Charles Sheffield - Cold as Ice 01 - Cold as Ice

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Charles Sheffield

Cold As Ice

Scanned on April 1,2002 by Warburner

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PROLOGUE

2067 A.D.: Rejoice! the War is Over

Every war begins with a first encounter, a first blow, a first casualty. That

is the shot heard 'round the world. But in every war there must also be a last

victim. And the event that takes that victim can happen after the combat is

officially ended. The Pelagic was a deep-space freighter, hurriedly converted

for passenger transport. Designed to creep ore-laden from asteroid mines to

the great refineries in low orbit about Earth or Mars, the ship had a maximum

acceleration of less than a quarter gravity. The Seeker that pursued her could

sustain five gees, or boost briefly at a hundred. The presence of the pursuer

had been detected in a routine scan for Belt debris not listed in the data

banks. Of the four people in the control room following the emergency call,

only Vernor Perry, the navigation officer, had accepted what the Seeker's

steady approach meant.

"I know we can't outrun it." Loring Sheer, the chief engineer, was still

arguing. "Why should we need to? You heard the radio messages from Earth. The

war is over"

"Vern? What do you say to that?" Mimi Palance was the captain, hurriedly

appointed when the refugee ship left the mid-sized asteroid of Mandrake. She

was a habitat designer, and she was having trouble in adjusting to the idea of

space command.

Vernor Perry looked stupefied. He was the one who had called them to the

control room. He knew more about Seekers than anyone else on board. He also

knew that he was dead. All discussion was pointless.

"Vern!" said Palance again, in a sharper tone.

Perry roused himself. "It makes no difference if the war is over or not.

Seekers are smart missiles, but they were built without a cancel mode. Once

targeted, they can't be changed."

"But what makes you sure that we are the target?" asked the personnel officer.

It was her first time in space since the war began, and Mary Vissuto was still

bewildered by the sudden order to flee from Mandrake. "Why mightn't the target

be another ship, or even a colony?"

"Probabilities." Perry pointed to a three-D display with the Pelagic as its

moving center. "There's no other ship or artificial structure within five

million kilometers. That Seeker is heading directly toward us. There's no

reasonable chance that it's aiming for anything else."

"So what can we do to escape it?"

Perry shrugged.

"That's no answer, Vern," said Palance. And, sharply again when he did not

reply, "Come on, man. We have four adults and fifteen children on board. I

agree, we can't outrun a Seeker. But what about a course change?"

"Useless." We're dead. Why are you bothering me? "I tell you, a Seeker is

smart. It's already observing us, with all of its sensors. If we change

course, it will compute a revised contact trajectory. If we turn our power

off, it will track us by our thermal signature. The Pelagic is hotter than any

natural body in the Belt. It has to be, or we'd all be frozen." "Then if we

can't run away, can we hide? Suppose we head for an asteroid and park behind

it."

"The Seeker will follow us. We can't run, and we can't hide." But even as he

spoke, a flicker of an idea crossed Perry's frozen mind.

"What, Vern?" Mimi Palance had seen the change of expression.

"We may be able to hide-for just a while. Don't get your hopes up, though. We

can't escape. But we might buy a little time." Perry went over to the control

console and called up the banks of solar-system ephemerides.

"I thought you just said that we couldn't hide. So why are you looking at

asteroids?" Loring Sheer had been trying to adjust to the idea of imminent

death, but now the engineer was confused again.

"We can't hide behind one. What we need for breathing space is a cluster. I've

got the computer looking for one we can reach before the Seeker reaches us."

He checked the missile's progress. "Luckily, it's in no hurry-it knows we

can't get away." He pressed the compute key. "Hold your breath."

"What are you calculating, Vern?" Mary Vissuto had been too busy on Mandrake

with the children and with her own work to pay much attention to the celestial

mechanics of the Belt.

"Asteroid groups. The asteroids move all the time relative to each other." And

when Mary still showed no sign of understanding, "They move, you see, but the

law of averages means that there have to be temporary clusters, continually

forming and dissolving. The trick is to find one near enough to do us some

good. Then we move over and snuggle up into the middle of the group."

