by Maggie Allen
While they waited, Lem clattered down the stairs. "Did you feel anything out there?" he demanded breathlessly.
"I did! I was standing on the seafloor and felt a tremor," Amari told him. Of course Lem would be excited about it.
"We don't know what caused it," he said, practically hopping from one foot to the other.
Their dad frowned. "What do you mean, you don't know what caused it?"
"It wasn't like a normal quake," Lem said. “We didn't measure any plate movement.”
"Okay, Lem, since you're here, take over my gillsuit," their father said, moving to the stairs. "Wait with Amari until the cycle finishes, and then you two head back to the apartment."
"What? I want to come with you!" Amari squeaked.
Lem protested, too. "I told Dr. Hodge I'd be right back!"
Their father shook his head. "I don't know what's going on, and the safest place for you is back at home. I'll tell you everything when I get back." We don't need you underfoot, he didn't say, but Amari heard the unspoken words as he turned and left.
"Grrr," Lem said, balling his fists. "I hate it when he does that. I was actually helping Dr. Hodge!"
"I know. I was right there looking at the thing in the trench, and I didn't get in anyone's way," Amari said, indignant.
"What thing in the trench?"
"I'll tell you in a minute. How can you not know what made the tremor?"
Lem shrugged. "Quakes are caused when the earth's plates move against each other, but not this time. Everything shook, but that wasn’t the cause."
Amari frowned. "What else could shake us up like that? Something big hitting the sea floor, like a submarine or a sinking ship? But the sensors would pick that up."
Lem pointed a finger at her. "Right. We wouldn't even need the sensors. It would have been right on top of us."
The decon locker beeped, and Amari and Lem hung up the suits, then started back to the family's living unit. Amari told Lem about the strange round shape lying deeper in the trench.
"A shipwreck?" he asked. "If it lodged against the wall of the trench, years of sand and silt could have drifted over it."
Amari shook her head. "I don't think so. It didn't have the right shape."
"I wonder who'll go down to get a closer look, and when?"
"They won't let anyone go into the trench if we're having tremors." They'd reached the main lounge for their pod and began climbing the stairs, Amari in the lead. "Some of the gillsuits will be tied up with whoever fixes the stabilizer rod, too. But hey!" she said, brightening. "I wonder if anything's happening with my sea monkeys?"
"I didn't even look at them today," Lem said, and they pounded up the stairs.
In Amari's room, she turned on the light and peered in through the tank wall. One section was curved to form a magnifying lens for the interior. If she looked closely, she could just see tiny forms moving around in the water. They looked like fuzzy specks with tiny tails, but they were definitely moving on their own, not just floating.
"They're alive," she whispered, "and they're exploring the tank!"
"Of course they're alive!" Lem said, nudging her aside so he could see, too. "I wouldn't buy you bad sea monkey eggs!"
Amari smiled. "I know. It's just so amazing how they can be dormant for so long—"
Her words cut off as a violent lurch shook the pod. The tank of sea monkeys slid across Amari's desk. She made a grab for it even as she stumbled on the unstable floor. Lem clutched at the desk with one hand and Amari's arm with the other, and they managed not to fall. When the shaking stopped, Amari had the sea monkey tank in one hand. The water inside sloshed around, but the bright orange cover stayed tight. The tiny creatures were safe.
For now.
"What was that?" Lem's voice sounded a little unsteady.
"Another not-quake?" Amari suggested, breathless herself. Nothing had ever shaken the habitat pod like that before.
Amari's room had only one smallish window above her bed. The twins ran out to the living room, where a bigger window looked out on their watery world. There was nothing to see there, only clouds of sand and silt whirling in the current. Anything else that might have been down there was obscured.
Lem hit the communicator pad. There were buttons for all the main areas in the hub, the other living units, and one for each family member of their own unit. "Dad? What's happening?"
Only the crackle of static came in response. He tried another button. “Mom? You there?”
Nothing.
