Natural Selection

by Dave Freedman

  “That’s a fantastic idea, Phil.”

  “Yeah, you like it?”

  “I love it. I’ll still write up my own stuff, but for the others, it could be very helpful.”

  Phil chuckled to himself. Of course Jason would still write up his own stuff.

  Jason thought there could be other positives. The Species Council was a demanding twelve-person committee with very strict procedural requirements that tended to favor analyses written by multiple scientists. Formalizing Craig’s findings on GDV-4, Lisa’s on plankton, and Darryl and Monique’s on migratory habits could be extremely useful in the credibility department. Also, any excuse to have Phil deal directly with the others on a daily basis could have more . . . touchy-feely benefits as well. If his efforts actually made Darryl and Craig’s lives easier, maybe they’d finally stop giving him such a hard time.

  “Let’s discuss this with the others, but I think it’s a great idea.”

  Phil Martino smiled like an encouraged child. “Excellent.”

  Suddenly Darryl yelled from farther down the dock. “Hey, Jason! Are these your buds?!”

  Jason turned as a towering two-hundred-foot research behemoth cum yacht entered the marina. Sid Klepper and Ross Drummond had just arrived.

  “HEY, GUYS!” Leading the others, Jason bounded up the stairs of the massive boat toward two men waiting enthusiastically at the top.

  “Hey, Jason!”

  “Great to see ya, buddy!”

  Klepper and Drummond smacked him hard on the back, lost chums reuniting. As Lisa arrived, she smiled at the genuine camaraderie. Drummond and Klepper were a happy pair, with sizable bellies, freewheeling demeanors, and the clothes to match. Klepper wore baggy blue sweats, a V-neck sweatshirt with a gold chain, and fluffy moccasins. Drummond had on a faded long-sleeved T-shirt, jungle-green camouflage pants, and $1.99 flip-flops. Millionaire hippies. After intros to Lisa, Darryl, and Phil, Ross got down to business. “We still going to those same coordinates, Jason?”

  “Yep.”

  Ross walked toward the controls. “Be there in twenty minutes.”

  “So someone has a submersible license?” Sid Klepper asked.

  Darryl raised his hand. “Me.”

  Sid looked him up and down. “Big dude. You’re really gonna have to squeeze in.”

  “Yeah.” Darryl glanced down at his own crotch. “I’m used to that.”

  Everyone laughed, and Lisa shook her head. Then Darryl’s cell started ringing. “Excuse me. Must be one of my groupies.” He fumbled to remove the little device from his pocket.

  “Come on, Darryl, pick up.”

  The Expedition very slowly moved north, on autopilot, as Craig eyed what looked like a desktop computer monitor but was actually a sonar analysis station set up on the back wall. On-screen was an interactive computerized map of the twisting coastline: land colored white, and ocean colored blue. In the middle of the blue was a blinking black dot the size of a pencil head that Summers had been staring at for ten minutes. Standing behind him with a cell phone to her ear, Monique was staring at the dot too, wondering where the hell her husband was. “Come on, Darryl, pick u—”

  “What up, Wife?”

  “Darryl, we found the rays immediately, and we’re trailing them. Can I talk to Jason?”

  “Hold on.”

  Monique drummed her fingers. She couldn’t believe how quickly it had happened. She and Craig had dropped buoys over a wide swath of ocean, hooked up the station, tuned it to the appropriate UHF signal, and crossed their fingers. Almost immediately, the blinking black dot had appeared. Its source was just two miles offshore.

  “Still moving north, Monique?” This was Jason’s voice.

  She looked forward as they approached a yellow triangular buoy bobbing in the sea. “Yeah, Jason, slowly but surely.”

  “Any chance you’ll actually see one?”

  “Think we’ll see one, Craig?”

  Summers shook his head. “No way. They’re nearly three miles down.”

  “Way too deep, Jason.”

  “Stay on it. Maybe they’ll go into shallower waters.”

  She hung up, and the blinking black dot continued up the coast.

  SID KLEPPER turned to Darryl. “Want to see my equipment now?”

  The toothy grin flashed. “If it can measure up, bro.”

