“Still there,” Qin said. “What if they don’t leave by nightfall? Then what?”
“I’m hesitant to try and scare them away. Can you verify that, if we do nothing, the current is still leading us close to the rally point?”
“Already done. We’re still heading north for several hours before skirting the coast eastward. But if we don’t blow the raft when we get close, we’ll pass right by, and out to open sea. What if they stay—”
“Hang on,” Aether interrupted, holding out a finger to Qin while staring down at her seat. “What the hell is that?” Deep beneath the surface, perhaps 100m below the two Sea Threck, hundreds of new heat signatures appeared and grew.
“Ahh yeah, ahh not good… ahh how many—”
“Does it matter? Wait…” As the amoebas of heat ascended, Aether could see them combining into larger blobs. It wasn’t a bunch of different entities, but a single, extremely large creature, slowly rising toward them.
Qin murmured, observing the same thing, “Ahh man that’s some kind of whale…”
“More like a mollusk… That’s all hard shell just beneath the—oh, I know what it is. Affrik or averik or something like that. It’s the big domesticated fishing boat animals. You know, in the harbor?”
Qin just stared downward, inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the mouth.
A moment later, the massive beast stopped its ascent about 40m below. Five Sea Threck appeared from around the thing’s edges. The other two that had waited now twisted into action and all seven rose to the surface, surrounding the floating pod.
Two thuds in rapid succession. Something appeared in the porthole over Aether’s head. A thick, pink vine. Squeaks and bumps against the hull. The EV tilted, knocking Aether off-balance. She grabbed a handle and steadied herself.
“They’re wrapping us up!” Qin said. “Hippies or not, they’re not giving up as interesting a prize as this! They’re keeping us! They’re going to take us somewhere!”
Aether ignored him and watched four figures quickly swim down toward the giant animal. What to do? Blow the hatch and raft, and bail? Initiate contact now? As much as she tried to convince Qin how peaceful these people were, the truth was they didn’t have all that much data on Sea Threck. What if they spoke an entirely different language? It seemed likely, given the differences in environments, land and water. Most sounds spoken in one atmosphere wouldn’t work at all in the other.
And what if the Sea Threck tried pulling them farther out to sea?
She didn’t have to think long about this question. Answering for her, the Sea Threck had their enormous creature submerge once more, dragging the pod beneath the surface with ease.
“Crap! Ah crap!” Qin blurted, clutching two handles as the pod sunk deeper and deeper, sunlight from the surface rapidly dissipating, the glow of the EV’s internal lights taking over. He spewed rapidfire thoughts, “Where’re they taking us? Wha’d’we do? What if the pressure—”
As the pod continued plunging, it accelerated to the northwest.
Aether tried to remain calm for the both of them. “We don’t have to worry about pressure. We equalized on landing, so we’ll remain at sea level atmosphere. Also, the EV’s can withstand pressure down to… what… two-K?”
Qin was losing it. “I don’t know! Is it? Can it? What if we run out of air? Stuck at the bottom… the scrubbers…”
“Calm down!” Aether roared. “Our concerns are no different from being in orbit.”
The top of the pod scraped against a rigid surface, sending a grating screech into Aether’s head. They’d been dragged beneath something solid. Forward motion slowed.
The EV bobbed side to side as she toggled the console to the external environment variables screen. The altitude gauge had switched to read “Depth.” They’d reached 156m below the surface and continued to move northwest, albeit very slowly.
Aether climbed up onto her seat back and peered out the porthole. There, a few meters away, she saw a Sea Threck swimming alongside the EV. A faint green glow was all that lit its bug-eyed face. Aether switched to IR and the area beyond the window appeared in crisp grayscale. They were in an underwater cavern, but not a naturally occurring one.
The EV stopped its forward progress and swung against its line for a moment, drifting forward then backward until the pod’s buoyancy held them straight up like a tethered balloon.
“Ahh man, so not good, really not good,” Qin murmured under his breath. He was in his seat, gripping the restraints and staring through the instrument cluster. “Wha’d’they want, wha’d’they want…”
“Start adjusting our pressure. I think we need to equalize with this depth, and fast.”
“But you said they couldn’t—”
“Qin!”
He shut up and turned to the console.
“And make sure your suit and visor are sealed.”
Aether climbed down and switched back to thermag, observing what had so rattled Qin. She estimated 30-40 Threck floated before them. Beyond the group of orange figures, the rough outline of a craggy wall appeared in wavy grays, and hundreds of vines grew upward, obscuring the rocky surface like a curtain. Several dark patches marked entrances to tunnels hidden behind the vines. From the vague features discernible through her optics, the whole structure before them looked like a magnified coral reef, whereas behind and above, the cavern appeared fashioned from enormous shells. Perhaps, she thought, shells of the huge mollusks, like the one currently anchoring the EV. They’d built onto a natural structure, creating a concert-hall-sized compound.
To her left, hundreds of small fish swam frantically within a netted enclosure affixed to the wall. Tall vines grew in clusters from small pits. On her right, half a dozen large animals drifted about, tied to the opposite wall. Through thermag, their silhouettes were smooth domes like turtle shells, but with four long, broad fins instead of legs. Could they be young versions of the massive creature that pulled the EV under? The basic anatomy matched.
“I can’t believe this,” Qin’s voice moaned in Aether’s helmet speakers. “This is unbelievable. Do you believe this? After all that to reenter?”
“It’s less than ideal,” Aether said. “Can you check our comms status? And after that, assemble a map of this cavern. We need the shortest, safest routes to the surface.”
“You expect we’ll need to—”
“No, I don’t expect anything, but we need to plan for everything. Just focus on the tasks, okay?”
Qin quietly echoed her words as he began. “Focus on task… planning and focusing…”
Aether climbed around, peeking out the portholes again. The vines were the source of the green glow. Tiny bubble clusters along the stalks, like baby grapes, appeared to be reservoirs for bioluminescent bacteria or fungi. The Sea Threck equivalent of installing street lights, or had they simply grown wild?