He did not take time to explain the tricky part of what he was doing. The

bodies of the Asteroid Belt ranged in size from Ceres, a giant by asteroid

standards at seven hundred and fifty kilometers, down to free-falling

moun-tains and on to the pea-sized and smaller pebbles. Everything from worlds

to sand grains moved in its own complicated orbit, defined by the

gravitational forces of sun and planets, by solar wind and radiation pressure,

and by asteroid interactions.

Vern's first task was to choose reasonable size limits. He had on file the

orbit parameters for every Belt body of --more than fifty meters in diameter,

and he had set the required number of bodies to one thousand, with a cluster

radius of five hundred kilometers. If the computer could find nothing that

matched those requirements, he would have to decrease the number of bodies in

the cluster or increase the permitted cluster radius. Each of those options

would make it more difficult for the Pelagic to hide. And the hiding place

would be temporary, whatever he did. The Seeker would patiently search every

body of a cluster until it again encountered the unique signature of the

Pelagic.

The other two in the control room had not needed Perry's explanation to know

what he was doing. Their eyes were fixed on the displays. "It's found some,"

said Palance as the computation ended. "Four of them!"

Perry shrugged. "Yeah, but look at the distances. We can forget the first

three-the Seeker would catch us before we got there. It's number four, or

nothing."

"That cluster's not even close to our present trajectory." Sheer was peering

at the tabulation. "We'd have to burn all the fuel we've got to make that

course change."

"You'll never find a better use for it." Mimi Palance had already made up her

mind. "Vern, give me a flight path."

"Doing it." Perry was at the console. Hope was the biggest delusion, but what

else was there to do? "Loring, make sure you're ready for full acceleration.

I'm going to assume that you can squeeze out a quarter gee."

"You'll be lucky." But Loring Sheer was looking better as he hurried out.

Something to do, anything to do. Even if he blew the engines apart, that was

better than sitting around watching the approach of the Seeker.

"A quarter gee!" protested Mary Vissuto. "We haven't had a tenth of that since

we left Mandrake. The cabins and galley aren't ready f* it."

"They'd better be," said Perry. "In about two minutes. I'm programming for

maximum thrust as soon as Sheer can give it to us."

"We'll never get things tied down in time." But Mary, too, was hurrying out,

leaving Palance and Perry alone in the control room.

"So we go sit in the middle of the cluster." Perry spoke in a dry, controlled

voice, as though they were discussing some academic problem of orbital

rendezvous. At the same time, he was fine-tuning the trajectory, seeking a

region where the cluster bodies were converging. "What then, Mimi? Loring and

Mary still don't understand. They think this gives us a chance. It doesn't. It

gives us a short reprieve. There's no way that the Pelagic can escape a

Seeker."

"I know. We're going to die. I didn't accept that ten minutes ago, I do now.

But I don't accept it for the children. They're special. We have to come up

with an idea, Vern. And we have to do it quick. Get your brain in gear."

The control sequence took over. The engines fired. The Pelagic accelerated its

ungainly bulk toward the random assembly of rock fragments that comprised the

chosen cluster. Far behind, taking course changes in its stride and closing

steadily on the bigger ship, the deadly needle of the Seeker followed every

move.

When the group reconvened in the control room six hours later, Mimi had

herself and the meeting under better control. She took no credit for that.

Loring Sheer and Mary Vissuto had come to grips with unpleasant reality, while

Vern Perry was admitting that impending death did nor remove the obligation to

think.

*'Vern." She nodded her head at the navigation officer. "Status summary,

please."

"Our physical location has changed, but not our situation." Perry already had

the displays he needed on file. "That's us." A blue point winked on the

screen. "We're nicely tucked away behind a one-kilometer rock, and I'm going

to keep us there. These fourteen other bodies"- more winking lights-"are

available if we want to do some dodging. We're safe for twenty-four hours

unless the Seeker changes its operating plan. I don't see why it should. Here

it is." A red point of light appeared. "It knows where we are, and the Doppler

from its radar signals shows that it's closing at a constant rate."

He turned from the console. "The bad news we already know. We can't run away,

because we have no fuel left. Even if we could, the Seeker is fast enough to

catch us and run rings round us."

"All right." Mimi Palance turned to Sheer. "The Pelagic is stuck here. What

about other transport?"

