Cold water touched my skin, and I startled awake. The cryo-mask secure on my face, I breathed deep and slow, and tried to get my bearings. Deep blue surrounded me, and I realized the orbiter was submerged in water.
Designed to orient with the passenger facing the surface, I knew the orbiter rested on the seafloor or lakebed, or whatever body of water I’d landed in. The gentle splash of cold water on my hands alerted me to the fact that my vehicle, designed with submerged landing safety precautions, was equalizing pressure by allowing water to displace some of the orbiter’s air. I had ten hours to exit the orbiter before an energy shutdown.
Touching the digital interface, I looked for answers. “SCOOBE, depth gauge?”
“Thirty meters,” SCOOBE said. “Water sampling indicates a large body of freshwater.”
Taking another deep breath, I found it uncomfortable. At almost a hundred feet underwater, the pressure down here was compressing my entire body. But adjusting to the pressure down here was crucial to my survival when I activated the underwater egress. My system needed to exactly match what would have happened if I’d done a free dive from the surface. In fact, the now-icy water making contact with my skin was initiating my own body’s natural reaction.
Humans were born with a mammalian dive reflex; experts argued humans were intended to swim in deep water. Babies could swim a natural breaststroke and hold their breath for forty seconds. Lungs and heart, the cardiopulmonary system, adjusted to deep water breath holding with relative ease, sending blood to the thoracic cavity. After the first stage of breath holding, the larynx would automatically close, and the spleen would release 15 percent more “fresh” oxygen-rich blood into the circulatory system. The influx of oxygen would grant the person precious time to swim to the surface.
As a free diver, I’d learned to exploit these evolutionary stages and capitalize on maximizing my time under the water. The only problem was, I hadn’t been on a free dive in over two years.
“Dammit,” I muttered and fussed with my harness clips. “Thank you for saving my life, SCOOBE,” I said. “I’m swimming to the surface.”
“You’re welcome, ADVISOR,” the AI’s voice said with no trace of sadness. It would tick away on the bottom of the lake until its solar cells depleted.
Taking deep, slow breaths, I mathed out the scenario as I scanned the digital representation of the orbiter’s surrounding waterscape.
If I took it slow, I could avoid the fatal effects of nitrogen poisoning as I rose.
The training pool on the Lucidity was only six meters deep and essentially useless from a free diving perspective, so I hadn’t practiced. But survival had a way of bringing essential knowledge to the surface, pardon the pun.
The orbiter would be safe for another nine hours, but there was no point in waiting for a rescue that wouldn’t come.
“CeCe, here’s your chance,” I said to myself. My chance to practice the artform I loved even though others said I was crazy when I started doing it. I had learned that under the water, my hyperactive brain calmed down. My focus turned inward, and I felt a calm normally reserved for when I was fast asleep.
Pushing the buttons that would trigger the underwater egress system, I studied the digital readout one more time. SCOOBE’s scanners would show underwater life, but nothing wavered in the surrounding region.
Centering myself, I took a final deep breath and released the underwater egress hatch, letting the water flood into an inner sheath while a jet of pressurized air encapsulated my body in preparation for entering the frigid water. I felt the cold water embrace my mouth and nose, but I was already focused on the surface, even as I pushed the air inside my sinuses into my ears to avoid damaging my ear drums.
Though it’d been years, my body remembered what to do. This would be cake. Just like riding a bike. A free dive consisted of me descending a couple hundred feet and turning around and ascending. I only had to go less than half that distance, as long as SCOOBE’s scan was correct.
The dark blue water calmed me, and I let my systems slow to my diving rate; my heartbeat slowed dramatically while my lungs contracted to half their size. A human’s natural buoyancy will help them rise to the surface—unless they’re below forty feet. Then gravity pulls on you. The orbiter seemed reluctant to let me go, so my powerful kicks raised me a few more feet. I kept kicking and keeping my body as straight and tall as possible with my eyes pointed up. I was deep enough that there wasn’t an obvious “lighter” part for me to ascend to. Also, it could be night up there.
Tapping into my inner peace, I kicked until I felt reverse buoyancy release its grip, and I floated up, feeling my blood retrace its path from my organs to my extremities.
This last stretch was the most dangerous; in my desire for fresh oxygen, I could inhale too soon. With the build-up of carbon dioxide in my blood, nitrogen narcosis could trick me into thinking I’d cleared the surface before I had. And while I’d taken care not to swim up too fast, nitrogen poisoning was still a possibility if I’d miscalculated my swimming speed.
With countless gallons of alien planet water pressing in on me from all sides, I didn’t even dare to look around at my surroundings, choosing instead to regulate my heart and monitor my consciousness as I rose through the depths. Daydreams and hallucinations were common in the remaining minutes of oxygen deprivation.
Blinking a couple times, I thought I saw two tall women, but past experience said it was the altered state of consciousness brought about by not breathing for a couple minutes.
When they pointed up, indicating the path I’d already taken, it confirmed my suspicions. My brain was hallucinating. But I was almost there. Just a few more meters to go.
The women appeared again, the strange lighting under the water casting their skin to a greenish tinge. Their white braided hair floated around their faces, and their expressions appeared calm but sad. I almost opened my mouth to reassure them before remembering it wasn’t time yet. Instead, I exhaled in preparation for filling my lungs with good air once I cleared the water’s meniscus.
I saw them for the last time right as my face broke the water; they were still green! But I gasped for breath and treaded water, and of course they were nowhere to be seen in the dusky light.
The half-circle of a setting sun wavered on the horizon with a second sun on its tail, and I spun in the water, looking for land. It was water for as far as I could see in any direction.
“Well,” I said to myself. “No better place for a hydrogeologist than the water.” I picked a point to the right of the setting sun and started swimming.