Chapter No. 19 Locusts from the Abyss

Dawn of the eighteenth day: with its systems on standby to reduce passive sonar noise, the Nautilus holds at station-keeping near the bottom, four kilometers north of Fernandina. Captain Stubens had waited until night to move out of the trench, reasoning that daytime satellite surveillance would mistake them for a normal bottom topographic variation--or an old sunken ship, especially if they weren't moving. His hunch proved correct; the frigates had moved away from the immediate area.

Eric and Margaret had busied themselves with preparations for their trip to Fernandina. They had checked and re-checked every piece of equipment and had made sure that their mini-sub was ready for the challenge that they knew was imminent. What they really knew down deep was that there is no margin for error.

Realizing that the Hauptman's were risking their lives in the pursuit of pure science, the other scientists stood on the docking compartment ledge and wished the courageous couple good luck. Other divers had volunteered to take Margaret's place, but she had declined their offers, preferring to accompany her husband to whatever fate awaited.

The Hauptman's mini-sub had been fitted with auxiliary batteries and extra air tanks to increase their chances after they enter the underwater volcanic shaft. These adaptations have a serious drawback: they slow the craft's speed. If a patrol boat should find them, their chances of survival will be very slim.

Even Dr. Stevens joined the send off. His ruddy face revealed both dismay and skepticism, but he said nothing that gave away his true feelings. Despite the fact that his ego had been damaged, he had no intention of challenging Wang's authority; he lacked the intestinal fortitude.

After waving and smiling at the spectators, Eric and his wife climbed into their little sub and buckled into snug seats designed to accommodate scuba gear. Eric flicked a switch, and the observation canopy slowly swung down to a closed position. The canopy sealed against the fuselage and air pressure rose in the sub to help maintain the integrity of the vessel against the pressure of the sea. When there was no more change in the air pressure, a light on the control console flashed green, causing a momentary increase in Eric's heart rate. The signal meant that the sub was ready for departure and it was time for he and his wife to put their lives on the line.

But, there's no hurry to die.

When the docking bay was empty of people, the long process of flooding the chamber with seawater began.

When time crawls, anxiety builds.

After a long period of silence, Eric turned to his wife and smiled. "Well, Love, we're committed."

Instead of returning his smile, she set her face into a gloomy cast. "We should be committed, that's for sure."

"Getting second thoughts?"

"No . . . I'm just a little nervous."

Her husband tried a reassuring grin. "If you weren't, I would be suspicious."

That coaxed a tentative smile from her, but it soon faded. "Do you think they really care about us?"

"Don't worry; they care."

"I'm not so sure. They probably think we're crazy." She turned to stare at the rising water. "Maybe they're not too far from the truth."

"We're pioneers, Love. Most pioneers are thought to be crazy . . . or at least eccentric. You have to be a little crazy to make great discoveries. It comes with the territory."

Margaret sighed. "I think we're more than a little crazy for . . . I just hope that they don't forget what we've already accomplished. I'd hate to think that this madness that we're about to embark on will be the only thing we'll be remembered for."

Eric turned to look directly into his wife's eyes. "Think of it this way: if we fail, we won't be around to find out what the hell people think of us."

That made a chill run up her spine and the hairs on the back of her neck to rise. Her husband sounded apocalyptic and it frightened her. He's a gentle, calm man, not easily panicked. Is he simply stating fact or is he espousing prophecy?  She and her husband had faced death often, but she had never thought of their mortality as being not only possible but also imminent. This mission raises the probability of death to a frightening height. Few divers have ever survived an excursion into a volcanic shaft, especially one deep under the sea. The mini-sub will provide an edge, but their chances are still slim. It didn't give her a confident feeling.

After the chamber had filled with seawater and large doors on the bottom of the Nautilus had slowly opened, Eric flooded the ballast tanks to drop the sub through the opening. He had to make fine adjustments in ballast to achieve neutral buoyancy before he advanced the throttles to move out from under the Nautilus. The shadow of the sub was large and the darkness it caused was disorienting, especially at a depth of 100 meters. Eric was tempted to turn on the mini-sub's running lights, but he thought better of it. Light of any kind could reveal their presence--the last thing they wanted.

It is four long kilometers to the island of Fernandina. Anxiety builds. Stomachs churn. Sweat breaks out on foreheads. This could be the big one.

