Gravity. Tess Gerritsen

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       1

      The Galápagos Rift

      .30 Degrees South, 90.30 Degrees West

      He was gliding on the edge of the abyss.

      Below him yawned the watery blackness of a frigid underworld, where the sun had never penetrated, where the only light was the fleeting spark of a bioluminescent creature. Lying prone in the form-fitting body pan of Deep Flight IV, his head cradled in the clear acrylic nose cone, Dr Stephen D. Ahearn had the exhilarating sensation of soaring, untethered, through the vastness of space. In the beams of his wing lights he saw the gentle and continuous drizzle of organic debris falling from the light-drenched waters far above. They were the corpses of protozoans, drifting down through thousands of feet of water to their final graveyard on the ocean floor.

      Gliding through that soft rain of debris, he guided Deep Flight along the underwater canyon’s rim, keeping the abyss to his port side, the plateau floor beneath him. Though the sediment was seemingly barren, the evidence of life was everywhere. Etched in the ocean floor were the tracks and plow marks of wandering creatures, now safely concealed in their cloak of sediment. He saw evidence of man as well: a rusted length of chain, sinuously draped around a fallen anchor; a soda pop bottle, half-submerged in ooze. Ghostly remnants from the alien world above.

      A startling sight suddenly loomed into view. It was like coming across an underwater grove of charred tree trunks. The objects were blacksmoker chimneys, twenty-foot tubes formed by dissolved minerals swirling out of cracks in the earth’s crust. With the joysticks, he maneuvered Deep Flight gently starboard, to avoid the chimneys.

      ‘I’ve reached the hydrothermal vent,’ he said. ‘Moving at two knots, smoker chimneys to port side.’

      ‘How’s she handling?’ Helen’s voice crackled through his earpiece.

      ‘Beautifully. I want one of these babies for my own.’

      She laughed. ‘Be prepared to write a very big check, Steve. You spot the nodule field yet? It should be dead ahead.’

      Ahearn was silent for a moment as he peered through the watery murk. A moment later he said, ‘I see them.’

      The manganese nodules looked like lumps of coal scattered across the ocean floor. Strangely, almost bizarrely, smooth, formed by minerals solidifying around stones or grains of sand, they were a highly prized source of titanium and other precious metals. But he ignored the nodules. He was in search of a prize far more valuable.

      ‘I’m heading down into the canyon,’ he said.

      With the joysticks he steered Deep Flight over the plateau’s edge. As his velocity increased to two and a half knots, the wings, designed to produce the opposite effect of an airplane wing, dragged the sub downward. He began his descent into the abyss.

      ‘Eleven hundred meters,’ he counted off. ‘Eleven fifty…’

      ‘Watch your clearance. It’s a narrow rift. You monitoring water temperature?’

      ‘It’s starting to rise. Up to fifty-five degrees now.’

      ‘Still a ways from the vent. You’ll be in hot water in another two thousand meters.’

      A shadow suddenly swooped right past Ahearn’s face. He flinched, inadvertently jerking the joystick, sending the craft rolling to starboard. The hard jolt of the sub against the canyon wall sent a clanging shock wave through the hull.

      ‘Jesus!’

      ‘Status?’ said Helen. ‘Steve, what’s your status?’

      He was hyperventilating, his heart slamming in panic against the body pan. The hull. Have I damaged the hull? Through the harsh sound of his own breathing, he listened for the groan of steel giving way, for the fatal blast of water. He was thirty-six hundred feet beneath the surface, and over one hundred atmospheres of pressure were squeezing in on all sides like a fist. A breach in the hull, a burst of water, and he would be crushed.

      ‘Steve, talk to me!’

      Cold sweat soaked his body. He finally managed to speak. ‘I got startled—collided with the canyon wall—’

      ‘Is there any damage?’

      He looked out the dome. ‘I can’t tell. I think I bumped against the cliff with the forward sonar unit.’

      ‘Can you still maneuver?’

      He tried the joysticks, nudging the craft to port. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He released a deep breath. ‘I think I’m okay. Something swam right past my dome. Got me rattled.’

      ‘Something?’

      ‘It went by so fast! Just this streak—like a snake whipping by.’

      ‘Did it look like a fish’s head on an eel’s body?’

      ‘Yes. Yes, that’s what I saw.’

      ‘Then it was an eelpout. Thermarces cerberus.’

      Cerberus, thought Ahearn with a shudder. The three-headed dog guarding the gates of hell.

      ‘It’s attracted to the heat and sulfur,’ said Helen. ‘You’ll see more of them as you get closer to the vent.’

      If you say so. Ahearn knew next to nothing about marine biology. The creatures now drifting past his acrylic head dome were merely objects of curiosity to him, living signposts pointing the way to his goal. With both hands steady at the controls now, he maneuvered Deep Flight IV deeper into the abyss.

      Two thousand meters. Three thousand.

      What if he had damaged the hull?