Dragon

  Plunkett gazed in awe at the hollow stalks as the worms inside poked their delicate pink and burgundy plumes into the black water. "Some of them must be a good three meters in length!" he exclaimed.

  Also scattered around the vents and the tube worms were huge white mussels and clams of varieties Plunkett had never seen before. Lemon-colored creatures that looked like puff balls and were related to jellyfish mingled with spiny white crabs and bluish shrimp. None of them required photosynthesis to survive. They were nourished by bacteria that converted the hydrogen sulfide and oxygen overflow from the vents into organic nutrients. If the sun was suddenly snuffed out, these creatures in their pitch-black environment would continue to exist while all other life forms above them became extinct.

  He tried to etch the image of the different vent inhabitants in his brain as they disappeared into the silt cloud trailing behind, but he couldn't concentrate. Sealed tight in the lonely cabin of the mining vehicle, Plunkett experienced a tremendous wave of emotion as he stared into the alien world. No stranger to the abyssal deep, he suddenly felt as isolated as an astronaut lost beyond the galaxy.

  Pitt took only a few glimpses of the incredible scene outside. He had no time for distractions. His eyes and reflexes depended on his reaction to the dangers shown on the monitor. Twice he almost lost Big John in gaping fissures, stopping at the brink of one with less than a meter to spare. The rugged terrain often proved as impassable as a Hawaiian lava bed, and he had to rapidly program the computer to chart the least treacherous detour.

  He had to be especially careful of landslide zones and canyon rims that could not support the vehicle.

  Once he was forced to circle a small but active volcano whose molten lava poured through a long crack and down the slope before turning solid under the frigid water. He steered around scarred pits and tall cones and across wide craters, every type of texture and contour one would expect to find on Mars.

  Driving by the sonar and radar probes of the computer instead of relying on his limited vision under the DSMV's lights did not make for a joy ride. The strain was beginning to arrive in aching muscles and sore eyes, and he decided to turn temporary control over to Plunkett, who had quickly picked up the intricacies of operating Big John.

  "We've just passed the two-thousand-meter mark," Pitt reported.

  "Looking good," replied Plunkett cheerfully. "We're better than halfway."

  "Don't write the check just yet. The grade has steepened. If it increases another five degrees, our tracks won't be able to keep their grip."

  Plunkett forced out all thoughts of failure. He had complete confidence in Pitt, a particular that irritated the man from NUMA to no end. "The slope's surface has smoothed out. We should have a direct path to the summit."

  "The lava rocks hereabouts may have lost their sharp edges and become rounded," Pitt muttered wearily, his words coming slow with the edge of an exhausted man, "but under no circumstance can they be called smooth."

  "Not to worry. We're out of the abyssal zone and into midwater." Plunkett paused and pointed through the viewing window at a flash of bluegreen bioluminescence. "Porichthys myriaster, a fish that lights up for two minutes."

  "You have to feel sorry for him," Pitt said tongue-in-cheek.

  "Why?" Plunkett challenged. "The porichthys has adapted very well. His luminescence is used to frighten predators, act as bait to attract food, as a means to identify his own species and, of course, attract the opposite sex in the total blackness."

  "Swimming in a cold black void all their lives. I'd call that a real drag."

  Plunkett realized he was being had. "Very clever observation, Mr. Pitt. A pity we can't offer midwater fish some sort of entertainment."

  "I think we can give them a few laughs."

  "Oh, really. What have you got in mind?"

  "They can watch you drive for a while." He gestured to the control console. "She's all yours. Mind you keep a tight eye on the monitor's geological display and not on jellyfish with neon advertising."

  Pitt slouched in his seat, blinked his eyes closed, and looked to be asleep in a moment.

  Pitt came awake two hours later at the sound of a loud crack that came like a gunshot. He immediately sensed trouble. He came erect and scanned the console, spying a flashing red light.

  "A malfunction?"

  "We've sprung a leak," Plunkett informed him promptly. "The warning light came on in unison with the bang."

  "What does the computer say about damage and location?"

  "Sorry, you didn't teach me the code to activate the program."

