by Steve Alten
“What nonsense.”
Heads turned as Frank Heller entered the galley. “Don’t listen to him, D.J. Taylor’s sole reason for becoming an academic was to justify his actions seven years ago in the Challenger Deep. I made the mistake of certifying him as fit to dive. I won’t make that same mistake again.”
Jonas felt his pulse jump. “What are you saying, Frank?”
“I’m saying you’re off the dive. As Masao’s chief medical officer I’m declaring you mentally unfit. Terry will accompany her brother into the trench.”
“Yes!” Terry hugged D.J.
Jonas glanced at Mac. Humiliated, he exited the galley and headed out on deck.
Descent
JONAS AWOKE SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN. His cabin was pitch-black, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was.
The second series of knocks had him fumbling for the light switch. Dressed in a navy blue and white Penn State sweat suit, he made his way to the stateroom door and unlocked it.
Mac was standing in the corridor, holding a black and red neoprene body suit and matching footwear. “Masao’s en route from Tokyo. He just reamed out Frank on the radio. Terry’s benched, you’re back in the game.”
He handed Jonas the garment. “This is a bio-suit, it allows us to monitor your vitals during the dive. Get dressed, grab some breakfast, then do whatever you deep-sea divers do to purge your bowels, you launch in ninety minutes.”
Jonas closed the door, his heart racing.
Damn …
*
The dawn sky was a fierce tapestry of gray, gusting with thunderclouds that blew whitecaps across the roiling sea.
A forty knot wind assaulted Jonas as he stepped out onto the main deck in his bio-suit and rubber boots. He had forced down a light breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, needing to put something in his stomach before popping two of his yellow pills for the descent. In his left shoulder pouch were four more tablets. Despite the medication, he still felt anxious.
Mac’s launch team was busy attaching canvas harnesses to each of the Abyss Gliders. D.J.’s sub would be hoisted into the sea first, the end of the steel cable clipped to the folded mechanical arm secured beneath the sub’s undercarriage. The cocky young pilot was huddling with his older sister, who was wearing a wetsuit.
Seeing Jonas, she approached the submersible pilot. “You can still back out.”
“Give it a rest.”
“Why are you really doing this? Is it ego?”
“It’s something I just have to do. A piece of me died down there, maybe this is the only way to make myself whole again.”
“And did you pack your little yellow pills, Dr. Feel Good?”
She grabbed his arm as he tried to walk away. “D.J.’s my brother, Jonas. When our mother died, I practically raised him. So if you screw up down there … if anything happens to him, don’t bother surfacing.”
Without waiting for a reply she returned to D.J. They talked for a minute, then she hugged him and joined three other divers who were pulling on their scuba gear.
Mac stood by Jonas. “You do have a way with the women. Speaking of which, how are things going with that wife of yours … you know, the one who refused to visit you in the mental ward?”
“She’s screwing my old college roommate.”
“Ouch.”
“Any other painful subjects you wish to broach before I pilot this glass coffin seven miles beneath the Pacific?”
“Still listen to my boy, Tom Jones?” Mac held up a Best of Tom Jones CD.
“The Abyss Glider has a CD player?”
“No, but there’s one in the command center linked to your radio.”
The two men watched as D.J. crawled head-first through the rear hatch of his glider. Moments later, the big A-frame powered up, lifting the torpedo-shaped vessel off the deck, over the stern rail, and into the sea, the winch feeding out steel cable.
Alphonse DeMarco’s booming voice faltered in the wind. “Let’s go, Taylor, we’re burning daylight.”
Mac muttered, “As if you’ll need it where you’re going.”
Jonas punched knuckles with his friend before ducking down on all fours to climb through the open rear hatch of his submersible, straining his back as he sealed the Lexan pod behind him.
The interior was tight but well-cushioned, the body hammock smelling of new leather. Jonas realized the sub was new, and the sudden thought of taking an untested vessel seven miles below the surface only added to his trepidation.