"Maybe one of the quakes damaged communications?"
"They're not quakes," Lem said stubbornly, "but you could be right."
"The view lounge," Amari said, but Lem's voice stopped her as she reached for the door latch.
"Dad said to come here and wait. Will we get in trouble for going out?"
As if in answer, the pod lurched again, tossing Amari against the wall. She clutched the sea monkey tank tighter. Lem went down on his knees. He looked up at her.
"I think we should go and see what's happening," Amari said. "The comm pad in the lounge might still work. And what if we have to leave the pod? The only way is through the tube to the hub."
Lem nodded and climbed to his feet. With her sea monkey tank cradled in one arm, Amari opened the door. They hurried down the spiral steps and emerged into the viewport lounge, meeting none of the other residents of the pod. Everyone must be in their units or already gone to the hub. Amari went immediately to the window and peered outside. She gasped.
The tower of rock and coral tilted sideways now, as if something large had pushed it askew. Pieces had broken off and tumbled down to the seafloor. Some of the corals had been broken as well, their fan-like branches shattered. The fish and jellyfish from earlier had fled.
Amari squinted down at the seafloor. Something large and reddish-brown lay in a shallow depression at the base of the coral spire. It looked like a six-foot rock split in half, except the inside was hollowed-out, making it more like a shell, or a container for something. A large hole had splintered open in one side. Lem joined Amari at the window.
"What's that?"
Amari shook her head. "It wasn't there when Dad and I were outside earlier. It almost looks like a big, cracked eggshell, only made of rock."
"Is it part of that coral formation? That looks all busted up."
Amari pressed her forehead against the viewport, wishing she could get into a gillsuit and go outside for a closer look. "No, it's not made of the same stuff at all. The outside of it looks a little like brain coral, but we're way too deep for that. And it's blue. Most things that live and grow at this depth are black or red because there's so little light. It doesn't make sense."
Lem pressed the comm pad, trying again to reach their parents, but the same static hiss emerged.
Amari was about to say they should go to the hub when movement outside the viewport caught her eye. Fish returning to the coral refuge? But no, it was bigger than any of the fish known to live at this depth. Amari knew that sperm whales could dive this deep sometimes, but it wasn't that big. It seemed about human-sized. Maybe someone had ventured outside in a gillsuit, even though that seemed like a dangerous risk with the seafloor so unstable.
Then it swam right up to the viewport, and Amari saw that it wasn't human at all.
The creature outside the viewport was so startling, so alien, Amari screamed. Lem ran to join her, and they both stared at the creature.
It was the size of an adult human, and humanoid in shape, but it had rough-looking bluish skin, not scaly, but pebbled with bumps. Its head, tilted curiously as the creature regarded them, seemed over-large for its body, and many fine, waving tendrils took the place of hair. Two large eyes, dark and bulbous as those of the fish Amari had seen yesterday, stared in at the twins. Its mouth was a horizontal, almost lipless slit across the bottom third of its face. Two arms ended in long-fingered hands with softly undulating webbing stretched between each digit. Its legs were finned on the sides
and back, with flipper-like feet that fluttered gently in the current, holding the creature in place.
"That is not a fish," Lem said in a strangled voice. "That's not any kind of fish, is it, Amari?"
She swallowed. "No. Not a fish." Not any kind of a fish or underwater creature that she'd ever seen or heard of...or even imagined.
The creature startled them by curling away from the viewport and gliding back to the broken coral spire. It darted around the wreckage, picking up bits of broken coral and rock, examining and then discarding them.
"What's it doing?" Lem whispered.
Amari stared at the creature, wondering the same thing. This didn't make sense. How could such a creature exist without anyone knowing about it? Of course, the Llyr was here to explore, to investigate and maybe discover new creatures and habitats, but how was it possible that they'd missed these creatures in all the previous years and years of sea exploration?