"There's one lifeboat. We could all get into it, and we might even be able to

fly somewhere before we ran out of air. But we wouldn't be given the chance. A

Seeker can recognize a lifeboat as well as it can a ship, and it would see our

drive go on. It would tackle the Pelagic, then come after us-or maybe the

other way around. Either way, it would make no difference. We can't get

anywhere using the lifeboat."

"So cross that one off." Mimi was aware of the clock. Any actions they might

take were less likely to succeed as the Seeker came closer and the resolution

of its sensors improved. "All right. Life support and habitats, that's my

area. Not good. We have nine single-person pods. Self-contained life-support

system on each one, but no thrust capability. Nine pods, and nineteen of us.

Bad arithmetic. Mary? Ideas?"

"Nine of the children are two years old or less. Can you double up, put two to

a pod?"

"No." Mimi Palance did not elaborate. She knew why that was impossible, as

Mary should have known too. "If we put kids on the pods, only nine can go. And

they have to be the youngest. They're the smallest, and the pods can keep them

alive the longest. The bigger ones . . . stay here with us."

She paused and swallowed. The others could not look at her. They knew that

although each of them had a child on board under two, Mimi Palance's only

child was a boy approaching seven. He would stay with her on the Pelagic.

And die with her, thought Vernor Perry. Just like the rest of us. But all he

said was, "Won't work."

"Why not? We can do a ballistic launch-throw them out of the Pelagic. No

thrust from the pods for the Seeker to track. It will think they are bits of

space junk associated with the cluster. I'm sure the Seeker doesn't have any

better list of small rocks than we do, and there are thousands around here

that we don't have in the data bank."

"That's not the problem." Perry hated to dash hopes, but there was no value to

fantasy. "Sure, there would be no thrust to track, no deviation from free-fall

to observe. But that's only one way that the Seeker hunts. The pods have to be

kept above ambient temperature if you want the kids to survive. So the Seeker

will find them in just the way it's going to find the Pelagic-because of a

thermal signal far above background."

"Loring? Any comment? Any ideas?"

"No. Vern's right. The Seeker will detect and destroy the pods." The engineer

was silent for a few seconds. "Unless ..." "Come on, Loring. Quick! We don't

have time to dawdle."

"Well, this is half-baked. But we have liquid helium on board. Not a lot of

it, but the I/R sensor detectors need cooling way down, and we use it for

that. Suppose we put the kids inside the pods, as many of them as will fit,

and then we blow a liquid-helium spray onto the outside of the pods. That

could bring the skin temperature down to ambient, the same as the rest of the

rocks hi the cluster. It would take some calculation of latent heats and heat

transfer, but I can hack that out pretty quick. And then we eject the pods

from the Pelagic while we're in the shadow of one of the bigger asteroids . .

. and hope the pods get far enough away before they heat up again because of

the children inside. It's our best bet. Vern?"

"It's not our best bet, it's our only bet. We have to try it."

"But if you can do that for the life-support pods," said Mary Vissuto, "why

not do it for the whole ship?"

"And then what?" Vern Perry was losing patience. "Even if we had enough liquid

helium that we could spray the whole Pelagic-and we don't-we have no fuel to

go anywhere. The Seeker wouldn't go away. It would sit and wait, and after a

while our hull temperature would warm up again. It has to, or we'd all die of

overheating. Then the Seeker would zap us. And when it realized what we had

done to cool the ship, it might start looking around for other things that had

been treated in the same way."

"But what will we do about the other children?" asked Mary Vissuto. It was as

though she had not heard one word that Perry had said. "And what will happen

to the rest of us?"

This time no one answered. If Mary still refused to look reality in the face,

that was her problem. The easy part was the desperate action. The nine pods

were coated with an extra layer of thermal insulation, as much as could be

installed and still permit the body heat of the infants within to dissipate.

Ejection vectors were computed to make the pods seem as much as possible like

ordinary members of the cluster. Finally the metabolism of the nine young

children was reduced as far as Mimi Palance dared. No one had ever determined

how long a child could survive in a pod, let alone with a reduced metabolic

condition. Perhaps it was as well that no one knew.

