DEEPSTAR III – ASCEND CHECKLIST
1. Set Ballast Blowers To: On
Proceed To Next Cancel
So that was how it worked, Norman thought. A step-by-step checklist stored in the sub’s computer. All you had to do was follow directions. He could do that.
A small surge of current moved the sub, swaying it at its tether.
He pressed the “CANCEL” and the screen went blank. It flashed:
Timer Reset – Counting 11:53:04
[[241]] The counter was still running backward. He thought, Have I really been here seven minutes? Another surge of current, and the sub swayed again. It was time to go.
He moved to the hatch, climbed out into the dome, and closed the hatch. He lowered himself down the side of the sub, touched the bottom. Out from beneath the shielding metal, his radio immediately crackled.
“—you there? Norman, are you there? Answer, please!”
It was Harry, on the radio.
“I’m here,” Norman said.
“Norman, for God’s sake—”
In that moment, Norman saw the greenish glow, and he knew why the sub had surged and rocked at its moorings. The squid was just ten yards away, its glowing tentacles writhing out toward him, churning up the sediment along the ocean floor.
“—Norman, will you—”
There was no time to think. Norman took three steps, jumped, and pulled himself through the open hatch into DH-7.
He slammed the hatch door down behind him but the flat, spade-like tentacle was already reaching in. He pinned the tentacle in the partially closed hatch, but the tentacle didn’t withdraw. It was incredibly strong and muscular, writhing as he watched, the suckers like small puckered mouths opening and closing. Norman stomped down on the hatch, trying to force the tentacle to withdraw. With a muscular flip, the hatch flew open, knocking him backward, and the tentacle reached up into the habitat. He smelled the strong odor of ammonium.
Norman fled, climbing higher into the cylinder. The second tentacle appeared, splashing up through the hatch. The two tentacles swung in circles beneath him, searching. He came to a porthole and looked out, saw the great body of the animal, the huge round staring eye. He clambered higher, getting away from the tentacles. Most of the cylinder seemed to be given over to storage; it was crammed with equipment, [[242]] boxes, tanks. Many of the boxes were bright red with stencils: “CAUTION NO SMOKING NO ELECTRONICS TEVAC EXPLOSIVES.” There were a hell of a lot of explosives in here, he thought, stumbling upward.
The tentacles rose higher behind him. Somewhere, in a detached, logical part of his brain, he thought: The cylinder is only forty feet high, and the tentacles are at least forty feet long. There will be no place for me to hide.
He stumbled, banged his knee, kept going. He heard the slap of the tentacles as they struck the walls, swung upward toward him.
A weapon, he thought. I have to find a weapon.
He came to the small galley, metal counter, some pots and pans. He pulled the drawers open hastily, looking for a knife. He could find only a small paring knife, threw it away in disgust. He heard the tentacles coming closer. The next moment he was knocked down, his helmet banging on the deck. Norman scrambled to his feet, dodged the tentacle, moved up the cylinder.
A communications section: radio set, computer, a couple of monitors. The tentacles were right behind him, slithering up like nightmarish vines. His eyes burned from the ammonia fumes.
He came to the bunks, a narrow space near the top of the cylinder.
No place to hide, he thought. No weapons, and no place to hide.
The tentacles reached the top of the cylinder, slapped against the upper curved surface, swung sideways. In a moment they would have him. He grabbed the mattress from one bunk, held it up as flimsy protection. The two tentacles were swinging erratically around him. He dodged the first.
And then with a whump the second tentacle coiled around him, holding both him and the mattress in a cold, slimy grip. He felt a sickening slow squeeze, the dozens of suckers gripping his body, cutting into his skin. He moaned in horror. The second tentacle swung back to grip him along with the first. He was trapped in a vise.
Oh God, he thought.
[[243]] The tentacles swung away from the wall, lifting him high in the air, into the middle of the cylinder. This is it, he thought, but in the next moment he felt his body sliding downward past the mattress, and he slipped through the grip and fell through the air. He grabbed the tentacles for support, sliding down the giant evil-smelling vines, and then he crashed down onto the deck near the galley, his head banging on the metal deck. He rolled onto his back.
He saw the two tentacles above, gripping the mattress, squeezing it, twisting it. Did the squid realize what had happened, that he had gotten free?
Norman looked around desperately. A weapon, a weapon. This was a Navy habitat. There must be a weapon somewhere.
The tentacles tore the mattress apart. Shreds of white padding drifted down through the cylinder. The tentacles released the mattress, the big pieces falling. Then the tentacles started swinging around the habitat again.
Searching.
It knows, he thought. It knows I have gotten away, and that I am still in here somewhere. It is hunting me.
But how did it know?