Then again, it could be another dud.

As Eric guided the little craft on a wide course around the island, he kept the mini-sub submerged enough to hide all but the observation canopy, obviating the need to consume compressed air. The surface was choppy, tossing their craft around unpleasantly.

They arrived at the spot where they had seen the creatures and waited at station keeping to see if their mysterious subjects would make an appearance.

No such luck.

After an hour of anxious waiting, Eric turned to look at his wife. "Well, Love, we may as well go into the shaft and get it over with."

"How do we know they're not out foraging for food?"

"We don't, but we can't lollygag around here. Someone could spot us. I don't know about you, but I would rather take my chances in the shaft. I really don't like bullets whizzing around my head."

His wife gave him a teasing smile, tilting her head to emphasize her amusement. "Very funny, dear."

The gesture was a facade. Anxiety pulsed through her body like jellyfish nerve toxin, numbing her brain and causing her mouth to dry. She was frightened, but it was too late to back out now.

Eric gunned the engines and trimmed the dive planes to plunge the mini-sub into the depths. He quickly navigated to the location where the creatures had disappeared on the previous run.

He wasn't too happy about what he saw. The shaft's entrance was narrow and located nearly fifty meters below the surface, a particularly dangerous depth because of the ever ominous possibility of decompression sickness--especially if they had to abandon the protection of their little submersible and stay at that depth for any length of time.

Oh, well. It's too late for timidity.

The shaft took a sharp bend to the right and quickly became excruciatingly narrow. Like a shutter closing over the dim ghostly light of the sea at that depth, pitch-blackness enveloped the two nervous explorers. Eric activated the running lamps to reveal a myriad of floating debris and churning undersea life darting and swirling around barnacle-encrusted stalagmites and broken slag. The narrow confines of the tunnel and the varied obstacles proved to be extremely difficult to navigate, using up precious air and battery power.

Neither spoke. Eric was busy trying to avoid a collision and his wife was occupied with the infrared scans and the sonar. Their work was intense and nerve-racking. Up, down, around and around. Plenty of dead ends. Disorientating. Difficult. Dangerous. Any normal person would high tail it on out of there.

But they're too stubborn.

Two hours later, after countless confusing turns, several dead ends, and frequent depth changes, they had made no sightings. Eric nervously watched the battery-charge indicator drop below the half mark, perilously risking their chances for a safe return. Even worse, he had no idea how he was going to reverse-navigate out of the tortuously complicated maze that they had come through.

Just when all hope had been abandoned, the impossible happened. Margaret was the first to notice it. She tapped her husband on the shoulder and pointed up. He tilted his head back to view an unexpected sight. The ceiling above their craft was no longer a craggy facade of broody dark magna rock. The running lamps reflected back from a shimmering, undulating interface between water and air.

Eric quickly blew ballast. At first he and his wife had no idea where they were. Darkness rules this location. The sub's running lights barely penetrated through a thick vaporous mist.

After he opened the mini-sub's canopy, Eric decided to play it safe and keep his scuba equipment functioning. His wife decided to concur with his judgment. The atmosphere in this place could be poisonous.

Margaret punched the on-button of a hand-held gas analyzer. The readout came to life with a report: "Seventeen percent oxygen," she said. "A bit low, but there's only a trace of methane and sulfur dioxide." She removed her regulator and took a tenuous breath.

After observing his wife briefly, Eric removed his regulator.

"Smells dank," he said, scrunching his nose.

"It'll do," she said. "We're just visiting."

"I think I see some terra firma," her husband said before he advanced the throttles and made a turn to starboard.

Eric carefully guided the mini-sub to a rock-strewn shore that led to a gentle slope of overlapping crusty magna rocks, some weighing a half-ton. The two explorers climbed out onto a large stone ledge that jutted out from the rocky shore.

Margaret turned her lantern on and began sweeping it around. "We're in some sort of undersea cavern."

Her partner duplicated the sweep with his lantern. "Fairly large. Must have been formed from one hell of a volcanic eruption."

Margaret's lamp beam caught a shape on the rock slope leading up to a low cave entrance. "Eric! There's one!" She pointed. "Over there!" Her whispers were loud enough to echo with a bright cadence around the walls of the cavern.

