INTO THE SEA
Karlstad nodded as if satisfied, then cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Krebs still appeared to be sleeping, floating in an almost fetal position up by the overhead. Grant dared not ask the question, but Karlstad grinned at him and made a circle of his thumb and forefinger. He’s gotten into the station’s medical files, Grant understood. Despite his better judgment, he wondered what Krebs’s file said about her.
With a blink of his eyes, Grant returned his attention to the sensors and concentrated his attention on them. The generator and thrusters were performing so close to their design optima that Grant could almost forget about them, relegate them to a corner of his mind, a background hum of power buzzing along his nervous system. The sensors were something else, though: He could see through the murky alien atmosphere as if it were a cloudy, hazy day on Earth.
Off in the distance Grant saw a swirling snowstorm, a blizzard of white particles falling thickly into the sea. They’re not really white, he reminded himself. You’re seeing them in false color. Actually they’re dark, sooty with carbon compounds; the manna that makes Dr. Wo think there must be living creatures in the sea feeding off this bountiful abundance of organic particles. Wo’s reasoning is more wishful thinking than logic, Grant told himself. Just because there are organic particles raining—or, rather, snowing—into the ocean doesn’t mean there have to be creatures in the sea to eat them. That’s a classic fallacy.
They were getting closer to the blizzard. Hardly thinking consciously about it, Grant imaged the ship’s planned course as a slim bright yellow line against the view of the blizzard. We’ll pass by it, miss it by more than four hundred kilometers. He felt glad of that; he had no desire to ride through another storm. Yet, at a deeper level, he felt disappointment.
And curiosity. Why are the particles concentrated so thickly there, and not any of them falling anywhere else in sight? If the organics form in the clouds, why isn’t there a steady drizzle of them everywhere? It must be that they form only in special places up in the clouds, the processes that create the organics aren’t spread evenly throughout the entire cloud deck. I’ll have to ask Egon about that. If there are creatures in the ocean that eat those organics, we’re most likely to find them under the storms that produce their food.
The pressure outside was rising steadily as the atmosphere thickened into liquid. Grant could feel long, billowing surges of waves now, ripples and cross currents racing through the ammonia-laced water. Riding through this ocean won’t be easy, he realized. There’s a tremendous amount of power in these waves.
By the time Lane and Zeb returned to the bridge, Krebs was fully awake and snapping commands. Sonar pings were bouncing back to the receivers, reflecting off layers of true liquid now. Grant handed over the sensors to Muzorawa reluctantly. Zeb’s going to be connected to them when we actually get into the ocean, he told himself, feeling jealous.
O’Hara started to call out altitude numbers. “Ten thousand meters to the reflecting layer. Sink rate nominal.”
“Be quiet!” Krebs said. “I can see the data perfectly well.”
She sounded testier than usual to Grant. She’s just as clanked up about entering the ocean as I am, Grant thought.
“Thrusters to one-third power,” Krebs ordered.
Grant cut back thruster power. He had to look up at the main screen to see outside now. There were waves out there, restless, ceaseless swells, almost close enough to touch. They were reaching for the ship, heaving angrily, surging higher and higher.
Grant wormed his feet deeper into the floor loops and grasped the hand grips on the front of his console. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Krebs was holding onto a handgrip set into the overhead with one hand, dangling like a thickset monkey.
Lower they sank, deeper into those long, powerful swells. Grant could hear his pulse thudding in his ears. Muzorawa looked tense, his hands squeezing on the console grips, making the muscles in his forearms ripple.
Grant turned toward O’Hara, but Krebs shouted, “Left five degrees!”
Looking up at the wallscreen, Grant saw a raging current surging straight for them, bloodred in the sonar system’s false-color imagery, filling the screen.
“Full power on the thrusters!” Krebs snapped.
Impact! The ship slammed into the current as if hitting a mountainside. One of Grant’s floor loops tore free and for a moment he lost contact with the thrusters. He stared down at his console, but the ship was shaking so badly the screens were little more than a blur. Then he felt the thrusters again, surging powerfully, singing their mighty song. Grant smiled inwardly as the thrusters drove the ship below the current’s powerful stream, down deep beneath its shearing force.
The shaking eased. The shaking dwindled away. They were truly in the ocean now, safely beneath the turbulence, down where the currents flowed swiftly and smoothly—most of the time.
“Thrusters to half power,” Krebs said, almost gently.
“We’re in the ocean,” said Karlstad, as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Obvious but true,” O’Hara replied.
“Stop the chatter,” Krebs growled. “Check all systems.”
Grant found that the generator was performing perfectly well, and so were the thrusters. The only damage he could find was the foot restraint that had torn loose.
“The forward infrared camera is not functioning,” Muzorawa reported. “It must have been damaged on impact.”
“Repair or replace,” Krebs said flatly.
Muzorawa nodded. “I’m running a diagnostic now, Captain. If the damage is too severe to be repaired, I’ll go to the backup.”
O’Hara reported no major problems with the ship’s maneuvering systems, although one of the steering vanes had unfolded only partway. The ship had six steering vanes and two backups. Krebs ordered O’Hara to deploy one of the backups and fold the stubborn vane back into the hull.
“Life support?” Krebs asked.
Karlstad said loftily, “All my systems are functioning nominally, Captain. No problems.”
Before Krebs could comment on that, Lane said worriedly, “Captain, I can’t get the vane back. It’s stuck in the half-open position.”
Krebs scowled at her. “Fold the vane on the opposite side of the ship to the same angle and freeze it there. Deploy both backups for maneuvering.”
O’Hara nodded.
“Anything else?” the captain asked.
None of the crew had any other problems to report.
“Very well,” Krebs said. “Take a half-hour break. But no sleeping! I want you awake and alert in case I need you.”
They all disconnected and drifted back toward the food dispenser. Karlstad got there first and grabbed one of the feeding tubes. Grant let O’Hara go ahead of him.
“Going to be a gentleman, are you?” she teased.
Grant muttered, “Uh, yes, I guess so.”
“Thank you, then,” Lane said, taking the other tube.
It still bothered Grant to see her plug the tube into the socket in her neck. He felt a slight ache in his shoulders. Tension, he guessed.
Turning to Muzorawa, bobbing gently beside him, Grant said, “So we’re in the ocean.” It was idle chatter and he knew it.
“The captain handled the entry very well,” Zeb said, his voice low. “When we hit the jet stream on the first mission, half the ship’s power went out.”
“How could that be?” Grant blurted. “It’s all solid state.”
“The generator isn’t solid state,” Muzorawa countered. “One of the deuterium feed lines was knocked loose. We had a devil of a time repairing it.”
Grant was suddenly aghast. “The radiation …”
Muzorawa smiled gently. “The best thing about fusion generators, my friend, is that the radiation is all contained inside the reaction chamber. The deuterium and helium-three that feed into the chamber are not radioactive.”