BENEATH - A Novel (26 page)
Authors: Jeremy Robinson
It was dark.
Connelly pulled herself up and saw Robert searching the circumference of sphere, peering out into the pitch black water surrounding them. The bio-whales had left. Fast.
"Any sign of them?" Connelly asked.
Robert pointed into the distance. "I, ahh, I think they went that way…but they were moving fast. And that sound...Before I fell to the floor, I saw them swim away. I know there is no basis for me understanding what or how these creatures think, but they looked completely terrified."
"They're seventy-feet long, what could possibly threaten them?"
Click, click, click.
The sound was distinct from those of the bio-whales and came in three second intervals.
Connelly held her breath, listening.
Click, click, click.
"You know what that is." Robert said.
Connelly looked into Robert's glassy eyes. "Echolocation," she said.
Robert nodded. "Something's out there—something big—and as long as we're in the open water, there is no place, and I mean no place, we can hide."
Regret wasn't an emotion that Connelly often felt. Her entire life, aside from her bouts with anxiety, read like a textbook example of how to make positive choices. But since joining the Europa mission, it seemed her decision-making abilities were lackluster at best. Thinking about getting involved with Peterson was her first mistake. The experiment gone awry involving the plant incubator was her second. Her third mistake now appeared to be going for a spin in the TES, the consequences of which she and Robert now faced.
The electric glow of the distant schools of fish faded around them, returning the water to its previous pitch black state. Even the sea floor seemed less radiant, as though the tiny creatures and plant life were attempting to draw less attention by dimming their luminosity.
Connelly's eyes shifted to the top of the sphere's interior. The red light, which allowed their eyes to fully adjust to low light while providing enough illumination to see by, glowed brightly in the darkness. They would be easy to see.
We're attracting the creature
, Connelly thought.
Click, click, click.
The sound was loud and continuous, repeating every three seconds. The muscles on Connelly's face contracted and tightened with each click until she felt her head would burst, spewing her liquefied mind over the glass of the sphere.
"We need to turn the red light off!" Connelly shouted between clicks.
Click, click, click.
Connelly covered her ears with her hands.
Through the clicks she heard Robert's voice. He was shouting, but she couldn't understand what he was saying. All she could focus on was shutting off the damn light. Then maybe whatever was lurking in the darkness would leave them alone long enough to make a hasty retreat to the surface. Connelly moved toward the red light and prepared to remove the colored glass and extract the bulb. The plan was to perform each move during the three second intervals.
Why didn't we put a light switch in here for that bulb
! she thought.
A click of echolocation rang through her hands and into her ears, but it also shook the sphere violently.
The creature must be close
. She had three seconds.
After removing her hands from her ears, Connelly reached for the red glass light fixture. She unscrewed the glass two full rotations in three seconds and then recovered her ears. She waited for the next echolocation to sound out.
It never came.
Instead, she felt an insistent tapping on her shoulder. She turned and saw Robert standing behind her. His face was unusually placid, like he had just received an injection of Botox. "Don't bother," he said, "it's here." Robert stepped aside.
Through the glass, Connelly saw a wriggling worm-like creature, no bigger than a large terrestrial earth night crawler. Glowing brilliant red, the small creature seemed to dance in space like a puppet being dangled by a string.
Like a worm on a hook
.
Like an angler fish
. The angler fish, which lives in the deepest, darkest portions of the
Connelly's shoulders fell down in defeat. "Oh shit."
Robert ducked down slowly, slid to a side panel and popped it open. He began fiddling with the internal wiring.
Connelly glanced down at him, afraid that any motion, would attract the attention from the creature of unknown size that lurked silently outside the sphere. "What are you doing?"
"Rewiring the lighting controls so we can control the light from down here without being attached to the topside cables."
Connelly gently slid her body down and kneeled next to Robert while keeping her eyes glued on the red worm doing a happy dance outside their window. "And that will accomplish what?"
Robert shifted his body under a bundle of wires. He broke two, stripped them quickly with his teeth and reconnected them oppositely. "I'm assuming that most creatures in this ocean haven't seen anything brighter than what we've already seen. Bioluminescence isn't typically glaringly bright, though it may sometimes seem so in the dark."
"Get to the point, please," Connelly said.
"We'll blind it…if only long enough to escape. Turn on everything we've got and make a run for it. It should be like staring into the sun for these creatures. And if the effect is lasting, we should have plenty of time to—"
Click
…
The sound was gentle.
Probing.
"We don't have much time," Robert said.
Connelly tensed her muscles and prepared to spring into action. "I'll handle the controls. You work the lights."
Robert nodded.
"Go!"
*
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*
*
*
Like a stone monolith, Peterson stood before the door to the decon room. He was fully garbed in his PMS and holding his hood-like helmet in his hands.
Moving independently of his body, Peterson turned his head to the left. His eyes scanned back and forth left to right in a rapid motion as he read a bright red sign.
WARNING: PERSONAL MULTI-PRESSURE SUITS MUST BE SEALED BEFORE ENTERING DECONTAMINATION ROOM. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN DEATH.
Peterson's eyes lingered on the last word. He reached out and grazed his fingers across the letters, feeling the subtle indentations of the printed word.
"Death," Peterson said, his voice low and distorted.
His eyes moved up, scanning the previous words. He stopped on, "DECONTAMINATION ROOM." Again, he eased his hand across the text. He turned his attention to the sign above the decon room door, which read: DECONTAMINATION ROOM — DOCKING BAY AHEAD.
