300 Minutes of Danger Page 2

  01:00He lay there for a moment, the snow burning his cheek. The only sound was the distant whispering of the wind as it swept over the Siberian wilderness. The sun emerged from behind a cloud.

  The plane took off about twenty minutes before George jumped out, and flew at roughly 300 kilometres per hour. That made him a hundred kilometres from civilisation. He had no food, no shelter and no way to contact the rest of the world.

  00:30Luckily, most of his journey would be downhill.

  George detached his boots from the binders on the board and clambered to his feet. He used his shadow to work out which way west was, then he put his board under his arm and started sloshing through the snow towards the top of the next peak.

  His adventure was only just beginning.

  00:00

  SUB-HUMAN

  30:00‘Once you’re at the bottom of the ocean, grab anything you can find,’ Otto’s mother said. ‘The weirder the better.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Otto gripped the safety rail and peered over the edge into the roiling sea. ‘If the virus comes from flies, why would the cure be on the seabed?’

  Mum ignored him. ‘How’s it going?’ she called to the engineer.

  ‘Getting there.’ The engineer was fiddling with the hatch of the neon-green submersible in a way that Otto didn’t find reassuring. He half hoped the engineer wouldn’t be able to get it open.

  29:30Then Otto wouldn’t have to go down into the black.

  A cloud cast a shadow across the ship. The salty breeze whipped at Otto’s hair. A sliver of land was still visible on the horizon. He knew how bad it was back there—hundreds dead, thousands barricaded inside their homes, hospitals overflowing—but it couldn’t be nearly as scary as where he was going.

  28:45‘The virus doesn’t come from flies,’ Mum said. It took Otto a moment to realise she was speaking to him. ‘Flies just carry it. Genetic tags tell us the virus came from the trench below us. But according to the sonar there’s a huge amount of movement down there, which means life forms must have developed an immunity, or else the virus would have wiped them out. If we can study them, we can probably cure it.’

  ‘If there’s so much life down there,’ Otto said, ‘how come we haven’t studied it before?’

  ‘We know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the sea,’ Mum said. ‘It’s really hard to get to the ocean floor because of the pressure, and once you’re down there it’s really hard to see.’

  28:00Otto looked at the submersible. Giant halogen floodlights were mounted on the sides. ‘What about those?’

  ‘Even with the lights on, you won’t be able to see much,’ Mum said. ‘The water is full of dirt stirred up by the currents, and those lamps only create wavelengths of light that are invisible to most fish. We don’t want to scare anything off.’

  27:40Currents. Wavelengths. Life forms. How had Otto gotten himself into this?

  The Endeavour had left port nine hours ago with a crew of fourteen. Otto, his mother, seven engineers and five scientists. Then Chapman—a little man with a bristly moustache and a scar on his cheek—got sick. No-one seemed sure exactly what he had, but it had something to do with his lungs, and was severe enough that he had to be quarantined in a little room on the port side of the vessel.

  27:00No-one said out loud that Chapman might have the ‘flyrus’. But Otto knew they were thinking it.

  The neon-green submersible had been designed specifically for Chapman. But if he went down there while he was ill, the pressure could kill him. If they went back to land to pick up a new pilot, the worsening weather could make the dive impossible. And every hour they spent debating what to do, more people were falling prey to the virus sweeping the mainland.

  25:50The only other person on board small enough to fit in the submersible was Otto.

  ‘Go back to the pressure,’ Otto said. ‘What do I do if it leaks?’

  ‘The vessel is made from syntactic foam,’ the engineer said. ‘The more pressure there is, the stronger the material gets. So if there’s a leak—’

  ‘Which there won’t be,’ Mum put in.

  ‘It’ll happen near the surface,’ the engineer continued. ‘So we’ll just pull you back up.’

  25:00‘OK, so no leaks,’ Otto said. ‘But there’s got to be a limit to how much pressure it can take, right? What if it implodes?’