When everything was ready, each pod would be thrown out into space at a pre

selected moment, chosen to optimize the masking effect of the natural bodies

of the cluster. The pods shared no common destination, but all of them were

targeted for the inner solar system. After nine days, when they should be

safely beyond the Seeker's attention, each would begin to broadcast a distress

signal.

As soon as the ninth life-support unit was ready, Vernor Perry placed an

unconscious child inside it. He tenderly kissed the little boy good-bye. All

of the children on the Pelagic were special, but to Vern this one was

extra-special, Vern's own flesh and blood. He surveyed the cold anonymity of

the pod and shuddered at the thought of his baby facing empty space, unnamed

and unknown. With Mimi Palance's consent, he attached a little name card to

the infant boy's shirt, then helped to prepare cards for the other eight

babies.

He watched as they were launched, one by one. When the ninth pod was ejected

with its precious cargo, Vern Perry muttered to himself, "The ark went upon

the face of the waters. And the spirit of God moved over the vasty deep."

And then there was nothing more to be done. They could not run, they could not

hide.

The hard part began.

Vern could not bear to stay with the other adults. He went to where his older

boy, Martin, was playing, and retreated with him to the navigation room.

The Pelagic had emerged from the shelter of the rocky asteroids as soon as the

last pod was on its way. The Seeker was close enough now to show a visible

image. It was a long, sharp-pointed cone, with a broad lip on its thick base.

There had been no change in its behavior when the six-foot ovoids of the

life-support units were launched.

Seated on Vern's knee, his eight-year-old son watched the Seeker with no fear

and a good deal of curiosity. "I've never seen a ship like that before, Dad,"

he said. "Is it a Belt design?"

"Yes. It's called a Seeker. It's a ... a weapons ship."

"Well, the war's over now. Thank goodness. Hey!" Martin could see everything

that his father saw. "It's coming this way, isn't it?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"Well, the picture looks the same size, but the scale bar on the display keeps

changing."

"Quite true. You're a smart boy." He is, too-super-smart. When he grows up-

Vern choked off the thought and squeezed his eyes tight shut.

"Why is it getting closer to us?"

"It's coming to . . . to take us home. "Vern opened his eyes again and peered

at the other screen. There, diminished to a tiny dot, was pod number nine. It

was still safely retreating. He stared and stared. It was all he had to hold

on to.

"Back home to Mandrake, you mean? That's great." Martin was still gazing at

the first screen. "Hey, look, Dad. The other ship's turning around."

The Seeker was rotating slowly on its axis, bringing about the end of its

blunt cone to face the Pelagic.

Remote weapons system. Vern's analysis when he turned again to the main screen

was automatic. So it doesn't intend to destroy us with impact.

The Seeker's rotation was complete. Vern Perry was staring right down the

emission venturi. But its image was a misty-eyed blur. He put his arms around

his son.

Nine billion dead in four months. It's an unthinkable number, when every loss

could be as painful as this.

"Dad, quit that!" The boy was laughing. "You're squashing me. See, the end's

opening up."

"It's all right, Martin. Everything's going to be all right."

"Dad, look. Dad"

As space around the Pelagic bloomed yellow and crimson, the Great War claimed

its last casualties. But Vernor Perry did not see it happen. He was holding

his beloved son close. His eyes were closed, and the agony in his heart had

nothing to do with his own fate.

His final thought was a prayer for the end of all such sorrow.

INTERLUDE

This is the size-distribution law of the Asteroid Belt: For every body of

given diameter, D, there will be ten bodies with diameter d = D/3.

Corollary: As the body you are searching for becomes-smaller, the problem of

distinguishing it from others of similar size becomes rapidly more difficult.

Conclusion: Personal survival pods, each a couple of meters long, will be lost

in a swarm of natural objects, more numerous within the Belt than grains of

sand on a beach. Visual search techniques in such an environment will be

useless.

Solution: Although the sky in and beyond the solar system glimmers and glows

with visible light from stars, planets, diffuse and luminous gas clouds,

novas, supernovas, and galaxies, other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum

are far less busy. Choose carefully. At the right wavelength for observation,

Earth shines brighter than a thousand suns.

