But the others kept circling the stranger, holding it at bay, waiting for it to exhaust itself.
TRAPPED
“You’ve got to get higher!” Karlstad demanded, his voice almost a hysterical shriek. “We’ve got to get away from them!”
Krebs shot him a venomous glance. “Every time I try to lift, they swarm above me and batter us down again.”
“We can’t take much more pounding,” Karlstad said. “Hull integrity…”
Grant was awash with pain. His console lights were flickering from amber to red. The thrusters were close to failure and there was nothing he could do about it.
Krebs seemed to be fully aware of the situation. Grimly she muttered, “Full thruster power. We break loose from them or we die here and now.”
Vision blurring, his whole body spasming with agony, Grant felt the thrusters strain as he diverted all available power to them. The lights went out again as the bridge tilted dizzily, the emergency lamps glowed feebly. Grant reached for the handgrips on his console.
“Look out!” Karlstad screamed.
Something hit the ship with the power of an avalanche. If Grant hadn’t been hanging on he would have been flung across the bridge again. Krebs went sailing, banged against the food dispenser with a solid, sickening thud of flesh against metal. Karlstad was holding on to both his console’s handgrips, his feet torn free of the floor loops and flailing wildly.
“We’re sinking!” Karlstad yelled. “Hull’s been breached!”
Grant saw that Krebs was unconscious. Or dead. An ugly gash across her forehead was streaming a fog of blood into the fluid they were breathing. The optical fibers had been torn loose from her legs.
“What can we do?” Karlstad screeched. “What can we do?”
Grant tried to ignore his pain as he tapped at his console’s touchscreens, calling up all the ship’s systems. The sudden rush of information boggled his mind and body. Everything—every chip, every wire, every square centimeter of structure, all the sensors, the ship’s steering controls, the thrusters, the power generator, the auxiliaries, all the life-support systems, the medical monitors, the lights, the wiring, the welds along the hull—every molecule of the ship, every bit of data flowing through all its systems, all flooded in on Grant like a huge overpowering tidal wave. He was flung into a maelstrom, mind spinning madly as he desperately tried to cling to some vestige of himself, some trace of his own soul in this deluge of sensations, some thread of control.
He could no longer feel his own body. That reality had been flung aside, left far behind in this new reality of—power. That’s what it is, Grant told himself. Power. I am the ship. I have all its power, all its pain, all its destiny within me.
Godlike, he expanded his senses. He saw, sensed, felt every part of the ship. The crack in the outermost hull was like the sharp slash of a knife wound; the labored straining of the thrusters like the excruciating knotting of cramped, overworked muscles.
Zheng He was losing buoyancy, maintaining its position only by dint of the thrusters’ full-throated push against the ever-present power of Jupiter’s pervasive gravity.
And he saw the sharklike creatures, more than a dozen of them, swarming above and on both sides of the slowly sinking submersible.
Karlstad was babbling, but it was a faint jabbering noise far in the background of Grant’s consciousness. I am the ship, he told himself. I’m wounded, badly hurt. How can I get out of this? How can I get away? When Krebs tried to climb out of this they battered us so hard the hull cracked. What should I do? What can I do?
Go inert, he heard a voice in his mind say. Shut down the thrusters. Let the sharks think you’re dead. Let them find out that you’re metal, not flesh; an alien, not food.
You’ll sink. You’ll sink deeper, the outside pressure will increase, the crack in the hull will get worse, you’ll be torn apart, crushed, before you can get the thrusters started again.
Maybe. All this flashed through Grant’s mind in less than a second. Through it all, the one—only—hope he had was the fusion generator. It purred along as if nothing outside its alloy shell mattered in the slightest. That little artificial star kept on fusing atomic nuclei, transforming matter into energy, oblivious to the wants or needs of the humans who had built it, those whose lives depended on it. Grant felt its warmth like the fire in a hearth, comforting, protecting against the raging storms outside.
He shut down the thrusters. He turned off the outside lights. The ocean out there went black, sunless, a blind oblivion. Except that Grant could see; through the ship’s infrared sensors and sonar he could see the imagery of the huge sharks gliding around and above him.
“We’re sinking!” Karlstad repeated, his voice high and shaking, even in their fluid environment.
“Take care of Krebs,” Grant said evenly. “See how Lane and Zeb are doing.”
“But we’re sinking!”
“We’ll be all right,” Grant said, hoping it was true. “I’ve got her under control,” he lied.
The sharks were coming closer, nosing around the slowly settling Zheng He. Can’t you sense that we’re metal? Grant asked them silently. Are you too stupid to see that we’re not food?
One of the huge creatures brushed against the sub, knocking it sideways. Grant saw it coming, held on to his console.
“Jesus!” Karlstad yelped. “Jesus. Jesus.”
Grant almost smiled. We could use His help, he thought. Does God see us this far down in this alien sea?
A low rumbling sound, so low-pitched that Grant felt it along his aching bones rather than heard it. Long, like the rumble of distant thunder, but so powerful that it made the bridge vibrate. An earthquake sound, here where there was no ground to shake, not a solid clump of soil or a rock for tens of thousands of kilometers.
The sonar was tingling along Grant’s nerves. He closed his eyes and saw the imagery: Something was heading their way, something superhuman, a huge power streaking through the water toward him, and it was emitting this low, thunderous profundo note as steadily as an avalanche roars down a mountainside.
The sharks pulled away, turning in unison so fast that Grant felt the sharp waves they made as a single unified pulse in the water. The infrared sensors kicked in and showed what was approaching: that immense solitary whale. It was rushing toward the sharks like a huge cannonball fired at supersonic velocity.
The sharks seemed to be gathering themselves into a battle formation, facing the onrushing whale. They’ve forgotten about me, Grant saw. They’re ready to confront the whale. Maybe I can slip away…
Cautiously he lit the thrusters again. Minimum thrust. Don’t call attention to yourself. Balance your sink rate. Maintain buoyancy by using thrust to balance the leak.
Zheng He rose a little. Grant watched through the ship’s sensors as the gigantic beast raced straight toward the waiting delta-shaped sharks. He edged the thrusters slightly higher and maneuvered the battered submersible away from the predators. All the while the ocean reverberated with that lone, sustained, low-pitched note, like the melancholy howl of a solitary wolf in a snowy wilderness, but many, many octaves lower and enormously more powerful and sustained far longer than Earthly lungs could ever achieve.
The gigantic creature barreled into the sharks. Instead of fleeing from it, as Grant had expected, the sharks spread their formation into a wide-space net and surrounded the whale. They’re not running away from it, Grant saw. They’re attacking it!