  ‘That could happen,’ the engineer admitted. ‘But it was designed to withstand up to 114 MPa. At the bottom of this trench you should only be exposed to 110 MPa.’

  24:30That didn’t sound like much of a safety margin to Otto.

  ‘But what if it does implode?’ he pressed.

  Mum and the engineer looked at one another.

  ‘It won’t,’ Mum said.

  Her answer told Otto more than he wanted to know. He could only hope that if the massive pressure on the seabed crushed the submersible, it would happen fast. No fear, no pain—just the walls rushing in to kill him so quickly that he’d be dead before he knew he was in trouble.

  For a moment he wished he had a normal mother. The sort who smiled and laughed and fussed over him and worried about him and didn’t drag him along on crazy science expeditions. She had said he would be safer with her than on the mainland, but that had turned out to be false. He wished he had the sort of Mum who would tell him he didn’t need to do this.

  23:10But he did have to. No-one else could. So maybe he should be grateful that she wasn’t trying to convince him he had a choice.

  The vessel didn’t look much like a submersible. It looked more like a lime-green cartridge, ready to be loaded into a giant printer. It was tall and thin, with what looked like tank treads fixed to the bottom and two spindly robotic arms hanging from the sides.

  22:40‘It’s so tall,’ Otto said. ‘What if it tips over?’

  ‘The top weighs less than the bottom,’ the engineer said. ‘If it falls over, it’ll just stand itself back up again.’ He finally got the glass dome on top open, revealing a circular control array around two dark holes. ‘OK! Good to go.’

  Otto clambered gingerly into the submersible. His legs slotted neatly into the two holes. There were pedals beneath his feet.

  21:00‘The pedals control the treads,’ the engineer said, as if reading Otto’s mind. ‘Tilt your feet forward to move forward. Tilt back to move back. Tilt your feet opposite ways to turn around.’

  Otto tried it. He could hear the treads whirring beneath him, but because the submersible was still suspended above the water, it didn’t go anywhere.

  ‘These two joysticks control the arms,’ the engineer continued. ‘When you find something worth picking up, pull the trigger and the hand will snap closed. If you’ve successfully grabbed it, push the green button. The hand will automatically put the object in the sample pouch. If you missed, push the red button. The hand will open and you can try again.’

  ‘What is worth picking up?’ Otto asked.

  20:00‘Anything alive,’ Mum said. ‘Or recently dead. Coral is good, fish is great. The bigger the better, and the more variety the better. But no rocks, no dirt. Those are worth studying, but today we have more important things to collect.’

  ‘There’s a ballast attached to the bottom of the vessel,’ the engineer continued. ‘It’ll weigh you down so you sink to the bottom. When you’ve filled all the sample pouches, hit these two switches. That will release the ballast so you float back up. The ballast is designed to dissolve within twenty-four hours of contact with saltwater, so even if the battery is damaged and you lose power, you won’t have to worry about getting stuck down there.’

  19:10It hadn’t occurred to Otto to worry about that until the engineer mentioned it. He felt less safe rather than more—like when he saw a dog with a muzzle, or when the brace position was explained on an aeroplane.

  ‘These controls here are for the radio—we’ve turned it on and pre-set the frequency, so don’t touch them. Anything else you need to know?’

  Thi
s was all happening too fast. Otto was so overwhelmed that he couldn’t think of any questions, but he had no doubt that as soon as the craft was underwater he would think of something he should have asked.

  ‘OK then,’ the engineer said. He went to close the hatch, but Mum stopped him.

  18:00She leaned over Otto. ‘Good luck,’ she said, and kissed him on the cheek. That should have been comforting, but it was out of character for her. It reminded Otto of how much danger he was in.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  The engineer closed the hatch. As the silence closed in, Otto remembered the question he should have asked—how much air is in here?

  Plenty. Surely. There would be no point having a dissolving mechanism which let the pod float back up to the surface after twenty-four hours if there wasn’t enough air to last that long.

