In ten minutes he could see the ragged edges of the hull, and in another two he was outside the ship. He found himself taking deep gulps of air, as if emerging from a cave. The vise-like feeling of claustrophobia ebbed, and he mopped his brow, trying to get his heart rate back to normal. The UQC crackled back into life, the voices of mission control and the other two subs resuming. Thank God.
He radioed up. “Control, this is John. Mission accomplished. Black boxes retrieved.”
“Very good,” came Glinn’s voice. “Proceed to waypoint one and commence transmitting your data and the video feeds. You’re the first to complete your mission, so hold tight at the waypoint until all three of you are ready to ascend together.”
“Roger that.” He entered the pre-programmed waypoint into his control stack and the mini sub glided back to the location, about a hundred yards from the wreck, then came to a hovering stop. Gazing through the forward viewport, he saw a single tentacle from the anomalous life-form wandering across the mud. It looked like a thin snake or a worm of endless length. He thought of the huge Baobab-like thing towering above them all, and felt a shiver of both disgust and dread.
Then, shaking these feelings away, he settled in, preparing to transmit his datastream while waiting for the others to complete their assignments.
16
ELI GLINN PREFERRED to stand, even to the point of exhaustion. He could never get enough of standing. He had been in a wheelchair for so long he felt he had done enough sitting for a lifetime.
As a result, in anticipation of being liberated from his wheelchair, he had designed the central command console of mission control in a U-shaped form, the keyboards and screens positioned for the height for a standing man, with no chair or option to sit. If others had to stand when in control, so be it. But now he was in control, the others in the room at their own distant posts. He was surrounded by screens, and he carefully shifted his attention among them, from one to the next to the next, so as not to miss any development.
So far things had gone well. While he knew it was pure superstition, Glinn did not feel comfortable when everything went as planned. Perfection seemed a mockery to him; in his view, perfection was not only impossible, but the enemy of success. The real key was flexibility in the face of the unexpected, or, as someone once said, the “known unknowns.” But he was willing to accept each accomplishment as it came, realizing that much more difficult decisions, and greater unknowns, lay ahead.
John, under Gideon’s control, had been inside the wreck for thirty minutes, unable to transmit due to interference from the hull. The baud rate on the UQC was abysmally low even in the best of circumstances, acceptable for voice but a mere soda-straw for data. He wanted to see what the interior of the ship looked like.
Suddenly he heard Gideon’s voice pop back on the frequency. “Control, this is John. Mission accomplished. Black boxes retrieved.”
“Very good,” Glinn said. “Proceed to waypoint one and commence transmitting your data and the video feeds.”
A few minutes of silence. Then: “This is John, back at waypoint one. Transmitting.”
“Understood,” said Glinn. “Any issues?”
Another, briefer silence. “No. Except I encountered another two corpses.”
Glinn did not inquire further. He would see it soon enough on video.
He shifted his attention to the other two DSVs. Garza was fully engaged in mapping and he, too, was ahead of schedule, with just the five-mile transect remaining. Lispenard was cautiously circling the Baobab, moving higher in a spiraling fashion, using LiDAR to scan the entity at millimeter-level resolution, as well as videoing it in visible light. So far there had been no sign of life from the Baobab; no sign, in fact, of anything. It was inert.
That concerned Glinn.
A faint beep from the console indicated the compressed video upload from Gideon was complete. Glinn hesitated, and then tapped a few keys, directing the upload to play on a spare screen at four times normal speed.
He watched in silence as the sub passed through the open hull and made its way deeper into the ship. The explosion had blown away most of the bracing around the cradle and reduced it to a splintered hulk; the force of the compression could be clearly seen radiating from the cradle.
No question: the meteorite—the seed—had reacted violently on coming in contact with salt water. Perhaps this was the beginning of its sprouting process. If indeed the word sprout could be applied: so far they had gathered no evidence this was a plant, nor the meteorite an actual seed. It could be anything—spore, rhizome, egg, gametophyte. Or it could be something utterly alien. Even though he had been there in that hold during those final critical moments, Glinn reminded himself once again to stay detached; not to make assumptions.
He cut the playback speed to normal time.
On the screen, Gideon cut through the blocking struts. Glinn watched as the sub’s mech arm then cut a hole in the decking below the electronics hub and moved into the space, slicing away the deck piping as it did so.
And then Glinn froze. There was one of the corpses Gideon had mentioned. In uniform. Four bars on the sleeves.
The captain.
He felt a sudden, strange buzzing in his head. The body, its back turned, blond hair floating, was slowly rotating, turning its face toward him.
Glinn experienced a momentary cessation of thought. And then, despite all his carefully constructed defenses, his deliberate blocking out of certain memories for so long, the pain came rushing in, along with the sick horror of her death—a death for which he was responsible. Here it was, his guilt, in the very flesh, come back to haunt him.
A single decision had done this: the most inexplicable decision of his life, a decision he believed at the time was founded on logic, but which in retrospect was the product of emotion, fear, and panic; a decision that had forever stripped him of certitude and self-confidence. And it was a decision that led to the death of the only woman he had ever loved.
He could not breathe as he watched the body turn toward him, the hair forming a golden halo. He did not want to see the face, which he knew even now would be a sight to haunt him forever. But he was paralyzed; he could not turn away.
The face came slowly into view, profile first, then full-on, like a moon rotating on its axis; lips pink, skin as pure as marble, the small nose dusted with freckles—but worst of all were the eyes, those staring blue eyes, coming around to drill into him: accusatory.
His legs began to shake; but before he could seek a chair he felt all muscle tension slacken and he folded to the floor.
After that there was only a confused jumble, muffled shouts, people bending over, Brambell’s bald and shining head, the sting of a needle, the sensation of being lifted, the murmured commands, and a welcoming absence of thought.
17
ALEX LISPENARD WORKED her DSV controls, circling the trunk of the Baobab from a distance of about forty feet. The trunk was massive, far larger than even the largest sequoia: around sixty feet in diameter, and covered with a rough, bark-like surface of crude, parallel vertical grooves.
As her spotlight probed the trunk, she could see it was vaguely translucent, almost like a cloudy jellyfish, of a pale-greenish color like sea glass. Within, she could see the blurry outlines of what appeared to be internal organs, folded tubes and sacs that made no sense, looking like no terrestrial organism she knew of. There were also some round globules with a yellowish tinge, along with spidery networks of darker, reddish strands. The entity’s flesh was scattered with shining flecks and spots that drifted around in slow motion, like snow in a snow globe. It was simultaneously beautiful and grotesque. From this vantage point, seeing the complexity inside, it appeared to her more animal than plant, or perhaps something in between. And yet so far she had seen nothing that looked like sensory or feeding organs. Nor did it seem to have a mouth or anus.