Bridget walked up to the scientist. "Dr. Ernst, Captain Bridger."
"Captain—" Ernst said.
Bridger looked over at Terry McShane and nodded. "And nice to see you again, Ms. McShane."
She smiled at his formality, and it was good to see her grin.
Bridger turned to his exec. "We'd better get going. Mr. Ford—if you've set a course, trim forward ballast..."
Ford relayed the order.
"Ahead one-half. Set aft dive planes—"
"Captain," Ernst interrupted, "I was told that you could provide me with a console and a communications unit. There are—"
"Yes, Dr. Ernst—but there's one thing you should understand." Bridger glanced at Ford, who took a breath as if bracing himself for the storm to follow. Bridger's warm smile gave no clue to his words to come...
"What I'd like you to understand, Dr. Ernst, is that I don't want you here and I don't want to ferry you to the vent area."
"But you have been ordered—"
Bridger raised a hand. "Yes, yes, I know. I've been ordered to take you to the Azores Research Base. And so—I will. But I don't have to pretend to be happy about it."
"I must have a console to link up with the base."
Bridger nodded to Ford. "Lieutenant Bachmann, my communications officer, will see that you get everything you need. And—" Bridger looked at Terry. "And we'll prepare quarters for you and Ms. McShane. But, if you don't mind my suggesting, we have over a day's sailing before we reach the base. We've all been through a lot, and rest—for all of us—might be in order."
Bridger took a breath.
"Perhaps, Dr. Ernst, you could prepare a briefing for me on the vent area we're going to. Say, eleven o'clock—that's in the morning."
"I know what time—"
"As for me, if I don't get some sleep, my head's going to explode. Mr. Ford, see that our course is plotted and logged. And the helm is yours—"
Bridger turned around and walked away... "And don't wake me."
There were no dreams this time, no bittersweet fantasies that were so real he could almost touch them.
Bridger slept soundly, awakening only when he heard a noise in the passageway. He blinked himself alert in the dark stateroom.
He flapped around with his hand, searching for a light switch. "Lights," he said, still not quite used to the fact that so much on this ship was voice-responsive. The room was instantly lit. He looked at the clock on the sleek Lucite desk that projected out of the wall. 8:45.
Not enough sleep, Bridger thought. He certainly didn't feel rested.
But it was time he got up. He actually looked forward to hearing Ernst's presentation on the vent area... and, even more than that, he looked forward to seeing Terry McShane again.
He showered, shaved, and, while he did, he studied his face in the mirror, the added lines and cracks. No longer young, not quite old.
Too old to be feeling this odd rush of adrenaline thinking about Terry, he thought.
Before he headed down to the officers' mess, he stopped at the bridge and checked that everything was fine, the seaQuest moving at a steady 110 knots toward the Azores, with nothing eventful having happened during the night.
Then Bridger went down to breakfast.
Terry McShane sat alone. It looked as if she had just finished eating and was ready to leave.
Bridger walked over to her.
"Hope you're not leaving."
She looked up, no smile on her face. "Leaving the ship? I don't think that's a possibility."
Bridger sat down at the table. "You don't seem too friendly this morning."
One of the cooks came over holding a pot of coffee and a cup on a saucer.
"Coffee, Captain?"
"Yes, thank you," Bridger said.
He watched Terry while the cook poured the coffee. They waited—and when the man was gone, they both started speaking at the same time. And now finally—she smiled.
"No," Bridger said. "You go first. I insist."
The smile stayed there, a sweet smile that fit her auburn hair, her sparkling green eyes.
"It's obvious you don't want me here, Nathan."
"Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Let's say that I don't know why you're here. And I don't like being told who can come on my ship."
"Your ship?"
Now it was Bridger's turn to grow serious. "What this ship is, and what it can become... a force to make the oceans a place to live and work, a ship that will discover secrets we can only dream of." He took a sip of the coffee. "That's my ship."
"The UEO might disagree on ownership."
Bridger smiled again. "They probably would. Now, why don't you tell me—what are you really doing here?"
Lieutenant Hitchcock and Lieutenant Krieg came into the mess, talking loudly. But, looking over at their captain, they quieted down.
Terry looked at Bridger. "You know why I'm on—"
"Okay," he smiled. "Sure... to study the interaction of the military and scientific crews. So don't tell me the real reason. When you're good and ready, I'll be here."
