The MEG

by Steve Alten

  Captain Heitman’s skin tingled. “How, Paul? How are you going to prove it?”

  Paul flashed his father’s smile. “Lucas, old pal, you and I are going to coax it up.”

  4

  Aboard the DSV-4: Sea Cliff

  THE 58,000 POUND BEHEMOTH sank slowly away from its detached harnesses and out of the dive team’s view, trailing streams of air bubbles. The fiberglass hull, fashioned over the four-inch-thick titanium crew sphere, was essentially a chassis, designed to secure the silver-zinc batteries that powered the electrical and life-support systems, as well as the two hydraulic units that drove its propeller. Mounted outside the hull were television and still cameras, external lights, short-range sonars, two 7-function hydraulically operated manipulator arms, a collection basket that could hold up to 450 pounds, and a “super-sucker” device used for collecting samples.

  Ballast tanks, set in pairs forward and midship, prevented the submersible from plunging to the bottom like an anchor. Should the vehicle pitch in the currents, the pilot could employ the sub’s Battelle trim system—sintered tungsten carbide balls in a hydraulic fluid, moved along stainless steel coils at either end of the sub.

  Steel plates were fastened along the bottom of the craft. When it was time to ascend, the pilot simply jettisoned the six tons of ballast, the change in buoyancy launching the DSV to the surface.

  Limited to an hour’s forward velocity of 2.5 knots, restricted to controlled descents and ascents, the Sea Cliff was essentially a deep-diving mechanical turtle, its three passengers sealed within its watertight titanium shell.

  *

  Of the three teams of scientists assigned to the mission, Jonas enjoyed the company of Richard Prestis and Mike Shaffer the most. Unlike the other stuffed-shirt professors, these two middle-aged geologists had a boyish comic side to them, especially at chow time when Prestis would often attempt to steal his friend’s food, causing Shaffer to retaliate with a “titty twister.”

  The interior of the titanium capsule was far too small for goofing around—the equivalent of placing three grown men inside an empty Jacuzzi encased by a five foot curved ceiling of equipment. The three 4.3 inch portholes did little to relieve the sensation of claustrophobia lurking a wandering thought away, forcing both scientists to balance their cognitive responsibilities with their intake of Valium.

  Jonas had no such luxury, and could ill-afford a lapse in concentration, especially today.

  In a sense, piloting a DSV was similar to the dangers of driving a truck solo cross country; fatigue was the result of the hypnotic effect of long journeys on monotonous interstate roads. Operating an eighteen wheeler at night was ten times more dangerous than during daylight hours. The mind wandered, impairing decision-making and slowing the driver’s reaction time.

  Of course, a truck driver could always pull over at a rest stop to stretch his legs, even grab a few hours of sleep. In the DSV it was always night, at least after the first thousand feet.

  Three dives in eight days…

  Fifty-one hours of piloting in just under 190 hours.

  Gazing out the forward viewport above Mike Shaffer’s shoulder, Jonas watched the blue void deepen to violet as the Sea Cliff slipped below eight hundred feet, sinking beyond the shallows of the mesopelagic region. 400 feet later, the depths officially extinguished the last gray curtain of sunlight, casting them into the mid-region’s velvety darkness.

  The journey had officially begun.

  Approaching the first quarter mile …one of twenty-four quarter miles that leads down to the warm layer. Five hours down, three to five hours collecting samples, then another four back to the surface, maybe less if I push it. The sea will be even rougher by tomorrow morning with that damn typhoon right on our ass. The highlight of the day will be watching Danielson bent over the rail.

  Shifting his weight within the tight confines, careful not to kick the dozing Dr. Prestis, Jonas looked down at the viewport between his feet—a grapefruit-size window revealing only blackness.

  As he watched, the dark void suddenly came alive with thousands of twinkling lights.

  The Sea Cliff had transported them into another universe—a mid-water region known as the bathypelagic, home to the largest ecosystem on the planet. Encompassing upwards of ten million species, the life forms inhabiting this “twilight zone” had adapted to an eternity of living in darkness by evolving large, bulbous eyes that could pick up slivers of light …and by creating their own light.

