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THE SUB:
When the blue dot in his vision fades, Okana’s eyes adjust to the red emergency lights as he grabs the steering arm and brings the sub upright. He looks at the rear view mirror, but doesn’t see his companion. “Mike! Are you injured?”
Mike pushes away from the wall and drops onto the chair. “I don’t think so. Remind me to use my seat belt next time.”
Okana flips a circuit breaker, and the outside lights come on, radiating through the layer of silt covering the window. He engages the rear thruster and the gray film slides off the sub. “That was interesting.” He keys his headset. “Are you there, Lisa?”
“I’m here. What just happened? We saw a bright blue light, then the video transmission ended.”
Even with the sub’s powerful exterior lights, Okana cannot see through the roiling cloud of silt, so he engages the downward thrusters. “Mike and I went for a ride. We need to get back to the ship so I can check for any damage.”
“Are you guys okay?”
“We’re fine. See you shortly.”
As they rise above the silt, they see white bubbles rising from the billowing gray cloud. Okana looks in the mirror at Mike. “Send the rover to the surface, Mike. Harrison will pick it up in the motorboat.”
Mike enters a command, and the rover climbs up out of the silt and heads toward to the ship. He keys his headset. “I hope you got all that, Lisa.”
“We did, but you didn’t get a sample of the bubbles.”
The mention of bubbles jogs Okana’s memory of the first trip. “I didn’t see any bubbles when we arrived, Lisa. It must have stopped after we left earlier, but we can see them rising out of the silt again. Something crazy is going on down here. I’ll come back once I know my sub is safe. I’ll see you on the ship.”
***
Josh waits on the stern, rocking from foot to foot while the ship’s first mate and the deckhand guide the sub onto the storage bracket, and set the ladder against the side of the sub. He looks up as Mike comes out first and climbs down.
“I hope that was as good on tape as it was live?” says Mike.
“It wasn’t that great for me, boss. We couldn’t see anything because of the silt.”
Okana closes the hatch and climbs down the ladder to join them. “We were hit by a tsunami wave down there, and the ultrasound should not have caused that to happen.”
They enter Lisa’s lab and she rewinds the recording until she finds when the blue light appeared. When she enhances the image from the ultrasound, she notices something unexpected and points at the picture. “That clear ice under the methane is over a thousand-feet-deep, and it looks like there’s something at the bottom. Watch this.”
Lisa uses the mouse to zoom in and they see a cylinder-shaped object near the bottom. “That’s the best picture I can get from the ultrasound. Whatever it is, it’s been down there since the crack first opened.”
Okana is more worried about what he felt. “When that blue light appeared, something forced the water to create a pressure wave, and it slammed into the sub. We were tossed around pretty good, so I need to check for damage. Once I make sure the sub’s okay, we should go back down and try to figure out what happened.”