Exploring. The word echoed in her mind, bouncing off ideas and bits of information and linking them together into something that made sense. She looked down at the tank of newly-hatched sea monkeys in her hand, and at the broken, hollow rock lying on the seafloor below them. She thought about the shadow in the trench, something buried under sand and silt for a long time in the darkness. She thought about the Llyr trundling along, stirring things up, the stabilizer rod hitting something buried. Waking it up?
"It's exploring! Lem, look!" She pointed to the broken rock halves. "It's not a rock, not coral—it's...a shell! That thing just came out of it!”
"But what is it?" Lem looked at her, puzzled.
"Remember the shape in the trench? What if it's a ship, a space ship that crashed down here a long time ago—"
Lem's eyes lit up. "And the tremors weren't quakes, they were buried eggs, or pods, or something—"
"Oh, no!" Amari's hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes were very wide.
"What?"
Amari grabbed Lem's arm with her free one. "Come on!" Dragging her brother, she ran into the flexible tube connecting the habitat pod to the main hub. But instead of heading up to the labs or admin levels, Amari started down the stairs.
"Where are we going?" Lem shouted. “We should tell Dad—”
"The moon pool!" Amari's steps didn't slow. She threw words back over her shoulder to Lem. "That creature is exploring. If it finds the moon pool—"
"It could come right into the Llyr!" Lem finished for her.
"Lem! Amari!" Their mother's voice echoed down the stairwell, but she was too far away for them to explain that they couldn't wait for her.
They both knew that a possibly alien creature inside the Llyr could be a very bad idea. And the creature could find the entrance at any moment. They ran down the stairs.
"Even if it's not dangerous to us, the air in here could be dangerous to it," Amari said as they slid into the moon pool room. "It doesn't know anything about us or the Llyr."
"What if—" Lem's words died as they both saw something floating in the moon pool. It was still below the surface of the water, but only by a few inches. The alien's blue face and floating tendrils were clearly visible through the water. Its bulbous eyes peered up into the room, as if it were trying to make sense of it. They turned in the direction of Lem and Amari.
Amari's mind raced. She was not so much afraid for herself or the station as she was for the alien creature. Obviously the salt ocean water and the enormous pressure at this depth wasn't harmful to it. It must have come from a world with similar conditions. But even though their technology allowed humans to venture into this world, too, they couldn't survive in it without that technology. If the alien ventured into the world of the Llyr, Amari didn't think it would survive long.
Holding up a hand in a "stop" kind of way, and hoping it understood, she took a few steps toward the moon pool.
"Amari!" Lem hissed. "What are you—"
She shook her head and took another step, motioning the creature to stay underwater. "Get ready to close the pool door," she told her brother out of the corner of her mouth. "I'll tell you if it drops down far enough to close it safely."
At the edge of her vision she saw Lem sidle toward the control panel. One push of the button would slide the pool door over the opening. Amari walked toward the pool, step by careful step, motioning the creature to stay. Did it understand? It hadn't come up out of the water yet.
"Lem? Amari?" Their mother's voice came again, closer now.
"We should get this closed before she gets here," Lem warned in a low voice.
"I know." Amari had reached the edge of the moon pool. The alien creature looked up at her through a few scant inches of water. Her eyes met the bulbous, unblinking ones. She tried to tell the creature go, please go, it's not safe here.
For a long moment their eyes held, and Amari held her breath. She felt a strange thrill of communication pass between them. Even without words, she thought the alien might understand her message. Be safe. I want to help you.
In a flash of blue and fins, the alien darted down and away.
"Now!" Amari hissed, and Lem hit the button. The door slid soundlessly over the moon pool, shutting the water out of sight. The latches clicked into place. Amari felt her body go weak with relief.
"Lem! Amari! What are you doing down here? This is no time to be playing around the moon pool!" Their mother stood in the doorway, hands on her hips.
Amari turned, the sea monkey tank with its tiny new life still clutched to her chest. She smiled at her mother. This was going to take a while to tell.