  Bioluminescence in living organisms was generated through a chemical reaction, in this case a light-producing luciferin and its catalyst, called luciferase. Fueled by the release of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), the luciferase caused the luciferin to oxidize, creating a bioluminescent light. Jonas was familiar with these light-emitting photophore organs, having dissected a Vampire Squid in the navy’s lab.

  The deeper they descended, the more curious the fish became. Hatchet fish bashed their fanged jowls against the thick glass in alternating swarms, attempting to reach the twinkling lights of the control panels. For several minutes an anglerfish escorted the starboard viewport, its illuminated rod fin casting an eerie yet enticing reflection back at the hitchhiker, who was unknowingly snapping at itself.

  Finding himself becoming mesmerized, Jonas looked away, focusing his attention on his gauges. The sea temperature had dropped to a bone-chilling 51-degrees Fahrenheit, the water pressure increasing beyond 1,935 psi.

  Closing his eyes so as not to cheat, he attempted to calculate their depth, a mental exercise designed to keep his mind sharp. Water pressure increases at a rate of 14.7 pounds per square inch for every 33-feet of depth. Dividing 1,935 pounds per square inch by…

  The sudden sensation of vertigo nearly tossed him from his cushioned bench. Quickly reopening his eyes, he glanced around the sphere.

  Richard Prestis was still snoozing on his left, curled under a blanket in a forced fetal position.

  Michael Shaffer was staring at him on his right, the geologist’s eyes as wide as the Hatchet fish’s, his white-knuckled hand clutching a frayed paperback book. “Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay. Right as rain.”

  “Good. Then maybe you ought to strap in…you know, your harness?” He pointed.

  “Harness? Yeah. Good idea.” Retrieving the two straps, he attempted to insert one end into the other, only his hands were trembling far too much to accomplish the task.

  Shaffer waited patiently, while on the inside his pulse raced. The scientist glanced up at the depth gauge as its orange LED numbers flickered past 7,100 feet. Barely a quarter of the way down and Taylor’s already losing it. Better lighten the mood …ease his mind, at least what’s left of it.

  “Hey, Jonas, did I ever tell you about the best toast of the night contest? It was won by a fine Irish lad, John O’Reilly, who hoisted his beer and said, ‘Here’s to spending the rest of me life …between the sumptuous legs of me big breasted wife!’ When John returned home that night, drunk as a skunk, his wife demanded to know what the prize was for. ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘I won the prize for the best toast of the night. Here’s to spending the rest of me life, sitting in church beside me beautiful wife.’

  “Well, the next day Mary ran into one of John’s drinking buddies. Staring at her massive boobs, the man said, ‘So Mary, did ye hear John won the prize the other night at the pub with a toast about you?’ ‘Aye, he told me,’ Mary said, ‘and I was a bit surprised myself. You know, he’s only been there twice in the last four years. Once he fell asleep, and the last time I had to pull him by the ears just to make him come.’ ”

  Jonas smiled. “It’s a long ride. I hope you saved your ‘A’ material for the Devil’s Purgatory.”

  “Now there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Who came up with that name for this stretch of trench?”

  “I’m told it originated from one of the scientists aboard the H.M.S. Challenger. According to his journal entry, it was in this area that they ne
tted some of the biggest fossilized shark teeth of the entire voyage, including a few that dated back less than ten thousand years.”

  “How big were the teeth?”

  “Six to seven inches, the edges all serrated. Like a steak knife.”

  “What kind of—”

  “Megalodon. A prehistoric relative of the Great White shark. If you figure an inch of tooth equals ten feet of shark …well, you get the idea.”

  “That’s a big-ass shark.”

  “Here’s the real scary part: if the teeth were less than ten thousand years old, then that meant some of these sharks had survived the last Ice Age by going deep to inhabit the warm layer heated by the volcanic vents. Lots of heat along the bottom. The hot zone. As in hell.”

  “As in devil, I get it. But the term purgatory makes it sound as if the sharks had been stuck down there.”

  Jonas pointed to the temperature gauge, the ocean now registering an icy 42-degrees. “Seventy degree temperatures along the bottom, separated from sun and shallows by six miles of cold. If you lived in an oasis with plenty of food, would you risk crossing the desert to reach another oasis you had no clue even existed?”

