THE SUB'S HULL creaked disconcertingly as they descended into a darkness broken only by the occasional glimmer of lightning below. Bandicut was reminded of a time, years ago, when he had made a toursub dive onto the site of the sunken Titanic, four thousand meters down in the North Atlantic, on Earth. It had been a haunting experience, watching the carefully lit wreck emerge from the darkness of the ocean grave, thinking of the hundreds who had gone with the ship to their personal graves. The wreck had lain undisturbed for decades, and even now, though it was a historic park, there was a sense of quietude about it, a somber sense of tragedy that would never go away. He had thumbed off the commentary in his earphones and just watched the floodlit ship loom before them in the perpetual night, a haunting presence of silence and solitude.
Floating detritus streamed backward past them now in the sub's headlight, which was the only thing that told Bandicut that they were descending even faster than the current. He could still feel the current, as some occasional turbulence caught them and swayed them close to the limits of L'Kell's control. From time to time he heard a whispering rush of air and felt his ears popping, as the sub's internal pressure adjusted in stages to the growing pressure outside—not keeping the two equal, but reducing the differential. It made him think of the habitat that was rocketing toward the surface, if it hadn't already reached it, and he shuddered at the thought of the explosive decompression that must be occurring. When he asked L'Kell, the Neri answered, "With luck, anyone inside got out. They could survive a pressure change much of the way up—but they'll certainly die if the hull breaches and ruptures."
Bandicut was silent after that. He wondered, where in all of this were Antares and Li-Jared?
/// Your other friends?
You miss them. ///
/I'm worried sick about them. What if they're in the breakaway habitat?/
/// They might die. Is that it? ///
/Of course that's it. They're not like you, Charlie. Charlene, I mean. They don't spring back to life the way you do./ At least not as far as he knew.
/// You can call me Charlie if you want.
This matter of dying is
an important business to you,
isn't it? ///
/What a question! Jesus, Charlie—yes! It hurts to have your friends die./
/// Yes, I suppose it— ///
/And I must tell you, it doesn't help to have you and your fellows dying all the time, usually just when I need you the most./
He could almost sense Charlene pursing her lips in thought.
/// Just like Charlie-Four, before me? ///
/Well—yeah. Don't get me wrong—I'm happier with you here. I suppose you could say that that death was a good thing./
/// Really? Why?
Would you say that if I died? ///
/No!/
/// Don't get upset.
I'm just trying to understand. ///
Bandicut let out a slow breath, suddenly aware of his inward tension—stunned, in fact, by the rage and grief and bewilderment that were welling up inside him. /Listen. Charlie-Four was a mean-spirited, bad-tempered sonofabitch./ But even as he said it, he felt his inner voice catch.
/// So you aren't sorry that he died. ///
/I didn't say that!/ He struggled to find the words. /I am sorry! It hurt, it always hurts. But you know as well as I do that he wouldn't have done—well, what you did, to save Lako, for instance./
/// You're sure about that. ///
/Yeah I'm sure. He flat-out refused. Things got tough, and he checked out. I never knew quarx could commit suicide./
/// If that's what he did. ///
/Well, that's what it seemed like./
/// And if he did . . . was that a bad thing to do? ///
Bandicut peered moodily out into the streaming turbid flow, and wondered how deep they were and how much deeper they were going. L'Kell was piloting with silent concentration. /Yeah, it was, I think. An act of cowardice. Except . . . I am glad for its result. I'm glad you're here now./
The quarx hesitated, and he sensed that she was debating whether or not to voice disagreement.
/// Thank you, ///
she said finally. And then she fell silent, and Bandicut found himself wondering if he had somehow missed something in the discussion.
The water became gradually clearer even as the bottom slope appeared to become siltier. It also became steeper, for a while. Then some irregular topography loomed into the headlight beam: the slope almost leveled off, then rose in sharp little peaks, which L'Kell had to steer over or around. Then it dropped again, leveled, and peaked; and that pattern was repeated several times, in a series of stepped ledges punctuated with low ridges and hills. For a time, the flickering light from below disappeared or was blocked from view. Something about this topography rang a bell in his memory, but he couldn't quite place it . . . until plumes of dark, smoky material suddenly loomed in the headlight beam, billowing up out of chimneylike formations on the seafloor. The plumes bent sideways as they were caught by the current, and then streamed downslope in coiling, turbulent ribbons that flowed over the ridges toward the abyssal depths. Bandicut drew a sharp breath.
/// You know these things? ///
/On Earth they're called smokers. Volcanic vents on the seafloor. If these are the same, they'll have boiling hot water pouring out with the smoke—/
"We must steer around these hot vents," L'Kell said, banking the sub into decelerating turns. "We are almost there."