Securing himself in the hammock, he adjusted the padded elbow rests which were situated in front of and below his chest. Placing the headphones over his ears, he reached for the two joysticks, his left hand controlling the sub’s thruster, the device in his right hand used to steer. He did a quick inventory of the storage areas, finding snacks, bottled water, and a urine bottle in one, a medical kit, a knife, and a pony bottle of air attached to a face mask in the other. In a Velcro pouch he discovered a pair of night vision goggles.
Small LCD computer screens mounted on a low forward rise provided him with sonar, radio, battery levels, and life-support readouts. As he ran through a pre-launch check list the sub suddenly lifted away from the deck, sending his equilibrium spinning.
Jonas’s pulse raced as the big winch hoisted the Abyss Glider beyond the Kiku’s rail, offering him a birds’ eye view of the harsh Pacific. The A-frame rotated forward, lowering him to a team of divers waiting in the fifteen-foot swells—Terry among them. For several nauseating minutes he held on as the ocean lifted and dropped the buoyant submersible unmercifully while the team of frogmen detached the A-frame’s harness. Finally, one of the divers knocked on the Lexan nose cone, giving the all-clear sign... followed by the middle finger.
“Love you, too, Terry.” Jonas started the engine, pressed forward on the throttle, then adjusted the mid-wings, aiming his vessel underwater.
The glider responded at once, nose diving beneath the waves. The seasickness immediately subsided, yielding to smooth sailing. Jonas noticed the sub felt much heavier, perhaps even sluggish compared with the lighter weight surface model he had test-piloted nine years ago. Still, the Abyss Glider was a Corvette compared to the tank-like design of the Sea Cliff.
Jonas followed the thick steel cable down another thirty feet before spotting D.J.’s sub. The radio crackled, the young pilot’s voice filtering through.
“Age before beauty, Professor. You take the lead, I’m right behind you.”
Walk in the park...
Jonas moved the starboard joystick forward, sending his ten-foot glider into a steep forty-five-degree descent.
D.J. followed him down, the steel recovery cable in tow, the two subs looping downward in a slow spiraling pattern.
Within minutes the blue of the Pacific faded to a deep shade of purple, followed by pitch blackness. Jonas checked his depth gauge: a mere 1,250 feet. He searched a pad of toggle switches on his right, located the exterior lights, and flicked them on.
A column of light illuminated a patch of sea below, scattering a school of fish. Descending into nothingness was disorienting, and Jonas wondered if he’d be better off just focusing on his LCD readout. He checked his depth gauge again: 2,352 feet.
Relax and breathe. This is a marathon, not a sprint, J.T. You’ve got a long way to go.
*
The UNIS command center was located in the Kiku’s bridge, the horseshoe-shaped bank of monitors and sonar arrays uploading data from the two Abyss Gliders. Alphonse DeMarco was tracking the descent; Mac keeping vigil over the subs’ propulsion and life support systems.
Frank Heller sat facing two computer screens linked to the pilots’ bio-suits. Vital signs were displayed in real time, with heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and breathing patterns falling into either a green, yellow, or red zone.
D. J. Tanaka’s readings were all well within the green zone.
Jonas Taylor’s were fluctuating within the yellow.
Heller looked up as Terry entere
d the bridge. Masao’s daughter was dressed in a sweat suit, her hair still wet from the releasing the gliders.
“How are they doing, Frank?”
“Your brother’s as calm as a frozen lake. Taylor … not so good. If his vitals go red, I’m scrubbing the mission. If your father doesn’t like it then he can fire me.”
Terry smiled, patting him on the shoulder.
*
Jonas popped a yellow pill into his mouth, washing it down with a swig of bottled water.
DeMarco’s voice rattled his ear drums. “Jonas, I need you to switch off your exterior light, you’re wasting battery power. Nothing to see down there anyway.”
Jonas gritted his teeth as he flipped back the toggle switch, casting his existence into darkness, save for the soft orange glow from his forward console. He took a deep breath, trying to focus on the nothingness before him.
In the distance he saw a flash of light, followed by a dozen more. Luminescent sparks twinkled all around him, blinking in and out of existence, the green, blue, and red flashbulbs of color disorienting to look at.
