“Open the door and let’s try.”
The door opened with a gentle whoosh, which I’d never before heard. Must be the SeaCom’s added sensitivity I thought.
Silkwood stepped around and faced outward into the darkness.
“Forward one-knot,” he said starting a slow forward motion out of the bay lights.
At the far edge of the lighting, he disappeared.
“Hey guys it’s dark out here. How do I turn on the lights?”
“Say ‘floods on.’”
On his command, the suit’s floods illuminated showing him as a white-outlined shadow still drifting outward trailing the yellow rope behind him.
“Hold,” he said bringing himself to a stop hovering in place some sixty feet out.
“Good,” I said, “Now we’re coming out behind you. Move off to starboard and give us room to exit.”
“How do I do that?”
Briscoe at the end of his patience sighed. Surprising me, he grabbed the microphone from my hand and yelled back.
“Read the damn HUD! It’s all in there. Just look up to your helmet’s display.”
Seconds passed before anything happened. Then we heard his command loud and clear.
“Turn to starboard ten meters then halt.”
It was like watching a beginner at a video game causing us to chuckle quietly wondering what he would do next, but slowly his suit veered right and went out of view behind the bay wall.
“We’re coming out,” I announced. “Steer clear.”
As I pushed the joystick forward, we moved out of the bay into the darkness with Silkwood still hovering level with us at some distance off to the right of our bubble. I turned the SeaPod toward him illuminating his suit and presenting a perfect image of a space walker on a repair mission trailing a yellow tether connecting him to his spaceship.
“Looks like a scene from Gravity,” Briscoe said. “Amazing the effect a simple rope tether can add.”
“Yeah. Wish we had a camera. We could give him a selfie he’d never forget.”
“Going down to explore,” he said then he issued some more commands, which surprisingly took him directly past the submarine and down to the ocean floor landing near the monopole.
“On site, gentlemen. I made it!” his voice crackled over the SeaCom.
“I’m setting the SeaPod down about fifty meters behind you, facing our floods your direction. Narrate your findings as you go.”
The floor’s contact bumped gently through the cockpit as I released the joystick. We were stationary lying silently on the ocean floor facing him with the submarine to our left and his lights appearing as four dim dots off in the forward distance. The only sounds I could hear were our whirring air-scrubber fans and his jagged breathing sifting through the intercom’s speaker.
“Roger your command. I’m about two meters from the object and its fiery disk has gone black in the center. And I mean black. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s like a hole in my vision. Just nothing there. My power meter is just barely starting to drop so I’ll continue on.”
“Okay but let us know if you get into trouble,” I added. “We’ll pull you right out.”
His voice returned with more static.
“Now standing by the three missing wheels. All around me, streams of glowing blue plasma are oozing into its black core. Having to dodge them. A forth wheel is now being pulled weirdly distorting into the hole and even the bulkhead of the crawler’s base behind the wheels is grotesquely distorting and drooping down toward it. Looking over at the sub’s hull, I see it’s sagging in on itself like a tire going flat. My surroundings remind me exactly what I’ve read about an event horizon’s predicted effects. I must be entering the Kerr ring.”
“Thank you, Dr. Silkwood for the description. Sounds like you may need to leave. Are you ready?”
“No, no. Much more to see. I’m in a wonderland of impossible physics. Going toward the black ho-ll-lll-le.”
“Did you just call it a black hole?” I asked trying to confirm his statement. A change in the intercom’s sound lowered the pitch of his voice and slowed it down into a deepening slow-motion drawl.
With no answer I asked, “How’s your suit’s HUD clock? Running backwards?”
“Oooh nooo, nnott rruunnning, iiittt’s raaciing baaackwaarrrds.”
“We’re pulling you out now, Silkwood. Clear your rope and prepare for a jolt.”
“Nooo dooo noottt dooo thhhaaaattt, I’mmm nnooott rreeaddyyy, yyyetttt.” His rapid breathing had slowed to a ghoulish roar between words.
