Immediately following that final click of the gauge, a loud sucking noise emanated from somewhere outside the craft. After that, comparative silence reigned within the sub. Now the only sound was a combination of the ventilation fan and an augmented but still muffled electronic whir of the propulsion system.
Almost a minute passed without the slightest sensation of movement.
Finally Perry breathed out. “Well,” he said. “What happened?”
“We can’t be airborne for this long,” Suzanne admitted.
Everyone relaxed their death grips and looked out their respective view ports. It was still as dark as pitch.
“What the hell?” Donald questioned. He looked back at his instruments. The sonar monitors were now filled with meaningless electronic noise. He turned them off. He also dialed down the power to the propulsion system, and its whirring stopped. He looked at Suzanne.
“Don’t ask me,” Suzanne said when their eyes met.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on.”
“How come it’s dark outside if we’re on the surface?” Perry asked.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Donald said. He looked back at his instruments. Reaching forward, he put power back to the propulsion system. The whirring noise reappeared but there was no motion. The craft stood absolutely still.
“Somebody tell me what’s going on,” Perry demanded. The euphoria he’d felt a few moments earlier had dissipated. They obviously were not on the surface.
“We don’t know what is happening,” Suzanne admitted.
“There’s no resistance to the propeller,” Donald reported. He turned the propulsion system off. The whirring died away for a second time. Now the only sound was the ventilation fan. “I think we are in air.”
“How can we be in air?” Suzanne said. “It’s totally dark and there is no wave action.”
“But it’s the only explanation for the sonar not working and the lack of resistance to the propeller,” Donald said. “And look. The outside temperature has risen to seventy degrees. We’ve got to be in air.”
“If this is the next life, I’m not ready for it,” Perry said.
“You mean we’re out of the water entirely?” Suzanne still had trouble believing it.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Donald admitted. “But it’s the only way I can explain everything, including the fact that the underwater phone doesn’t work.” Donald next tried the radio and had no luck with that either.
“If we’re sitting on dry land,” Suzanne said, “how come we haven’t tipped over? I mean, this hull is a cylinder. If we were on dry land, we’d surely roll over on our side.”
“You’re right!” Donald admitted. “That I can’t explain.”
Suzanne opened an emergency locker between the two pilot seats and pulled out a flashlight. Turning it on, she directed it out her view port. Pressed up against it on the outside was cream-colored, coarse-grained muck.
“At least we know why we didn’t tip over,” Suzanne said. “We’re sitting in a layer of globigerina ooze.”
“Explain!” Perry said. He’d leaned forward to see for himself.
“Globigerina ooze is the most common sediment on the ocean floor,” Suzanne said. “It’s composed mainly of the carcasses of a type of plankton called foraminifera.”
“How can we be sitting in ocean sediment and be in air?” Perry asked.
“That’s the question,” Donald agreed. “We can’t, at least not in any way that I know of.”
“It’s also impossible for globigerina ooze to be this close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” Suzanne said. “That sediment is found in the middle of the abyssal plains. Nothing makes sense.”
“This is absurd!” Donald snapped. “And I don’t like it at all. Wherever we are, we’re stuck!”
“Could we be completely buried in the ooze?” Perry asked hesitantly. If he was right, he did not want to hear the answer.
“No! Not a chance,” Donald said. “If that were the case there would be more resistance to the propeller, not less.”
For a few minutes no one spoke.
“Is there any chance we could be inside the seamount?” Perry asked, finally breaking the silence.
Donald and Suzanne turned to face him.
“How could we be inside a mountain?” Donald asked angrily.
“Hey, I’m only making a suggestion,” Perry said. “Mark told me this morning he had some radar data that suggested the mountain might contain gas, not molten lava.”
“He never mentioned that to me,” Suzanne said.
“He didn’t mention it to anyone,” Perry said. “He wasn’t sure of the data since it was coming from a shallow study of the hard layer we were trying to drill through. It was an extrapolation, and he only mentioned it to me in passing.”
“What kind of gas?” Suzanne asked while her mind tried to imagine how a submerged volcano could become void of water. Geophysically speaking it seemed impossible, although she knew that on land some volcanoes did collapse in on themselves to form calderas.
“He had no idea,” Perry said. “I guess he thought the most promising candidate was steam held in by the extra-hard layer that was giving us so much trouble.”
“Well, it can’t be steam,” Donald said. “Not at a temperature of almost seventy degrees.”
“What about natural gas?” Perry suggested.
“I can’t imagine,” Suzanne said. “This close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, it’s a geologically young area. There can’t be anything like petroleum or natural gas around here.”
“Then maybe it is air,” Perry said.
“How could it get here?” Suzanne asked.
“You tell me,” Perry said. “You’re the geophysical oceanographer. Not me.”
“If it is air, there is not a natural explanation that I know of,” Suzanne said. “It’s as simple as that.”
The three people stared at each other for a beat.
“I guess we’ll have to crack the hatch and see,” Suzanne said.
“Open the hatch?” Donald questioned. “What if the gas is not breathable or it’s even toxic?”
“Seems to me we have little choice,” Suzanne said. “We have no communications. We’re a fish out of water. We’ve got ten days of life support but what happens after that?”
“Let’s not ask that question,” Perry said nervously. “I say we crack the hatch.”
“All right!” Donald said with resignation. “As captain I’ll do it.” He stood up from his pilot’s seat and took a giant step over the central console. Perry leaned out of the way so that Donald could pass.
Donald climbed up inside the sail. He paused while Suzanne and Perry positioned themselves just underneath him.
“Why don’t you just undog it but not open it,” Suzanne offered. “Then see if you smell anything.”
“Good idea,” Donald said. He took Suzanne’s suggestion, grabbing the central wheel and turning it. The sealing bolts retracted into the hatch’s body.
“Well?” Suzanne called up after a few moments. “Smell anything?”
“Just some dampness,” Donald said. “I guess I’ll go for it.”
Donald cracked the hatch for a brief moment and sniffed.
“What do you think?” Suzanne asked.
“Seems okay,” Donald said with relief. He opened the hatch about an inch and smelled the damp air that flowed in. When he was satisfied it was as safe as he could determine, he pushed the hatch all the way up and poked his head out the top. The air had the salty dampness of a beach at low tide.
Donald slowly rotated his head through 360 degrees, straining his eyes in the darkness. He saw absolutely nothing but intuitively he knew that it was a big space. He was staring into a silent, alien blackness as frightening as it was vast.
Poking his head back inside the submersible, he asked for the flashlight.
Suzanne got it for him, and as she handed it up she asked what he’d seen.
“A whole lot of nothing,” he replied.
Reemerging from the hatch, Donald shined the flashlight in the distance. The mud stretched away in all directions as far as the light could penetrate. A few isolated mirrorlike puddles of water reflected back at him.