“Yes’m.” Grant began pulling his own optical fibers free.
Suddenly the ship lurched as if it had been hit by a torpedo. Grant was torn loose from his foot restraints and went sailing across the bridge, optic fibers popping loose. He banged painfully against the far bulkhead as all the lights went out.
ATTACK
The emergency lamps came on, dim, scary. Grant blinked in the shadowy lighting. Everything looked tilted, askew. Then he realized that he was floating sideways next to the food dispenser, his right shoulder and side afire with pain. Red lights blinked demandingly on all the consoles.
“… back on-line!” Krebs was shouting. “The auxiliaries can’t power the thrusters for more than a few minutes.”
Muzorawa was floating in the middle of the bridge, a haze of blood leaking from his open mouth. Krebs bumped into him and pushed him aside, in the general direction of the sleeping quarters. O’Hara was at her console, but doubled over as if in overwhelming pain. Only Karlstad seemed to be unhurt, but he looked bewildered as Krebs rattled off commands rapid-fire.
“Get back to your console,” she said to Grant, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and shoving him toward the console. Grant’s shoulder and ribs were thundering with pain. I must have hit the bulkhead there, he realized.
“What happened?” he asked dazedly as he fumbled with his optical fibers.
“No time for linking,” Krebs snapped. “Go to manual control. Get the generator back on-line.”
“But Zeb—”
“There’s nothing you can do for him now. Get the generator back on-line!”
Grant saw that the same floor loop that had torn loose earlier was flapping again, held only by one remaining bolt. He slid his foot into the other and scanned the glowering red lights of his console.
“O’Hara!” Krebs barked. “Disengage and take care of Dr. Muzorawa.”
Lane looked sick, positively green in the eerie light of the emergency lamps. She nodded and began pulling off her optical fibers.
“I’ll handle the ship,” Krebs went on. “Karlstad, take over the sensors. Archer, why isn’t the generator back online?”
“I’m working on it,” Grant said, fingers racing across the console touchscreens.
The bridge seemed to be rising and sinking, twisting as if on a roller-coaster ride. Glancing to his right, Grant saw Krebs at O’Hara’s console, moving her fingers along the touchscreens, her mouth a thin, grim, bloodless line.
The ship lurched again, and this time Grant heard a definite thump, as if they had banged into an undersea mountain.
“Those sharks are attacking us,” Krebs said, her voice strangely low, controlled. “They think we are food.”
Karlstad screeched, “The hull can’t take this kind of pounding! It’ll crack!”
“I am trying to get away from them,” Krebs agreed. Turning to Grant she bellowed, “For that, we need power!”
“It’s not the generator,” Grant reported. “The generator’s working fine. It’s the power bus; it shorted out from the first concussion.”
Another thump. The bridge tilted crazily. Even the emergency lamps blinked.
Hanging onto one of the console’s handgrips, Grant worked madly to reboot the power bus. One by one the circuit breakers clicked on. One by one the red lights on his console flicked to amber or green. The thrusters came back on-line, although Grant saw that their telltale lights were amber. There must be a lot of damage, he thought. Maybe the tubes have been dented by the sharks. He wished he had time to link with the ship, then he’d know immediately what was wrong.
“Here comes another one!” Karlstad yelped.
“Thrusters to max!” Krebs said. She didn’t need Grant to turn them on, she did it herself from O’Hara’s console.
Even immersed in the thick liquid that filled the bridge Grant felt the surge of thrust. Another thump, but this time it was a glancing blow. Still, it set the ship spinning.
“I don’t know how long the thrusters can maintain full power,” Grant yelled.
“We have to get away from them,” Karlstad shouted back.
Krebs shook her head. “They’re faster than we are. They’re racing ahead of us.”
“If only we had a weapon,” Karlstad muttered, “something to defend ourselves with.”
Grant heard himself say, “What about the plasma exhaust?”
“What?”
“The exhaust from the thrusters. It’s over ten thousand degrees when it leaves the nozzles. It boils the water behind us. They mustn’t like that.”
Krebs seemed to think it over for a moment. “If they stayed behind us…”
“They’re not,” Karlstad said, his closed eyes seeing what the ship’s sensors showed. “They’re forming up in front of us again.”
“We’re moving at top speed and they race past us,” said Krebs, sounding defeated.
“They’re too fucking stupid to realize we’re not food,” Karlstad grumbled.
“By the time they discover that fact, we will be dead.”
Grant said, “Can’t we spin the ship? Or turn in a tight circle? Spray our exhaust in all directions?”
“What good would that do?”
“It might discourage them.”
Karlstad laughed bitterly. “Brilliant! You want to circle the wagons when we only have one wagon. Absolutely brilliant.”
“It’s worth a try,” Grant urged.
“We have nothing else,” said Krebs. “We have nothing to lose.”
With the power back on, Grant grabbed for the loose optical fibers and slapped them onto the chips in his legs. Pain! Sharp, hard needles of pain jabbed at him. The thrusters were running full-out but they were damaged, their tubes dented from the battering by the sharks.
At least the sharks were not attacking now. Krebs was turning the sub in tight circles, spinning a helix of superheated steam around them, keeping the predators at bay.
For how long? Grant asked himself. He knew the answer: Until the thrusters give out. Then it won’t matter if they renew their attacks or not; it won’t matter if they think we’re food or not. We’ll be dead, drifting in this alien ocean, without the power to climb back to the surface and leave. We’ll sink until this eggshell is crushed by the pressure. We’ll die here.
LEVIATHAN
Leviathan could scarcely believe what its sensing members were telling it. The Darters had broken off their pursuit to chase—Leviathan did not know what to call the tiny round, flat thing that had caught the Darters’ hungry attention. It was unlike anything the Kin had seen before, except for the tale that had been flashed among them about a strange cold alien that had appeared briefly and then vanished into the abyss above.
Leviathan remembered sensing something like this stranger, when it had been in the barren cold region on the other side of the eternal storm. It was not one of the Kin, not even a member unit that had broken away to bud.
Whatever it was, the Darters were swarming around it and the stranger—whatever it was—was spinning madly, squirting hot jets of steam that boiled the sea into wild bubbling froth.
Where are the Kin? Leviathan wondered. How far from here could they be? Leviathan considered calling to them but feared that its distress signal would rekindle the Darters’ attention.
The Darters had forgotten about Leviathan in their blind hunger for this small, almost defenseless creature. The stranger was giving Leviathan a chance to race away, unnoticed by the instinct-driven Darters.
That would mean leaving the stranger to the predators. It did not seem able to get away from them. Every time it tried to climb higher, to head back toward the cold abyss above, the Darters drove it back down again. One of them came close to the hot steam and twisted away in agony, howling so loudly that Leviathan’s sound sensors shut down for several moments. Two of the Darters immediately attacked their wounded companion, silencing it forever with a few voracious bites.