I stared at Briscoe needing an opinion.
“What should I do, Chief?”
“Just cool your jets, Marker. Let him stay. He’s in his realm. He wants this experience before he goes back home.”
Agreeing, I nodded affirmatively.
“Well he’s getting it. When his suit alarms power failure over our SeaCom we’ll jerk him out. Give him maximum exposure until that happens. Shhh. Let’s listen.”
His roaring breaths continued until suddenly: a pause.
“Helllloo lliitttllle onnnne. Whaaat aarrre yoouuu?”
His breathing restarted.
“Whhhyyy aarrre yoouuu heeerre?”
We leaned in toward the speaker listening for a response. Nothing.
“Whhheeerrre aarrre yoouuu frrroommm?”
Again nothing sounded from the intercom but his heavy roaring breaths.
“Foouuur poooiiinnnt twwooo whaaat? Liiiighhtt yeeaarrrs? Immmposssiibblle.”
“What’s he talking about? And to who?” the Chief asked.
“Sounds like he’s hallucinating, Chief. Maybe his air mixture’s off. Could be CO2 narcosis. We need to pull him back.”
“No wait. Something’s happening.”
In the distance, the outline of his suit began to glimmer with a brilliant blue-white light illuminating the sub and crawler base with sporadic lightning flashes like those from an arc welder’s rods.
Then his deeply distorted voice replaced his uneven growling breaths.
“I’mmm cccoooommmiiinnggg iiiinnnn. Arrrrrree yooouuuu thhhheeerrrre? I’mmmmm sstttrrrrreeeettttcchhhiiinnnggg. Ooohhhh wwooooowww…….”
As his voiced tapered off, the yellow rope trailing over the ocean floor from our SeaPod to his suit suddenly jerked up from the ground and wildly uncurled, straightening until it was taut, and then yanked us forward several feet. All at once, his glow went dark and the rope slackened and gently drifted back to the bottom.
“What happened, Chief?”
“I don’t know. Call him on the SeaCom. See if he’s okay.”
In the eerie quiet, now void of his roaring sounds, I pushed the intercom.
“Are you all right, Dr. Silkwood? Please respond.”
Silence.
“Are you there, Jonas?”
Silence.
“Reel in the rope, Marker. Now! We have to pull him out before it’s too late.”
The urgency in his voice struck a chord and I jammed the Reel In icon starting a whining motor beneath our feet. With our eyes glued to the swiftly approaching rope, we watched in horror as the distant end appeared in our floods with nothing in tow, dragged across the floor throwing up silt and then drew into the reel spinning endlessly.
“Silkwood’s gone!” Briscoe said, “The rope must have broken. Let’s go get him.”
Even though I wanted to share the Chief’s optimism, I knew that Silkwood had vanished, drawn by his compelling curiosity into another plane of existence… or dimension. We were suddenly dealing with deadly consequences and I feared we would be next. Ironically, his death, or whatever it was, was the first one directly caused by the monopole.
“No, Chief. We shouldn’t return. He’s gone. I can feel it. No need to go back and jeopardize our own lives again. We have to return to the station and warn Dave of the impending danger.”
Chapter 22. Tilt
“But he warned me that he was prone to paracusia
on the trip down here,” Franklin argued. “I say what he heard was from his auditory hallucinations. He told me that he frequently experienced them under stress and if that wasn’t stress I don’t know what is. He had previously heard voices in his head and his coworkers reminded him that he often answered them with nobody there. Poor soul. May he rest in peace.”
“So you think he created that conversation in his mind?” Williams asked. “From what Marker and Briscoe said it was a cogent albeit bizarre interchange between him and another entity possibly from 4.2 light years away.”
She closed her eyes for seconds then opened them wide-eyed.
“What if that object is not a God-particle or Higgs boson from the Hadron Collider accident as we suspect but rather a speck of something like a visitor from another time or dimension that drifted into our atmosphere and impacted the Pacific near us? Ever think about that?”