  “Come on.” In his sweats and fluffy moccasins, Klepper led them along the giant deck, past half a dozen Jet Skis and a massive gray crane, stopping at a tiny yellow sub perched on rudders. The sub was the length of a car but much thinner, almost like a hot dog, the words DEEP DIVER printed on its side. Klepper gently touched it.

  “Three of you will go down on this, two inside the sub, one outside it, the latter wearing special equipment and standing on that little deck. You see it?” The deck on the rear of the sub looked like the world’s tiniest apartment terrace, a bright red platform with a waist-high railing. “We’ll lower you to the bottom with the crane so you won’t use the sub’s internal engines until you get there. Darryl, as big as you are, whoever goes down with you inside should be physically small, but I’ll let you guys decide that. Jason, I assume you’ll be the one in the suit?” The “suit” referred to the atmospheric diving suit, a highly specialized piece of equipment with a $2 million price tag.

  Eyeing the little red deck, Jason swallowed nervously. “We’ll be going, what, more than a third of a mile down?”

  Watching him, Lisa suddenly felt bad for Jason, clearly scared as hell, probably like some people felt before getting on an airplane, except much worse. She hardly blamed him. The prospect of being alone in a pressure-filled world that could crush you to death in a millisecond if anything went wrong would make anyone nervous. His eyes were wider than normal, and he kept swallowing. It was the first time Lisa had actually seen Jason Aldridge scared. Strangely, she liked it. It made him less of a machine, more human, even attractive. Little things like this had been building for months, and despite her better judgment, Lisa Barton was becoming . . . interested in Jason. She wished he could relax, though. You’ll be fine, she thought, you’ll be fine.

  “You’ll be fine,” Sid said. “The suit connects directly to the sub’s oxygen supply, and you’ll have enough for four full hours.” He smacked Jason on the back. “So chill out. Darryl, I need to show you a few particulars with the sub. Phil, you wanna come?”

  The three men walked off, and Lisa leaned into Jason and whispered, “You will be fine.”

  He nodded, trying to look cool. “I know.”

  “You want me to go down in the sub?”

  He’d just figured Phil would go. “You’d do that?”

  “Actually, I think it could be fun.”

  Oh. Now he wasn’t sure why she wanted to go.

  “Hey, Jason!”

  They turned to Ross Drummond, waving at them from the outdoor flying bridge. “Come over here and talk to me, brother!”

  They walked over. “What’s going on, Ross?”

  “Ah, not a thing. How about you? Seeing anybody these days?”

  “Well . . . you know I have serious intimacy issues, right, Ross?”

  They all chuckled as Ross noticed that Lisa’s wedding finger was ringless. Was something going on with these two?

  “Who else is going down in the sub, Jason?” Sid had just returned with Darryl and Phil.

  “Lisa.”

  “What?” Phil looked wounded by this. “But I wanted to go.”

  Sid shrugged unapologetically. “Then lose the belly, pal.”

  Jason leaned in and whispered, “Lisa’s more appropriate here, Phil.” He paused. “They’ll be safe, Sid?”

  “Safe as a church. Ross and I have personally used this thing thirty times without a problem.”

  Jason nodded and Lisa glanced at him sweetly. Was he concerned for her safety? Then the boat stopped, and Ross quickly walked toward them. “Enough conversation. We’re here.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “YEA
H, PHIL. That could actually be helpful.”

  Phil smiled. He’d just explained his idea of recording everyone’s findings in the laptop to Darryl, and to his delight, his crewmate liked it.

  “Great. You think Craig and Monique will feel the same way?”

  “Definitely. You’re helping them out, brother. You’re helping us all out.”

  “Why don’t you take this down in the sub, then?” He handed Darryl a mini–tape recorder. “So we’ll have a record if you see anything worthwhile.”

  “How do I look?”

  They turned. It was Jason, wearing the atmospheric suit except for the helmet.

  Darryl looked him up and down. “Like Neil Armstrong.”

  Phil snickered. “Or maybe the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

  The suit indeed looked like something an astronaut would wear. White, with big bubble-shaped body parts. But instead of puffy fibers, it was constructed of a hard magnesium alloy that made it nearly impossible to walk in.