Norman ducked behind the galley as one of the flat tentacles came crashing through the pots and pans, sweeping around, feeling for him. Norman scrambled back, coming up against a large potted plant. The tentacle was still searching, moving restlessly across the floor, banging the pans. Norman pushed the plant forward, and the tentacle gripped it, uprooted it easily, sweeping it away into the air.
The distraction allowed Norman to scramble forward. A weapon, he thought. A weapon.
He looked down to where the mattress had fallen, and he saw, lining the wall near the bottom hatch, a series of silver vertical bars. Spear guns! Somehow he had missed them on the way up. Each spear gun was tipped in a fat bulb like a hand grenade. Explosive tips? He started to climb down.
The tentacles were sliding down, too, following him. How did the squid know where he was? And then, as he passed a [[244]] porthole, he saw the eye outside and he thought, He can see me, for God’s sake.
Stay away from the portholes.
Not thinking clearly. Everything happening fast. Crawling down past the explosive crates in the storage hold, thinking, I better not miss in here, and he landed with a clang on the airlock deck.
The arms were slithering down, moving down the cylinder toward him. He tugged at one of the spear guns. It was strapped to the wall with a rubber cord. Norman pulled at it, tried to release it. The tentacles drew closer. He yanked at the rubber, but it wouldn’t release. What was wrong with these snaps?
The tentacles were closer. Coming down swiftly.
Then he realized the cords had safety catches: you had to pull the guns sideways, not out. He did; the rubber popped free. The spear gun was in his hand. He turned, and the tentacle knocked him down. He flipped onto his back and saw the great flat suckered palm of the tentacle coming straight down on him, and the tentacle wrapped over his helmet, everything was black, and he fired.
There was tremendous pain in his chest and abdomen. For a horrified moment he thought he had shot himself. Then he gasped and he realized it was just the concussion; his chest was burning, but the squid released him.
He still couldn’t see. He pulled the palm off his face and it fell heavily onto the deck, writhing, severed from the squid arm. The interior walls of the habitat were splattered with blood. One tentacle was still moving, the other was a bloody, ragged stump. Both arms pulled out through the hatch, slipped into the water.
Norman ran for the porthole; the squid moved swiftly away, the green glow diminishing. He had done it! He’d beaten it off.
He’d done it.
DH-8
“How many did you bring?” Harry said, turning the spear gun over in his hands.
“Five,” Norman said. “That was all I could carry.”
“But it worked?” He was examining the bulbous explosive tip.
“Yeah, it worked. Blew the whole tentacle off.”
“I saw the squid going away,” Harry said. “I figured you must have done something.”
“Where’s Beth?”
“I don’t know. Her suit’s gone. I think she may have gone to the ship.”
“Gone to the ship?” Norman said, frowning.
“All I know is, when I woke up she was gone. I figured you were over at the habitat, and then I saw the squid, and I tried to get you on the radio but I guess the metal blocked the transmission.”
“Beth left?” Norman said. He was starting to get angry. Beth was supposed to stay at the communications console, watching the sensors for him while he was outside. Instead, she had gone to the ship?
“Her suit’s gone,” Harry said again.
“Son of a bitch!” Norman said. He was suddenly furious—really, deeply furious. He kicked the console.
“Careful there,” Harry said.
“Damn it!”
“Take it easy,” Harry said, “come on, take it easy, Norman.”
“What the hell does she think she’s doing?”
“Come on, sit down, Norman.” Harry steered him to a chair. “We’re all tired.”
“Damn right we’re tired!”
“Easy, Norman, easy … Remember your blood pressure.”
“My blood pressure’s fine!”
“Not now, it’s not,” Harry said. “You’re purple.”
“How could she let me go outside and then just leave?”
[[246]] “Worse, go out herself,” Harry said.
“But she wasn’t watching out for me any more,” Norman said. And then it came to him, why he was so angry-he was angry because he was afraid. At a moment of great personal danger, Beth had abandoned him. There were only three of them left down there, and they needed each other—they needed to depend on each other. But Beth was unreliable, and that made him afraid. And angry.
“Can you hear me?” her voice said, on the intercom. “Anybody hear me?”
Norman reached for the microphone, but Harry snatched it away. “I’ll do this,” he said. “Yes, Beth, we can hear you.”
“I’m in the ship,” she said, her voice crackling on the intercom. “I’ve found another compartment, aft, behind the crew bunks. It’s quite interesting.”
Quite interesting, Norman thought. Jesus, quite interesting. He grabbed the microphone from Harry. “Beth, what the hell are you doing over there?”
“Oh, hi, Norman. You made it back okay, huh?”
“Barely.”
“You have some trouble?” She didn’t sound concerned.
“Yes, I did.”
“Are you all right? You sound mad.”
“You bet I’m mad. Beth, why did you leave while I was out there?”
