Sea Station Umbra Page 6

  “Go! Go! Go!” yelled the crewman, curling his arm around us from the rear. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. Leaving my side the Chief yelled, “Aw shiiiiit,” as he disappeared into the pitch-blackness of the waves.

  I was right behind him and screamed something too but can’t remember what. Before I could close my mouth a wave filled it with salt water then tried to invade my nose. This is not supposed to happen I thought. That one-second free fall into the cold dark Pacific Ocean must have taken years from my life. I vowed never to do that again.

  When I finally popped to the surface, over the receding helicopter’s flutter I heard Briscoe screaming from some distance away. “Are you okay, Marker?” I also heard a chill in his voice that reminded me how cold I was.

  “Fine, Chief, over here,” I yelled hoping he could hear me. Then there was silence except for the clapping waves topping out over me. Worried looking around I saw nothing but darkness and a sky full of sparkling stars with not even a glimmer of moonlight to help my vision.

  I flinched, startled at the nearby voice from the waves:

  “Got your beacon on?”

  “Yes I do but how the hell did you find me, Chief?”

  “I just followed your whimpers when the waves crested over you. Simple.”

  “I don’t whimper,” I argued.

  “Well, how did I find you then? Sonar?”

  I had to laugh at his strange logic then he began to laugh too. Suddenly the surrealism surrounding us hit me: we were two humans laughing, floating helplessly at sea, hundreds of miles from the closest shore. Two lost rudderless ships meeting in the dark. This was definitely not our normal mode of diving.

  “Hey did you bring any shark repellant?” I asked fending off another wave.

  Even through the darkness, I felt his face flush.

  “No. That wasn’t on my checklist. Did you?”

  “No but maybe they’re sleeping. They won’t bother us.”

  “Right and I have some swampland in Florida I’ll sell you too.”

  I can’t tell what it was maybe fear or brainless camaraderie but we laughed together for what seemed like hours waiting for our ride to show up. Neither of us had ever heard of a BenthiCraft mini-sub so we didn’t know what to expect other than a small sub with three seats: one for the pilot, one for me and one for him.

  Then something appeared. A dim light from below illuminated the waves with an eerie blue cast. Gradually a huge lighted bubble pierced the waves like a UFO rising from the depths. As it surfaced not far from us I searched for a hatch and noticed a hatch cover, a sizable drain-plug-like object, a cork so to speak seated in a large hole at the top of its dome. Attached to it was a reinforced curved arm reaching down with some form of lifting hinge at the hull. The whole bubble couldn’t have been more than eight feet in diameter and the hatch looked only a few feet across.

  “See that, Chief?” I asked pointing forward trying to stay upright in the waves. “There’s a hatch on top. Think you can fit through that with all the donuts you’ve eaten?”

  “Hey easy, son. Don’t make me think about donuts right now I might throw up.”

  As I watched, the hatch cover lifted mechanically and slowly pivoted back with the arm leaving a gaping hole for our entry in the thick dome.

  “Yeah I can fit through that. Let’s go, Marker,” Briscoe said swimming toward the light struggling against the waves.

  “Right behind you, Chief,” I called out.

  Suddenly a motion in the sub, something standing from a seat preceded a body shape rising through the hatch. Expecting a male crewman, I heard a female voice greet us.

  “Come on fellas can’t wait all night. We’ve got a hot date down below.”

  As I bobbed paddling toward the craft, I had to look twice; I thought I was seeing Charlize Theron standing there smiling, a mirage of loveliness rocking with the waves motioning us toward her like a mermaid from the sea.

  “See her there?” I asked rubbing water from my eyes trying to clear them.

  “No way. They wouldn’t do that. Would they?” he said coughing almost choking.

  “Looks like they did. Things just got more interesting.”

  “Okay guys cut the small talk. Somebody climb on the hull and give your hand before I get sick. Let’s get underway,” ordered the voice.

