Loud cursing came from the inner cabin. “Rombelle! Get your fat ass in here right now. The fusion drive doesn’t work!”
Thank God. Drowning, maybe, but no instant incineration. Bony stood up to walk the few steps through to the control cabin. Then he paused. Looking down, he could see that outside the port there was no longer a featureless cloud. Below the ship was a forest of spears, their points stretching upward. The Mood Indigo was dropping straight down onto them.
“Hold tight! We’re going to hit bottom.” Bony followed his own advice and grabbed for the back of a seat, but the warning was a little too late. Amidst a crystalline tinkling sound like fairy bells — it came from right outside and underneath the ship — they smacked into the seabed.
Bony held his breath and waited. This might be it , the end of everything. A space pinnace like the Mood Indigo was designed to withstand certain stresses encountered during travel in space. It was not intended to bear the forces that came from contact with an array of sharp, up-pointed spears, at some unknown depth in some unknown ocean.
The hull flexed and groaned like an old man in pain. The cabin floor trembled and tilted. The port next to Bony, normally flat, bowed in a little under the pressure. And, from the control cabin, the voice of Friday Indigo came again. “Rombelle! You fat-ass idiot, what are you playing at out there? I’ve lost sensor readouts. Get in here!”
Business as usual. If Friday was yelling, they must still be alive.
Bony took the few steps through to the inner cabin. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned. Never get involved in a venture with a man who inherited his money and didn’t earn any himself. He’ll assume he’s smarter than you are, just because he’s rich and you’re not, and he’ll expect you to bow down to his greatness because for all his life people have. Bony had known Indigo for less than a week, but the man fitted the rich-man model to perfection. Friday Indigo; descendant of one of the original heirs to the Yang diamond; only son of a Kuiper Belt developer who was killed by a Persephone tunnel cave-in; self-proclaimed entrepreneur, space expert, and daring explorer.
And a bombastic, domineering little turd who never did a day’s work in his life and blames other people for everything that ever goes wrong. Liddy, how can you share a bed with him?
Bony muttered that under his breath; then he popped his head into the control cabin. “Yes, Captain?”
Friday Indigo waved his hand at the display. “What have you done to those sensors?”
Bony glanced at the screen. “The ones you are pointing to are located at the rear of the ship. We came down tail-first, so I assume they were crushed when we hit the bottom of the sea.”
“Well, do whatever needs doing to get them working again. I can’t fly this ship when it’s blind.”
Or when you can see. You brought us here, wherever here is. “Yes, sir. It may take a while. First, I need to learn what the environment outside the ship is like.”
“What are you talking about, what it’s like . You can see it, can’t you?”
“I need to know how deep we are. What the external pressure is. What the seabed is made of. If it’s water out there, or something else.”
“Of course it’s water. What else could it be? Don’t waste time on pointless tests. And you, my girl.” Friday rounded on Liddy Morse. “Go with him, try to be useful for a change. Expand your repertoire, do something different from the usual.”
He patted her rump in a proprietary way. Liddy gave Friday Indigo a look which to Bony’s outraged eye combined equal parts of resignation and discomfort, but she followed Bony down a short ladder toward the rear part of the ship.
“And while you’re at it,” Friday called after them, “find out where we are.”
That’s right, Bony thought. Save the hardest question for last.
He moved downward carefully, measuring the pressure on his foot at each step. At the bottom he turned. “Try and estimate as you put your feet down, Liddy. How much would you say you weigh?”
He watched her descent and cursed his own cravings for food. Liddy was so slim and graceful, she made him feel as fat and clumsy as an elephant. She stepped easily all the way down and paused at the bottom for a moment to think.
“A lot less than on Earth. I was only on Mars once, but I think I weigh less than there, too. Maybe half of that — about the same as on the Moon or Ganymede.”
“That’s my guess, too. About one-sixth of Earth gravity.”
“Does that tell you anything?”
“Nothing useful.” He grinned at her, and was delighted when Liddy smiled back. She was a different person when she was not around Friday Indigo. He wondered, not for the first time, how a delicate and sensitive young woman like her came to be on board a dangerous expedition to nowhere.
And, thinking of nowhere … “I have no idea where we are, but the low gravity may be the reason we are alive. Water pressure at depth is a lot less here, so the ship’s hull can stand the force. Let’s see what else we can find out.”
Time to show off in front of Liddy. And it wouldn’t be easy. Everything about the Mood Indigo , inside and out, had been designed for a vacuum environment. Bony had to make things work on the ocean bed.
He went to the tailmost port on the ship and took another look outside. The array of spears had shattered under the impact and lay in pieces beyond the hull. Visual inspection suggested fragile, crystalline structures. Just as well, or the hull of the Mood Indigo might have been damaged by them.
If the liquid outside was water, they couldn’t be too deep. Bony could make out no shadows, but he had a definite impression that he was seeing by light that streamed in from above.
Was it sunlight from some local star in the Geyser Swirl, diffusing down through the liquid and slowly being scattered and absorbed as it came to greater depths? Probably. But Friday Indigo would say, rightly, that guesswork was not proof. They needed to find a way to get outside and float up to the surface. But before that, they must have samples. Suppose it was acid out there, acid that was even now eating its way through the ship’s hull?
Bringing a sample into the Mood Indigo was much easier than taking a person out of it. The liquid, whatever it was, would have filled the little cylinders of the fusion drive normally exposed to open space. He could isolate one of those and retract it without leaving the ship.
“Keep well back, Liddy. This may splash. I expect that it’s water, but I’m not sure.”
It was another test of a sort. When he opened one end of the cylinder’s chamber to allow it to come into the ship, it would be forced in by whatever pressure existed at the other end. Bony placed his left palm in the way, preparing himself for the idea that the cylinder could possibly shoot out hard enough to break the bones of his hand.
Bony opened the valve. The cylinder, its flat end about two inches across, shot backward and smacked into his open palm. It didn’t hurt. The pressure outside couldn’t be much more than a standard atmosphere. That corresponded to a thirty-foot column of water, back on Earth; which meant that the liquid outside, assuming it was water under a sixth of a gravity, couldn’t be more than a hundred and eighty feet deep. Once in suits and outside the ship, they could easily float up to the surface.
In spite of his warning, Liddy had stood too close. As the cylinder came backward, liquid splashed out of it onto her hand.