Eric slashed his lamp beam onto the same location that his wife's lamp was illuminating. When he beheld what she was all excited about, he tilted his head up and rolled his eyes. "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Then he smiled and shook his head back and forth. "O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvelous things."

Margaret looked at him with an amused expression. "Are you praying, dear?"

"Why not. We've tried everything else."

"Maybe it helped. They haven't moved."

"They? There's more than one?"

She pointed her lamp's beam at three figures, pausing a second at each one. Two creatures sat on rocks half way up the slope. A third smaller creature reclined near the entrance to a low ceilinged cave.

"I'm going to get some chem-light tubes," her husband said. "We need more light."

Eric retrieved several chemical-luminescent rods from the sub and gave some to his wife. They began deploying the devices along the ledge near the creatures, twisting each tube and ramming it into a rock fissure. Soon, a diffuse green light filled the large cavern giving it a surrealistic aura, especially when the light reflected from many eyes looking back at them from all around the cavern.

Margaret's own eyes widened--more from amazement than fear. "Oh, my God! They're all over the place." She painted her lamp beam over several of them before stopping at one. "What's that one holding?"

"Looks like a gun to me, but it's unlike any gun I've ever seen."

"A gun!" his wife said in a squeaky voice. "Are they going to shoot us?"

"If they were, we would be dead by now."

"Maybe they're sizing us up."

"You're starting to sound like George. Too bad he's not here to see this."

His wife exhaled a deep breath. "What the hell good would it do? He'd think we faked the whole thing."

"You're right, but he's missing a great opportunity."

"He wouldn't know a great opportunity if it fell on his head."

Eric tried to laugh but it came out as a nervous giggle.

Silence. Except for rapid breathing.

But it didn't last.

Eric began climbing toward one of the larger creatures, testing both his courage and the creature's skittishness.

"Eric, be careful. They may bite."

"I don't care," he said without turning around.

Humans just can't resist touching things, especially new things.

He inched his way up to the creature, pausing to discern any reaction.

No movement.

Well, at least nothing threatening.

He slowly extended his trembling hand to touch the lower gray aquatic part of its body. His fingers made tentative contact at first and then with a more positive pressure. The creature's large cat-like eyes followed the progress of his hand as he slid it up to the interface between the lower part and the upper flesh-colored torso. The creature's alabaster skin, glistening with water, was smooth and slippery, and yet it had a tactile and interesting texture, pleasurable to feel.

Sensuous. Exotic. Beautiful.

What are these magnificently bizarre creatures? Am I dreaming? Can this really be happening?

He turned to behold his wife's awe-stricken face. He didn't have to say anything. She repeated her husband's inspection of the creature's skin, deriving more pleasure from the process than he had.

"Feels like a dolphin," she finally said in a soft but still excited voice.

"It also has a tail like one." Her husband pointed at the creature's fluke.

Margaret touched one of the creature's round firm breasts. "They must be mammals."

"That's obvious," he said with a hint of sarcasm.

When she touched the nipple, the creature's fluke began to wave like a dog wagging its tail.

"Sensitive, isn't she."

"Indeed."

She shook her head and sighed. "We're way out of our league, here. This species doesn't fit into our area of expertise."

"So what," her husband said. He swiveled his head around in a facetious manner. "I don't see any other biologists here."

"Very funny, dear."

He gave her a smirk, but she wasn't paying attention.

"Look at all this hair," his wife said in a higher pitch than normal. She caressed the creature's long platinum blond locks, which extended half way down its back. Curiosity got the best of her. She moved the creature's hair away from the side of its head to reveal a strange ear.

"Good heavens!" Eric said. "It has a pixie ear. Look how pointed it is. I've never seen an aquatic species with an ear like that."

Margaret was already racing ahead. Her fingers probed along the creature's taunt cheek to its thin lips.

"Be careful," Eric said. "This thing has a mouth full of very sharp teeth."

She turned to him. "If it wanted to bite me, it would have done so by now."

Margaret continued her examination by probing the creature's back, noting the large ridged scapulars and the protruding spinous processes. She marveled at the creature's coke bottle shape, its narrow waist joined to a bulged out pelvic section.