“Harry said he’d take over for me.”
“He what?” Norman looked at Harry. Harry was shaking his head no.
“Harry said he’d take over at the console for me. He told me to go ahead to the ship. Since the squid wasn’t around, it seemed like a good time.”
Norman cupped his hand over microphone. “I don’t the remember that,” Harry said.
“Did you talk to her?”
“I don’t remember talking to her.”
Beth said, “Just ask him, Norman. He’ll tell you.”
“He says he never said that.”
“Well, then, he’s full of it,” Beth said. “What do you think, I’d abandon you when you were outside, for Christ’s sake?” [[247]] There was a pause. “I’d never do that, Norman.”
“I swear,” Harry said to Norman. “I never had any conversation with Beth. I never talked to her at all. I’m telling you, she was gone when I woke up. There was nobody here. If you ask me, she always intended to go to the ship.”
Norman remembered how quickly Beth had agreed to let Norman go to the sub, how surprised he had been. Perhaps Harry was right, he thought. Perhaps Beth had been planning it all along.
“You know what I think?” Harry said. “I think she’s cracking up.”
Over the intercom, Beth said, “You guys get it straightened out?”
Norman said, “I think so, Beth, yes.”
“Good,” Beth said. “Because I have made a discovery over here, in the spaceship.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve found the crew.”
“You both came,” Beth said. She was sitting on a console in the comfortable beige flight deck of the spacecraft. “Yes,” Norman said, looking at her. She looked okay. If anything, she looked better than ever. Stronger, clearer. She actually looked rather beautiful, he thought. “Harry thought that the squid wouldn’t come back.”
“The squid was out there?”
Norman briefly told her about his attack.
“Jesus. I’m sorry, Norman. I’d never have left if I had any idea.”
She certainly didn’t sound like somebody who was cracking up, Norman thought. She sounded appropriate and sincere. “Anyway,” he said, “I injured it, and Harry thought it wouldn’t come back.”
Harry said, “And we couldn’t decide who should stay behind, so we both came.”
“Well, come this way,” Beth said. She led them back, through the crew quarters, past the twenty bunks for the [[248]] crew, the large galley. Norman paused at the galley. So did Harry.
“I’m hungry,” Harry said.
“Eat something,” Beth said. “I did. They have some sort of nut bars or something, they taste okay.” She opened a drawer in the galley, produced bars wrapped in metal foil, gave them each one. Norman tore the foil and saw something that looked like chocolate. It tasted dry.
“Anything to drink?”
“Sure.” She threw open a refrigerator door. “Diet Coke?”
“You’re kidding. …..
“The can design is different, and I’m afraid it’s warm, but it’s Diet Coke, all right.”
“I’m buying stock in that company,” Harry said. “Now that we know it’ll still be there in fifty years.” He read the can. “Official drink of the Star Voyager Expedition.”
“Yeah, it’s a promo,” Beth said.
Harry turned the can around. The other side was printed in Japanese. “Wonder what this means?”
“It means, don’t buy that stock after all,” she said. Norman sipped the Coke with a sense of vague unease. The galley seemed subtly changed from the last time he had seen it. He wasn’t sure—he’d only glanced briefly at the room before—but he usually had a good memory for room layouts, and his wife had always joked that Norman could find his way around any kitchen. “You know,” he said, “I don’t remember a refrigerator in the galley.”
“I never really noticed, myself,” Beth said.
“As a matter of fact,” Norman said, “this whole room looks different to me. It looks bigger, and—I don’t know—different.”
“It’s ‘cause you’re hungry.” Harry grinned.
“Maybe,” Norman said. Harry could actually be right. In the sixties, there had been a number of studies of visual perception which demonstrated that subjects interpreted blurred slides according to their predispositions. Hungry people saw all the slides as food.
But this room really did look different. For instance, he didn’t remember the door to the galley being to the left, as [[249]] it was now. He remembered it as being in the center of the wall separating the galley from the bunks.
“This way,” Beth said, leading them farther aft. “Actually, the refrigerator was what got me thinking. It’s one thing to store a lot of food on a test ship being sent through a black hole. But to stock a refrigerator—why bother to do that? It made me think, there might be a crew after all.”
They entered a short, glass-walled tunnel. Deep-purple lights glowed down on them. “Ultraviolet,” Beth said. “I don’t know what it’s for.”
“Disinfection?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe it’s to get a suntan,” Harry said. “Vitamin D.” Then they came into a large room unlike anything Norman had ever seen. The floor glowed purple, bathing the room in ultraviolet light from beneath. Mounted on all four walls were a series of wide glass tubes. Inside each tube was a narrow silver mattress. The tubes all appeared empty.
“Over here,” Beth said.
