Something vertical and sheer and flat looms out of the darkness.
Full stop, McIntyre orders, hold us steady.
It’s the hull of a ship, a tall slab of darkness covered in lumpy streaks of red and brown, rendered in washed-out greyish pastels by the Trieste II’s search lights. McIntyre can see a line of portholes, black circular maws in the steel.
Take us up about sixty feet, he says, and reel in the trail ball to fifteen feet.
What you got? Stryker asks.
It’s a ship, replies McIntyre. Looks like some kind of freighter.
They are above the gunwale now, and light from Trieste II spreads across an area of deck, revealing the dark shafts of cargo hold hatches, ventilators covered in knobbly lines of rust laid one upon the other like wax on a candle, and bollards mysteriously clean and untouched. He briefly wonders what it would be like to swim through the shattered corpse of this ship, to eel in and out of the gaping hatches, explore her passages and compartments by flashlight—but that’s nearly 600 atmospheres out there. The muted reds and oranges and browns and greens of whatever it is that covers the steel, the depth and richness of it, the wax-like runnels hanging from the rails and yardarms, he’s guessing this ship has been down here for more than a couple of decades. He’s not surprised it’s not on the charts—who would look for wrecks this deep?
I’m getting more, Taylor says.
More what? asks McIntyre.
More sonar contacts. Looks like there’s a whole damn fleet down here.
McIntyre doesn’t understand. The bottom should be clear here, the USNS De Steiguer never mentioned any wrecks, nor did the photographs she took with her search fish show any.
What the hell is going on? he demands. We’re still on the plot, right?
He checks the NAVNET computer himself and yes, they’re still within the search triangle they plotted back up on the surface, and though Taylor has yet to find dot zero using the Straza, they can’t be all that far from it.
McIntyre can see the freighter’s superstructure, what’s left of it, most of it has collapsed into itself leaving only a tall triangle of steel at one corner, jagged and thick with those streaks of rusty brown, its edges fading into blurred darkness. The rail passes below the pressure-sphere and now there’s darkness beneath—
No, McIntyre can see something else spearing up out of the blackness at the limit of the bathyscaphe’s search lights. It’s no ship but it looks man-made. He stares at it, trying to make sense of the shape, of the play of darkness and shadow. It’s some kind of fin, a thin vertical triangle… and beyond it another triangle and beneath both what looks like a narrow cylinder…
He orders Stryker to release some of the gasoline, and they sink until the echo sounder tells them they’re 50 feet above the bottom. McIntyre can see what it is much better now, it glows in the bathyscaphe’s search lights. The cylinder depends from the rear of a boat-shaped hull, and he’s still puzzled until he realises the two flat stubs on the top of the hull are all that remain of wings. The shape swims into focus, the cockpit, the nose and its ball turret—
An airplane, he says. It’s a goddamn airplane. What the hell is an airplane doing down here?
What sort of airplane? asks Stryker.
A flying boat, McIntyre replies, a Martin PBM, I think.
He sits back from the window and rubs one palm up and down his cheek. Damn it, he says, it’s like a goddamn junkyard out there, we’ll never find the bucket in this. And I’m not risking finding our way through it on the bottom. Phil, drop some more shot, let’s go up to about 100 feet, then we’ll be clear of the wrecks and maybe we can see where we’re going.
But he’s still worried they have yet to get a signal from the zero dot and he hopes it doesn’t mean the battery on it has gone dead. Because their mission has just become a thousand times more difficult, now they’ve discovered the bucket landed in some abyssal graveyard of ships and planes…
And that prompts a thought—Bermuda is due north of here and Miami north-west and San Juan due south, and that puts this stretch of the Puerto Rico Trench firmly within the triangle formed by those three places…
UP
Cobb reaches up and unlatches the hatch, struggling in the inflated spacesuit to work the mechanism. She unfastens her seat harness and pushes herself up. Gently, she floats from the spacecraft, through the open hatch and…
Her previous flight could not compare. Then she saw the Earth through a tiny window, but this… She hangs in space, the inflated bladder of the spacesuit forcing her arms out from her sides, and she’s uncomfortably warm but she ignores it. Below her curves a cerulean plain—she can see from horizon to horizon, she can see the Earth is a globe, a jewelled globe hanging in Creation. She feels a sense of ineffable serenity steal over her, the same peace she feels deep in her heart when she kneels before the altar in her Oklahoma City apartment. The presence of God is palpable, His handiwork is plain in all she can see, and the joy of it threatens to bring tears to her eyes.
She reaches out but it proves too tiring to keep her arms up before her. She wants to hold the Earth in her arms—she knows it is safe in God’s hands, but she wants the world to share her awe, her love of God, the purity of purpose she now feels. She floats there beside the Gemini capsule, basking in the light of Creation, a world unto herself, and she feels the nearest to God she has ever felt. It is all the more heartfelt because she is lucky to be here—
Her Mercury flight was a success and she was celebrated for it. Like Cagle before her, there was no ticker-tape parade but she got to meet President Kennedy. And Jackie too, of course. For a while, Cochran—magnanimous in the reflection of Cobb’s glory and what it said about her management of the astronaut corps—was even complimentary: I knew you were the right one for this flight, she told Cobb.
But there were another eleven astronauts to fly before Cobb got a second flight, and even then Jean Hixson and Gene Nora Stumbough found themselves with no Mercury spacecraft available. Which gave them priority on flights in the Gemini programme, the new two-person spacecraft. Cagle, of course, commanded the first flight, with Stumbough beside her, but Cobb is commander of this second one, Gemini 4, and Hixson is sitting in the left-hand seat…
Cochran has looked after her charges well, even Cobb has to admit as much. When Cobb asked Max Faget to add a window to the Mercury capsule, Faget said it was impossible, the weight penalty was too much. But Cochran made calls and marshalled her contacts, and pretty soon Faget changed the design. What Cochran wanted, Cochran got; and what Cochran’s “space girls” wanted, Cochran got. The men are away fighting and the women go up into space, and thanks to Jackie Cochran the Mercury 13 are treated like real pioneers, like astronauts.
Someone is talking to her. Cobb blinks and tries to focus.
It is Hixson: Jerrie, they want you to come back in now.
Back in?
Back in.
A minute longer, Cobb replies, please.
Mission Control say you have to come in now, Jerrie.
Hixson’s worry is audible—it is enough to remind Cobb of her mission, of what she was sent up here to do. She doesn’t want to leave, she wants to stay out here. The pure freedom of it is intoxicating, she is mistress of her own destiny, beholden to none, it is a tiny echo of this freedom Rosie the Riveter must feel. It is surely what God intended for her, to experience this, to see the entire Earth in its glory rolling sedately beneath her.
You still have two and a half more days to go, says Hixson.
I know, Cobb replies, I’m coming.