  His junky flip-flops slapping the deck, Ross approached Jason from behind. “Before we get going, I’m just gonna check there aren’t any holes or cracks in this thing.” This wasn’t a joke. At one third of a mile, roughly two thousand feet, a hole the size of a pinprick in the suit would mean certain death. Ross quickly inspected every bulge and seam. “Everything looks fine. Oh, but . . .” He checked the casing around the heels. “Yep, fine.” Then he saw Jason’s face. The guy looked terrified. “Loosen up. Your friends will be with you every step of the way, and Darryl knows what he’s doing. There won’t be any problems, I promise.”

  “Can anything go wrong with the tube?” Lisa asked.

  Ross turned to her. The tube was the size of a vacuum cleaner’s and screwed into the back of the suit’s neck. “No. The tube’s reinforced with magnesium alloy and steel. It’s been crush-tested to thirty thousand feet. It can’t get tangled; it can’t implode; it can’t explode, either. A shark could bite down on it without making a dent.” He got in Jason’s face. “You’ll be fine. Try to relax and have a good trip down.”

  Jason nodded tightly. “Let’s do this before I chicken out.”

  Seconds later, he stood on the red platform holding a helmet as Ross screwed a tube into his back.

  “How you two doing in here?”

  Crammed into a sub the size of a phone booth, Darryl and Lisa looked up as Sid Klepper dropped in two men’s ski jackets. “There’s no heat in this thing and it can get down to thirty-five degrees on the ocean floor. Sorry they’re so big, Lisa, but Ross and I love fried food and hate exercise. I’d put them on now.”

  They did, and Lisa was indeed swimming in hers.

  “Both of you OK?”

  They nodded.

  “All right, have a good trip.” Sid closed the containment door, sealing them in like sardines.

  “Jason, I’m gonna lift the sub now.” Ross walked over to the crane’s controls. “So grab ahold of the railing.”

  Jason clutched the red terrace’s guardrail as best as he could with his clunky hands.

  “Got a good grip?”

  Jason nodded.

  “OK, here we go. . . .” Ross flipped a switch and the crane’s electric motor raised the sub straight up into the air, carried it twenty feet away from the boat, then slowly lowered it into the ocean.

  Inside, Lisa smiled as sloshing blue seas appeared in front of a viewing pane the size of a big TV. Darryl ignored the view. At the controls, he began fiddling with switches and knobs.

  Then a voice sounded from the ceiling. “Darryl, everything OK?”

  He flicked a switch. “Fine, Ross. All systems go.”

  “Lisa, you too?”

  “Fine, Ross, thanks.” She eyed a monochrome monitor of Jason in the back of the sub, fully submerged now in the sun-dappled seas.

  “Jason, everything OK?” Ross asked.

  From the back platform he looked up at a watery sun. “Yeah, Ross, fine.”

  “OK, all of you, listen up. A cable will take you all the way to the bottom then disengage. Once you get down there, you’ll have a fully active sub. And Jason, you’ll be able to walk around as much as you want. That’s it. Any questions or problems?”

  No one said anything. Inside the sub and out, they were ready to go.

  “All right, I’m gonna cut out. Have a safe trip, guys.”

  The sub lurched slightly as a big steel cable began turning. Then Darryl Hollis, Jason Aldridge, and Lisa Barton descended toward the darkness.

  CHAPTER 27

  BUBBLES STREAMING past his helmet, Jason eyed the departing boat’s underside. His gaze leveled, and he took in the sun-dappled world surrounding them. The water was bright blue, almost turquoise. He didn’t feel nervous anymore. He felt fine, even relaxed. The only sound was from his own machine-assisted breathing. The sea was like a great vacuum, quiet, peaceful, and immense. He stared into its blueness as they descended thirty feet, then fifty, then seventy. Jason had spent a large part of his life in the water, but the ocean still awed him. Inside his helmet, he thought of how foolish the three of them had to look, invading the gargantuan silent world with the aid of their tiny man-made contraptions. As a scientist, Jason had tremendous respect for man’s inventions, but there was something about the vastness of the sea that made them seem puny. He often wondered if astronauts felt similarly in space. He’d never be an astronaut, of course, never look down at the earth from a distant, cold, faraway place, but he’d read the accounts of those who had and imagined himself being there. It was strange, but at the moment, he felt like he actually was. The sunlight was disappearing. The water was darkening.