Jonas had entered the ocean’s mid-water region, a habitat enshrouded in perpetual darkness. Known as the twilight zone, the creatures inhabiting this vast domain had adapted by evolving their own bioluminescent light.
A scarlet vampire squid was caught surfing in his bow-wake. Turning itself inside-out, it cast a false glowing turquoise eye upon the sub, attempting to scare it off. When this tactic failed, it expelled a cloud of bioluminescent mucus, executing a magician’s vanishing getaway.
Remembering the night vision goggles, he pulled them out of their pouch and placed them on—instantly transforming the sea into an olive-green world. A thousand shadows became bulbous eyes and jaws that unhinged, and bizarre fish with bioluminescent bulbs that dangled before their open mouths like bait. They were everywhere—Viperfish and gulper eels, Fangtooths and Dragonfish and Anglerfish with teeth that would put a piranha to shame, the underwater universe twinkling with ten thousand points of light.
The deeper he descended, the more curious the fish became. Schools of hatchet fish flew past his nose cone, staring at him with freakish eyes, their narrow bodies blinking blue by means of light-producing photophores. The glider descended past harvests of bioluminescent jellyfish, their transparent bodies filtering red in his sub’s emergency keel light.
“Abyssopelagic animals,” Jonas whispered to himself, reciting the technical name for these unique groups of fish, squid, and prawns. He watched as a four-foot gulper eel hovered in front of him, surfing on the nose cone’s wake. Deciding to attack the larger sub, the eel spun around and opened its mouth, hyperextending and unhinging its jaws, revealing vicious rows of needle-sharp teeth. Jonas tapped the acrylic and the eel darted away.
To his left, a deep-sea anglerfish circled, an eerie light appearing over its mouth. The species possessed a rod fin that lit up like a lightning bug’s tail. Small fish would mistake the light for food and swim straight toward it, right into the angler’s wide-open mouth.
Even in the cold, perpetual darkness of the sea, nature had found a way to adapt.
Jonas hadn’t noticed the cold creeping in on him. He glanced at the sub’s external temperature gauge: Forty-two degrees. He adjusted the thermostat to heat the interior capsule.
The blast of Guns ’N Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle caused Jonas to nearly jump out of his harness. Tearing the headphones from his ears didn’t help, the pounding heavy metal was turned up way too loud to be ignored.
The wave of panic happened without warning. It was a desperate, empty, frightening feeling—a feeling of being trapped … of being squeezed beneath six thousand feet of water in a crawl space barely wider than a coffin.
Sweat poured from Jonas’s body. His breathing became erratic, and he found himself hyperventilating. He fumbled for another pill, only to drop it beneath the console.
*
“He’s losing it,” Frank Heller announced, pointing to Jonas Taylor’s vital signs, all readings deep inside the red zone.
Mac rolled his chair away from his console to look at Frank’s monitor. “What the hell happened?”
DeMarco grabbed the radio. “Taylor, what’s wrong? Taylor, answer!”
Mac glanced at Terry, who was watching from behind the horseshoe, her back to a wall panel stacked with communications equipment. That’s when he noticed the volume level lights jumping on one of the CD players.
*
Jonas couldn’t breathe. His heart pounded so hard his chest hurt, his limbs shaking so badly he could no longer pilot the sub.
Welcome to the jungle, we take it day by day. If you want it you’re going to bleed, but it’s the price you pay...
The music abruptly stopped, his ears still buzzing.
A moment of terror passed during the silence that followed, and then another song played at half the volume over the headphones…
Pussycat, Pussycat, I’ve got flowers and lots of hours to spend with you.
So go and powder … your cute little pussycat nose—.
Jonas smiled. The tightness in his chest disappeared.
What’s new pussycat? Woah woah…
What’s new pussycat? Woah a-woah woah.
Retrieving the discarded headphones, he placed them back over his ears to listen to the Tom Jones romp.
*
Frank Heller watched, dumbfounded, as Jonas’s vital signs returned to the green zone. “Son of a bitch…”
Terry glanced back at Mac, who was standing next to the CD player, holding the Guns ’N Roses CD in one hand, wagging his index finger at her with the other.
