Walking with him back to the core, he suggested we stop by the mess for coffee. The Chief had never refused coffee and I was game so we all grabbed a mug and sat discussing plans.
Bowman’s plans had changed by our discovery and its threatening implications but he still had to move the station by tomorrow. TPCI and FRMS divers were heading out shortly to start pulling in sensors and another support crew of maintenance divers would be working on the tractor wheel spoke repair. In his mind, he was set for the move.
Then he asked about our plans.
At the top of ours, a simple plan was to sleep for hours in our rooms away from anything loud, traumatic, or wet.
Bowman agreed and apologized not realizing that we had not yet slept since arriving. His assignment to us before sending us up to our racks was to return with a solution for the monopole mystery: should we leave it, ignore it, take it with us, or even report its discovery to headquarters.
Another loud crash and jolt interrupted me from my sound sleep throwing me from my bunk. From outside my door I heard the klaxon echoing through the hallway. Awaiting Ivy’s message I flipped on my bunk light and checked my watch. It was 10:35 p.m. in my mind but 2235 hours station time. I had slept for six hours and surprisingly I was alert and rested but my body ached all over from muscling around in the Exosuit.
“Station alert! Station alert!” Ivy loudly announced. “An object has impacted the crawler’s structure under Pod Bay 3. Impact under Pod Bay 3. Station dome integrity unaffected. Repair crew requested. Report immediately to your stations.”
Chapter 15. The Whale-Ship
Here we go again, I thought. I threw on my jump suit and rushed into the hallway to find the Chief and three other crewmen rubbing their eyes looking around and waiting for more information from Ivy.
“At least we’re not flooding,” said the Chief standing near the Ivy console.
“Think we should go see what happened, Chief?”
“What? Can’t hear you over the klaxon.”
“Think we should we go down into the chaos again?” I screamed.
“Yes, I think should we go down into the chaos again, dummy,” he said mimicking my tone. “It’s our mission, isn’t it?”
In the mess hall, seven crew members were seated around a table wiping coffee and mug shards from the floor. As we poured ourselves a cup and sat with them, the ominous buzzing finally stopped.
Looking around the table, I recognized Williams, Norris and Alvarado, and was quickly introduced to Castro and Turnbull. Two others seated with them were identified as Broyles and Simon, repair divers from the support crew. They had all just returned from retrieving and stowing the sensor array and repairing the tractor wheel and were warming up with coffee when the station shook.
“Any idea what happened out there just now?” I asked as Williams returned with a fresh mug.
Swallowing a sip, she paused before she answered.
“I have no idea but there was a pesky little sperm whale calf in the distance clanging echolocations. Could have bumped into the station. Not too unusual lately. But no. Everything went like clockwork. We’re ready to move… unless that impact damaged another wheel.”
Broyles and Simon nodded in agreement.
“It’s not a hard fix but takes time with all the safety hoops we have to jump through especially dodging that damn glowing spot and the downed ROV,” Simon offered.
“Hey, Marker,” the Chief asked, “ready to visit Chef Saunders again?”
“Oui oui,” I replied, “He’ll be so glad to see us. Wonder if he’s restacked that pallet.”
“Probably. Let’s go find out,” he said chuckling.
“Oh Lieutenant, would you please notify Bowman that we’re going out to investigate? I know you guys are tired since you just came in. Drink your coffee and warm up,” I said rising from the table.
“Sure, Marker,” she said, “and we thank you for that. Seems like the water was colder this time out. Really chilled us all to the core.”
We downed our coffee and went back to the kitchen. Calling out for Saunders, the Chief wandered back to the pantry.
“Guess he’s in the rack. It’s late,” he said. “Nobody here.”
Seconds later he yelled, “Oh, crap! It has been restacked.”
I rushed back in time to see him with one motion lift the pallet’s corner as Saunders did tumbling food cartons and boxes everywhere.
“Ready to do this again, Marker?”
“Yep. Same as before. Let’s do it.”
Without the urgency, this dive was going to be much less stressful even though we were diving into another mysterious situation.
For the first time I exited the bay before the Chief. I couldn’t see him behind me but I knew he was there by his rapid breathing sounds over our suit-to-suit intercoms.
Leaving the bay, I turned downward toward the base shining my floods onto the most confusing sight I had ever seen. Waiting for the Chief to catch up I stared down upon a conundrum, an enigma that I was not ready to see. From what I could gather at my distance, I was nearing something resembling a huge animatron with a sperm whale’s body and large fluke but with a thick clear plastic bubble where its face should be.
Moving in beside me he exclaimed, “Holy cow! What in the world is that? A Trojan whale?”
“Now is not the time for humor, Chief. Let’s approach it and see if it moves.”
“Really Marker?”
”Yes, I want to peek into the cockpit. It looks disabled: void of life.”
As I slid up to the cockpit and looked in, Briscoe moved over its outer skin toward the large stationary fluke. Inside the creature’s head, which I now deemed to be a vessel was a large tubular room with three seats facing outward toward me. My most horrifying discovery was seeing three individuals slumped back in their seats immobile with their eyes and mouths gaping wide in horror like they died gasping for breath. There was no motion at all; even their chests showed no breathing movements.
Studying the scene, I realized that I was observing the inside of a foreign ship. Not only were the three occupants oriental males, the writing on the signs and displays throughout the cabin were in hieroglyphic-style symbols that I assumed were Chinese or Japanese.
“Hey Chief, come look in here. Tell me what you think.”
He propelled back to my side and faced the bubble.
“My God, Marker, it’s a spy submarine. Those symbols are like the markings I found on Edwards’ crashed SeaPod. Something has been watching us but not sperm whales. They must have been tracking our divers pulling the probes and got caught in the monopole’s grip.”
He pointed back toward the monopole.
“From the looks of their direction of impact they had just passed over it when their ship went down.”
“Just like our SeaPods.”
“Yes, exactly like our SeaPods but those Jonahs didn’t know how to reboot their whale.”
It took a few seconds but I laughed at his morbid humor even though he wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Well done, Chief. Keep looking.”
Turning away, I shone my floods forward on the crawler base as he returned to the whale-ship. At the point where the whale head hit the crawler’s thick hull there was no damage to anything other than the black hard-rubber flange surrounding the bubble. It was torn back all the way to the acrylic bubble. Had it peeled back another inch the bubble seal would have broken flooding the interior with tremendous pressure. Maybe that would have been a more humane death for them than slowly asphyxiating in an oxygen-free tomb.