Vitals. Greg Bear

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       CHAPTER EIGHT

      The Mary’s Triumph had managed to cruise between three massive chimneys. Outside, hydrogen sulfide had leaped from a stinking trace to levels toxic to humans. Where steam-boiler temperatures did not scald, life flourished. Tube worms gathered in weird bouquets between the chimneys. White crabs crawled through like ants in grass. No alien city would ever look so strange or so weirdly beautiful.

      For a second, I spotted something gray and serpentine just beyond a nearly solid wall of tube worms. I tried to call it to Dave’s attention, but by the time he turned to look, it had faded like smoke. A current? A ribbon of bacterial floc scalded loose by a geyser?

      ‘We have about two hours,’ Dave reminded me. ‘Those chimneys have to be eighty feet high.’

      ‘That could happen in a few months down here.’

      ‘It’s still pretty damned wonderful. One of the biggest fields we’ve found.’ Dave shook his head. ‘But you’re not interested in tube worms.’

      ‘Not right now.’

      Tube worms are born empty, then suck bacteria into their hollow guts and rely on them to process sulfides and provide all of their nourishment. They live about two and a half centuries, three at the most. Impressive, but they still take their marching orders from germs.

      I wanted evidence from earlier times, when the host was still putting up a good fight and the bacteria were still flying their true colors.

      ‘Under the plume,’ I reminded Dave. ‘Let’s go east about a hundred yards. The walls seem to open up, and there are already fewer vents.’

      ‘So there are,’ Dave said, comparing the image from our forward-looking sonar with a terrain map made several months ago – a map, incidentally, that did not show Field 37.

      He rechecked our position, triangulating between the pulses from the mother ship and the transponders on the seafloor, then pushed the stick forward. Two, three, four knots; a gentle glide through the forest, over tube worms and around spewing, roaring geysers.

      We passed near enough to look up at a flange thrusting almost six feet from the side of a tall chimney. The bottom of the flange was painted with rippling, silvery pools. Superheated mineral-rich water, refusing to mix with the cooler local fluid, gathered under the flange’s rough surface and reflected our lights.

      ‘I get nervous around these puppies,’ Dave said. ‘Had one almost topple over on me when I was working for NOAA. Just clipped it with a manipulator arm, then, wham.’

      ‘That’s not common, is it?’ I asked.

      ‘Not very,’ Dave admitted. ‘But once is enough. Well, shit – I mean, dog poop – on it.’

      That just didn’t sound like reliable Dave the Christian man, the steady pilot of NOAA DSVs. I gave him a concerned look, but he was too busy to notice.

      We made our way between the long, winding canyon walls, pushing along at half a knot. The vents were behind us now, but wooly bacterial clumps fell all around, flashing in the lights. Bacteria coalesced into floc, carpeting the seafloor or being blown up into the megaplume, where they could be carried for miles, then sprinkle down like fake snow from an old Walmart Christmas tree.

      ‘Looks promising,’ Dave said. His arm twitched. The little sub tilted, and he corrected. ‘Poop.’

      ‘Focus,’ I said. The view outside was getting interesting. A thin, viscous silt covered the floor of the canyon. Ideal.

      A long, segmented ribbon like a thick blade of grass floated in our lights. ‘There.’ I pointed. Dave had turned the thrusters to reduce our forward motion, and the ribbon greeted us with a frantic, gelatinous shimmy. Then – before I could take charge of the data glove on my side and extend the manipulator arm – the organism tore itself into spinning bits of jelly.

      I watched the bits get lost in the floc.

      ‘Sorry,’ Dave said.

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