/There?/ Bandicut started to ask, then had a thought. /Ah, I think I understand./
/// What? ///
/I'll tell you in a moment. If I'm right./
/// You could share the thought,
whether you're right or wrong. ///
Grunting, he strained to peer into the distance. He was rewarded seconds later by the sight of silt-covered domes and derricks and other machinery emerging from the darkness. /That's it! There it is! Their factory is located on the vent ridge! Unbelievable./
/// Why would they do that? ///
/Heat and raw materials, I suppose. Of course! Those smokers are billowing up plumes of chemicals and superheated water. With the right equipment, they could probably use that—/
"Our factory," L'Kell said suddenly, "uses these plumes for mineral extraction and heat. When it is working correctly, it can—"
"Hrahh, what is that?" Ik cried, interrupting the Neri. He pointed to a conglomeration of greyish machinery rising from the ledge ahead—and lodged against it, just visible in the headlight, what looked like a metal framework holding a ghostly bubble. As they drew closer, two small shapes became visible, moving around inside the bubble.
"Mokin' fokin' lay me in hell," Bandicut whispered. "Is it really?"
/// What? ///
/Not what. Who. It's Napoleon and Copernicus. That's our bubble. Our star-spanner bubble./ Bandicut felt the tightening of fear in his stomach. "L'Kell—"
"Yes, I know," said L'Kell, in a tone that implied he was very busy at the moment. He steered close to the structure holding the star-spanner bubble, then swung the sub around with motors singing at high pitch, countering the movement of the current. L'Kell was trying to hover close to the star-spanner bubble, and the current was trying to sweep them away into the darkness. He finally had to give up and move away. It appeared that the factory was perched on the edge of a sharp drop-off. Bandicut caught sight of a glimmer of lightning in the abyssal gloom, straight down beyond the edge.
"I hope the current will ease soon," L'Kell said. "At that point we will return to do what we can about your bubble. In the meantime, we must inspect the area for anything else that might be caught—and for damage to the factory." He didn't elaborate, but Bandicut remembered his earlier remarks. The Neri's machine-makers were breaking down. And without them, the Neri faced disaster.
"Will you bring teams down to repair the factory?" Ik asked.
The Neri completed a maneuver before answering. He was guiding the sub over the neighboring landscape, angling this way and that to inspect what looked like an abandoned alien settlement on the bleak surface of a moon. Finally he said, "We would—if we knew how."
Bandicut opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. What could he say? What could either of them say?
*
"Obliq, turn off your weapon! You've hit one of our subs," rasped a male Neri voice, not Askelanda's. "We need to get help to them."
Kailan's finger was poised for more shots. She held off, watching the display. The sound of three concussions thumped through the walls, delayed by distance. "We've hit the breakaway," she breathed, "but did we put a big enough hole in it?" Her finger traced the likely path of the habitat up to a series of long, horizontal lines on the screen. "Still rising. It takes time to flood."
"Obliq, please acknowledge!"
"Message received," Kailan snapped. "Standing by. But keep the line of fire clear!" Kailan hesitated, watching the display. "It's not slowing fast enough. Okay—your sub is clear. Firing again!"
Three flashes went up the thread of light.
They hit the habitat symbol.
The symbol was still rising, approaching the horizontal lines that represented the solar array, not far below the surface. But the habitat was slowing. It nearly touched one of the array symbols, as it came to a stop. It hung there for a few moments, then began to sink.
Three thumps, delayed.
"Obliq!" Askelanda's voice again, sharp.
"Turning off power to the weapon," Kailan said. "The habitat is coming back down. It may have struck one solar collector, but I believe not. Can you get a grapple on it now? If there's anyone still aboard, they'll need help."
The answer was a mixture of angry acknowledgment and shouts and orders in the background.
Kailan stepped back from the console and said to Elbeth, "We must meet with Askelanda. Please ask for a sub, as soon as they can send one." She turned to Antares and Li-Jared. "There will be trouble over this, I am afraid. Askelanda and I do not see eye to eye on all of these matters. And now it will only be worse."
"Why?" Antares asked. "Because of the habitat?"
"Because the Maw of the Abyss has awakened," Kailan answered. Gesturing to Elbeth, she asked her assistant to lead the guests back to the submarine hangar. "I'll meet you there," she said, and quickly slipped away through a doorway on the far side of the room.
*
The current finally slackened, and tapered off into a leisurely horizontal flow. L'Kell was clearly relieved when he no longer had to fight to keep them from being dragged deeper into the abyss. The eerie glow had flickered out. Once it was gone, Bandicut felt an even greater sense of depth, as they moved about in darkness broken only by their own headlight. He wondered just how deep they really were now—and decided that he would rather not know. On Earth, as he recalled, volcanic vents were thousands of meters deep.
L'Kell turned the sub. "We'll go back to your bubble in a moment, but I must check something first." They glided above some machinery that seemed half buried in silt—the result, apparently, of the powerful downward flow just now. He made a rasping sound that Bandicut interpreted as displeasure.