*
Eighteen thousand feet…
Jonas had settled into a nice groove when D.J. interrupted his music over the ship-to-ship frequency. “Doc, how are you holding up?”
“No problems to speak of. How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess. This damn cable’s all tangled around the mechanical arm. Kind of like my telephone cord gets.”
Jonas cut his speed, allowing D.J.’s glider to come up along his starboard side. Flipping on his exterior lights he could see the cable was twisted into tight loops beneath the other sub’s chassis.
“D.J., if it’s a problem maybe we should head back—”
“I’ve got it under control. When we get to the bottom, I’ll flip the arm around a few dozen times and ease some of the tension.”
Jonas called up to DeMarco. “D.J.’s cable is twisting around the mechanical arm. Can you do anything topside to relieve some of the pressure?”
“Negative. D.J.’s got the problem under control. We’ll monitor him. You concentrate on what you’re doing. DeMarco out.”
Jonas checked his depth gauge: 19,266 feet. They had been descending now for forty minutes, and were still only a little more than halfway to the bottom. He rubbed his eyes and then attempted to stretch his lower back within the tight leather hammock.
The Lexan pod creaked. The water pressure surrounding him was 9,117 pounds per square inch. Jonas felt the telltale signs of claustrophobia creeping in again, his skin tingling, his face flushing.
The feeling reminded the former Penn State All-Big Ten conference tight end of the time he had to submit to ninety minutes’ worth of MRIs after suffering a concussion during his junior year in a game against Ohio State University. The massive machine had been situated only inches above his head like a sword of Damocles waiting to crush his skull.
Only the soft glow from the Abyss Glider’s control panel gave him a sense of direction, keeping him sane.
His eyes moved over the interior of the capsule, damp with condensation.
Why am I here?
Long minutes passed. The depth gauge numbers continued to mount: 23,850 … 28,400 … 30,560 … 31,200 … He stared out into the blackness, his hands trembling from nerves and fatigue. 33,120 … 34,000…
Jonas felt a slight trace of vertigo, which he hoped had more to do with the rich oxygen mixtur
e in the submersible than with his medicine. His eyes moved from the inky water to the control panel readouts. The outside ocean temperature was a frigid thirty-six degrees.
D.J.’s voice shattered his thoughts. “Okay, Doc, turn on your exterior light, you should be able to see the hydrothermal plume.”
Jonas complied, the light cannon piercing the darkness, illuminating a steaming, swirling, muddy layer of soot sixty feet below.
“Doc, here’s where it gets a bit rough. Best way to get through is to accelerate into a sixty-degree angle and don’t stop until you’ve passed on through to the Land of Oz.”
Jonas accelerated into the maelstrom, his heart racing as the glider shook, the sweeping black current slamming him sideways in his harness as gravel rained upon his tiny craft. Fear washed over him as he prayed to his maker, begging for the ship’s acrylic seals to maintain their integrity beneath the weight of the ocean’s depths. He recalled the words of wisdom offered by U.S. Navy Lt. Donald Walsh during a lecture when he initially began training as a submersible pilot. The first man ever to venture into the Mariana Trench had a rather simple philosophy regarding the dangers of the depths—“if you’re afraid it’s a good sign, it means you’re still alive.”
And then he was through, his craft flying through the crystal clear bottom waters as if he had entered the eye of a hurricane.
Jonas adjusted his night vision glasses, awestruck by the view. Below was a petrified forest of black smokers—towering chimneys of hardened mineral deposits, their open vents spewing thick brownish black clouds of superheated mineralized water into the abyss. As he drew closer to the sea floor he could make out acres and acres of tubeworms, their stalks ghostly-white, their tips blood-red in his sub’s heavenly light. There were thousands of giant albino clams lying around the vents, along with countless crustaceans, albino lobsters and crabs, all glowing in the darkness of the abyss, all completely blind.
Life. The amount and variety within the trenches had shocked scientists, who had incorrectly theorized that no life form could exist on the planet without sunlight. Jonas felt awed at being in the Challenger Deep. In the most desolate location on the planet, nature had found a way to allow life to not only exist, but to thrive.