  Still, he found himself taking shallower breaths. His hands were clammy against the joysticks.

  The radio fizzed and crackled. ‘Otto,’ the engineer said. ‘Can you hear me?’

  17:30‘Loud and clear,’ Otto said.

  ‘OK. We’re going to—’

  Snap! There was a sickening lurch. Otto found himself floating in the air for a second before the vessel slammed down into the ocean. He sprawled forward over the controls on impact.

  Just as the engineer had promised, the sub didn’t tip over. The ballast dragged it straight down.

  ‘What happened?’ Otto demanded.

  17:00‘The cable snapped,’ the engineer said. ‘It was calibrated for Chapman. You must be heavier. You OK?’

  Otto tried to stifle his dread as the water rose up the sides of the dome and then closed over the top of him. He couldn’t see what was below. He could only look up and watch the rippling surface move further and further away.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he lied. ‘But this means you can’t pull me up. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What if there’s a leak?’

  ‘There won’t be,’ the engineer promised.

  16:20The ocean was vast but not empty. A distant underwater mountain was encrusted with coral. A cloud of jellyfish pulsed around in lazy circles. Something bumped against the vessel, and Otto whirled around in time to see a receding tailfin.

  16:00‘Shark!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got sharks down here!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the engineer said. ‘Even a big shark couldn’t bite through the syntactic foam. They’ll be curious, but they can’t hurt you.’

  Otto wondered why it was the engineer talking him through this. He would have preferred his mother, but he was too proud to say so.

  By the time the shark turned back towards him, revealing a mouth of crooked fangs, Otto had already sunk out of its reach.

  The deeper he descended, the darker the ocean became. Soon it was like being outside at night. After that, it was as if the dome had been painted black. The only light came from the glow of his instruments.

  The vessel creaked ominously as more and more water moved in to crush it.

  ‘The hull is making noises,’ Otto said. ‘Are you hearing this?’

  ‘The readouts are still within the normal range,’ the engineer said. ‘You’re probably fine.’

  15:30‘“Probably”?’

  ‘You’re fine.’

  He didn’t sound sure.

  When Otto was a little kid he’d often wake up at night with the paralysing fear that a cat was under his bed—a big cat with bald patches and a milky eye. He could hear its claws, as long as knives, rustling the carpet. When he eventually worked up the courage to call out to his parents, it was usually Dad who came in. Dad, with his soothing songs and his reassurances and his rough hands which gently stroked Otto’s hair.

  15:05But sometimes his mother came in instead. She wouldn’t even sit down on the bed.

  One breath, she would tell him. That’s all it takes to calm down, if you really pay attention to it.

  Now Otto inhaled slowly, listening to the sound, trying to feel the air in his lungs and trying not to imagine the walls slamming inward and squashing him like a cherry tomato.

  It worked, sort of.

  14:30Thump! Something else hit the vessel. Not a shark this time. The ground.

  He peered through the glass, but it was still pitch black.

  ‘I’m at the bottom,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ the engineer said. ‘Any signs of life?’

  ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Are your lights on?’

  14:00Otto scanned the control panel, feeling foolish. He didn’t remember anyone telling him how to turn the lights on.

  There—a button marked LIGHTS. He pushed it.

  Immediately the twin lamps clicked on, as bright as the sun.

  13:35Otto screamed.

  Something was stuck to the dome. A tangle of tentacles around a slimy purple mouth, sucking on the outside of the glass.

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ the engineer demanded.

  ‘Nothing. I mean, an octopus scared me. It was stuck to the dome.’

  Mum’s voice: ‘You’re deeper than any known species of octopus can go. Can you grab it?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ Otto grabbed the joysticks. He heard the mechanical arms rotate in their sockets, but he couldn’t see them—the octopus was in the way.

  Operating by feel, he pulled the joysticks backward and up, hoping to snag a tentacle. But the octopus reared back and launched itself away from the glass like a deflating balloon. A split second later it had vanished. Had it changed its skin colour, released a cloud of ink or simply disappeared into the shadows? It was too dark to tell.

