One clue. The tether remained taut and straight, despite the rowers’ efforts. And with a horrified realization, Jonah realized why. The bigger sub tilted upward almost halfway to vertical, with its nose aimed high.
They’ve lost their main ballast! Great slugs of stone and raw metal normally weighed a sub down, lashed along the keel. They must have torn loose amid the chaos of the thump—nearly all of them! But how? Certainly, bad luck and lousy maintenance, or a hard collision with the ocean bottom. For whatever reason, the Pride of Laussane was straining upward, climbing toward the sky.
Already, Jonah could see one of the bubble habitats from an angle no canyonite ever wanted … looking down upon the curved dome from above, its forest of pinyon vines glowing from within.
Cursing his own slowness of mind, Jonah let go of the rudder cables and half stumbled toward the hatch at the rear of the control chamber, shouting for Petri. There was a job to do, more vital than any other. Their very lives might depend on it.
5.
“WHEN I GIVE THE WORD, OPEN VALVE NUMBER ONE JUST A quarter turn!”
It wasn’t a demure tone to use toward a woman, but he saw no sign of wrath or resentment as his new wife nodded. “A quarter turn. Yes, Jonah.”
Clamping his legs around one of the ballast jars, he started pushing rhythmically on his new and improved model air pump. “Okay … now!”
As soon as Petri twisted the valve they heard water spew into the ballast chamber, helping Jonah push the air out, for storage at pressure in a neighboring bottle. It would be simpler and less work to just let the air spill outside, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. There might be further uses for the stuff.
When Bird started tilting sideways, he shifted their efforts to a bottle next to the starboard viewing patch … another bit of the old hull that had been polished for seeing. Farther aft, in the third compartment, he could hear some of the passengers struggling with bags of rice, clearing the propeller crank for possible use. In fact, Jonah had ordered it done mostly to give them a distraction. Something to do.
“We should be getting heavier,” he told Petri, as they shifted back and forth, left to right, then left again, letting water into storage bubbles and storing displaced air. As expected, this had an effect on the sub’s pitch, raising the nose as it dragged on the tether cable, which in turn linked them to the crippled Pride of Laussane.
The crew of that hapless vessel had given up cranking to propel their ship backward. Everything depended on Jonah and Petri now. If they could make Bird heavy enough, quickly enough, both vessels might be prevented from sinking into the sky.
And we’ll be heroes, Jonah pondered at one point, while his arms throbbed with pain. This could be a great start to his life and reputation in Laussane Bubble … that is, if it worked. Jonah ached to go and check the little sub’s instruments, but there was no time. Not even when he drafted the father of the Sadoul refugee family to pump alongside him. Gradually, all the tanks were filling, making the Bird heavier, dragging at the runaway Pride of Laussane. And indeed …
Yes! He saw a welcome sight. One of the big habitat domes! Perhaps the very one they had been passing when the thump struck. Jonah shared a grin with Petri, seeing in her eyes a glimmer of earned respect. Perhaps I’ll need to rest a bit before our wedding night. Though funny, it didn’t feel as if fatigue would be a problem.
Weighed down by almost full ballast tanks, Bird slid almost along the great, curved flank of the habitat. Jonah signaled Xerish to ease off pumping and for Petri to close her valve. He didn’t want to hit the sea bottom too hard. As they descended, Petri identified the nearby colony as Leininger Dome. It was hard to see much through both sweat-stung eyes and the barely polished window patch, but Jonah could soon tell that a crowd of citizens had come to press their faces against the inner side of the great, transparent bubble wall, staring up and out toward the descending subs.
As Bird drifted backward, it appeared that the landing would be pretty fast. Jonah shouted for all the passengers to brace themselves for a rough impact, one that should come any second as they drew even with the Leininger onlookers. A bump into bottom mud that …
… that didn’t come.
Something was wrong. Instinct told him, before reason could, when Jonah’s ears popped and he gave vent to a violent sneeze.
Oh no.
Petri and Jonah stared at the Leiningerites, who stared back in resigned dismay as the Bird dropped below their ground level … and kept dropping. Or rather, Leininger Bubble kept ascending, faster and faster, tugged by the deadly buoyancy of all that air inside, its anchor roots torn loose by that last violent thump. Following the path and fate of Bezo Colony, without the warning that had allowed partial evacuation of Cixin and Sadoul.
With a shout of self-loathing, Jonah rushed to perform a task that he should have done already. Check instruments. The pressure gauge wouldn’t be much use in an absolute sense, but relative values could at least tell if they were falling. Not just relative to the doomed habitat but drifting back toward the safe bottom muck, or else—
“Rising,” he told Petri in a low voice, as she sidled alongside and rested her head against his shoulder. He slid his arm around her waist, as if they had been married forever. Or, at least, most of what remained of their short lives.
“Is there anything else we can do?” she asked.
“Not much.” He shrugged. “Finish flooding the tanks, I suppose. But they’re already almost full, and the weight isn’t enough. That is just too strong.” And he pointed out the forward viewing patch at the Pride of Laussane, its five large, air-filled compartments buoyant enough to overcome any resistance by this little truck.
“But … can’t they do what we’ve done. Fill their own balls—”
“Ballast tanks. Sorry, my lady. They don’t have any big ones. Just a few little bottles for adjusting trim.”
Jonah kept his voice even and matter-of-fact, the way a vessel captain should, even though his stomach churned with dread, explaining how external keep weights saved interior cargo space. Also, newer craft used bubbles with slimmer walls. You didn’t want to penetrate them with too many inlets, valves, and such.
“And no one else has your new pump,” Petri added. And her approving tone meant more to Jonah, in these final minutes, than he ever would have expected.
“Of course …” he mused.
“Yes? You’ve thought of something?”
“Well, if we could somehow cut the tether cable …”
“We’d sink back to safety!” Then Petri frowned. “But we’re the only chance they have, on the Pride of Laussane. Without our weight, they would shoot skyward like a seed pip from a lorgo fruit.”
“Anyway, it’s up to them to decide,” Jonah explained. “The tether release is at their end, not ours. Sorry. It’s a design flaw that I’ll fix as soon as I get a chance, right after repainting your name on the stern.”
“Hm. See that you do,” she commanded.
Then, after a brief pause, “Do you think they might release us, when they realize both ships are doomed?”
Jonah shrugged. There was no telling what people would do when faced with such an end. He vowed to stand watch though, just in case.