  I unclipped my kitbag and beacon from my belt pitched them in then slid through the hatch and sat. Seconds later Briscoe threw in his bag and beacon and followed still coughing. Although he claimed he was fit he struggled through the opening then slammed into a seat across the pilot’s from me with a loud grunt, panting and wheezing.

  “Swallowed some saltwater,” he coughed.

  She ducked down and sat between us then forcefully slapped him on the back.

  “Cough it up,” she said. “By the way I’m Lt. JG Susan Williams at your service. Welcome aboard SeaPod 2.”

  Situating himself in his seat the Chief stopped sputtering and stared at her, squinting.

  “Does that mean you have pod bay doors on Discovery One? That’s pretty corny.”

  “Oh yes of course Mr. ---? Sorry I didn’t catch your name but I was told the older one was Briscoe. Is that you?”

  Briscoe had always been sensitive about his age. I knew that from way back when I had once called him an ‘old man’ in jest and he nearly took me down over my comment. His years had given him wisdom and smarts rather than age he told me and I almost agreed.

  “Yes ma’am,” he answered. “But young for my age I assure you. I once was the Navy’s best diver.”

  “Well as I was saying our architect, Chief Scientist and Station Manager, Dr. David Bowman is quite attached to the allegorical nature of his name and Kubrick’s 2001 if you know of that movie.”

  “Certainly. Who doesn’t know of Hal?” he said.

  “Well, we call her Ivy down there the same as back at HQ in Point Mugu. He tried to change her name to Hal but couldn’t override Ivy. He’s very egocentric. You’ll see.”

  “Oh really?” I said, “I once knew him as a youth and he was my best friend. Of course we were only ten but he seemed like every other normal kid except he was obsessed with sandcastles.”

  “He must have changed then,” she said, “Now he won’t even consider letting anyone else named Dave work in the station. He wants to be the only one. In time, you will learn from him as everyone has that he was a Navy brat and child prodigy. He designed and mentored the construction of a unique undersea missile storage facility for the Navy by the time he was fourteen. After that, his parents put him in Annapolis with a special dispensation at age fifteen. He graduated by seventeen, got his PhD by nineteen, then left the Navy and formed his own company by twenty, designing and building subterranean and submersible structures. Truly, a fast-track wonder. His most recent creation was Discovery One and he’s understandably quite proud of it.”

  Hearing of his good fortune disturbed me. I should have been proud of him but I was jealous; I could have matched his achievements but my parents---.

  “Hatch closing,” she called interrupting my thought.

  Glancing around the cabin, she pulled a lever on the small streamlined control panel the likes of which I had never seen. Sleeker and simpler than the Canyon Glider’s it put the controls of my old mini-sub to shame: a Ferrari style sub compared to my militarized Jeep version.

  Behind my seat, a motor whined as the hatch-cover arm dropped down over us and seated itself into the hatch with a loud clunk causing my ears to pop. Heated air began to wash through the cockpit bringing the first warmth I had felt in hours. What surprised me the most was the air had a ‘new car’ smell. I loved that smell.

  Quickly she reached overhead and twirled the hatch wheel sealing us into the large Plexiglas bubble probably six inches thick and not more than eight feet across sitting on a sturdy yellow motorized propulsion hull. I could hardly wait to see and inspect it in full lighting and marvel at its beauty. Still as I looked around
the interior with its subdued blue-white led lighting it impressed me; it was like a showroom ad: a simple and magnificent machine.

  “Ready to dive?” she asked.

  “Always,” said Briscoe looking behind his seat, “Especially in this chop. Git ‘er down, Lieutenant.”

  I glanced back to see what he was looking at and saw meters, indicator lights and pressure gauges on a large panel. In front of her, small flat screen displays covered the space I expected to be the sub’s dashboard. Digital meters, status icons, and moving bar graphs glowed in sectioned regions filling the panes requesting her attention. As I watched mesmerized by the new science, she touched a few buttons and then propulsion motors rumbled and vibrated the cockpit. Then sounds of water rushing into ballasts roared below us. All familiar sounds I recognized from my sub; at least they weren’t changed by new technology.

