“No power, Luke. Nada. The Challenger’s out of juice.”
“How the hell did that happen?”
“No idea. I didn’t leave the fucking headlights on, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Luke flinched at the tone of her voice.
“There was plenty of juice when I left her. Now I can’t even get a charge off the glow plugs. I couldn’t stay inside too long—it’s pitch-dark and freezing cold. But that’s not all. I found something on the Edison.”
“What’s that?”
“A stock ticker. Last-ditch communication method. It runs off a pair of nine-volt batteries. If the power goes, it’ll still feed communiqués through.”
She handed him a ribbon of paper, same as the stuff that used to fall during a ticker-tape parade. Luke read the words on it in a gathering swell of dread:
“It hardly matters,” said Alice. “The Challenger’s kaput. I sent a message back through the Edison, but they won’t be able to do anything until the ring clears. It’s as powerful as a tornado, and it’ll make mincemeat out of any vessel they send down.”
“How long will that take?”
“How long will the rain fall? How long will the wind blow? It’s nature, Doc. It doesn’t operate on a clock.”
“You said the last current ring was in place for…?”
“About two weeks.”
Two… weeks. The thought of spending that much time inside the guts of the Trieste… No. It was unthinkable.
Luke opened his mouth to ask the question—Are you saying there’s no way to get off this station?—but Al’s expression answered it well enough.
“Can we route electricity from someplace else to power up the Challenger? I mean, in case the ring clears? Do we have a portable generator?”
Al considered it. “We do have a genny, yeah, and it could work. Draw off the main power source, but we couldn’t overdo it—a blowout could black out the whole station, and then we’re royally screwed.”
The Trieste in total darkness. Christ. Luke couldn’t even contemplate it.
“If we fed enough juice into the Challenger, we could make a low-power ascent,” she said. “Providing the current ring clears, or even slackens a little. We’d need enough juice to run the oxygen pumps, a few key utilities. We could surface fifty miles from the Hesperus, we could run into the trench wall, or steer right into the ring. Or…”
“Or what?”
“Well, I could steer us through the heart of the ring. The water is calmest there, but it’s an eye-of-the-needle maneuver.”
“But you could do it?”
Al actually smiled. “Believe it or not, I’ve done crazier things.”
“I believe it, Al. So let’s find that fucking generator.”
“Okay. But we need to head to the communications room first. Maybe I can get in proper contact with the Hesperus from there.”
They backtracked toward the wedged-open door. Luke glanced over his shoulder, certain he’d heard something—a rustling like a giant moth flapping its wings.
But there was nothing. Was there…?
A gelatinous shimmer along the ceiling—a glittery snail trail that, even as Luke watched, dimmed to nothingness.
We’re trapped, he thought. Bugs in a kill jar.
“Come on, girl,” he said to the dog. LB needed no prodding—she was already at his side.
10.
THE HATCH WAS CLOSING as they rounded the gooseneck.
Luke heard the canister pop from where it’d been wedged with a chilling tink. Al had already broken into a run. Luke could see the lip of light beyond the hatch thinning by heart-stopping degrees.
Alice dove like an outfielder laying out to catch a long fly ball. She struck the hatch with a muffled thump and let out a strangled squawk. When Luke reached her, he saw that she’d managed to jam her left hand between the frame and the hatch door.
“Push it open.” Al’s voice was calm but her face was white. “Quick.”
Luke rocked the hatch open a few inches; its weight was immense, as though something was pushing from the other side. Al snatched her hand out and cradled it to her chest. Luke assessed the damage. There were twenty-seven bones in the human hand. It looked as if Al had broken more than a few of them.
“Let me see what you’ve done,” Luke said.
Her pinkie was bent at an unnatural angle, her middle finger snapped amidships. The dent in the back of her hand was a clear indication that some of the bones of her palm had been crushed. Her hand looked as if it had been compacted—as if something had set its considerable weight against the hatch and shoved with merciless pressure.
“There goes my juggling career,” Al said, her face greasy with shock.
Luke saw the dislodged air canister. He’d watched Al wedge it in. Its metal was dimpled where she’d rocked the hatch shut against it, pinning the canister firmly in place. Still, it had popped out. Had the tunnel heaved slightly—a sensation unfelt by Luke—to knock it loose?
Or had somebody jarred it free?
“Where’s a first-aid kit?” he asked.
“Should… should be one in the communications room.”
Luke helped her up. Al was running on shock and adrenaline at the moment; before long the pain would set in.
“Come on,” she grunted.
She stumbled from the storage area and stopped at another hatch set in the tunnel wall, about fifty yards shy of the crawl-through chute.
“You’re gonna have to open it, Doc. Can’t manage right this second.”
Luke cranked the wheel. The hatch opened into a tight passageway. He followed Al in, LB following them. The tunnel was strung with hatchways—four, by Luke’s count. He figured this was a central hub, branching out to other sections of the Trieste.
A red X had been slashed across the porthole window of one hatch. Luke remembered reading about when the Black Plague swept across Europe, red X’s had appeared on doors of houses—this place is infected, steer clear.
After a dogleg, they reached the communications room.
Al said: “What in fucking blue hell happened here?”
The room was tiny. The overhead lights were smashed, but enough light leaked through from the tunnel to see by. A bank of monitors occupied one wall, labeled Lab N, Lab W, Pure, Sleep, and so on.
“Looks like someone didn’t want to be watched,” said Luke.
Nine of the ten monitors had been shattered. It looked like an act committed in a violent frenzy. Glass was scattered on the floor. Luke shooed LB away, fearing she’d get a shard in her paw.
The final monitor—marked Pure—was unbroken, but dead and gray; Luke walked over to it; his swollen reflection played over the screen’s convex surface.
“The comm link’s busted,” Al said. “Fuck me, Freddy.”
She pointed to the snapped and skinned remains of the sea-to-surface radio. The receiver was broken neatly in half, the wires stripped out.
Luke said, “You think this was done recently?”
“I can’t tell. Whoever did it… I mean, they were fucking anal about it. Dr. Toy’s the strongest candidate for this shit. Or maybe Westlake, before he surfaced? Your brother, even?”
Luke pictured Clayton wielding a bone mallet, destroying the monitors in a state of controlled wrath. The steely calm in his eyes as he methodically stripped the wires from the receiver, stranding everybody down here so that he could study in peace.