Suddenly he surfaced.
Dim light.
Crowe bobbed up next to him. He was still gripping her arm. Eyes closed, she retched and spat, then her head disappeared below the surface. Anawak pulled her up. The water was foaming around them. He realised that they were at the bottom of the tunnel. In place of the lab and the well deck he was in a fearsome flood tide.
The water was rising, and it was bitterly cold. Icy water straight from the ocean. His neoprene wetsuit would protect him for a while, but Crowe didn't have one.
We're going to drown, he thought. Or freeze to death. Either way, it's over. We're trapped in the bowels of this nightmarish ship, and it's filling with water. We're going down with the Independence.
We're going to die.
I'm going to die.
He was overwhelmed with fear. He didn't want to die. He didn't want it all to be over. He loved life, and there was too much to catch up on. He couldn't die now. He didn't have time. This wasn't the moment.
Agonising fear.
He was dunked under water. Something had pushed itself over his head. It hadn't knocked him very hard, but it was heavy enough to force him under. Anawak kicked out and freed himself. Gasping, he surfaced and saw what had hit him. His heart leaped.
One of the Zodiacs had been swept up by the current. The pressure wave from the explosion must have wrenched it from its mooring on the well deck. It was drifting, spinning on the foaming water, as it climbed up through the tunnel. A perfectly good inflatable with an outboard motor and a cabin. It was built for eight, so it was certainly big enough for two, and it was filled with emergency equipment.
'Sam!' he shouted.
He couldn't see her. Just dark water. No, he thought. She was here just a second ago. 'Sam!'
The water was still rising. Half of the tunnel was already submerged. He stretched up, grabbed the Zodiac, pulled himself out of the water and looked around. Crowe had disappeared. 'No,' he howled. 'No, for Christ's sake, no!'
Crawling on all fours he dragged himself to the other side of the boat and looked down into the water.
There she was! She was drifting, eyes half closed, beside the boat. Water flowed over her face. Her hands paddled weakly. Anawak leaned out, grabbed her wrists and pulled.
'Sam!' he screamed.
Crowe's eyelids fluttered. Then she coughed, releasing a fountain of water. Anawak dug his feet against the side and pulled. 'The pain in his arms was so excruciating that he was sure he would let go, but he had to save her. Abandon her, and you may as well stay behind too, he thought.
Groaning and whimpering, he pulled and tugged until all of a sudden she was with him in the boat.
Anawak's legs folded.
His strength was gone.
Don't stop now, his inner voice told him. Sitting in a Zodiac won't get you anywhere. You've got to get out of the Independence before she pulls you into the depths.
The Zodiac was dancing on top of the rising column of water as it surged towards the hangar bay. There was only a short distance to go before they were swept on to the deck. Anawak stood up and fell down again. Fine, he thought. I'll crawl. On his hands and knees he went to the cabin and hauled himself up. He cast his eye over the instruments. They were distributed around the wheel in a pattern he knew from the Blue Shark. He could handle that.
They were shooting up the last few metres of the ramp now. Clinging, he waited until the time was right.
Suddenly they were out of the tunnel. The wave washed them into the hangar bay, which had started to fill with water.
Anawak tried to start the outboard motor.
Nothing.
Come on, he thought. Don't play around, you piece of shit. Start, goddamn it!
Still nothing.
Start, goddamn it!
All of a sudden the motor roared and the Zodiac sped away. Anawak closed his hands around the wheel. Speeding through the hangar, they veered around and shot towards the starboard elevator.
The gateway was shrinking before his eyes.
Its height was decreasing even as they raced towards it. It was unbelievable how quickly the deck was filling. Water streamed in from the sides in jagged grey waves. Within seconds the eight-metre-high gateway was just four metres high.
Less than four.
Three.
The outboard motor screamed.
Less than three. Now!
Like a cannonball they shot into the open. The roof of the cabin scraped against the top of the gateway, then the Zodiac flew along the crest of a wave, hovered momentarily in the air, and splashed down hard.
The swell was high. Watery grey monsters rose towards them. Anawak was clinging so tightly to the wheel that his knuckles blanched. He raced up the next wave, fell into the trough, rose again and plummeted. Then he cut the speed. It was safer to go slower. Now he could see that the waves were big, but not steep. He turned the Zodiac by 180 degrees, allowed the boat to be lifted on the next wave, pulled back on the throttle and looked around.
It was an eerie sight.
The Independence's island towered out of the slate-grey sea in a cloud of dark smoke. It looked as though a volcano had erupted in the middle of the ocean. The flight deck was almost totally submerged, with only a few burning ruins defying their fate. He'd managed to get a fair distance away from the sinking ship, but the noise of the flames was still clearly audible.
He stared out breathlessly.
'Intelligent life-forms.' Crowe appeared next to him, deathly pale, with blue lips, and shaking all over. She clung to his jacket, keeping the weight off her injured leg. 'They cause nothing but trouble.'
Anawak was silent.
Together they watched the Independence go down.
PART FIVE
CONTACT
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves.
Dreams
Wake up!
I am awake.
How can you tell? There's nothing but darkness around you. You're flying to the bottom of the world. What can you see?
Nothing.
What can you see?
I see the red and green lights of the flight controls in front of me. I see the gauges that tell me about the pressure inside and outside the boat. I see how much oxygen I'm using, how much fuel I have left, how fast I'm travelling and how steeply the Deepflight is diving. It tests the water composition, and I see the results in statistics and charts. The temperature is monitored by sensors, and I see a number.
What else can you see?
I see particles swirling in the water, flurries of snow in the floodlights, tiny scraps of organic matter sinking to the depths. The water is saturated with organic compounds. It looks murky. No – wait. It looks very murky.
You still see too much. Don't you want to see everything?
Everything?
Nearly one kilometre stretches between Weaver and the surface. Nothing has tried to attack her. Her path has been clear of orcas and yrr. Everything in the Deepflight is in perfect working order. The submersible winds its way down in a sweeping ellipsoidal spiral. Every now and then small fish swim into the lights, then dart away. Detritus tumbles through the water. Krill are caught in the beam, each tiny crustacean a speck of white matter. The shower of particles reflects the light back to its source.
For ten minutes she has been peering into the dirty-grey cocoon of light that the Deepflight casts before it. Artificially lit darkness: light that illuminates nothing. Ten minutes in which she has lost all sense of up and down. Every few seconds she checks the display for information that can't be gleaned from the view: how fast she's travelling, how steeply she's diving, how much time has elapsed…