Dead Sea (2 page)

And yet, as Richard was well aware, the appearance of fragility was utterly misleading.
Salacia
was an extension of the Chinese
Jialong
deep-sea exploration programme which had already sent men more than seven thousand metres deep. She was designed to go where even
Neptune
could not venture – down to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. A place visited by very few: by Piccard and Walsh in 1960, and by James Cameron in 2012. A place apparently as dead at seven miles down as the plastic poisoned surface was above.

And somewhere in between the two marine deserts sat the two deep-sea exploration vessels with almost nothing to observe except each other. The screens in front of Richard showed much more than
Salacia
's picture etched against the glittering blackness all around her. They gave full-spectrum analysis of everything anywhere near
Neptune
herself – thermal imaging; 3D broad-spectrum sonar modelling of the ocean bed towards which they were easing so carefully, temperatures, pressures, and, crucially, depths. ‘Just coming past four thousand metres now,' Richard rumbled, his gaze flickering steadily over the range of familiar readouts. He lifted his right hand briefly off the control to adjust the micro-mic at his throat and ease the earphones slightly. ‘Seabed another thirty-five hundred metres below . . .'

‘Three thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven,' observed Nic's precise Boston tones in Richard's head. ‘Yes, I see. I think
Salacia
's readouts are more accurate than yours.'

‘I was just rounding up,' countered Richard easily. ‘The seabed immediately below us is only the upper edge of a cliff in any case. The cliff foot is another . . .'

‘One thousand, six hundred and nine metres down. Yes. I see,' drawled Nic. ‘Five thousand and forty-six metres to the ocean bed itself. Looks like we're just under halfway there . . .' Like Richard, the tenser things got, the slower he talked and the faster he thought.

‘And that's only the start of the trench,' observed Richard. ‘It gets deeper pretty quickly the further south you go.'

‘The gates of hell. Yeah. “Abandon hope all ye . . .”'

‘
What's that?
' Richard interrupted his friend's quotation, his voice suddenly showing some of the tension that he actually felt.

Out of the blackness swam the largest jellyfish Richard had ever seen. It arrived unannounced because it was so diaphanous that the sonar pulses passed right through it as though it was made of the water that surrounded it. None of the other systems registered it either. It was so much a thing of the element it inhabited that it registered no movement, showed no heat signature, gave out no light signal. It may well have had sections or patterns of luminosity, as many deep-water life forms did, but they had been overwhelmed by the glare of the two deep-sea vessels' lights. It suddenly appeared, therefore, disturbingly abruptly, ghostlike, and almost shockingly identical to
Salacia
.

The huge silvery bell of its body must measure almost three metres across, thought Richard. And the tentacles trailing after it must reach nearly forty metres back, though the shadow behind it made accuracy difficult. ‘You registering this?' he asked Nic.

‘Yup.'

With a weary pulse of its enormous body, the gigantic jellyfish pulled itself closer to
Salacia
, as though hoping it had found a companion in the midst of this massive emptiness.

‘I think she likes you,' Richard observed. He swung
Neptune
easily inwards, closer to the cruising monster.

‘Don't disturb her,' ordered Nic. ‘It's our first date. We're just getting acquainted . . .'

Richard glanced up at the series of monitors above
Neptune
's display, which gave
Salacia
's point of view. It was exactly as though Nic's vessel was staring into a looking glass, he thought. Then he eased back as Nic pushed
Salacia
forward gently, the two colossal silvery bubbles – one of strengthened glass and the other of watery jelly – seeming to close towards each other like reflections coming together in a massive mirror. The pressure down here was passing four thousand atmospheres, he thought, double-checking the readouts. How could a life form apparently as fragile as spun glass possibly exist?

‘You any idea what she is?' enquired Nic.

‘Looks like a Lion's Mane to me,' Richard answered. ‘Lion's Mane jellyfish are supposed to be the biggest and I can't imagine anything much bigger than this. But I thought they stayed up in the Arctic. It's pretty rare to see one this far south. Maybe . . .' His voice tailed off as he became lost in thought.

‘Yeah?' prompted Nic. ‘Maybe . . .?'