There was silence again, and there was this feeling, this terrible desire to say things that, maybe, should have been said a long time ago.
Their eyes locked, and—for one powerful moment—the beauty and feeling in Terry's eyes was enough to make Bridger want to reach out, grab Terry's hand, hold it—
She seemed to sense what was happening.
And she ended it—
"Nathan, a lot of time has passed since... since we knew each other. We're different people now—"
"Terry, I always wanted to—"
She looked away, and Bridger could see that the pain wasn't really a decade old. It was fresh, not so easily forgotten.
"We both have jobs to do." She looked right at him, the light in her eyes faded now. "And if you let me do my job, then everything will be fine."
"Captain, would you care for some breakfast?" the cook called over to him.
Bridger kept looking at Terry, and then, slowly, he shook his head. And he spoke. "No." He nodded, stood up, and turned to the cook. "No, thanks. I'm not hungry this morning."
As he left, he hoped that Hitchcock and Krieg weren't watching him.
Ernst's briefing was held in Dr. Kristin Westphalen's Science Wing.
Westphalen had already complained to Bridger that Ernst was being incredibly tight-lipped about what was going on at the Azores base.
"What are they doing down there, Nathan, that they can't tell me?" she asked Bridger, and the Captain had to reassure her that this lack of knowledge was temporary.
"I'm sure you and your science crew will be involved as much as you want to be... once we get there."
Then Westphalen, prone to snap decisions, said, "I don't like him."
Bridger almost said, Nor do I. But he took a seat while Emst prepared his downloads from the EarthNet to aid the presentation.
Besides Westphalen, Hitchcock and Ford were there, as well as Terry McShane and Akira Shimura. Bridger would have liked to have had Lucas at the briefing—but already the small conference room was crowded. No matter, Lucas would be able to pick up all the downloads and watch them as they came in...
"All set, Dr. Ernst?"
Ernst was hitting the keyboard, downloading images, maps, filmed footage that he wanted to use.
"Er—yes, now..." And Ernst turned around. "Thank you all for coming." There was a trace of an accent in his voice, only a slightly Anglicized pronunciation to some words.
Ernst looked a bit better this morning, Bridger saw. Amazing what a good night's sleep could do. "I've been asked by your Captain Bridger to provide a briefing on the hydrothermal vent area we are going to..." Ernst smiled, and Bridger saw that the scientist was an old hand at selling his scientific package to groups, probably the big-money boys, the ones who funded the exploratory mining colonies.
There was nothing the mineral and ore wildcatters liked better than a scientist who told them that this square mile on the ocean floor was where they would hit it big.
The large paper-thin gas-bubble screen behind Ernst came on, and there was a map of the South Atlantic. The image was 2-D, but the high-definition screen gave it a breathtaking realism. As Ernst talked, the image changed from a satellite photo of the ocean to increasingly tighter views.
"Hydrothermal vents have been places of intense interest on the part of the scientific community ever since their discovery in the 1980s. At that time, a number of oceanographers, including Dr. Robert Ballard—the man who found the Titanic—uncovered full-blown ecosystems that developed around the volcanic seeps. These seeps form along fault lines and fissure zones at the ocean's bottom."
The ocean photos gave way to a side view illustration showing the depth of a vent area, and an animated graphic of a submersible going down.
But that sequence was interrupted by filmed footage of the vent creatures—a sight that never failed to impress Bridger. Here were fields of giant tube worms, some stretching twenty feet or more, all tinged with a telltale pinkish color.
Monstrous albino crabs scurried in between the worms, while eyeless shrimps darted around them. Clusters of overgrown mussels dotted the landscape.
"The strange thing about these ecosystems...
Westphalen leaned close to Bridger and whispered, "The way he's talking, you'd think we weren't a research ship."
Bridger smiled, nodded, and raised a hand to the chief seaQuest scientist. "Let him go on. I want to see where he ends up with all this."
"... was that they were essentially alien systems. The creatures that lived in the vent areas didn't depend on the photosynthetic cycle of the surface. There, in the abyssal blackness, they had developed a life cycle that depended on chemosynthesis."
That was truly incredible, Bridger thought. Somehow the tube worms had developed an ability to take the poisonous hydrogen sulfides, a toxin, and turn them into food. And how they did it was even more bizarre.
"Adding interest to these life forms is the symbiotic relationship between the tube worms, the primary producer of food, and the bacteria that live inside the host worms."