"Decontamination is death."
As though an electric shock had just jolted through his fingers, Peterson yanked his hand away from the sign. He took one step toward the decon room and stopped. He looked down with wide, red eyes and saw the helmet still in his hands. A gasp escaped his lips and he quickly flung the helmet onto his head and locked it down. His breaths came rapid and deep.
The doors slid open as he stepped inside. He looked down at his hands as the decon room doors closed behind him. They were shaking. The doors slammed shut.
When the exit to the decon room opened up into the docking bay, Peterson burst out, gasping for air. Like frozen fish being flung at a Japanese market, he slammed onto the smooth floor of the docking bay and slid, stopping in a rigid fetal position.
Muscles twitching, Peterson slowly uncurled. Wrinkles of anxiety crisscrossed his forehead. Sounding like a small child coming down from a crying fit, Peterson's voice mixed with each vibrato breath, until slowly, he regained control of his breathing of his body. He stood, inspected the PMS and then struck out in a bold stride across the docking bay.
He stopped in front of Lander Two, which was identical to Lander One. In under a minute he had entered the lander, strapped himself in and started the engines. As the docking bay doors spread open, Peterson caught sight of the flashing lights on Jupiter's cloudy surface. The electrical storms were still raging. The occasional flash illuminated a slice of red on the moon's surface—a vast field of Europhids.
With every show of crimson on the surface of Europa, Peterson's body became more relaxed. He gripped the controls and gently lifted off the docking bay floor. As he guided the craft out into space, he caught a glimpse of a red glow, rippling from a portion of the moon's surface. It was a display never seen from this point of view and a genuine smile creased his lips.
"Come in, Harris, are you reading me? Over." Choi's voice seemed like a thunderous boom in Peterson's ear. He shook and crashed his knee into the console. "If you can hear me, something strange is going on down here. The Europhids…I think there is more to them than we know. I think you should watch Peterson more closely. I'm going to call the TES crew and rendezvous with them back at Lander One unless you tell me otherwise. If you are receiving this, reply when you have coms back. Over."
Peterson squinted and glared at the surface of Europa with the intensity of a coiled snake, ready to strike. Through gritted teeth, he spoke, "Decontamination."
*
*
*
*
*
A dull, constant pain twisted in the sockets behind Robert's eyes. With every movement, the pain cut through his skull. And it didn't help that he was moving as quick as he could. He was working the new lighting controls at a frantic pace, setting them up to all turn on at once. It was more difficult than he thought it would be. Connelly was ready at the sphere's control stick, waiting for the world to glow.
"Robert," Connelly said, her voice stretched with tension, "when I said, 'go,' and jumped up here I thought you were going to turn on the lights?"
"Almost there…" Robert's squeezed his tongue white between his lips. His fingers flew over the keys, finalizing the procedure. "Got it!" Robert slammed down the final key.
Bright white light burst into the water like a flash-bang grenade. But in that blinding moment, Robert refused to close his eyes. He had to see what lurked outside the sphere. When he saw the beast, he wished he hadn't.
Robert scanned from left to right. Hovering just feet from the sphere's exterior were two lips. Each lip was a foot tall and stretched endlessly to each side. Two softball sized, obsidian, eyeballs, only two feet apart, which seemed unnaturally close for a creature of this size, rested just above the top lip. The leviathan's skin had the texture and color of sand, while its two gargantuan lips looked a shade darker.
It took Robert only two seconds to get a full view of the creature—exactly the same time it took for all hell to break loose.
In reaction to the blazing light, the predator lurched back and sunk its eyes back into its head, concealing them from the light. The plan had worked, but Robert quickly noticed a deadly side effect. As the creature reeled from the light, it opened its titanic mouth, which appeared to be large enough to swallow a bio-whale whole, and sucked in. Ocean water, and everything in it, was pulled toward the beast's mouth.
"Dive, Connelly! Dive!" Robert's voice cracked as he pushed the shout out with every decibel his voice box could manage.
Robert was thrown back into his chair as the sphere dropped down. Connelly had the control stick pushed all the way forward, sending them into a rapid and uncontrolled descent. Robert wondered if it would be enough.
The creature was still sucking in. Robert could feel the pull, like gravity. The bottom lip of the beast came into view as they dove down, but they were still approaching the exquisite jaws, which Robert could now see were filled with human sized teeth. The teeth were jagged and crisscrossed, meant for snagging and holding prey rather than chewing. Robert was sure this giant could swallow its dinner whole.
He felt ill as he saw the inside of the creature's throat, wide like a cave, ribbed by a hidden skeletal structure. But the vomit that threatened to free itself from his throat never made it out his mouth. He swallowed it back down as he realized that they were going to crash directly into the creature's lower lip.
"Watch out for the lip!" Robert said.
Connelly pushed harder on the stick. "I'm trying!"
Robert buckled his safety belt a split second before the struck the lip. The collision wasn't as jarring as Robert had expected. They bounced into the creature's flaccid lip and instead of being pulverized, were spun end over end.
The sphere continued its rapid decent as it spun like a cue ball across a pool table. One hundred feet below, the sphere finally came to a stop. Robert leaned forward, head between knees and wretched onto the floor. Without pausing, he wiped off his mouth and looked at Connelly. "We can't outrun that thing down here."