‘The north polar icecap is still melting, even if the Antarctic seems to be gaining ice again,' said Richard slowly. ‘Maybe the meltwater from the Arctic Ocean is pushing creatures like this one further south. Setting up new currents in the deep ocean . . .'

‘It's a theory.' Nic didn't sound particularly convinced but he fell silent and Richard eased
Neptune
closer to the jellyfish. Her lights probed the darkness behind the huge creature, showing a forest of trailing tendrils reaching away into blue-black shadow. And more. Richard was suddenly frowning almost thunderously and swearing under his breath. For tangled in the huge creature's tentacles was a massive section of drift net. Orange cable – an indestructible mixture of polypropylene and Kevlar – led to two big orange plastic floats separated by fat tubes of Styrofoam. The orange balloons squashed flat by the pressure, but the Styrofoam somehow still holding its shape. Behind this billowed the better part of sixty square metres of indestructible orange fishing net – complete with the rotting corpses and skeletons of whatever the net had been set to catch. No wonder the huge jellyfish seemed to be pulling itself so wearily through the water.

With hardly a second thought, Richard sent
Neptune
further back along the huge creature's tentacles, already unfolding the mechanical arms, calculating the most effective way of cutting the netting free. He had no idea whether the jellyfish could feel any pain near its extremities, and if so how it would react to even a well-intentioned attempt to cut the jetsam free. At worst it would simply make a run for it. But
Neptune
and
Salacia
could both outrun it easily. So, with any luck . . .

As Nic held the bubble-bow of his vessel face-to-face with the jellyfish – seemingly communicating on some alien level, the English business magnate focused his own thoughts and actions on the central tangle of tendril and cable. As delicately as a surgeon placing a stent in a blocked artery, he reached
Neptune
's longest arm forward until the crab-claw clipper at the end of it could cut the mare's nest of dead and living fibres apart. He extended a second arm equipped with pincers, and gently took hold of one end of the cable. Only when he had a firm grip did he start cutting the tangle of netting free.

The huge jellyfish whirled into motion at the first touch. Like a fisherman at the end of a line, Richard seemed to feel the power of the creature's reaction.
Neptune
's head jerked down. The gripping pincers slid back along the cable as the jellyfish fought to escape. Like some kind of massive kite on the windiest of days, it heaved again and again. Richard's concentration remained focused upon the Gordian knot of palp and plastic he was cutting. A third incision coincided with a fourth huge downward heave. The net tore free and the jellyfish was gone, its speed enhanced immeasurably by the fact that
Neptune
was now holding the putrid sea anchor which had been slowing it down so terribly.

But even as it did so,
Salacia
's warning systems kicked in.
Neptune
's sonar started acting up, going haywire. As Richard looked at the monitors, trying to work out what on earth was going on now, Nic's voice drawled through his headset: ‘Hey, Richard, looks like there's something really big down there just below us. And it's coming up towards us pretty damn fast. Far too fast for comfort, in fact . . .'

‘I
t's coming up!
'

‘Can you see it? See what it is?'

‘Not yet. But I think it's pretty big! Yes. I'm sure it's big!'

Sudden excitement at
Poseidon
's stern filled the last moments before the eight bells sounded for the noon watch. Crewman Ironwrist Wan had managed to hook something at long last and now he was wrestling his fishing rod as though trying to land a whale. His mate, Fatfist Wu, was jumping in ungainly leaps around him, calculating whether Ironwrist would get his catch aboard before First Lieutenant Straightline Jiang called them on to duty, which he would do the instant the bell sounded or Captain Mongol Chang would be down on him like a ton of bricks. His nickname ‘Straightline' referred to his preferred navigating technique. Her nickname, ‘Mongol' referred to her leadership style – reminiscent of Genghis Khan's on a bad day – rather than to her appearance or ethnicity, though she was notoriously ugly, in the opinion of her adoring crew.