  Pitt quickly punched the proper code on the keyboard. The readout instantly swept across the display monitor.

  "We're lucky," said Pitt. "The life-support and electronic equipment chambers are tight. So is the shielded reactor compartment. The leak is below, somewhere around the engine and generator compartment."

  "You call that lucky?"

  "There's room to move around in that section, and the walls are accessible for plugging the entry hole.

  The battering this poor old bus has taken must have opened a microscopic casting flaw in the lower hull casing."

  "The force of the outer water pressure through a hole the size of a pin can fill the interior volume of this cabin in two hours," Plunkett said uneasily. He stirred uncomfortably. The optimism had gone out of his eyes as he stared bleakly at the monitor. "And if the hole widens and the hull collapses. . ." His voice dropped off.

  "These walls won't collapse," Pitt said emphatically. "They were built to resist six times the pressure of this depth."

  "That still leaves a tiny shaft of water coming in with the power of a laser beam. Its force can slice an electric cable or a man's arm in the wink of an eye."

  "Then I'll have to be careful, won't I?" Pitt said as he slipped out of his chair and crawled toward the aft end of the control cabin. He had to maintain a constant handhold to keep from being thrown about by the swaying and pitching of the vehicle as it lurched over the broken terrain. Just before reaching the exit door, he leaned down and lifted a small trapdoor and switched on the lights, illuminating the small confines of the engine compartment.

  He could hear a sharp hiss above the hum of the steam turbine but couldn't see where it was coming from. Already there was a quarter meter of water covering the steel walk matting. He paused and listened, trying to locate the sound. It wouldn't do to rush blindly into the razor-slashing stream.

  "See it?" Plunkett shouted at him.

  "No!" Pitt snapped nervously.

  "Should I stop?"

  "Not for anything. Keep moving toward the summit."

  He leaned through the floor opening. There was a threatening terror, a foreboding about the deadly hissing noise, more menacing than the hostile world outside. Had the spurting leak already damaged vital equipment? Was it too strong to be stopped? There was no time to lose, no time to contemplate, no time to weigh the odds. And he who hesitated was supposed to be lost. It made no difference now if he died by drowning, cut to ribbons, or crushed by the relentless pressure of the deep sea.

  He dropped through the trapdoor and crouched inside for a few moments, happy to still be in one piece. The hissing was close, almost within an arm's length, and he could feel the sting from the spray as its stream struck something ahead. But the resulting mist that filled the compartment prevented him from spotting the entry hole.

  Pitt edged closer through the mist. A thought struck him, and he pulled off a shoe. He held it up and swung it from side to side with the heel out as a blind man would sweep a cane. Abruptly the shoe was nearly torn from his hand. A section of the heel was neatly carved off. He saw it then, a brief sparkle ahead and to his right.

  The needlelike stream was jetting against the mounted base of the compact steam turbine that drove the DSMV's huge traction belts. The thick titanium mount withstood the concentrated power of the leak's spurt, but its tough surface had already been etched and pitted from the narrow onslaught. r />
  Pitt had isolated the problem, but it was far from solved. No caulking, no sealant or tape could stop a spewing jet with power to cut through metal if given enough time. He stood and edged around the turbine to a tool and spare parts cabinet. He studied the interior for a brief instant and then pulled out a length of high-pressure replacement pipe for the steam generator. Next he retrieved a heavy sledge-type hammer.

  The water had risen to half a meter by the time he was ready. His makeshift scheme just had to work.

  If not, then all hope was gone and there was nothing he and Plunkett could do but wait to either drown or be crushed by the incoming pressure.

  Slowly, with infinite caution, he reached out with the pipe in one hand and the hammer in the other. He lay poised in the rapidly rising water, inhaled a deep breath, held it a moment, and then exhaled.

  Simultaneously he shoved one end of the pipe over the entry hole, careful to aim the opposite end away from him, and immediately jammed it against the angled slope of the thick bulkhead shield separating the turbine and reactor compartments. Furiously he hammered the lower end of the pipe up the angle until it was wedged tight and only a fine spray escaped from both top and bottom.