They peered through one glass tube. The naked woman had once been beautiful. It was still possible to see that. Her skin was dark brown and deeply wrinkled, her body withered.
“Mummified?” Harry said.
Beth nodded. “Best I can figure out. I haven’t opened the tube, considering the risk of infection.”
“What was this room?” he said, looking around.
“It must be some kind of hibernation chamber. Each tube is separately connected to a life-support system—power supply, air handlers, heaters, the works—in the next room.”
Harry counted. “Twenty tubes,” he said.
“And twenty bunks,” Norman said.
“So where is everybody else?”
Beth shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“This woman is the only one left?”
“Looks like it. I haven’t found any others.”
“I wonder how they all died,” Harry said.
“Have you been to the sphere?” Norman asked Beth.
“No. Why?”
[[250]] “Just wondered.”
“You mean, you wondered if the crew died after they picked up the sphere?”
“Basically, yes.”
“I don’t think the sphere is aggressive or dangerous in any sense,” Beth said. “It’s possible that the crew died of natural causes in the course of the journey itself. This woman, for example, is so well preserved it makes you wonder about radiation. Maybe she got a large dose of radiation. There’s tremendous radiation around a black hole.”
“You think the crew died going through the black hole, and the sphere was picked up automatically by the spacecraft later?”
“It’s possible.”
“She’s pretty good-looking,” Harry said, peering through the glass. “Boy, the reporters would go crazy with this, wouldn’t they? Sexy woman from the future found nude and mummified. Film at eleven.”
“She’s tall, too,” Norman said. “She must be over six feet.”
“An Amazon woman,” Harry said. “With great tits.”
“All right,” Beth said.
“What’s wrong—offended on her behalf?” Harry said.
“I don’t think there’s any need for comments of that kind.”
“Actually, Beth,” Harry said, “she looks a little like you.”
Beth frowned.
“I’m serious. Have you looked at her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Norman peered through the glass, shielding his hand against the reflection of the purple UV tubes in the floor. The mummified woman did indeed look like Beth—younger, taller, stronger, but like Beth, nevertheless. “He’s right,” Norman said.
“Maybe she’s you, from the future,” Harry said.
“No, she’s obviously in her twenties.”
“Maybe she’s your granddaughter.”
“Pretty unlikely,” Beth said.
“You never know,” Harry said. “Does Jennifer look like you?”
“Not really. But she’s at that awkward stage. And she [[251]] doesn’t look like that woman. And neither do I.”
Norman was struck by the conviction with which Beth denied any resemblance or association to the mummified woman. “Beth,” he said, “what do you suppose happened here? Why is this woman the only one left?”
“I think she was important to the expedition,” Beth said. “Maybe even the captain, or the co-captain. The others were mostly men. And they did something foolish—I don’t know what—something she advised them against—and as a result they all died. She alone remained alive in this spacecraft. And she piloted it home. But there was something wrong with her—something she couldn’t help—and she died.”
“What was wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
Fascinating, Norman thought. He’d never really considered it before, but this room—for that matter, this entire spacecraft—was one big Rorschach. Or more accurately, a TAT. The Thematic Apperception Test was a psychological test that consisted of a series of ambiguous pictures. Subjects were supposed to tell what they thought was happening in the pictures. Since no clear story was implied by the pictures, the subjects supplied the stories. And the stories told much more about the storytellers than about the pictures.
Now Beth was telling them her fantasy about this room: that a woman had been in charge of the expedition, the men had failed to listen to her, they had died, and she alone had remained alive, the sole survivor.
It didn’t tell them much about this spaceship. But it told them a lot about Beth.
“I get it,” Harry said. “You mean she’s the one who made the mistake and piloted the ship back too far into the past. Typical woman driver.”
“Do you have to make a joke of everything?”
“Do you have to take everything so seriously?”
“This is serious,” Beth said.
“I’ll tell you a different story,” Harry said. “This woman screwed up. She was supposed to do something, and she forgot to do it, or else she made a mistake. And then she went into hibernation. As a result of her mistake, the rest of the [[252]] crew died, and she never woke up from the hibernation—never realized what she had done, because she was so unaware of what was really happening.”
“I’m sure you like that story better,” Beth said. “It fits with your typical black-male contempt for women.”
“Easy,” Norman said.
“You resent the power of the female,” Beth said.
“What power? You call lifting weights power? That’s only strength—and it comes out of a feeling of weakness, not power.”
“You skinny little weasel,” Beth said.
“What’re you going to do, beat me up?” Harry said. “Is that your idea of power?”
“I know what power is,” Beth said, glaring at him.
“Easy, easy,” Norman said. “Let’s not get into this.”
Harry said, “What do you think, Norman? Do you have a story about the room, too?”