The designers of search-and-rescue systems choose very carefully. The

available signal energy must be radiated in many directions, travel millions

or hundreds of millions of kilometers, and fill an immense volume. The amounts

of power

COLD AS ICE 13

available for distress calls are usually just a few watts. No matter. The

radio energy needed for signal detection and location is truly minute; the

total microwave power received at the solar system's largest radio telescope

would not carry a crawling fly up a windowpane.

SAR systems are designed to detect and triangulate a crippled survival pod

operating on its last dribble of power. From a single one-minute fix, a ship

or pod's position and velocity can be computed. A rescue vehicle will be

chosen, and a matching trajectory defined.

What SAR systems cannot do-because no one ever anticipated such a need-is to

operate efficiently when wartime battle communications swamp every channel.

And when war ends, emergency needs for reconstruction are no less demanding.

The last urgent and one-time call from the Pelagic, giving trajectories for

nine small objects, goes unheeded.

The pods drift through space. The sedated infants within them dream on. Their

sun-centered orbits carry them steadily closer to the monitored zone of the

Inner System, but they move at a snail's pace, too slow for the internal

resources of the pods. Life-support systems, intended for at most a few weeks'

use, begin to fail. The pods' own calls for help continue, but they, too,

weaken, merging into the galactic radio hiss that fills all of space.

Months pass. The pods drift on, interplanetary flotsam borne on sluggish tides

of radiation pressure and the changing currents of gravitational force.

No one knows that they exist.

2092 A.D.: Black Smoker

Nell Cotter had visualized the sequence precisely during the final minutes

before the hatch was closed: a slow fading of light, a gradual extinction that

would grow ever fainter as they descended, never quite bleeding away

completely.

And had she got it wrong! Here was reality, a few seconds of cloudy green

filled with drifting motes of white. A sudden school of darting silverfish all

around them, and then, moments later, no trace of diffused sunlight. Only

darkness, absolute and implacable. Scary.

But reporting personal discomfort was not what she was paid to do. "We are now

moving through the three-hundred-meter level," she said calmly. "That little

cluster of shrimp was probably the last life we'll see for a while. All

external light has disappeared."

She spoke into her main microphone, the one that Jon Perry could hear, but

after that, she automatically went on subvocalizing for the private record.

Don't need to say the depth. One of the cameras is trained on the instrument

panel. Can hardly see it though, it's so dim in here. She glanced at

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the other two video recorders. Getting nothing from outside. We need action,

or all of this sequence will be edited out.

The third camera showed Jon Perry at the submersible's controls, leaning back,

totally relaxed, even bored.

Goldfish, as cold-blooded as anything outside. Well, I was warned. The Ice

Man. Wonder if Mr. Personality does any better when he knows he's on camera.

"Dr. Perry, would you narrate while we're descending? I could do it, but I'd

only be parroting what you told me earlier."

"Sure." He displayed no more emotion, dropping in this hollow glass shell

through black depths, than she had seen him do on the ocean's surface. He

turned his face toward the camera. "We will be making an unpowered descent for

the next sixteen hundred meters. That will take approximately ten minutes and

put us onto the eastern edge of the Pacific Antarctic Ridge, about forty-five

south, a hundred and ten west. The coast of South America and the Arenas Base

are fourteen hundred kilometers east. We are already into the stable

temperature regime, with the water at a constant four degrees Celsius. It will

stay that way for another thousand meters. The only change we'll notice until

we reach the seabed is in the outside pressure. It adds ten tons of load to

each square meter of the Spindrift's surface for every ten meters that we

descend. If you listen closely, you can hear the vessel's structure adjusting

to the outside force. At the moment, the pressure on the hull is about a

thousand tons per square meter."

A thousand tons! Thank you, Jon Perry. I could have gone all day without

needing to know that. Nell stared around at the transparent goldfish bowl of

the submersible. On the surface, the three-meter globe of the Spindrift had

seemed substantial enough; now it felt as flimsy and as fragile as a soap

bubble. If it were to shatter under the enormous outside pressure . . .

She felt a twinge of discomfort in her bladder but pushed awareness of it into

the back of her mind.

16 CHARLES SHEFFIELD

7s he going to talk his damned statistics all the way down? No one on Earth or

anywhere else will want to watch. A pox on you, Glyn Sefaris. Promise me a

"quick and easy" assignment, so I'll agree to come here unprepared. And give

me this. (And better be sure to edit that out, before Glyn gets his editorial

look.)