  His jury-rigged stopgap may have been clever, but it wasn't perfect. The wedged pipe had slowed the incoming flood to a tiny spurt, enough to get them to the summit of the guyot, hopefully, but it was not a permanent solution. It was only a matter of hours before the entry hole enlarged itself or the pipe split under the laserlike force.

  Pitt sat back, cold, wet, and too mentally drained to feel the water sloshing around his body. Funny, he thought after a long minute, how sitting in ice water he could still sweat.

  Twenty-two grueling hours after struggling from its grave, the faithful DSMV had climbed within sight of the seamount's summit. With Pitt back at the controls, the twin tracks dug, slipped, then dug their cleats into the silt-covered lava rock, struggling up the steep incline a meter at a time until finally the great tractor clawed over the rim onto level ground.

  Only then did Big John come to a complete stop and become silent as the surrounding cloud of ooze slowly settled on the flattened top of Conrow Guyot.

  "We did it, old man," laughed Plunkett excitedly as he pounded Pitt on the back. "We jolly well did it."

  "Yes," Pitt agreed tiredly, "but we've still one more obstacle to overcome." He nodded at the digital depth reading. "Three hundred and twenty-two meters to go."

  Plunkett's joy quickly vaporized. "Any sign of your people?" he asked seriously.

  Pitt punched up the sonar-radar probe. The display revealed the ten-kilometer-square summit as empty and barren as a sheet of cardboard. The expected rescue vehicle had failed to arrive.

  "Nobody home," he said quietly.

  "Hard to believe no one on the surface heard our blasting music and homed in on our movement," said Plunkett, more irritated than disappointed.

  "They've had precious little time to mount a rescue operation."

  "Still, I'd have expected one of your submersibles to return and keep us company."

  Pitt gave a weary shrug. "Equipment failure, adverse weather, they might have encountered any number of problems."

  "We didn't come all this way to expire in this hellish place now." Plunkett looked up toward the surface. The pitch-black had become a twilight indigo-blue. "Not this close."

  Pitt knew Giordino and Admiral Sandecker would have moved heaven and earth to save him and Plunkett. He refused to accept the possibility they hadn't smelled out his plan and acted accordingly.

  Silently he rose, went aft, and raised the door to the engine compartment. The leak had enlarged and the water level was above a meter. Another forty minutes to an hour and it would reach the turbine. When it drowned, the generator would die as well. Without functioning life-support systems, Pitt and Plunkett would quickly follow.

  "They'll come," Pitt said to himself with unwavering determination. "They'll come."

  >

  Ten minutes passed, twenty, as the dread of loneliness fell over them. The sense of being lost on the sea bottom, the unending darkness, the bizarre sea life that hovered around them-- it was all like a ghastly nightmare.

  Pitt had parked Big John in the center of the seamount and then programmed the computer to monitor the leak in the engine compartment. He peered warily at the display screen as the numbers showed the water level creeping to within a few centimeters of the generator.

  Though the climb to a shallower depth sharply relieved the outside water pressure, the entry flaw had enlarged, and Pitt's further efforts could not stem the growing flood. He evacuated air to offset the increased atmospheric compression caused by the rising flood.

  Plunkett half turned and studied Pitt, whose strong craggy face was quite still, as firmly set as the eyelids that never seemed to flicker. The eyes seemed to reflect anger, not at any one person or object, but anger simply directed at a situation he could not control. He sat frighteningly remote from Plunkett, almost as if the British oceanographer was a thousand kilometers away. Pitt's mind was armored against all sensation or fear of death. His thoughts sifted through myriad escape plans, calculating every detail from every angle until one by one they were all discarded in the shredder inside his brain.

  Only one possibility stood a remote chance of success, but it all depended on Giordino. If his friend didn't appear within the next hour, it would be too late.

  Plunkett reached over and thumped Pitt's shoulder with one big fist. "A magnificent try, Mr. Pitt. You took us from the deep abyss to almost within sight of the surface."

  "Not good enough," Pitt murmured. "We came up a dollar long and a penny short."