“Hmmm,” Briscoe added. “It’s unfortunate that Dr. Bowman took this so hard. I wish he were here to add his observations.”
“He doesn’t have any experience with extraterrestrial visitors or particle physics,” Franklin said. “They wouldn’t help.”
“Does anyone?” I questioned. “I think we might as well be discussing his encounter as a paranormal experience.”
“Ghosts?” Briscoe scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Marker. That’s not even scientific.”
“Not so outlandish Chief if you consider the old Davy Jones legend… or the Bermuda Triangle mysteries. Things just mysteriously disappear into the ocean depths sometimes with warnings but most times without.”
“So what are you hinting at, Mr. Cross?” asked Admiral Franklin. “That this is just a figment of everyone’s imaginations? An exercise in mass hysteria? That’s preposterous!”
“No, Admiral I’m simply offering that we may never know what really happened especially with our inability to interact with it or understand its origin. It remains the enigma it is and will continue that way after we have to abandon this station and leave it buried under a two-hundred-ton debris field.”
“What?” Franklin barked, standing from his chair. “W-what do you mean abandon the station? Why would we do that?”
Looking over at Briscoe I said, “You tell him, Chief.”
With his eyes cast downward he began, “Admiral, the object that Silkwood called a black hole is eating away at the station, assimilating it. He described the process as ephemeral tendrils of blue plasma flowing from the wheels and even the crawler base into the object’s center, a core that he said was blacker that black. The structure of Discovery One will soon be so compromised that it will no longer hold back the pressure and we’ll have to evacuate.”
Appearing shocked the Admiral pried further.
“And when will that be in your estimation, Mr. Briscoe?”
“Hours, days, weeks? Who knows? We’re dealing with something beyond human experience or knowledge.”
He put his hand to his head and closed his eyes obviously in deep thought. Then, sitting down in his chair he said, “We need Bowman here. We need to move the station away for this thing as soon as possible.”
Supporting Briscoe’s warning, I spoke up.
“Given the damage I saw down there, I doubt that will be possible but it’s worth a try.”
“Williams, find Bowman and bring him down to the bridge,” Franklin ordered, checking his watch. “I’m heading there now and we’re moving the station to the CHUS cable as planned just a few hours early.”
“Aye, aye sir,” she answered standing and leaving the room.
Tracking behind the Admiral, the Chief and I had no idea where were going but he did. Rushing to keep up, we entered Quad 2 and paced through the racks of computers into the rear of the room. On the back wall, another down arrow noted BRIDGE with a red-lighted box around it resembling an exit sign.
Stooping he twisted the hatch lock and let it drop down into a dark musty vertical tunnel leading to a cavernous room far below. On his first step down the long ladder, the distant room illuminated with a muted red lighting. Briscoe glanced back at me waiting behind him and squinted down into the room.
“I hate that red lighting,” he said. “Makes me feel like my vision’s failing.”
“It’ll get better, Chief. Your eyes have to adapt. You know the drill.”
“Yeah, but I still hate it.”
At the bottom of the ladder, we stood by Franklin surveying our surroundings. Unlike a ship’s bridge, the room was more like an aircraft cockpit with a panoramic forward-looking thick window and a pair of side-by-side joysticks under them. Above and around the window were numerous video panels flickering to life, displaying lines and panels of moving data.
“Here’s the heart of our navigation system: the helm,” Franklin said fanning his hand across the windowed area. “Looks complex but it’s really like driving a zero-turn-radius riding lawnmower. The left joystick controls the ten port wheels while the right one controls the starboard’s wheel array of ten more. They all move in tandem under computer control with a five-hundred horsepower motor powering each wheel.”
“What about the three front missing wheels and the fourth decaying one. What will happen?” asked the Chief.
“We’ll have to see when we power them up,” he said matter-of-factly. “The tractor system’s redundancy should account for their loss. Although it has only been tested in the pre-commissioning trial runs it worked well when we removed or blocked several wheels simulating anticipated difficulties.”
