Cate had one hand looped through a strap on Alex’s shoulder, and the other she gripped tight to one of the submersible’s rear struts. Her shoulders screamed from the strain, but Orca’s gentle speed made it easier. Still, she knew if she lost her grip on Orca, they would be stranded, and if she let Alex go, his heavy kit would take him down, and he would be lost.
She turned her head to look back towards the surface of the underground sea. She could just make out their bubbles as they merged and then raced upwards. They were a silvery thread that ascended to a watery blue ceiling. She could imagine them popping on the calm sea, and she longed to be up there with them.
She turned back to the depths, and impatience started to take hold. One, two, three, four — she kept her mind occupied, and began to count seconds as Orca traveled onwards. The submersible’s propulsion units whirred softly, almost a purr beneath the water as the hydro-jets pushed liquid back towards them and over a bank of fins that guided it through the depths. Cate had programmed the machine herself, and knew one of its first searches was to be towards the east, before it was to head back out, and then dive deep. They needed to be well gone by then.
She looked back again at Alex’s limp body, his large arms and legs deathly still and trailing as they glided along. She wished she could check on him, but for now, hanging on was all that mattered.
Suddenly Orca slowed, and Cate’s head snapped back in alarm. The cigar shaped machine gave a little reverse thrust, to then hang motionless in the water. The submersible’s neutral buoyancy allowed it to be suspended without sinking or rising. She gritted her teeth, as she remembered her own program protocols — it would take audio readings now, and even though the propulsion units were near-silent water jets, it would also shut these off as it listened for the most minute of sounds.
Cate breathed in and out evenly, waiting, impatient, the only sounds she heard were her own exhalations, loud in her ears. She momentarily held her breath, and then there it was, all the clicks, squeaks, tapping, and pops of a living ocean. Around her, stars floated — tiny specks of light, either gliding or flashing before being quickly shut off. It was the silver biological glow of creatures in a dark sea, used for attracting mates, prey, or as a warning. To Cate, it seemed like she was floating in a night sky, not underwater, but high overhead, looking down on the stars in an endless universe.
Orca coming to a complete stop made her feel it was safe enough for her to let go of its strut. She lowered her arm and flexed her fingers, feeling immediately relieved. They were stiff and sore, but they’d be fine. She then dragged Alex up towards herself, looked into his face mask — his eyes were closed tight, but there was still the rhythmic pumping of his breather as he sucked in and expelled air. She decided she’d take the time to better secure him, and she dragged him closer, and unclipped his belt, then threaded it through her own belt at her back, so he was now lashed to her. It would cause more drag, but at least it gave her two free hands, that she could now alternate to share the load.
Orca hung in its aquatic inner-space a moment more before its nose-cone lit up as a bright ring of lights surrounding the camera eye came to life. To Cate in the dark water, it was as if the cigar-shaped probe was like some sort of deep-sea fish that had stopped to search for prey midwater.
The probe’s glowing eye created a pipe of light to try and illuminate the void. But it was a hopeless task as the darkness swallowed the glow without ever revealing the hidden world Cate knew was all around them.
But then from the corner of her eye, movement. Something the size of a hubcap glided past. It was circular, ribbed, and trailing ribbon-like tendrils. Cate concentrated, straining out from the probe to see it before it moved past the range of the light. Instead of disappearing, it stopped, and turned, drifting back towards them. Cate grinned around her mouthpiece.
You beautiful thing, she thought. Neuteloid — Cyrtoceras, I believe. It was banded blue, white, and black, something that never would have been known from the fossil record. The thing was a survivor of the ancient Ordovician Period. Their ancestors were around today, but much, much smaller.
The engines started up again, and the Crytoceras turned and sailed away. She then felt the fan of water on her face as the machine eased forward. She grabbed it and leaned out and to the side again, a passenger watching the strange world go by. From time to time, something would dart away from the beam like a laser had scalded it. The eyes of the sea creatures were probably more adapted to the dark, only ever having to deal with a soft, twilight glow whenever they rose to shallower waters.
Cate thought of her team, huddled together in a cold laboratory room over a mile above her, watching, recording, and marveling at everything they saw via their screens, while she saw it live. She hung on for her life, wishing Orca would stop again just for a few seconds so she could claw her way to the nose-cone. There, she could somehow communicate with them, tell them she was fine, and ask if they could shut down the light. Though the powerful globes pushed out a lot of energy and lit a pathway some forty feet in front of them, the wall of dark was only ever just pierced. But from out beyond the curtain of blackness, she knew its powerful beam would be seen for miles — the speck of white light would attract anything that hunted by sight.
Five hundred and one, five hundred and two… She counted more seconds as Orca sailed on. Her body began to ache again, and she changed her hands on the rail. She briefly wondered what would happen if she slipped — the probe would quickly leave them behind. Her team above may suddenly detect an improvement in maneuverability, but it was unlikely they would know to turn around for her. She could reprogram Orca. After all, she was its designer. But she was down here.
More than likely she and Alex would be cast adrift, a couple of slow moving non-aquatic mammals left to float in a fathomless dark sea. She shuddered at the thought and started to count again, trying to remember the probe’s search grid, and how long it was before they could expect to near any type of land. Alex had said it would be there, and close. She prayed he was right.
Orca suddenly dropped about twenty feet, and Cate felt a bone-chilling cold as the water temperature plummeted. She had heard there were temperature anomalies down here — silos and columns of hot and cold water. Her group had hypothesized that the warm water columns were caused by hydrothermal means, but the cold columns, they were the conundrum. One theory they had was that there could be a vortex in the underground sea. It literally breathed in and out, sometimes taking in cold water, and sometimes expelling warm. There was evidence for an open vortex, as the expellation had a physical manifestation — just recently a behemoth Antarctic algae bloom was seen off the Antarctic’s coast that was so large it showed up on satellite imaging from space.
She’d make a mental note, and hopefully one day they’d get to… she grinned around her mouthpiece. One day they’d get to what? She was stuck here, and the only thing she’d be doing from now on was simply trying to survive.