"Is something wrong?"
The Neri pointed to a spot not far in front of them, where four short masts stuck up into the current. Just beyond them a smoldering vent billowed a thick cloud of smoke. It took Bandicut a moment to realize that the masts were broken; something had been attached to them, quite recently. "That was the last exterior loading assistant, for moving equipment out of the factory and into subs. It has broken away." L'Kell stared at the spot in obvious dismay.
"Can't you replace it?" Bandicut asked. "Surely there must be a way."
"The factory itself used to make repairs like that," L'Kell said softly. "But it does not do so anymore. And I—we—do not know what to do about it. We do not have the knowledge, and even we cannot work easily at this depth."
Bandicut stared at him, then at Ik, who was silently contemplating the problem. And he suddenly thought, /You don't suppose . . . you know, I wonder if it could be—/
/// I see your thoughts, but do not understand.
"Nano-shit"? ///
/It's only a guess, but it stands to reason. I'll have to ask L'Kell. But if he doesn't have the knowledge—/
/// Submicroscopic machinery?
Self-replicating assemblers?
Self-repairing construction units? ///
The quarx's voice became subdued, as she tried to interpret his memories, which included a complex amalgam of feelings. Nano-assemblers were an important part of the infrastructure of the human civilization he had come from; but it was misprogrammed nanomeds—microscopic cellular repair units injected into his body—that had destroyed his career by crippling his ability to neurolink. It was the nanomeds that had left him vulnerable to attacks of silence-fugue.
/// Whoa.
This is something I need to know more about,
yes? ///
/I suppose so. Help yourself to the records. Ask me if you have questions./ He didn't want to think about it right now. He especially didn't want to think about it while he was a couple of miles underwater and as vulnerable to claustrophobia as he was ever likely to be in his life. He shivered in the dark, trying not to look beyond the little pool of light projected by the sub's headlight. The things that could come out of the dark . . .
The thought faded, probably with help. He thought a quiet thanks, and said to L'Kell, "Can you tell me anything about how your factory works? I have a reason for asking."
L'Kell was occupied for a moment with the controls. "I don't know how it works, really. It takes the raw materials, and the heat. And in—" klaa "—tanks filled with liquids, the machines that we need just . . . appear. Or they did." He brought the sub around to a new heading. "Perhaps it is—" kraff "—magic, and the magic is gone. Or perhaps the—" kraafff "—Maw has done something, has decided that it should not be allowed to continue."
"Or perhaps," Bandicut mused, "the nano-constructors have quit working because they have broken down. Or because their programming has gone wrong. I wonder—" And he suddenly realized that he was speaking aloud, and wished that he'd kept silent until he knew more.
But L'Kell had heard him. "You wonder what? Do you have the power to heal machines, as well as people?"
Bandicut shivered, and shook his head. Ik was staring at him in puzzlement. Charlie was waiting for him to voice his thoughts, too.
The sub's headlight crawled over a rising mechanical structure, and within the pool of light the broken docking frame and the star-spanner bubble suddenly appeared. The sub slowed as it approached the bubble. In its shelter, clearly visible, were the robots Napoleon and Copernicus.
"I can't heal machines," Bandicut said finally. "But maybe they can."
*
Li-Jared and Antares stood fidgeting on the dock of the sub hangar, waiting for Kailan to join them. The water surface, inches from their feet, was jiggling with vibrations from the current outside, and perhaps fading aftershocks from the quake. Li-Jared hated looking down into the water, so he tried to distract himself by talking to Antares. "Has it stopped yet?" he murmured, turning sideways to inspect the walls.
"It's not going to stop until we leave this planet," Antares mused, and he was startled to realize that there was a hint of humor in her voice. He felt Antares brush the under-layers of his mind, and knew that she was trying to help him. But she seemed pretty edgy herself.
"I meant the quake," he said.
"I know." The Thespi's hand touched his arm for a moment. He closed his eyes, regaining his center, grateful for her calming presence. "Actually," she said, "I think it is abating. But there's a lot of movement of silt out there. A strong current. I hope we don't go out in that."
Li-Jared bonged softly to himself. "I'm sure they know what they're doing. But why do they need us to decide what to do about this—" he took a hissing breath "—Maw of Darkness?"
"I suspect it is no coincidence that we are here to assist with this problem," Antares said. But if she had other thoughts on that, she did not voice them.
It seemed as if they had been waiting forever. But by the time Kailan arrived, Li-Jared was feeling better. Still, he was surprised to see the obliq carrying something about the size of a briefcase-satchel, and two of her assistants carrying similar cases. "May I ask," he said, "what we're about to do?"
"We are going to see if we can convince the ahktah that we would be better served worrying about what lies below us than worrying about what lies above," Kailan said. "I do not know if we will succeed. But you two . . ."