Briscoe nodded and stepped over to the window’s right corner, then peered downward. “Where are the Pod Bays? I expected to see them below us.”
“Above us, Mr. Briscoe. A level up. That’s why the long ladder down. We’re on the lowest habitable level with the nuclear plant and other life-support systems behind us.”
“So we’re on the closest level to the monopole?”
“Yes that’s right but we never anticipated such a danger below us. Fortunately the bridge is still intact.”
“But not for long,” I said noticing a small puddle of water on the floor beside Briscoe. “There’s water seeping in over here.”
He rushed over and stared down at it then slowly raised his eyes to me. “My God you’re right, Mr. Cross. It’s happening.”
“What’s going on down here,” asked Bowman dropping down with Williams from the tunnel. Lieutenant Williams said you were anxious to leave. Why is that Admiral? First you said to hold off and now you’re rushing us to leave. Has that DOD meeting schedule changed?”
“No, Dr. Bowman, your station has changed. Look over there,” he said pointing to the small pool of seawater.
“Well, Admiral, I can get a towel and clean that up if it bothers you.”
“Don’t be such a fool, Bowman. That doesn’t bother me. It’s the billions and trillions of gallons of water pushing that puddle inward that bothers me. And according to the Deep Force team here we’ll be dodging water knives, if not flooding, all over the station pretty soon.”
“So how will moving solve that problem?”
“The thing down there is eating the station, Dave, and we’re beginning to see the results of that damage. The station is now listing several degrees and that puddle is directly over it. The more we list toward that monster the faster it will consume us. You have to pull away and save what we have left.”
Without argument, Bowman walked to an Ivy console on the rear wall.
“Ivy, Dave Bowman. Please notify the station to prepare for travel in ten minutes. Announce for the crew to close and seal all hatches then clear the mess and tie down loose items. Also secure the Pod Bays for travel. The usual stuff.”
“Yes, Dave Bowman. Shall I also lock the hard drive heads as usual or run computations through the move?”
No. No computations. And prepare to pull anchor on my command.”
“Understood. I will be standing by. Ivy out.”
“Lieutenant, are you needed elsewhere,” B
owman asked rejoining us at the helm.
She glanced back to the tunnel still lit by the overheads in Quad 2 and said, “Only to seal that hatch. I left it open thinking we’d just be a few minutes.”
“Well things have obviously changed. Please close and secure it. You’re staying with us until we’re moving.”
“Yes sir. Anything else I can do?”
“Pray.”
Ivy’s announcement on the PA system soon started.
“Attention staff and crew. Attention staff and crew. Prepare for station’s travel mode in ten minutes. Repeat, prepare for travel mode. Stow all movable objects, clear and close the mess hall, close and lock all watertight hatches then staff your travel stations. Motion will begin in ten minutes.”
As she ended her message, Dave sat down at the driver’s console and powered up the tractor controllers. A small bank of indicators illuminated one at a time starting with #5 and blinked green through #20. At the end of the sequencing process lights #1 through #4 flashed red.
“What’s that all mean, Dave,” I asked watching over his shoulder.
“Those red-flagged wheels failed the self-test but I can override them manually ̶ take them out of the loop. We’ll run on sixteen. Not a problem though: we can run with five on each side if we have to.”
Reaching up, he touched four buttons under the red indicators turning them dark.
“Done. No more problems.”
Scoffing, the Chief whispered in my ear, “Famous last words.”
On my other side, Lieutenant Williams also engrossed with Bowman’s start-up procedure flinched.
“Oh crap! The hatch. I forgot to close it.”
She turned back and rushed up the ladder. Seconds later, I heard the hatch slam closed with a solid clunk that echoed through the bridge.
“Fast work,” I said on her return. “That would have taken me twice as long and I’d be huffing and puffing. You? You’re not even winded. How do you do that?”
She backed off and looked me over.
“If you spent six months on this station rushing up and down these ladders all day long like I do, you’d be fast too. Just comes with the job I guess.”
Sea Station Umbra Page 19
