I should have sealed the hatches, he thought. But then, what good would that do for anyone, honestly? Having drifted laterally from Cleo Canyon, any surviving chambers would be helpless, unable to maneuver, never to be found or rescued before the stored air turned to poison. Better that we all go together.
He recognized the sound that most of the rubble made upon the hull—bubble stone striking more bubble stone. Could it all have come from the Pride of Laussane? Impossible! There was far too much.
Leininger.
The doomed dome must have imploded, or exploded, or simply come apart without the stabilizing pressure of the depths. Then, with all its air lost and rushing skyward, the rest would plummet. Shards of bubble wall, dirt, pinyons glowing feebly as they drifted ever lower … and people. That was the detritus Jonah most hoped to avoid.
There. It looks jet-black over there. The faithful old sub had almost finished its turn. Soon he might slack off, setting the boat upright. Once clear of the debris field, he could check on the passengers, then go back to seeking the home canyon …
He never saw whatever struck next, but it had to be big, perhaps a major chunk of Leininger’s wall. The blow hammered all three compartments in succession, ringing them like great gongs, making Jonah cry out in pain. There were other sounds, like ripping, tearing. The impact—somewhere below and toward portside, lifted him off his feet, tearing one of the rudder straps out of Jonah’s hand, leaving him to swing wildly by the other. Bird sawed hard to the left as Jonah clawed desperately to reclaim the controls.
At any moment, he expected to greet the harsh, cold sea and have his vessel join the skyfall of lost hopes.
6.
ONLY GRADUALLY DID IT DAWN ON HIM—IT WASN’T OVER. THE peril and problems, he wasn’t about to escape them that easily. Yes, damage was evident, but the hulls—three ancient, volcanic globes—still held.
In fact, some while after that horrible collision, it did seem that Bird of Tairee had drifted clear of the heavy stuff. Material still rained upon the sub, but evidently softer materials. Like still-glowing chunks of pinyon vine.
Petri took charge of the rear compartments, crisply commanding passengers to help one another dig out and assessing their hurts, in order of priority. She shouted reports to Jonah, whose hands were full. In truth, he had trouble hearing what she said over the ringing in his ears and had to ask for repetition several times. The crux: one teenager had a fractured wrist, while others bore bruises and contusions—a luckier toll than he expected. Bema—the Sadoulite mother—kept busy delivering first aid.
More worrisome was a leak. Very narrow, but powerful, a needle jet spewed water into the rear compartment. Not through a crack in the shell—fortunately—but via the packing material that surrounded the propeller bearing. Jonah would have to go back and have a look, but first he assessed other troubles. For example, the sub wouldn’t right herself completely. There was a constant tilt to starboard around the roll axis … then he checked the pressure gauge and muttered a low invocation to ancient gods and demons of Old Earth.
“We’ve stopped falling,” he confided to Petri in the stern compartment, once the leak seemed under control. It had taken some time, showing the others how to jam rubbery cloths into the bearing, then bracing it all with planks of wood torn from the floor. The arrangement was holding, for now.
“How can that be?” she asked. “We were heavy when the Pride let us go. I thought our problem was how to slow our descent.”
“It was. Till our collision with whatever hit us. Based on where it struck, along the portside keel, I’d guess that it knocked off some of our static ballast—the stones lashed to our bottom. The same thing that happened to Pride during that awful thump quake. Other stones may have been dislodged or had just one of their lashings cut, leaving them to dangle below the starboard side, making us tilt like this. From these two examples, I’d say we’ve just learned a lesson today, about a really bad flaw in the whole way we’ve done sub design.”
“So which is it? Are we rising?”
Jonah nodded.
“Slowly. It’s not too bad yet. And I suppose it’s possible we might resume our descent if we fill all the ballast tanks completely. Only there’s a problem.”
“Isn’t there always?” Petri rolled her eyes, clearly exasperated.
“Yeah.” He gestured toward where Xerish—by luck a carpenter—was hammering more bracing into place. Jonah lowered his voice. “If we drop back to the seafloor, that bearing may not hold against full-bottom pressure. It’s likely to start spewing again, probably faster.”
“If it does, how long will we have?”
Jonah frowned. “Hard to say. Air pressure would fight back, of course. Still, I’d say less than an hour. Maybe not that much. We would have to spot one of the canyon domes right away, steer right for it, and plop ourselves into dock as fast as possible, with everyone cranking like mad—”
“—only using the propeller will put even more stress on the bearing,” Petri concluded with a thoughtful frown. “It might blow completely.”
Jonah couldn’t prevent a brief smile. Brave enough to face facts … and a mechanical aptitude, as well? I could find this woman attractive.
“Well, I’m sure we can work something out,” she added. “You haven’t let us down yet.”
Not yet, he thought, and returned to work, feeling trapped by her confidence in him. And cornered by the laws of chemistry and physics—as well as he understood them with his rudimentary education, taken from ancient books that were already obsolete when the Founders first came to Venus, cowering away from alien invaders under a newborn ocean, while comets poured in with perfect regularity.
Perfect for many lifetimes, but not forever. Not anymore. Even if we make it home, then go ahead with the Melvil Plan, and manage to find another bubble-filled canyon less affected by the rogue thumps, how long will that last?
Wasn’t this whole project, colonizing the bottom of an alien sea with crude technology, always doomed from the start?
In the middle compartment, Jonah opened his personal chest and took out some treasures—books and charts that he had personally copied under supervision by Scholar Wu, onto bundles of hand-scraped pinyon leaves. In one, he verified his recollection of Boyle’s Law and the dangers of changing air pressure on the human body. From another he got a formula that—he hoped—might predict how the leaky propeller-shaft bearing would behave if they descended the rest of the way.
Meanwhile, Petri put a couple of the larger teen girls to work on a bilge pump, transferring water from the floor of the third compartment into some almost full ballast tanks. Over the next hour, Jonah kept glancing at the pressure gauge. The truck appeared to be leveling off again. Up and down. Up and down. This can’t be good for my old Bird.
Leveled. Stable … for now. That meant the onus fell on him, with no excuse. To descend and risk the leak becoming a torrent, blasting those who worked the propeller crank … or else …
Two hands laid pressure on his shoulders and squeezed inward, surrounding his neck, forcefully. Slim hands, kneading tense muscles and tendons. Jonah closed his eyes, not wanting to divulge what he had decided.
“Some wedding day, huh?”
Jonah nodded. No verbal response seemed needed. He felt married for years—and glad of the illusion. Evidently, Petri knew him now, as well.