It was a party trick, elevated to a practical technique. Nell could keep up

her own stream-of-consciousness commentary on the subvocal recorder installed

in her larynx and still monitor and direct the course of the video program.

The final show would be a mixture of on-the-spot and voice-over comments.

Continuous tune-markers on cameras and microphones ensured that she would have

no difficulty in coordinating, editing, and splicing the different tracks. As

she paused, Jon Perry wound up the string of statistics and was moving on.

". . .at which point I will begin using our lights. We could do it now-we have

plenty of power-but it's not worth it, because the only thing we're likely to

see are a few deep-water fish, all of them well-known benthic forms."

"Not well known to me or to the viewers, Dr. Perry." Nell jumped in on her

public mike. The thrust of the show was supposed to be about the seafloor

hydrothermal vents and the life forms around them, but final subject matter

was irrelevant if viewers turned off before you ever got there. "Can we take a

look?"

He shrugged and turned back to the control panel. Nell watched his fingers

flicker across a precise sequence of keys.

Beautifully shaped hands. Make sure we show plenty of footage of them. Nice

sexy voice, too, if I could get more animation into it. Talks old, no juice.

Check his age when we get back-twenty-eight to thirty, for a guess. Check

background, too. I know next to nothing about him. How long has he been

playing deep-sea diver?

COLD AS ICE 17

The darkness around them was suddenly illuminated by three broad beams of

green light, each beginning twenty meters from the Spindrift and pointed back

toward it.

"Free-swimming light sources," said Perry, anticipating Nell's question. "Half

a meter long, two-kilowatt continuous cold light, or pulsed at a megawatt. We

have half a dozen of them. They normally travel attached to the base of the

Spindrift, but they can be released and controlled from here."

"Why not just shine beams out from the submersible?"

"Too much back-scatter. The light that's reflected toward us from an outgoing

beam would spoil the picture. Better to send the free-swimmers out and shine

light back this way."

"They're radio-controlled?"

He gave her a glance that might have been amused, but it was probably

contemptuous. He knew she'd been sent here half-briefed as well as she did.

"Radio's no use under water. Lasers would do, but focused ultrasonics are

better. They travel farther and don't interfere with what we see."

Which at the moment happens to be nothing. Nell stared out into three empty

cones of brightness. Not one hint of fish. Amazing, I can see everywhere. The

Spindrift admits light completely from all directions. Even the chairs are

transparent. "Progress in ceramic materials since the war, Miss Cotter." Perry

had patted the side of the clear globe as they were first boarding. "We can

make everything in the submersible as transparent as the best glass . . .

except the crew, of course. We're working on that." (Joke!) "And so strong

that the Spindrift could descend to the deepest part of the Marianas Trench."

To which, thank God, they were not going. The hydro-thermal vents lay at what

Jon Perry described as a "modest" depth of a couple of thousand meters.

Which means that we're going more than a mile straight down. Two thousand tons

of force on every square meter of the

18 CHARLES SHEFFIELD

hull. Smash in this Christmas ornament, and no one would ever find the broken

shell. Or its contents. God, I hate the deep sea-and I never knew it before.

Feel like I have to go to the bathroom. Hope I don't pee in my pants (and be

sure to edit that out, too, when I get back).

Still they were descending, through cold, lifeless water. . Jon Perry had

his free-swimmers on autopilot, their i' lighthouse beams creating cones of

green, fading in the distance. Over to the left, Nell finally caught a glimpse

of movement. Something dark, something faint, a wisp of smoke at the limit of

vision.

"Dr. Perry, I see a big object swimming. Over on your side."

But he was shaking his head. "Not swimming. That's the first sign of what we

came down here to look at. You're seeing the top of the plume from the smoker.

Look at the r water temperature."

Nell-and the camera-looked. It was eight degrees above freezing, warmer than

it ought to be. They were descending into the region of the hydrothermal vent.

A feathery plume of darker water-like up-flowing oil-was the first sign of the

vent's proximity.