  "Mind telling me how you planned to do it without the convenience of a pressure lock to escape the vehicle and a personnel transfer capsule to carry us to the surface?"

  "My original idea was to swim home."

  Plunkett raised an eyebrow. "I hope you didn't expect us to hold our breath."

  No.

  "Good," Plunkett said, satisfied. "Speaking for myself, I'd have expired before ascending thirty meters." He hesitated and stared at Pitt curiously. "Swim, you can't be serious?"

  "A ridiculous hope bred of desperation," Pitt replied philosophically. "I know better than to believe our bodies could survive the onslaught of extreme pressure and decompression."

  "You say that was your original idea. Do you have another-- like trying to float this monster off the bottom?"

  "You're getting warm."

  "Lifting a fifteen-ton vehicle can only be accomplished in a vivid imagination."

  "Actually, it hinges on Al Giordino," Pitt answered with forbearance. "If he's read my mind, he'll meet us in a submersible equipped with--"

  "But he let you down," said Plunkett, sweeping an arm over the empty seascape.

  "There has to be a damn good reason for it."

  "You know and I know, Mr. Pitt, no one will come. Not within hours, days, or ever. You gambled on a miracle and lost. If they do come to search, it'll be over the wreckage of your mining community, not here."

  Pitt did not reply but gazed into the water. The lights of the DSMV had drawn a school of hatchetfish.

  Silver with deep bodies and flattened on the sides, slender tails wavered in the water as rows of light organs flashed along their lower stomachs. The eyes were disproportionately large and protruded from tubes that rose upward. He watched as they swirled gracefully in lazy spirals around the great nose of Big John.

  Slowly he bent forward as if listening, then sank back again. "Thought I heard something."

  "A mystery we can still hear over that blaring music," Plunkett grunted. "My eardrums have ceased to function."

  "Remind me to send you a condolence card at a later date," said Pitt. "Or would you rather we give up, flood the cabin, and end it?"

  He froze into immobility, eyes focused on the hatchetfish. A great shadow crept over them, and as one they darted into the blackness and va
nished.

  "Something wrong?" asked Plunkett.

  "We have company," Pitt said with an I-told-you-so grin. He twisted in his seat, tilted his head, and looked through the upper viewing window.

  One of the NUMA Soggy Acres submersibles hung suspended in the void slightly above and to the rear of the DSMV. Giordino wore a smile that was wide as a jack-o'-lantern's. Next to him, Admiral Sandecker threw a jaunty wave through the large round port.

  It was the moment Pitt had wished for, indeed silently prayed', for, and Plunkett's great bear hug showed how gladly he shared the moment.

  "Dirk," he said solemnly, "I humbly apologize for my negative company. This goes beyond instinct.

  You are one crafty bastard."

  "I do what I can," Pitt admitted with humorous modesty.

  There were few times in his life Pitt had seen anything half as wonderful as Giordino's smiling face from inside the submersible. Where did the admiral come from? he wondered. How could he have arrived on the scene so quickly?

  Giordino wasted little time. He motioned to a small door that shielded an exterior electrical receptacle.

  Pitt nodded and pressed a button. The door slipped open into a hidden slot, and in less than a minute one of the articulated robotic arms on the submersible connected a cable.

  "Am I coming through?" Giordino's voice burst clearly over the speakers.

  "You don't know how good it is to hear your voice, pal," answered Pitt.

  "Sorry we're late. The other submersible swamped and sank on the surface. This one shorted its batteries and we lost time in repairs."

  "All is forgiven. Good to see you, Admiral. I didn't expect your honored presence down here."

  "Cut the apple-polishing," Sandecker boomed. "What's your status?"

  "We have a leak that will close down our power source within forty or fifty minutes. Beyond that we're in good shape."

  "Then we'd better get busy."

  With no more wasted conversation, Giordino maneuvered the submersible until its bow was on the same level and facing the lower broadside of the DSMV. Then he engaged the manipulator arms mounted on the front below the control sphere. They were much smaller than the arm system on Big John and more intricate.