  Reaching forward with a gentle twisting pushing motion she moved the joystick and we headed downward.

  “We’re diving at the SeaPod’s maximum speed of three knots,” she said. “The Discovery One currently rests on the floor below us at 985 meters. That puts our ETA roughly twenty-five minutes from now.”

  As we dove, I tried to look out through the bubble but my efforts were futile. All I could see were our distorted reflections like those from a fun-house mirror.

  “Does this have forward floods?” I asked.

  “Of course Mr. Cross but they won’t activate until we’re ten meters down. Can’t see them from the surface then. Remember, visual stealth above all else.”

  I had to keep reminding myself at these moments that we didn’t exist so any visual or physical cues to our presence were verboten. My introduction to the extreme secrecy of the black world was slowly sinking in.

  I checked the second hand on my watch expecting the floods to illuminate in six seconds at our three-knot or 1.6 meter-per-second descent rate. We had a huge almost 360-degree view through the bubble but it was a bit disconcerting to see nothing out there but reflections.

  Seven eight nine… ten.

  The submarine environment blazed to life around us. Multi-hued fish wandered up toward us searching for food as we passed through them; plankton, anchovies and other tiny wiggling sea creatures reflected our lights: a moving living fog of existence in otherwise crystal-clear waters.

  “Sure beats our tiny DSV viewports doesn’t it, Marker?” said Briscoe open-mouthed looking around.

  “Uh yeah,” I said. “It’s like a 3D wraparound aquarium. Not at all what I would have expected.”

  Lt. Williams diverted her attention from the controls to our surroundings.

  “Yes, it is beautiful up here. Down where we live, not so much beauty except for a few benthic-zone species trying to thrive in the great pressures of the ocean floor. This is the ocean’s rainforest; we live in its desert.”

  I had never thought of it that way before but she was right. The earth’s more or less constant-temperature oceans varying less than twenty degrees Centigrade from top to bottom could support most forms of sea life but depth rather than temperature was the defining obstacle for life. For example, an ocean’s pressure ranges from around 14.7 PSI at the surface to one hundred times that or 1,472 PSI at a thousand meters down.

  We would be living and working in that. And, figuring an average human body’s surface area of 2,700 square inches at a pressure of 1,472 pounds per square inch, it meant that if we lost protection down there we would be subjected to 1,472 X 2,700 = 3,974,400 pounds, almost four million pounds of pressure, squeezing the life from us. I closed my eyes imagining a squished tube of screaming toothpaste with arms and legs. Not a pretty picture.

  I was accustomed to working in those pressures oftentimes even greater but in a sturdy Abrams Tank of a military submarine rather than the comparatively flimsy but quite sporty SeaPod I was trusting with my life.

  “Hey, Marker,” he said dragging me from my trance. “You’ve missed a lot. Are you asleep over there?”

  I almost was and I was glad he roused me back just in time to see a huge dark bulbous structure looming below us growing larger looking exactly as Greenfield had described. No details were visible but the absence of the surrounding ocean floor gave it away since it was noticeably darker than its background in our floods. And as we moved deeper down past the top of the dome it disappeared against the deep-water environment. Then a small rectangular blue light appeared far away toward the bottom of the shape.

  “There! That’s our docking port,” Lt. Williams said pointing forward.

  We had veered onto a horizontal path approaching the station from the side so I expected to see the outline of something, anything other than a huge darkened mass ahead with a tiny light at its base, and a few specks of moving lights below us.

  “What are those lights down there? They appear to be moving across the floor,” I asked out of curiosity.

  “Oh those are a few of our divers in ADS Exosuits probably resetting our sensor probes. They foul with sea life excrement and silt on a regular basis. Isotope collectors are notoriously temperamental.”

  “Here, let’s listen in,” she said touching another icon on her screen.

  Nothing happened for a few seconds then voices crackled through the speaker behind us.