The thought of time running out prompted Ironwrist to depart from his much-vaunted artistry as the ship's master angler and simply jerk his catch out of the littered sea. A sizeable tuna soared up out of the water and on to the deck where it landed with a considerable
whack!
to lie writhing in the last shade under the ship's Changhe CA109 helicopter. The men gathered round it and Ironwrist shouldered his way through until he was crouching over it. He tried to get the hook out of its mouth but the fish seemed intent on biting off his fingers; so, aware of the speed with which noon was approaching, he whacked it over the head with the handle of his rod until it lay still. As soon as he was certain it was dead, he pulled out the gutting knife he had wheedled out of the ship's cook on the promise of giving his catch over to be added to the pot for dinner.

But somehow the fish didn't look all that appetizing. It was well over a metre in length, and bore all the usual familiar markings of a Pacific Bluefin tuna. But where the body between head and tail should have been rounded, full-packed, almost like a shell for a twenty-five-millimetre gun, there were only lean flanks, dull grey sides, and a strangely distended grey-white belly.

‘That's a sorry-looking specimen,' said Staightline Jiang, arriving to stir up his watch before eight bells called them to their various duties.

‘Yes,' agreed Fatfist. ‘It looks like one of those pictures of starving African kids. All skin and bone and swollen belly.'

Ironwrist just grunted and slit the fish open. Its stomach burst all over the deck, disgorging handfuls of brightly coloured plastic splinters. ‘Shit,' said the ship's master angler in disgust. ‘Would you look at that? This poor creature must have gorged itself to bursting on that crap. And the more it filled its belly, the more it starved to death!' The others nodded silently in disgusted agreement. The sea heaved wearily. The ship rocked. The rubbish on the surface whispered against her sides. Eight bells tolled.

‘No wonder it was after your fingers, then!' laughed Fatfist. ‘They'd have been its first square meal in ages.'

‘That's enough. Get it over the side with the rest of the rubbish,' ordered Straightline. ‘And get to your watch stations. Now!'

‘That's the afternoon watch,' said Richard as the bells rang through
Poseidon.
‘It's our signal to come up.' Less than ten seconds had elapsed since Nic's alarm warned of that massive, mysterious movement below and it was still sounding.
Neptune
was still holding the big square of netting cut from the Lion's Mane jellyfish, but at least the sonar seemed to be settling down.

‘Good timing,' observed Nic. ‘And weren't we supposed to be testing the emergency surfacing routines?'

Both men hit the switches designed to release compressed air into the variable buoyancy tanks forcing out the water which had allowed them to explore at this depth.
Neptune
and
Salacia
began to head for the surface, still side by side, like a couple of steel and crystal bubbles. As soon as they did so,
Salacia
's alarm fell silent.
Neptune
's sonar returned to normal. The tension eased. It had taken them three hours to get down – it would take them the better part of twenty minutes to return to the surface. Richard decided that clearing the deep of one more piece of dangerous rubbish was more important than winning Nic's race, so he kept hold of the net and didn't push for full buoyancy yet, though the submersible's burden was slowing
Neptune
as effectively as it had slowed the jellyfish.

Richard kept his eyes glued to the screens that showed what both of the vessels were experiencing as
Salacia
began to pull ahead.
Neptune
's equipment was designed to look all around. Light, sonar – everything reached out in a sphere around the vessel, presenting as many facts as could be gleaned, warning of as many dangers.
Salacia
's more advanced systems were designed to do the same, but were sensitive to a much higher degree.

Nic's systems might well be oversensitive, thought Richard hopefully, as fifteen minutes passed and everything on his monitors continued to read clear and safe while the two vessels raced on up towards the two-thousand-metre mark, the better part of ten metres apart now. Perhaps
Salacia
had misinterpreted a shoal of fish as one great entity. Or a deep-water current which had been given added weight by temperature, compression or salinity.

To be fair, compression was unlikely, Richard allowed. Even at these depths and under this pressure, water compressed only fractionally. But an unexpected wall of dense, salty water might explain the disturbance to
Neptune
's sonar too. Especially if the thoughts about escaping Arctic abyssal streams he had shared with Nic earlier were anywhere near the truth. Could the Oyashio Current, flowing south through the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, be gaining enough force to push further south than ever, its water less salty than the Pacific Ocean's, perhaps – but so much colder. Settling unsuspected into the lower depths, full of displaced Arctic life forms. Something must have brought that enormous Lion's Mane jellyfish down here. The jellyfish and God alone knew what else . . .