and the sub went into a smooth turn. In a moment Alex’s mini sub reappeared in the viewport.
“Gideon? How about learning to walk before you fly?”
Her instructional tone was beginning to irritate him. He accelerated toward her, then toggled up again; but this time his coordination was off and the sub went almost vertical, climbing sharply toward the surface.
“Toggle down.”
He pushed the toggle down, but accidentally pushed the joystick forward as well. The problem, he began to realize, was that the sub’s response wasn’t as instantaneous as a car’s; water gave everything a sluggish, delayed effect. And now he was heading straight for the bottom—fast.
“Oh, shit.” He pulled the toggle and joystick back, but in his panic overcompensated once again and gave it an inadvertent twist. The sub slewed around like a corkscrew before coming to an abrupt halt—unbidden—just above the kelp. A small red light was blinking and a genteel alarm was sounding; on the main control screen a message appeared:
FULL AUTOPILOT TAKEOVER
RELEASE OF CONTROL TO OPERATOR IN
15
SECONDS
He watched as the numbers counted down.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
Alex’s cool voice sounded in his ear. “Well, Gideon, congratulations. That was the most remarkable display of ineptitude I have ever seen in a DSV. Now that you’ve gotten your teenage ya-yas out, want to try again? This time as an adult.”
“If you weren’t yammering in my ear all the time,” he said angrily, “I might have pulled it off. Bloody backseat driver.”
Alex’s cool voice came through. “Keep in mind that our conversation, and everything we do, is being closely monitored in mission control.”
Gideon swallowed his next comment. He could just picture Glinn, Garza, and the rest assembled in the control room, listening and frowning with deep disapproval. Or perhaps laughing. Either way he felt annoyed.
“Right.” The seconds had now ticked off and the screen read:
CONTROL RELEASED TO OPERATOR
He eased the joystick forward and the sub moved slowly in a straight line; then he executed a gentle turn, came back, and halted.
“There’s a good boy,” said Alex. “Nice and easy.”
Gideon almost thought he could hear a faint snigger sounding in his headset.
9
THE R/V BATAVIA had “crossed the line” with all the silliness and concomitant ceremony that passing the equator entailed, which Gideon had retreated from with alacrity. For the past fifteen days, since leaving Woods Hole, life on board the Batavia had been dull: seasickness alternating with bored overeating, reading, watching Game of Thrones in the ship’s theater, playing backgammon with Alex (where he was now about a hundred games behind), and trying not to drink too many cocktails in the evening.
Although by now he had met numerous scientists and many of the ship’s other major players—nattily dressed Ship’s Chief Engineer Frederick Moncton; Eduardo Bettances, dour and formidable chief of security; and Warrant Officer George Lund, who seemed intimidated by everything and everybody—he had made few friends on board. Most of the crew were ex-navy, with crew cuts and pressed uniforms—not Gideon’s type at all. And the various scientific and technical teams were too busy preparing for their upcoming duties to do much socializing. Glinn was as remote as ever. Gideon and Garza, despite the recent thaw in their relations, remained wary of each other. The only one he really liked—liked far too much—was Alex, but she had made it clear that while she, too, enjoyed his company, shipboard romance was out of the question.
But there was one character aboard ship who, over time, began to intrigue him: the ship’s doctor, Patrick Brambell. He was like a gnome, a devious old fellow with a head as shiny as a cue ball, a small face, sharp crafty blue eyes, and a stooped way of slinking about the ship, like a ghost. He always had a book tucked under one arm and never appeared in the mess hall, apparently taking his meals in his room. The rare times Gideon had heard him speak, he’d detected a soft Irish accent.
What intrigued Gideon most of all was that, aside from Glinn and Garza, Brambell was the only member of the expedition who had been on the Rolvaag when it sank. Gideon had the nagging sense that Glinn and Garza were withholding information about the shipwreck, perhaps even lying about the fate of the Rolvaag in order to secure his nuclear expertise. For this reason, Gideon decided to pay Brambell a surprise visit.
So one muggy tropical afternoon, he made his way to the crew quarters and, making sure Brambell was in his room, knocked on the door. At first there was no answer, but he knocked again, loud and persistent, knowing the devious old coot was holed up inside. After the third knock, an irritated voice finally responded. “Yes?”
“Can I come in? It’s Gideon Crew.”