  “… looking. Alvarado, here it is. It’s the strontium-90 probe. There’s silt caked over it. Looks like it took the fluke-wash from a sperm whale or big fish. Bring that vacuum over here and I’ll get it.”

  “Hey, Norris, didn’t we just clean that sensor a few days ago? Something attractive about it?”

  “Not that I can see but until I get the vacuum I can’t tell. Hurry up move that suit!”

  “Running fast as I can but I’ve got a sticky joint. Got any WD-40?”

  She clicked off the intercom and smiled.

  “Wonderful divers, Alvarado and Norris. They keep us in stitches with their antics.”

  Briscoe alerted by their conversation added, “I love those Exosuits. Used my first one a few months ago. Worked like a charm. At least until I damaged a joint on a coral reef but the techs fixed it right away. Nothing better that an atmospheric diving suit. No decompression, no worries. How are they working out for you guys? Like them?”

  She hesitated before answering.

  “They’re great until you find one empty, defaced and missing its diver. Then they’re just plain spooky.”

  “Your divers all work in teams like those guys?” I asked.

  “Always.”

  Knowing that buddy system diving was usually observed by professional divers I couldn’t help but wonder how a single diver had made out without a partner. I put that on my mental list to check out later.

  “Any new information on that incident, Lieutenant?”

  “No, nothing more but we’ve had some rather eerie banging and scraping on the station’s outer shell in the past few days like someone’s trying to get in, but all personnel were accounted for; they were in the station.”

  Quickly I realized this information was connected to our mission and possibly a clue for us to start working from.

  “How many of the crew heard the noises?” I asked.

  “All of them. The sounds echoed throughout the dome for seconds leaving some very terrified divers and staff including me. In fact the incident brought back the fear of the Davy Jones Locker superstition in some.”

  Silently on Lt. William’s sonar screen a red blinking dot appeared growing larger as we neared the lighted rectangle but seeming no larger than a matchbox through the bubble.

  Being a backseat diver (yes that’s what we called ourselves sometimes) I had to ask, “How big is that port? Looks too small. Does this thing really fit in there?”

  Scoffing she glared at me.

  “Now that truly is a man’s question but yes it does after I push the AutoDock function. Our breadth is twelve feet, our height is nine feet, and the bay is twenty feet wide by twelve feet high. Size does matter in this case. We have plenty o
f room even when our hatch opens inside the bay.”

  Looking at the Chief I asked, “What do you think? Easy peasy docking?”

  “AutoDock huh?” he said. “I’ll take that. But does it work?”

  “Okay, watch,” she said touching a dimmed icon on her panel. As it brightened additional motor whines joined the main propulsion motors sounds. Assuming they were from horizontal and vertical thrusters, I must have been right because we began to slide sideways in the water centering ourselves on the growing matchbox.

  I examined her face checking for any sign of stress, which would suggest something amiss but she stayed relaxed smiling enjoying the ride with us watching the docking port approach.

  All of a sudden from a speaker behind our heads came a voice, a woman’s soft voice, crisp and slightly mechanical.

  “SeaPod 2, you’re on course for a perfect docking into Pod Bay 2. Reduce speed to one-half knot.”

  “That was Ivy over the SeaCom our sea intercom,” Lt. Williams said pulling the joystick slightly. “She functions as our control tower when we near the docking bay.”

  “Does she control our approach remotely?” Briscoe asked.

  “No, that can be too risky with random interference from whales in the area. She just advises us of our approach as an air traffic controller would. For example she just requested we drop our speed to less than a foot per second.”

  “Are we still on AutoDock,” I asked noticing our course drifting downward off dead center.

  “Uh huh, until I cancel after docking.”

  “Then why are we drifting downward off course?” I asked suspecting otherwise.

  She jerked her attention to the sonar display then looked forward and shouted.

  “Holy shit! Something’s wrong. We’re going off course. This can’t be happening!”

  “Pull up! Pull up!” Ivy squawked rattling the intercom speaker with her volume.