  Shaffer smiled. “Only if it was Vegas. I’m a bit of a shark myself. Card shark. Plus I love stalking the ladies. Grrowl.”

  *

  Aboard the Tallman

  17 miles north-northeast of Guam

  Lucas Heitman unfurled the bathymetric map across the fluorescent table top. “We’re here, about fifteen miles northeast of Guam. Your monster’s about a half mile ahead of us, cruising in 33,000 feet of water at a steady five knots. We’re pinging at 16 kHz, which is low enough to maintain a reading but high enough not to piss it off—at this range.”

  “What if I want to tag him?”

  “Tag him?”

  “Him. Her. It. All I know is that it was sheer luck detecting this shark. I don’t want to risk losing it because of some damn typhoon. Therefore we need to tag it.”

  “Okay, it’s time for a reality check: these fifteen-foot seas from that damn typhoon? By tonight they’ll become small mountains. If we don’t head south soon we’ll be caught in its eye, and that’s the last thing we want, trust me. Next reality check: your monster won’t abandon the warmth beneath the hydrothermal plume. That’s a major problem, Paul. The plume is like a raging river of minerals. It will tear the transmitter dart’s assembly from any launch platform you send down there, eliminating any possibility of tagging your shark.”

  “Okay, Lucas, so maybe it won’t abandon the warm layer for good, but I bet we could lure it up for a quick shot. Rig the Sea Bat-II with the transmitter gun and the remains of the tuna we netted yesterday morning. We bring the Meg up with Sea Bat-I, then lure it in real close to Sea Bat-II and blam—right in the mouth!”

  The intensity in Paul’s eyes bordered on manic.

  Lucas stared at his friend. “Shoot it in the mouth? Dude, what are we doing? We’re messing with a shark that’s the size of the Tallman’s beam. What happens if we lure it away from its habitat and it surfaces? What’s to stop it from following the ROV straight up into the shallows?”

  “Can you imagine those headlines? It’d be bigger than the Alvin discovering the Titanic.”

  “Paul, be serious.”

  “I am being serious. And if you had any idea how difficult it’s been to convince my father to keep this little venture of ours going, then you’d be serious about this too. Decent paying jobs outside of inspecting oil pipelines are few and far between, and most of them are going to the more established boats. We need something big like this to put Tallman on the map.”

  “All I’m asking is that you think this through. You bring this monster up from the depths, pal, and you own it.”

  “Don’t tease me.”

  “I’m talking about liabilities, Paul.”

  “First we tag it, then we figure out the next step. Fair enough?”

  “Fine. You have until six tonight to play tag, then we’re heading south.”

  “Make it eight.”

  “Paul, ever see the movie, The Poseidon Adventure?”

  “Okay, okay, six o’clock. Just have both Sea Bats rigged and ready to launch within the hour.”

  5

  Mariana Trench

  THE MARIANA TRENCH was birthed along the subduction zone where the massive Pacific Plate descends under the leading edge of the Eurasian Plate. For billions of years, hydrothermal vent fields have been delivering super-heated 700-degree Fahrenheit water into isolated habitats within the 1,550-mile-long, forty-mile-wide gorge. Laden with minerals, the volcanic discharge from these “black smokers” has coalesced about a mile off the bottom, forming a ceiling of soot which effectively insulates and seals off the frigid waters of the abyss. More than sixty feet thick, this hydrothermal plume is further stabilized by the steep walls of the trench’s submarine canyon, creating a temperate zone in an unexplored realm located at the bottom of the western Pacific Ocean.

  Prior to 1977, scientists were convinced life could not exist in the depths without sunlight. Once they actually investigated their claims aboard the Alvin submersible, they were shocked to find a vast food chain, all originating from tube worms—eight-to-ten-foot-long invertebrates that seemed to be feeding off the hydrothermal vents. In fact, the Riftia pachyptila actually existed on the bacteria living inside their own bright red nutritional organs. In a symbiotic relationship, the tube worms’ bacteria were feeding off the toxic chemicals spewed into the sea by the hydrothermal vents—a process that became known as chemosynthesis.