A pause. “Is this a medical issue?” the voice filtered through the door. “I’ll be glad to meet you in the sick bay.”
Gideon didn’t want this. He wanted to beard Brambell in his element.
“Um, no.” He said no more; the less explanation, the less Brambell would be able to find a reason to say no.
A soft rustle and the door unlocked. Without waiting for an invitation, Gideon pushed in and Brambell, taken by surprise, automatically stepped back. He was holding a Trollope novel in one veined hand, his finger marking where he’d been reading.
Gideon took a seat, uninvited.
Brambell, his wizened face wrinkling with annoyance, remained standing. “As I said, if it’s a medical issue, the clinic is the proper place—”
“It’s not a medical issue.”
A silence.
“Well, then,” said Brambell, not exactly defeated but resigned, “what can I do for you?”
Gideon took in the large room. It astonished him. Every single inch of wall space, even the portholes, had been covered with custom-built shelves, and those shelves were completely lined with books, all kinds of books, the most eclectic range imaginable, from leather-bound classics to trashy thrillers to nonfiction books, biographies, histories, as well as titles in French and Latin. As his eye roamed the collection, the only type of book he did not see in evidence was medical.
“This is quite the library,” said Gideon.
“I am a reader,” came the dry voice. “That is what I do. Medicine is a sideline.”
Gideon was impressed by this frank announcement. “I guess, being on a ship, you get a lot of time to read.”
“That is the very point,” said Brambell in his high, whistling accent.
Gideon clasped his hands and looked at the doctor, who was eyeing him curiously, no longer irritated—or at least, so it seemed. The doctor put down the book. “I see you are a man who has come to me with a purpose.”
Gideon already sensed that Brambell would respond well to directness. He knew when a person could not be socially engineered, and the ship’s doctor was just that person.
“Glinn says he’s given me the full story on the sinking of the Rolvaag,” said Gideon flatly. “But something tells me he left part of it out.”
“That would be like him.”
“So I’m here. To hear the story from you.”
Brambell gave a small smile, grasped the arms of what was evidently his reading chair, and eased himself down. “It’s a long story.”
“We have all the time in the world.”
“Indeed.” He made a tent of his fingers and pursed his lips. “Do you know about Palmer Lloyd?”
“I met him.”
Brambell’s eyebrows shot up. “Where?”
“At a private mental institution in California.”
“Is he insa
ne?”
“No. But I’m not sure he’s sane, either.”
Brambell paused, considering this a moment. “Lloyd was a curious man. When he learned that the world’s largest meteorite had been found on a frozen island off Cape Horn, he became determined to have it for the museum he was building. And he hired Glinn to retrieve it. EES bought their ship, the Rolvaag, from a Norwegian shipbuilding company. It was a state-of-the-art oil tanker, but they disguised it to look like a shabby old tub.”
“Why an oil tanker? Why not an ore carrier?”
“Oil tankers have sophisticated ballast tanks and pumps, which would be necessary to stabilize the ship. Not only was the meteorite the largest ever, but it was incredibly dense—twenty-five thousand tons. So Glinn and Manuel Garza had to develop elaborate engineering plans to dig it up, transport it across the island, load it on the ship, and bring it back and up the Hudson River.” He paused again, reflecting. “When we arrived at the island, it was surely one of the most godforsaken places on earth. Isla Desolación: Desolation Island. And that was when things started to go wrong. To begin with, the meteorite was not a normal iron meteorite.”
“Manuel told me it had ‘peculiar qualities.’ I’d say being an alien seed is peculiar enough.”
Brambell smiled mirthlessly. “It was a deep red in color, made of a material so hard and dense that the best diamond drills wouldn’t even scratch it. Indeed, it seemed to be composed of a new element with a very high atomic number. Perhaps one of the hypothesized elements in the so-called island of stability. This of course made it far more interesting. It was gotten aboard ship with great difficulty—but successfully. But as we started for home, we came under fire from a rogue Chilean destroyer. Glinn, through a typically brilliant stratagem, managed to sink the destroyer. But the Rolvaag was badly damaged herself and a storm came up, with a heavy sea. The meteorite started to shift in the hold, the cradle becoming more and more damaged with each roll of the ship.” He glanced at Gideon. “You know about the dead man’s switch?”
Beyond the Ice Limit Page 4