Jon Perry had listened well when she briefed him before the descent. He picked

up his cue now without a hint from her. "From this point, the water as we

descend will become hotter and hotter, all the way to the entry chimney of

Hotpot-a crack in the seafloor, the hydrothermal vent that leads right to

Earth's hot interior. Actually, this is both the newest and the hottest of the

known vents. Those in the Galapagos Rift are deeper, and they have been

studied for a long time: Mussel Bed and Rose Garden, Clambake and Garden of

Eden. But even the hottest of them, the 'black smokers,' don't run over

three-fifty Celsius. Hotpot here tops out at over four-twenty, a super black

smoker. If it weren't for the pressure down here, this would all be

superheated steam ..."

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And if it weren't for the calmness down here, this would all look damned good

on camera. Beautiful clear eyes, total technical confidence. Pale complexion,

because he spends too much time in the dark. Editing color balance will take

care of that easy enough. But you need a few pins sticking into you, Jon

Perry. We have to liven you up. Because let's face it, what you're saying to

our vast but shrinking audience is bloody dull stuff.

And Nell's experienced ear and eye told her that it was getting worse. Given

that the average audience member had an attention span shorter than the time

it took to blink. And given that there was not much to look at outside anyway.

As they descended farther, the water was becoming steadily more turbid. The

lights stopped a few yards beyond the glassy wall of the Spindrift, and in

those few yards she could see nothing.

"There are live organisms thriving down here," Perry was saying, "at

temperatures far above the usual boiling point of water-temperatures that

would kill a human being in a few seconds. But even that's not the most

interesting thing about the black smokers. Every creature on the land surface

of the earth or in the upper levels of the oceans depends on the sun for its

existence. Plants trap the energy of sunlight, animals eat plants, and animals

eat each other. So it all comes back to sunlight and solar energy. But the

animals that form colonies around the black smokers don't rely on the sun at

all. Their life cycle starts with bacteria that are chemosynthetic, not

photosyn-thetic. They depend on chemical energy, breaking down sulfur-based

compounds and using the energy from that to power processes within their

cells. If the sun were to go out completely, all life on the surface of the

earth would vanish. But it might be centuries before life down here even

noticed. It would go on as usual, energized by the earth's own minerals and

internal heat ..."

Pictures. Nell stared desperately at the roiling darkness

20 CHARLES SHEFFIELD

out beyond the Spindrift. Great God of the Boob Tube, give me pictures. I've

recorded enough talking-head material in the past five minutes for an hour's

program.

It was duller than her worst fears. And she knew what was coming next, because

Jon Perry had told her even before they left the surface. They were going to

scoop up exciting things like clams and mini-crabs and tube worms and

sulfur-munching bacteria from the seabed around Hotpot, with the aid of the

Spindrift's remote handling arms. And they were going to push the creatures

into the viewers' disgusted or bored faces.

/ told you, Glyn, I didn't need this bloody job. I should have stayed in bed.

But before Nell had finished that subvocal thought, Jon Perry had moved. He

was sitting up straight in his seat, and his face suddenly had an expression

on it. A live, interested look, like a real human being. He had stopped

speaking in mid-sentence, and he was ignoring the cameras. Nell felt a

movement of the Spindrift, an upward bobbing that she had last experienced

when the submersible was on the surface.

"What's happening?"

He did not reply, did not look at her. But he jerked his head toward the

instrument panel, which told Nell nothing. She saw only dozens of dials and

digital readouts, most of them unlabeled and unintelligible.

What was intelligible was the sudden disappearance of every scrap of outside

illumination. The free-swimmers' lights had vanished. Nell Cotter and Jon

Perry sat at the center of a jet-black globe, dim-lit from within. She saw a

streak of dark movement outside-opaque liquid swirling around them. It was

followed by another and more violent rocking of the Spindrift. The vessel

tilted far to one side, until Nell was thrown across to collide with Jon

Perry.

"Pressure wave." He finally spoke. "A big one. We have to get away from here.

The Spindrift was designed for

COLD AS ICE 21

uniform external pressure. It can't take much of this." His voice was calm,

but his hands were skipping across the controls at unbelievable speed.

Nell gasped. Something had reached out in the darkness, grabbing and holding

her at her waist, chest, and shoulders in soft, cool tentacles.