  In the depths of the Mariana Trench, giant albino crabs and shrimp fed off the tube worms; small fish fed off the crabs and shrimp, and larger fish fed off the smaller fish. Feeding off the larger fish were an exotic array of sea creatures, both modern and prehistoric, that had existed in this isolated temperate zone for hundreds of millions of years. While there were no whales or sea elephants in the Mariana Trench, there was still plenty of prey, all stemming from an ecosystem that flourished seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

  At the top of this food chain was Carcharodon megalodon.

  *

  The albino shark moved slowly through the pitch-dark canyon. At forty-eight feet and twenty-seven tons, the juvenile female Megalodon was already equal to her adult male counterparts—all of whom continued to avoid a confrontation, at least until her first fertility cycle.

  Warm water streamed into her slack-jawed mouth, held open in a cruel, jagged smile. Just visible above the lower gum line were twenty-two razor-sharp teeth she used for gripping prey. The upper jaw held twenty-four—far larger, wider weapons designed by nature to puncture bone, sinew and blubber. Behind these front rows of teeth were four or five additional rows, folded back into the gum line like a conveyor belt. Composed of calcified cartilage, these serrated teeth—three to six inches long—were set within a ten-foot jaw that, instead of being fused to the skull, hung loosely beneath the brain case. This adaptation enabled the upper jaw to actually push forward and hyperextend in a gargantuan bite, wide enough to engulf a mini-van from the back end all the way up to the front windshield.

  For most of the last thirty million years, Megalodon had dominated every ocean, feeding on the high-fat, high-energy yielding content of whales. Everything had changed two million years ago with the arrival of the last Ice Age. Warm water currents had been cut off, creating land bridges which altered whale migration patterns. While these factors did not significantly affect the Megalodon population, the rise of another species caused the giant sharks’ numbers to plummet.

  Orca.

  Hunting in pods of thirty to fifty individuals, the Killer Whales decimated Meg nurseries. Within the span of a hundred thousand years, very few of Mother Nature’s apex predators remained.

  It would be the nurseries located along the coastline of the Mariana Island chain that prevented the species from going extinct. Driven from the shallows of the archipelago by Orca, the survivi
ng Meg pups went deep, escaping the mammals and, in the process, discovering a warm water habitat in the deepest canyon on the planet.

  *

  The juvenile female continued on her southwesterly course, navigating around skyscraper-tall black smokers on a swiftly moving current that allowed her to expend little effort. Although there was no visible light in the trench, the Meg could still see. Adaptation and evolution equipped the shark’s eyes with a reflective layer behind the retina that offered wisps of nocturnal vision. Normally black, the Megalodon of the Mariana Trench had developed blue-gray eyes, a common trait found among albinos. The loss of the species’ lead-gray dorsal pigment had occurred over eons—an adaptation to an existence quarantined in perpetual darkness.

  The female glided effortlessly through the tropical void, her massive torpedo-shaped body undulating in slow snake-like movements. As her flank muscles contracted, the Megalodon’s caudal fin and aft portion pulled in a powerful rhythmic motion, propelling the shark forward. The immense half-moon shaped tail provided maximum thrust with minimal drag, while the fin’s caudal notch, located in the upper lobe, further streamlined the water flow.

  Stabilizing the Megalodon’s forward thrust were her broad pectoral fins, which provided lift and balance like the wings of a passenger airliner. Her dorsal fin rose atop her back like a six-foot sail, acting as a rudder. A smaller pair of pelvic fins, a second dorsal, and a tiny anal fin rounded out the complement, everything synchronized and perfected over 400 million years of evolution.

  The female inhaled her environment through two grapefruit-size directional nostrils, her brain processing an elixir of chemicals and excretions as traceable as smoke in a kitchen.

  Ahead, moving through the canyon as one, were thousands of giant cuttlefish.

  While the Meg had been tracking the school for weeks, there had been no urgency to feed. Feeding required hunting and hunting expended energy. With her core temperature approximating that of her environment, the huntress could go weeks without feeding—provided she remained in the balmy depths in a non-predatory state.