There were close-up images of the worms, flowing gently in the deep-ocean current, followed by lab footage of a pulpy-white worm being dissected, via robotic manipulator arms, in a tank under high pressure—guaranteeing that the tissue material wouldn't disintegrate.
"The tube worms depend on a bacterial parasite, a colony creature living inside them, to survive. The parasite takes the toxin and makes food for the worm, while the worm allows the bacteria to live."
"One big happy family," Bridger wisecracked.
Everyone in the room—excepting Ernst—laughed. And like a chagrined schoolteacher, Ernst waited until he had the attention of his audience.
"Shall I proceed. Captain?"
"Oh, yes—sorry. It's only that most of us have a pretty thorough grounding in the life cycle of the vent creatures. We're waiting for you to get to the point."
Just then, Ernst smiled. And Bridger felt that, yes, there was someplace that Ernst was going with this...
Bridger wondered what it might mean to his ship.
Noyce couldn't sleep. He got up and sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the darkness of his stylish brown-stone home, which was within walking distance of Twin Peaks Park.
His wife stirred and sleepily reached out a hand, touching his back.
"Bill... what's wrong?"
He shook his head in the darkness. "Nothing," he said. Then, fabricating, he added, "A headache."
He stood up and started to maneuver through the dark room. "I'm going to get a Tylenol..."
His wife grunted, already falling back to sleep, the alarm over.
Noyce walked out of the bedroom and shut the door gently behind him. He turned on the hallway light, the brilliant glass of the fixture so sparkling and bright it hurt his eyes.
He walked to the bathroom.
Now his head did throb. Maybe I will take something, he thought, splash some water on my face...
He entered the bathroom, gently touched a panel, and the light came on. He studied himself in the mirror.
He looked at his grizzled face, the day's growth of beard so gray. I look like a homeless person, he thought. He turned on the cold water and then scooped up a double handful of San Francisco's best tap water.
Noyce splashed the water onto his face, and he was even more awake. He looked like he'd been out in the rain, or sweating, or crying, and—
Then he knew what had awakened him.
It's guilt, he thought.
Guilt that he hadn't told Nathan Bridger the whole story, that he had had to leave certain things out... for now.
Had to do it, he thought.
Had to.
Didn't I?
Would Bridger ever forgive him?
As long as he was up, Noyce decided to take a shower, get dressed, maybe call for his car early.
After all, he wanted to be with seaQuest every step of the way on this one... even if Nathan Hale Bridger never knew it...
"The Azores field was discovered in 2016 by a joint team operating under the auspices of IFREMER, the French Oceanographic Institute, and the UEO."
There was nothing on the HD screens. All eyes were on Ernst, and he seemed to like it that way.
Guy knows how to hold someone's attention, Bridger thought.
"It was the largest field ever discovered, nearly thirty acres. And it was also the one with the most complicated topography. There were dozens of 'black smokers,' the giant spouts pouring out superheated water hot enough to melt the viewport of a submersible. There were caves, and canyons, and nasty volcanic ridges, and—everywhere—living things."
"Tell us something we don't know," Westphalen whispered. Bridger looked at her. She had done her own extensive work with the chemosynthesizers of the vents.
Ernst's face was set.
"What I'm about to tell you has been classified since the discovery of the vent area, kept secret by agreement of IFREMER, the UEO, and the scientific board in charge of the research station that was eventually built there."
Ernst paused. He hit the keyboard connected to the HD screens.
Images came on. More worms, clams, crabs—but there was something different here—the number of them. There was so many, and the colors looked different, the shape—
Westphalen muttered, "My God... what—?"
"The life forms found in this vent area were unlike any found in any vent area in the world. They were, like the other vent creatures, a chemosynthetic life form. But this time—they were even more alien."
The footage, material that Bridger certainly had never seen before, changed to close-ups, and he saw shellfish with curled bodies, strange shapes, bizarre—
"Beautiful..." Westphalen muttered.
Then Bridger saw a crablike creature scuttle over some of the shellfish. But the crab's body, white and dotted with reddish spots, was unlike anything Bridger had ever seen.
Bridger wondered—Where were the tube worms?
The film, top secret certainly if Westphalen hadn't seen it, moved on, to a giant cliff dotted with burrows, and then there they were...
"There was nothing more alien than the worms that were found here..."
Closer on the worms, until Bridger felt as if they were in the conference room with them.
And he wanted to get out...