  ‘Sorry,’ Otto said. ‘I lost it.’

  12:30Silence at the other end. Otto could feel his mother’s disappointment.

  ‘Understood,’ she said finally. ‘Keep looking.’

  Otto swallowed and leaned forward on both pedals. The tank treads rumbled and the submersible started to roll across the dark terrain.

  12:00Even with the lights, a cloud of black mist stopped Otto from seeing far. Occasionally a big rock would loom in front of him and he’d have to swerve around it, but otherwise it was like driving across a featureless wasteland at midnight. Flakes of sediment swirled around him like the shredded feathers of a raven.

  ‘You’re pretty close to your maximum depth,’ the engineer said. ‘Watch out for holes in the ground. If you fall down one, you could implode.’

  11:20 You could have mentioned that earlier, Otto thought. ‘How am I supposed to spot them? I can’t see underneath me.’

  ‘I’m just saying, tread carefully. Watch the ground on the horizon.’

  ‘Horizon,’ Otto grumbled under his breath. ‘Can’t see a thing.’

  A school of fish whipped past, scales shining in the halogen light, so fast that Otto barely registered they were there before they were gone. This was impossible. How was he supposed to grab anything which moved that fast?

  Something emerged from the shadows up ahead. Too tall and narrow to be a rock. A stem of coral? No, too long, too perfectly curved.

  Part of a sunken ship, perhaps. Otto turned in a slow circle. Yes, there was another stalk, the same as the first. And another. The submersible had rolled into a giant cage made of support-struts.

  10:15Or something. The stalks looked crumbly—not like metal, and not quite like wood.

  ‘Do you guys know of any shipwrecks in this area?’ Otto asked.

  Silence.

  10:00‘Hello?’ Otto had the sudden sense that he’d somehow travelled forward in time, and that he was standing in the sunken ruins of what had once been the Endeavour. Shivers rippled all over his body.

  ‘No,’ the engineer said finally. ‘There is nothing on record. Why?’

  Otto took a deep breath. ‘There’s some strange debris down here, that’s all. It looks like a wreck.’

  He rolled closer to one of the struts. It was ghostly white, with little divots in the surface where fish had eaten it away.

&nbs
p; It wasn’t wood, or steel. It was bone.

  09:30Otto’s mouth fell open. He turned around in another circle. He was in the centre of a giant rib cage. A rotting spine trailed away into the blackness.

  ‘It’s not a ship,’ he said. ‘It’s a skeleton!’

  ‘Otto,’ his mother said. ‘What kind of skeleton?’

  09:05‘A whale, I guess. A really, really big one.’ Then something caught his eye just beyond the enormous ribs. More bones—was that a gigantic hand?

  He shivered. ‘Not a whale. This thing had arms.’

  ‘Can you break off a piece?’ His mother sounded excited. ‘It may be too old to get anything useful from it, but it’s worth a try.’

  ‘Part of one of the ribs?’

  ‘Perfect. We have your coordinates—we’ll send someone down to take pictures of the rest later.’

  Otto gripped the joysticks and manoeuvred the robotic hands so they both gripped the nearest rib, one above the other. Then he twisted them in opposite directions.

  08:20 Crack! The rib split and the top part broke off, clenched in Otto’s mechanical fingers. He pushed the green button. The robotic arm swivelled out of sight. When it returned, the chunk of rib was gone. He wondered where the sample pouches were.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Great. Try to get something alive for the next one—or at least something with a little flesh on its bones.’

  08:00Otto tilted forwards on the pedals, rolling the submersible out of the rib cage. It was almost impossible to imagine that something so big had once been alive. And it wasn’t just the size. The pressure would kill most things, and the temperature was below zero down here—if not for the salt in the seawater it would have frozen solid.

  Even harder to imagine was whatever had killed the beast. Otto could see scars on some of the bones, as if someone had taken an axe to them.