I don’t know what to do! I can’t get her straightened out.
Zheng He plunged deeper.
Grant was totally deaf now, as if his ears were wrapped in thick towels or layers of insulation. Dimly, through the few sensors still working, he saw a sight that shook him to his soul. Dozens of the immense Jovians, scores of them, maybe a hundred or more were speeding through the water toward their wounded, exhausted comrade.
My God, Grant thought as the gigantic creatures neared, we had only glimpsed a small portion of the herd. There’s so many of them! And they’re so huge!
Many of them dwarfed the one that had fought the sharks. All of them were flashing lights, signaling each other in hues of brilliant red, flashing yellow, and that bright piercing green. The water was alight with their signals.
But Zheng He was sinking away from them, spinning slowly, revolving over and over again despite Grant’s frantic efforts to regain control.
A tap on his shoulder made Grant jump. Whirling, he saw it was Karlstad, wide-eyed, frightened. The man’s mouth moved, but Grant could hear nothing. When Grant tried to speak, he couldn’t hear his own voice.
Karlstad frantically jabbed both forefingers toward his ears. He’s been deafened, too, Grant understood.
The bridge was a mess. Most of the screens had blown out. Splinters of plastic and optical fibers from the unoccupied consoles floated uselessly in the dim emergency lighting.
His eyes showing sheer terror, Karlstad pushed himself over to the console on Grant’s left and tapped on its keyboard. Its one intact screen wrote in glowing orange letters:
GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.
Grant shrugged helplessly.
GET US UP!!! Karlstad typed.
Grant ran his fingers along the touchscreens. The thrusters were running at a fraction of their full power, but with the sub out of control he was afraid to run them up higher, afraid that they would simply drive the vessel deeper into the dark hot sea. What should I do? What can I do? In desperation, he shut down the thrusters completely.
TOO MCH PRESSURE! Karlstad typed.
Suddenly Grant understood what he must do. Get all this information back to the station. We’re not going to make it, he thought, but this information has got to get to Dr. Wo and the others.
Reaching for the keyboard on his console, Grant wrote, DATA CAPSULE.
Karlstad’s fingers flew across his keyboard. NOT NOW. GET US CLOSER TO SURFACE.
NOW, Grant insisted. SEND TWO.
Karlstad stared at Grant, finally understanding what he was trying to say. We’re as good as dead; there’s nothing left for us to do except this gesture of sending data back to the station.
Grant grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard, banging on his keyboard with his other hand. DO IT. TWO.
Karlstad blinked, then nodded his agreement. Bending over his console, he replied, TWO NOT NECESSARY. DATA COMPRESSION.
Grant tapped him on the arm. SEND TWO, he repeated. REDUNDANCY.
Even though one capsule could hold all the data they had recorded, Grant wanted to take no chances of that lone capsule failing. Briefly he thought about sending all four of the remaining capsules, but he decided two would be sufficient. Keep recording data with the few sensors still working. Send the final two when the last moment comes.
Turning his attention back to the sensors, Grant saw that the whales were some distance above them now. The Jovians were hovering around their wounded comrade, flashing lights back and forth with blinding speed. Grant got the impression they were jabbering to each other.
Two of them glided downward, lights flashing along their mountainous flanks.
Are they trying to communicate with us? The thought startled Grant.
Zheng He was still sinking slowly into the depths, despite Grant’s feeble efforts to get the submersible under control once again. The ship’s systems were not responding to his commands. No matter how he worked the touchscreens, the submersible continued to spiral slowly deeper. Backups, Grant thought. There are supposed to be backups for each of the main systems. But most of them were out of action, too, he saw.
Several more Jovians coasted down toward the sub, Grant saw, swimming in gigantic circles around the wounded little submersible, flashing their lights in endless complex patterns.
Are they trying to communicate with us? Grant asked himself again. Almost without thinking consciously about it, he turned on the sub’s outside lights. Only two of them still worked, and one of them flickered dimly.
And the whales matched its flicker rate exactly, in less than a heartbeat. Grant gasped with awe. The pictures running along the whales’ immense flanks were far too complex for him to understand, but they were flashing on and off at the same rate as the damaged lamp’s flicker.
Mimicry or intelligence? Grant asked himself.
Karlstad’s nudge against his shoulder startled Grant.
GET US UP!!! Egon had typed on his console screen.
I can’t, Grant confessed silently. I can’t. But his fingers typed, TRYING.
Grant ran a quick diagnostic. His heart sank as the results flashed across his closed eyelids. The thrusters were close to catastrophic failure. The crack in the outer hull was spreading, branching like a crack in an ice-covered pond. The inner hulls were still intact, but the pressure was building. It was only a matter of minutes before they started to break up. Worst of all, the sub was still spiraling downward, its steering vanes useless, its control jets too weak to stop its sinking spin.
“We’re finished,” Grant said. He couldn’t hear the words. Neither could Karlstad, a meter away, who launched both the data capsules at that precise moment.
LEVIATHAN
The stranger was trying to talk to them, Leviathan saw. Its language was odd: one steady light and one flashing on and off in an irregular rhythm. What could it mean?
Leviathan nosed deeper, watching as the stranger slowly spiraled down toward the hot abyss. Several of the Kin circled near it, watching, calling to it, trying to imitate its enigmatic signals.
It is hurt, Leviathan flashed to the Kin.
Yes, it seems so, one of the Elders agreed. It no longer boils the water.
Still they did nothing but watch. Sinking into the hot abyss will kill it, Leviathan thought. It came from the cold above; it must be so hurt that it cannot control itself.
It will die, he said to the Elders.
Swimming patiently around the wounded Leviathan, the Elders replied in unison, Perhaps it will begin to bud.
It is too small to bud, Leviathan said.
How can you know that? This strange creature has its own ways undoubtedly.
We cannot allow it to die without trying to help it, Leviathan insisted.
Help it? How?
Help it to go up toward the abyss above, where it came from.
What good would that do?
That is its home. Even if it must die, we can help it to die in the realm of its origin.
The Elders turned dark, thinking. New ideas were difficult for them to accept.
Leviathan decided not to wait for them to make up their minds.
SALVATION
Grant felt as if his entire body were in a vise that was slowly crushing him. Dimly he remembered that the Puritans in Massachusetts had crushed a man with heavy stones during the Salem witchcraft hysteria.