It was not going to be such a boring stop at Trench 42, after all.
After the Fall
by Mike Barretta
Mike Barretta is a retired U.S. naval aviator who works for a defense contractor as a pilot. He holds a master's degree in strategic planning and international negotiation from the Naval Post-Graduate School and a master's in English from the University of West Florida. His wife Mary, to whom he has been married to for 23 years, is living proof that he is not such a bad guy once you get to know him. His stories have appeared in Baen's Universe, Redstone, New Scientist, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show and various anthologies.
Lucy Cardiff daydreamed of dragons. Not the fantasy fire-breathing kind that hoarded treasure and fought off armies of dwarves, but the practical kind, long in limb with gracefully tapered wings designed to soar, the kind that plucked fish from the sea or snatched pigeons on the wing.
In that regard, she was definitely her mother's daughter.
She turned her attention back to the task at hand, making a dragon, and opened the plastic cover of her portfolio. Dr. Rebecca Nelms’ famously unreadable cursive script filled the title page. At the bottom, though, clear as day, was, "See me!" Lucy didn't worry too much about it. At least three quarters of the students in the class probably had a "See me!" Dr. Nelms was a bit of a throwback. Unlike the other teachers who used content analysis tools to grade work submitted on-line, Dr. Nelms preferred her students to submit printed work. She believed students took much more care when they brought their work into the real world.
"Ok, class," said Dr. Nelms. "Good job on your preliminary design work. I can tell you guys have put in a lot of effort on your concepts. Some of you have your work cut out for you. Big dreams, I like to see that." She passed out her responses to their capstone projects. "But now, it's time to turn those dreams into reality. Did anybody not get their project portfolio back yet?"
As a talented artist, Lucy thought Dr. Nelms was right. She took as much care in creating her AP Biology portfolio as the paintings that consumed the majority of her time. When you held something in your hand and turned it over to someone else, responsibility for it was unavoidable.
"Now, open up the refrigerators at your workstations and take out the packages inside. We are going to inventory the contents and register your Neosaur so as to not confuse it with anyone else's," said Dr. Nelms.
Lucy went to her workstation, a black-surfa
ced lab bench plumbed with water, gas, electricity, and fiber. She opened the refrigerator and took out her cardboard box. The only thing on the box was a shipping label to the school.
"Okay, open your shipping boxes. Be gentle—the contents are not particularly fragile, but they are expensive. We still want to exercise care. Take out the smaller box inside. If you have trouble with the tape, go ahead and use your obsidian scalpels. Carefully, please."
Lucy touched her lab bench drawer, and the biometric lock opened. She took out the stone-bladed scalpel, sharper than any metal blade ever made, and slit the packing tape. She folded back the flaps.
"Go ahead and open up your kit box and inventory it. Make sure everything is inside. You should have four amino acid vials, recombinator medium, a viral delivery injector and a Neosaur egg. Make sure the barcodes and numbers are the same on all of the kit’s contents. Make sure the egg is not cracked. Raise your hand if you find anything wrong."
Neosaur, thought Lucy. It certainly sounded sexier than chicken. She lifted the Bioscholastic Neosaur egg from the kit and inspected it. It looked just like a chicken egg because that is exactly what it was, a genuine chicken egg from a cloned, germline-patented chicken. The egg had a barcode printed on it and what looked to be a small Lego glued on the small end. The Lego thing was an injector port where she would inject the egg with a retrovirus, which would rewrite the DNA of the cloned chicken embryo inside so something she’d designed would hatch.
"Take the plastic card inside the kit and register your kit with Bioscholastic's website. This will give you access to tutorials and the genetic compilers. Let's do it now, so I know we all have access."
Lucy slid the card into the tablet reader, and the Bioscholastic site registered her kit. It asked her if she wanted to continue. She selected no.
"Log out, and put your kits back in the refrigerator. Recycle the shipping boxes in the back of the classroom. Then we are done for the day."
