Jessica was taking Tony’s blood pressure in his small cabin. Each of their sleeping quarters, including the captain’s, was identical: a small bed and a bureau built into the wall. That’s it. They shared toilets, sinks, and shower areas in a large common bathroom. All of the water that was used aboard the ship was made from their own desalinization plant located amidships next to the power station.
They sat on Tony’s bed and Jessica pumped the bulb of the sphygmomanometer in her hand.
“If it’s higher than normal, it’s because you’re sitting on my bed,” he said quietly. She shushed him and took her reading. “Feeling normal?”
“Yeah, why? Something wrong?”
“Nope, totally normal, which is why I’m concerned. I figured it would be higher with me sitting on your bed, and it’s normal. I must not be looking that good today. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.” She smiled, her big white teeth perfect.
“Nothing wrong with you,” said Tony. He reached for her to pull her close, and she quickly stood up.
“Simmer down, now. I was just playing. We’re down here to work, not start dating.”
“Who said anything about dating? You said you just wanted great sex.”
“I must have been narced out myself,” she responded. She patted his muscular shoulder. “I want to take some blood.”
“Just my blood? No other bodily fluids?” He smiled broadly.
She punched his arm. “Pig. Just your blood.” She tried to act tough, but he could see her little smile beneath the facade. “Roll up your sleeve.”
When she had finished poking and prodding him, she thanked him for being her guinea pig and started to walk out.
“That’s it? You give me a shot and don’t kiss the boo-boo?”
She walked back in, pecked his cheek, and then patted his shaved head. “That’s it. Be good!” She walked back to sickbay where she had her own small lab setup, a secret little smile on her flushed face.
**********
Ted returned to the bridge, where he sat at his console and began operating his computer. He had a remote water-sampling device that could be extended from the ship like a long pole with sensors on the end. It was located on the side of the ship next to the black smoker, and he began slowly extending the pole.
The readings began appearing on Ted’s screen as the device got closer to the vent. He watched the pole move through the water via a live feed from an outside infrared camera that lit up the darkness. The emissions coming from the vent itself looked similar to the oil spill of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010. Instead of oil and gas, superheated sulfur, zinc, gold, copper, and other heavy metals blew out of the vent in billowing black clouds. The temperature near the vent registered 633 degrees. A spectroscope attached to the device sent chemistry readings to the computer, which would later print a report of the elements contained in the poisonous cloud.
Ted scanned the camera across the surface of the mineral-crusted wall until he saw the cluster of tube worms. He smiled. Theresa would be happy to see them. Although not as happy as he was. He and his NASA team had used the black smokers as the basis for their hypothesis of life on other planets. The giant deep-sea tube worms thrived in an environment that would kill almost anything else on Earth. How? The answers to that would be similar to the answers they were seeking on Mars and beyond the solar system. He called Theresa down in the lab and told her he wanted to show her something.
Ian and Mike heard Theresa’s end of the conversation on her speakerphone.
“Maybe he wants to show you his tube worm,” said Ian
She batted her eyelashes. “Maybe I have a thing for astronauts,” she said in her most dramatic voice as she raised one shoulder and tossed her hair.
She rushed up the stairs to the bridge. Mike leaned over to Ian. “She is the smoker around her.”
**********
Theresa walked into the bridge and found Ted watching the giant tube worms on his monitor. “You found them! My God! Look at the size of them. They must be seven feet long.”
“Impressive specimens, no doubt,” said Ted.
She folded her arms. “That doesn’t make sense, though. If this smoker just popped a few months ago, they couldn’t be this large. They grow maybe thirty inches a year. This vent would have had to been here for three years or so.”
Ted looked away. “Perhaps the vent was open and the worms were growing, but it didn’t really start growing the walls until more recently. The worms would be brought up the sides of the chimney as it grew.”
“I suppose. Weird. Anyway, zoom in. Look deep into the cluster. See what else is in there.”
“I have been. Mussels and clams. A few fuzzy-looking crabs. There’s an entire ecosystem in here. An ecosystem foreign to this planet. It’s amazing.”
She smiled at Ted’s excitement. Very few people in the world spoke her language. “You know, until recently, it was believed the tube worms swallowed bacteria as larvae which they trapped in their bodies as they grew. As adults, they have no mouth or anus. The bacteria provides all of their food and energy in a symbiotic relationship. That theory went out the window two years ago. Now we know the bacteria enter the worms like a type of infection through the skin. Then the bacterium oxidizes hydrogen sulfide to create energy. It’s amazing. We’re only beginning to have a clue how these organisms live down here.”
Ted smiled. “I and my colleagues believe that the bacteria which live in the tube worms may be what’s left of the original primordial soup. The most basic and ancient of all life on this planet. And perhaps it didn’t start on this planet at all.”
“Ah—so you’re thinking that the life on Earth that began in the sea didn’t begin on Earth at all?”
“Who knows? What I do know is I intend to collect some of the bacteria from the worms, the mussels, clams, and anything else down here and isolate it in the lab. The work down here will be the catapult into space. Your little fish geek friends down in the lab can make all the snide comments they want, but this mission is about a lot more than fish—no offense.” He considered telling her more about his work at NASA on the bacteria, but he didn’t trust her enough quite yet. They’d be down for a year. There’d be time for more intense discussions. Especially after his own private experiments had begun. He pictured the orangutan in the superheated pressure tank back at the research lab.
Theresa cocked her head and folded her arms. “None taken,” she said cautiously. She found herself stuck between the war of egos going on between Ted and Ian. She was pretty sure Mike would side with Ian as well. As for herself—she was there to learn more about her deep-sea tube worms, and Ted seemed much more interested in the subject than Ian and Mike. She’d have to walk a fine line and attempt to keep the peace. A year was way too long to deal with egotistical bullshit. If it continued, she’d have to go to the skipper. The mission was too important to spend any part of it being a babysitter. In any event, Ted had her extremely excited.
“Have you thought about how to collect samples? We need to get them inside. Can’t exactly fish for them,” she said.
“That may not be true,” he said.
She crinkled up her little nose, her glasses slipping down a bit. “What do you mean?”
“They can leave their tubes.”
“I’ve seen free-swimming worms in photos. But they have no mouth—they aren’t exactly looking to feed on a piece of bait.”
“I’m not so sure about that. They may make direct-feed through their skin. Perhaps the bacteria can absorb nutrients through the outer membrane to supplement the sulfur metabolism process. Most animals down here don’t miss a chance to feed. I think if the tube worms come in direct contact with food, they’ll find a way to extract nutrition from it.”
Theresa was fascinated. “Amazing. I’ve never heard that theory, but it certainly could make sense. They feed by contact, return to the tube to digest . . . interesting. We have to try.”
“Well, if your friends downstairs can see fit to allow us some bait and a few days of trying, perhaps we’d have some success. And for the record, the clams and mussels are full of bacteria as well. Without it, they’d be cooked just like on your stovetop. The bacteria protects them against the temperature, changes their feeding process—hell, it changes their entire anatomy and metabolism. Not proven yet—but my personal theory is this whole deep-sea environment centers around the bacteria. It’s the key.”