Li-Jared waited. "We two what?"
Kailan's black, huge-eyed face was unreadable. "You two come from the stars beyond. So, I believe, does this demon, this Maw of the Abyss. Therefore, if anyone can help us to understand and control it, you can. Would you not say so?"
Li-Jared felt Antares' surprise and dismay before he even turned to meet her eyes.
*
Using the sub's external manipulators, L'Kell worked for some time rigging attachment lines onto the docking frame. He had already called for assistance, and by the time he had his lines on the frame, another submarine had joined them. This one attached lines on the other side of the docking frame. Inside the star-spanner bubble, at least until the silt swirl obscured it from sight, the robots could be seen watching the proceedings with apparent interest. There had been no communication with them, and it seemed unlikely that they would have been able to see Bandicut's face through the glare. He wondered what they thought was happening.
Both subs applied gentle power. The lines tightened, and the subs began lifting from opposite sides of the bubble. Huge clouds of fresh silt swirled up from the bottom, largely obscuring the view. The motors groaned, and so did the lines and the hull, as they lifted the docking frame and bubble. Bandicut glanced around nervously.
Something clanged, and a jar reverberated through the hull. One of the lines had caught somehow, and was causing the sub to yaw to the right. L'Kell called to the other Neri pilot and touched a control to subdue the movement. Everything settled back to the bottom. "Something's hanging up when we lift."
"Would it help," Bandicut asked, "if we could talk to the robots? Convey instructions to them?"
The Neri's round eye peered at him for a moment.
"Is there any way to amplify our voices out there?"
"You mean really talk to them? Oh. Sure." L'Kell touched a switch on the console. "Go ahead."
"CAN I JUST TALK?"
Bandicut started at the sound of his voice ringing outside the hull. He blinked as he heard a distant, scratchy voice in reply. "Hello? Is that you, John?"
His heart raced. "NAPOLEON! COPERNICUS! CAN YOU HEAR ME? IT'S BANDICUT!" His cry seemed to reverberate along the ocean bottom. L'Kell adjusted the control to reduce the volume.
"We hear you, Cap'n. Can you advise us what is happening?" It sounded like Napoleon.
"We're trying to rescue you! But you're snagged on something." Bandicut glanced at L'Kell. "How can they help?"
L'Kell peered out into the silt-obscured sea. "Ask if they can see anything, like the docking frame and that structure they're lodged against. Maybe they can tell us where they're caught."
"Nappy? Coppy?" he called. "Can your scanners penetrate the water at all? Our vision is obscured. We can't tell where you're hung up."
"Aye, Cap'n. It's this overhang above us, and half a meter aft of center. Can you see it?"
Bandicut peered, but the water was too turbid. L'Kell spoke on his comm to the Neri in the other sub, then said, "Can they say which way we need to move?"
Bandicut relayed the question, and the robots replied that they needed to drop slightly, then move forward until they were clear of the obstruction.
L'Kell made a rasping sound. "Difficult, difficult." He spoke to the other sub. They started their motors again, and the lines tightened. He applied sideways thrust as he lowered the sub until it was so close to the bottom that it was scraping up silt.
"Napoleon?"
"Forward thrust, please. Wait! Wait!"
The sub suddenly slewed, and there was a thump as the docking frame jarred into a new obstruction. L'Kell muttered as he cut the motors. The sub veered, then slammed into a boulder buried in the silt. L'Kell fought to regain control of the sub, while Bandicut struggled to catch his breath.
"The lines are catching—too low," Napoleon reported. "Hold on. We're going to try to get the star-spanner bubble to help us with buoyancy control." Napoleon fell silent, then, while Bandicut and Ik looked at each other in puzzlement, and L'Kell worked to keep the sub steady.
"Okay," said the robot finally. As they peered out in amazement, the bubble slowly sank about one-half meter. "You can take us out now. Straight and level."
Bandicut blinked and relayed the instruction. With great care, L'Kell and the other pilot guided their subs forward, with the load slung between them. They moved in near-blindness at first; then the remaining current carried away enough of the suspended silt to reveal most of the docking frame and star-spanner bubble.
"You're lifting us again," called the robot.
They eased back and allowed some slack in the lines.
"That's good. Forward again."
A minute later, they were clear of the obstruction. "Well done!" Bandicut cried. He was answered by a series of clicking, rasping whoops from the robots.
The two pilots increased power and carried the frame-and-bubble, suspended between them, to a point of safety, well away from the edge of the abyss. Then they set it down to rearrange their lines for proper, long-distance towing. As L'Kell brought them close to the bubble, Bandicut waved joyfully to the robots, who flashed their lights in reply. The two pilots spent some time changing the rigging, and at last began the laborious climb back toward the city—the bubble and its frame floating well above the bottom, slung between the subs.
It was going to be a long trip back—but a better trip, Bandicut thought, than the journey down.