"It's all right." Perry had heard her indrawn breath. "That's only the

restraining harness. It operates automatically if we exceed a ten-degree

tilt."

Which we should never do, except when we're bobbing around on the surface.

Nell remembered at least that much of her briefing. What's wrong with the

attitude stabilizers? They're supposed to keep us level. .

"I saw the temperature rising," Perry went on calmly, "faster than it ought

to, but I didn't know how to interpret it. We arrived here at just the wrong

time."

"But what's happening?" Nell could feel all of her weight transfer to the

harness on her right side. The Spindrift had rolled through ninety degrees.

• "Undersea eruption. Seafloor quake. The area around the smokers is

seismically active, and it chose now to release built-up compressions."

Nell heard a low, pained moaning. The seabed, crying out in agony? No. It's

the Spindrift, groaning because the hull is overstressed. Can't take much of

this, Perry says. So when the ship's had all that it can take-

The submersible shuddered and spun. Nell no longer had any sense of direction.

The seafloor could be right beneath her feet-or directly over her head. Jon

Perry was still busy at the controls. And, incredibly, he was talking in the

same lecturer's voice as before. Narrating his comments, as though they were

still making a video documentary.

"It is necessary that we leave the eruption zone at once, but it's no use to

head straight up toward the surface. The pressure waves fan up and out from

the seabed fracture

22 CHARLES SHEFFIELD

zone to fill a wedge-shaped volume, broadest at the top. We must travel

laterally and down to take us out of the active zone. That's what I'm doing

now. It's going to be touch and go, because we've already had two pressure

pulses that exceed the hull's nominal maximum tolerance. Hold tight. Here

comes another one."

The Spindrift groaned again, a sound like creaking timbers. Nell glanced

around. Outside there was nothing but turbid black water at killing pressure.

How could Perry have any idea of where he was going? She could see no

instruments that told direction or attitude. Yet his dim-lit fingers were

never still. He was making continuous adjustments to something. Nell could

hear another noise behind her: the whirring of electric motors, driving the

Spindrift's propulsion system at maximum thrust.

Does he know what he's doing? Or is he trying anything, just at random?

The submersible shuddered and changed direction again, so violently that Nell

was convinced that it must be the end. The hull moaned, surely ready to

collapse. But in that same moment, Jon Perry was lifting his hands clear of

the controls.

"Are we-" Nell didn't know how to finish the question. Are we doomed'? didn't

seem likely to receive a useful answer.

"Almost. Almost clear. Another few seconds."

The front of the submersible was admitting a faint, faded glow. The water

ahead was clearer, no longer filled with dense, suspended solids ejected by

the seafloor eruption. Nell could see one of the free-swimmer light sources,

leading the way to safety like a pilot fish. The Spindrift rolled slightly,

responding to a faint, final tremor from behind. And then Nell could feel no

evidence of movement, although the sound of the motors continued from behind.

Her restraining harness released and slipped away, retracting into the seat.

COLD AS ICE 23

"We're right out of it. All clear." Perry slapped his hand on the panel in

front of them. Able to see his profile for the first time in what seemed like

hours, Nell found that he was grinning like a madman.

Nell wasn't. Look at that! The crazy bastard, he acts like he loved it.

"Are you all right, Miss Cotter?"

Nell gulped, trying to clear her throat for anything more than subvocal rage.

Before she could say a word, he was turning to face her, his expression

changing from excitement to concern.

"I'm afraid I'll have to take us back to the surface, I'm really sorry about

your show. I realize that we didn't get the materials I promised you, but

there's no way we could examine Hotpot today. It's too dangerous. Anyway,

there'll be so much ejecta from the vent that we wouldn't be able to see a

thing for hours. We can come back another day."

Nell looked at the cameras. Still in position. Still working. They would have

recorded everything: the eruption, the abyssal darkness, the Spindrift tossed

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CharlesSheffieldColdAsIceScannedonApril1,2002byWarburner------------------------------------PROLOGUE2067A.D.:Rejoice!theWarisOverEverywarbeginswithafirstencounter,afirstblow,afirstcasualty.Thatistheshotheard'roundtheworld.Butineverywartheremustalsobealastvictim.Andtheeventthattakesthatvictimcanhappe...

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