Two more Threck figures emerged from the tunnels behind the vine curtain. Aether and Qin watched in silence as the pair appeared to confer with their comrades, then proceeded to swim toward the still-anchored EV. Several other Threck sprang into action, disappearing deep below. The EV lurched, rose minutely, then sunk once more. Aether watched as the giant creature below them slowly exited the area from the direction they’d come, while the pod remained in place, apparently tethered to a new anchor.
“Ho-hey!” Qin exclaimed.
Two Threck now swam just outside the EV, running their long, arm tentacles along the hull. Despite all the vids and pics she’d seen on the station, it was still astounding to see them so close. In the water, with leg tentacles fully extended, they appeared so much taller than all the on-land images—perhaps half a meter longer than an average human male. Out of water, they walked on a calloused bend in the tentacles, sort of shuffling along as if on very low knees. Near the center of Threck City there was a statue of a famous historical Threck leader with his arms in the air and standing on the very ends of his “legs,” but Aether wasn’t aware of Minnie ever observing someone fully extending their legs to stand or walk on the ends. Perhaps if there were a Threck ballet.
The two Threck swam around the EV, studying the hull, until one made its way to the top and found Qin’s porthole. It summoned its companion and another head appeared in the window. Their big eyes, like flesh-hooded billiard balls, touched and slid around each other as they tried to see in at the same time.
Aether made a decision. She stood up and faced the porthole straight-on, holding her arms out at her sides in the shape of an arrow. This was the City Threck equivalent to waving hello to a distant person. The two Threck gawked at her—not moving for a moment, appearing to consider—then whirled back to life. A third swam forward, passing what appeared to be a small stone to one of the two observers, who then struck the EV hull with it.
“Nononono…” Qin’s shaky, whispering voice.
“Just one tap… stay calm.” Another tap, harder. “Your suit ran a check, right?”
“Ahh yeah… it’s fine. Hey, do MWs work underwater?”
“Good question,” Aether said, checking her waist to verify the multiweapon was still there. “Look it up for us, would you?”
A rapid buzzing alert rang out in the cabin as the ambient light flashed from blue to orange and back.
“What?” a flabbergasted Qin shouted. “He figured out the hatch access!”
Aether peered through the still-sealed hatch and saw one of the Threck fiddling with the opening mechanism. Manipulating it was not an intuitive process, and the Threck’s nubby pad just didn’t seem up to the task. Then again, those nimble little cilia…
She barked, “Shut off that racket!”
The sound stopped but the lights continued flashing.
The Threck had poked the bar that pushed the semicircular handle out (thus the alarm), but to actually open the hatch they’d have to grip the handle, pull it out a couple centimeters, and rotate it 180 clockwise before pushing it in. Aether crouched close and watched the club struggling with it. Did the Threck know that the thing it was fooling with was an access mechanism? Or was it simply the first moving part they could find? A similar latch resided at the back of the EV for skimmer deployment, but everything else on the hull was tooled on.
“MWs work underwater,” Qin said. Aether heard a new determination, as if he’d come to terms with the situation and was ready to suck it up. “Stunshocks auto-disable when submerged. It also advises lethal setting for effective defense as nonlethal is severely diminished. Also, we should reset the EV. Prep it for reentry.”
“Why?”
“So the lockdown bars reengage. I just remembered. They can’t open the hatch if we reset.”
Aether thought about it. “Will we be able to? When the time comes? And what about the pressure?”
“Yes, it’ll be like a landing simulation as far as those instruments go. The pod’s already equalized for this depth, but its environment won’t be affected anyway. Plus, our suits are handling environment individually now.”
She looked at his intense face through the visor. She’d never seen him panicked before today, and it was good to see and hear him getting it together. “Okay, do it then. Lock us down.”
A new alarm sounded, more insistent.
Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep… and the orange light began to strobe. From the hatch frame, a thin bar of water blasted in, striking Aether’s body and helmet, thrusting her against the seat back. She struggled to turn sideways, grasping fruitlessly for the holstered MW.
The gushing water abruptly stopped.
Aether looked down and saw that she was sitting in a shallow pool. She clambered once more to her feet, climbing back onto the seat. Outside the EV, five Sea Threck appeared to be in a heated debate. One poked another in the face. The other returned with a swipe. Two more pulled the poker away. Which one had figured out the hatch access? And why did it stop? Had the external pressure been too great to pull the hatch open more than a crack, or had the ones at the portholes seen the water streaming in and ordered a halt? Aether had suddenly become a goldfish in a little bowl.
Three Threck swam to the top of the pod, pushing down with their legs while pulling at the vines. The EV began to roll in place, sending Qin and Aether scrambling to stay on their feet.
“They’re tipping us over!” Qin shrieked, his voice atop a layer of static.
They stepped off of their seats as their world rotated forward, the pool of water splashing over the hatch, consoles, and EV controls, shorting out instruments. Lights flickered and popped off, display panels shut down.
“We might lose intercomms,” Aether warned. “Switching to DC.”
They stepped lightly onto the systems panels, carefully avoiding kicking any switches or applying weight to sensitive surfaces or screens. What the hell were the Threck doing?
Blue emergency lights activated just as the EV stopped rolling. Aether and Qin stood on instrument panels flanking the hatch and waited, their respective portholes now situated beside their faces. Aether locked eyes with the Threck floating just a half meter outside. Like the mudskippers the Threck partially resembled, its large eyeballs sucked into their sockets and popped back up like an elaborate blink. She glimpsed its siphons moving open and closed like giant nostrils. Minnie had catalogues of Threck facial and body expressions in the language DB, but Aether couldn’t bring herself to pull them up. Her eyes were glued to the thing’s face, and the reverse appeared true of the Threck beyond the porthole. Beside its head, the occasional tentacle whooshed by. Its own or another’s? Too much going on at once.
The EV lurched again and the hatch slowly sank below gurgling salt water. The water level rose and briefly splashed, but only for a few seconds before stabilizing like a moon pool, the air trapped within.
Aether watched the submerged hatch slide silently away. Had this been the Threcks’ intention? Had they earlier observed the water spraying in, resealed the hatch, and turned the EV on its side to act as a diving bell, conscious of some beings’ need for air, and aware of the moon pool effect?
Without warning, two tentacles splashed up, planting themselves on the hatch frame, and a Threck thrust itself up into the cabin. Aether and Qin fell back against their respective sides as the Threck groped about before finding a bar to grasp, then braced its long legs against two sides. It twisted on its appendages, left, right—the equivalent of turning one’s head, and gawked at Qin, then Aether, then back. It reached out and touched the dark fabric of the seats, then the smooth surface of the panels, all the while turning and angling its body in short, rapid movements, like a bird.