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“It’s hard to believeanythingcould survive in this sunless bathypelagic zone,” Jazz said, placing a palm against the glass. “The pressure out there is more than two tons per square inch.”
“It’s exciting, isn’t it. Life not only took a foothold out there, but it’s thriving in great abundance.”
They both gazed at the wonderland beyond the glass.
A couple of anglerfish dangled their long rods, waving their luminescent lures. Clutches of squidworms squirmed through the light, feeding on marine snow that fell from the sunlit levels, bringing energy down to these midnight seas. Every glance around her revealed more: schools of viperfish, a pair of vampire squids, a single dumbo octopus. Farther out, albino lobsters crawled amidst waves of crimson anemone.
“Have you picked out the coral beds where you want to take our first samples?” Jazz asked, checking her dive watch. “Our first allotted window of ROV time is in ninety minutes.”
“I’ve selected a few candidates, but I’d like to make another full pass around the ring of windows at this level, and maybe on the tier above us, too.”
“Don’t dawdle,” Jazz warned. “We’re not the only ones salivating for ROV time. We’ve got a lot of competition down here.”
“And above us.”
Thousands of researchers, academics, and scientists had petitionedto be part of this great oceanic enterprise—but only three hundred had been chosen for the inaugural start of the Titan Project. Those hundreds were now spread across three zones.
Half the researchers remained topside, aboard theTitan X, the thousand-foot-long gigayacht that supported a thirteen-story glass sphere at its stern. The orb housed twenty-two state-of-the-art laboratories. It was a ship capable of servicing the station here, but it could also swiftly sail the seas, driven by a molten-salt nuclear reactor, to engage in studies around the globe.
Also topside wasTitan Station Up, a floating platform designed after the FPSO system of oil rigs. It served as the staging ground, workstation, and permanent support facility. The station’s two dozen submersibles—both HOVs and ROVs—were also docked there.
During the past two weeks, the specialized HOVs—human occupied vehicles—had ferried researchers and staff two miles deep toTitan Station Down. Some had described the inverted pyramid of the underwater station as the “world’s most expensive toy top.”
To her, as she had descended in an HOV two days before, it had been the most incredible sight. The station’s uppermost level, with its large glass observatory dome, looked like a huge UFO that stretched a hundred meters across. The four tiers below it were the same circular shape as the first, but each shrank in diameter the deeper they went, forming that “toy top.” The bottommost level—where she was now—was a mere twenty meters wide. It held no labs, just a ring of polarized black glass, making it as much an observatory as the dome on top.
Like the platform and ship above, this entire station floated, hovering above the seabed. Its position was maintained by ballast tanks and dynamically stabilized by thrusters at each level. The only point of contact with the fragile ecosystem below were a few anchors cabling them in place.
To make it easier for the researchers and workers to move about the three zones,Titan Station Downwas maintained at a constant one atmosphere of pressure, requiring no acclimation or decompression as personnel arrived or left. Submersibles offloaded or took on passengers through a docking system similar to the one at the International SpaceStation—which was appropriate, as the landscape around them was as hostile and as dangerous as any vacuum of space.
Still, such fears were hard to hold on to. Phoebe and Jazz, like most of the researchers, continued to walk around the sky-blue passageways in a haze of awe, nervousness, and excitement. They’d all had months of preparations, weeks of lectures, and days of safety classes. Still, nothing could prepare one for entering this world.
“Pheebs, you finish your survey down here,” Jazz said. “I’m heading up and checking our assigned ROV terminal. I want to make sure that duo from MIT doesn’t eat into our time.”
“You do that. Keep breathing down their necks if you have to.”
“Oh, trust me, this girl’ll cut a guy if he doesn’t move quick enough.”
Phoebe smiled as Jazz headed toward the spiral staircase that led upward. Jasleen was barely five-foot, with a pixie cut of dark hair, but when it came to defending their workspace and schedule, she could become a veritable pit bull.
Knowing Jazz would holdherjust as accountable to their schedule as anyone, Phoebe set about circling the Tethys Tier. This time, she focused less on the wonder of the abundant sea life that swam, crawled, or jetted across the reefs and more on her area of expertise.
Her doctoral thesis had been on the unique biology of deep-sea coral. Most people were familiar with shallow coral from snorkeling, where polyps derived energy from photosynthesizing algae that lived cooperatively within the coral. But her interests focused on those corals who made their homebelowthe sunlit zone. Such deep-thriving corals continued to be a mystery and remained poorly understood. In these frigid, high-pressure waters, they matured slowly and were known for their incredible longevities, up to five thousand years by some estimates.
With no sunlight, such species fed on microscopic organisms—zooplankton and phytoplankton—along with the particulate organic matter from decaying plants and animals. To take up that abundance, deep-sea corals formed beautiful, fragile structures of fronds and fine branches that sifted the currents for food and oxygen. As a result, bathypelagic reefs looked more like forests, all feathered and fanned out.
Which is certainly true here.
Beyond the window, the sheer volume of coral was astounding. It was more of a fluorescent jungle than a forest. Brilliant gorgonian coral rose in towering stalks and branches, some climbing thirty or forty feet high. They glowed in yellows, pinks, blues, and soft purples. They were mixed with sea whips and sea fans. Elsewhere, tall stands of jet-black tree corals rose in dense, thick branches, looking like carbonized sculptures of meter-tall pines. In stark contrast, huge bushes of ivory-coloredLopheliafilled gullies or crowned ridges.
She was momentarily daunted by the monumental task to study and catalog the breadth of this landscape, but she took a deep breath, remembering a Chinese proverb often quoted by her mother whenever Phoebe grew too overwhelmed, especially after they had first moved to the States.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.
I can do this.
11:08A.M.