  At the three-hundred-foot mark, he descended toward a few thousand cod, their silver bodies swimming effortlessly. He whirred down and past them. Looking beyond his hard white boots, he saw that what had been blue only moments ago was now a chasm of darkness. His gaze leveled. The water in the immediate vicinity was now a grayish shade, similar to early evening on land. He turned back up to the cod, but they were already gone, silently dissolving. He noticed the cable, their lifeline, and remembered the boat at the surface. It, too, was only a memory now.

  Inside the sub, Darryl glanced at a depth gauge as they passed five hundred feet. “Keep the lights off, Lisa?”

  “Yes.”

  Darryl flicked a switch. “Keep the lights off, Jason?”

  “Definitely.”

  None of them had actually been this deep before. They wanted to see the darkness, to feel it, to experience it, a silent, watery darkness that didn’t exist anywhere else on the planet.

  They passed seven hundred feet then eight. And then, very gradually, it became totally black.

  Alone on the platform, Jason’s eyes were wide open but saw nothing.

  “Passing one thousand feet,” Darryl’s calm voice said inside his helmet.

  Jason enjoyed the mystery of being here. Not long ago, the basic laws of marine biology had said no marine life at all existed in the zone they’d just entered. But as everyone now knew, those “laws” had never been laws at all but fundamentally flawed beliefs. Who were we kidding? We still don’t know anything about life down here. Staring into the pitch darkness, Jason thought of all the species that had only recently been discovered—the red shrimp, gelatinous squid, black fishes, and so many others. But what about those that hadn’t been discovered, that were still unknown? Were any of them close?

  They passed 1,200 feet then 1,500.

  Then the lights came on. Not from the sub but from fish, several thousand light-emitting jellyfish, each a few inches long and shaped like an ice-cream cone. The jellies suddenly surrounded Jason, and he just watched them, lit up in blues, reds, and whites, a platoon of slowly rising champagne corks, climbing straight up into the darkness. Whirring down and past them, he twisted his neck, marveling as their pulsing forms ascended. And then they were gone, fading into the abyss in seconds. It became pure black again.

  Jason looked around. “If you guys are ready, I w
ouldn’t mind having my vision back.”

  “And then there was light,” the voice in his helmet said calmly.

  Like a spaceship, several dozen headlights illuminated from all angles, and the water became bright blue again. Jason looked around anew. The light had a range of just a few hundred feet. Beyond were vast walls of blackness in every direction.

  Darryl focused on a depth gauge. “Passing eighteen hundred feet. Should be touching down soon.”

  They continued descending, until, two and a half minutes later, at a depth of exactly 2,102 feet, the sub lurched up and they landed on the ocean floor.

  JASON SUDDENLY jerked to the left. What was that?

  Inside the sub, Lisa jolted toward the same spot. “Did you see that, Darryl?”

  “No.”

  She flicked a switch. “Jason, did you see that?”

  “Not well enough to make it out.” But he knew where it was, hiding in the darkness just beyond the range of the lights. And then it returned, swimming out of a black wall. A rattail fish, long and snakelike. Not what they’d come for, but it was good to confirm that life was actually here.

  Lisa and Darryl watched as the foot-long fish swam right up to their window. It peered in curiously, looking right at Darryl. Lisa smiled. “I think he wants a date, Darryl.”

  Darryl smirked. “He’s not the only one who wants one of those, is he, Soccer Mom?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Darryl smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m not gonna tell.” He flipped a switch. “So, Mr. Aldridge, want to try out your sea legs?”

  Jason turned on the platform. Looking very much like Neil Armstrong indeed, he wished he had a waterproofed American flag. “This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  “Go get ‘em, Neil!” Darryl yelled happily inside his helmet.

  Lisa watched him on the monitor. Be careful, she thought.

  As if testing whether the sand could actually support his weight, Jason tentatively put one foot down. Then the other. He just stood for a moment, literally getting grounded. Then, for the first time in his life, Jason Aldridge walked on the seafloor. Boots clanking, the oxygen tube growing longer, he ambled to the front of the sub and peered in.