And look how the flesh-colored top part merges with the lower gray part. The front plunges to the pubic bone--assuming there is a pubic bone--exposing tight, well-defined rectus muscles. The back descends in a V-shaped shape to the end of the coccyx--again, assuming there is a coccyx bone. The visual effect definitely enhances the creature's semi-nude look.

The illusion of nudity, the long blond hair, the large eyes, the breasts, and the curvaceous shape gives the creature a mysteriously erotic appearance. Definitely feminine. The only thing that detracts from that image is its musculataure, especially in the arms and shoulders. The animal exhibits both softness and power. Did it infer duplicity?

"Why don't you photograph the other adult and the juvenile," Eric said. "I'll see if I can determine anything more about this one."

Margaret crawled up to the other two subjects, stopping first at the second adult and then proceeding to the juvenile. When she reached the younger specimen, the second adult moved closer, sliding its body along with its hands. Mother protecting her young, she surmised. She decided to avoid touching the juvenile, simply filming it instead.

The young creature appeared to be just a smaller copy of the adults, but there was one aspect of its anatomy that indicated that it was a juvenile. Its breasts were small, appearing at two small perfectly round buds with tiny nipples.

How interesting. I wonder if this is an adolescent.

What the hell's the matter with me? What else could it be?

Eric was mesmerized by the first creature's face. Large dark oval eyes with vertically slitted pupils peered out at him with a look that ran a chill up his spine. A mixture of lizard and feline, those eyes said it all. Anyone who has owned a cat knows that look of feline superiority, that steely look of aloofness, the look of a true predator.

Those killer eyes didn't seem to fit in with the creature's up-turned nose with pulsating slits and its thin-lipped mouth set in a delicately boned jaw.

The mouth full of razor sharp teeth fit the predator image well, though.

A muscular ring at the apex of its forehead hinted of a blowhole. The forehead itself had two prominent ridges that led from protruding supraorbital margins up the frontal bone. It gave the front of the skull a craggy appearance, like that of a lizard. There was some resemblance to a human face at a distance. But, this creature's face definitely isn't human. As far as he's concerned, its face is unearthly, more like that of an extraterrestrial--or at least what one would imagine for the face of an extraterrestrial.

He looked down at the creature's hand, which rested on its lap, and marveled at its complexity. Impressed enough to shrug off fear, he gently grabbed the creature's wrist and pulled its arm up so that he could examine the marvelous hand. The appendage was human in appearance, except for some very peculiar differences: webbing between the fingers, a small dorsal wrist flipper shaped like a delicate fan, and instead of finger prints, each phalange is tipped with shallow diagonal ridges. Suckers, much like those on octopi, populate the areas between the joints of each phalange and on the palms of the hand itself.

Then he noticed something very significant about the creature's hand: the thumb is opposable proportionally to each finger. The great apes and monkeys don't really have an opposable thumb like humans. Humans have both a precision grip and a power grip. Somewhere in the distant past when apes stayed in the trees and hominids, which eventually evolved into modern humans, walked upright, the advanced hand developed. This marvelous quirk of evolution came before the development of a complicated brain. The bottom line is that this creature has an advanced morphology. It can do delicate work with tools, a skill that is the exclusive domain of humans.

Up to now, that is.

His wife's shouting startled him.

"Eric! Eric! Come up here! You've got to see all this stuff."

He looked up at his wife gesturing frantically from the cave entrance and took a deep breath. Gently returning the creature's hand to its original position, he gave it a pat and smiled, hoping that a smile was considered a peaceful gesture. The creature never changed its expression.

Eric climbed up the slope, nervously glancing back at the three creatures. They were guarding the entrance to the cave, he assumed, but they were making no attempt to impede his progress.

When he reached the entrance, he scanned his lamp around the interior. The cave was indeed cluttered with all sorts of strange 'stuff.' Crouching to avoid bumping his head on the low ceiling, he proceeded into the cave and knelt down.

"Oh my God!"

"The whole cavern is filled with hand-crafted objects," his wife said.

An understatement.

He picked up a small harp-shaped object, approximately eighteen inches in height, and ran his fingers over the strings, causing them to emit various musical tones.

"This is some sort of musical instrument. It appears to be constructed from sea shells and bones, but I have no idea what they've used for the strings."

"Eric! Look at these. They're carved figures."

She turned her head to see if any of the creatures were watching and then returned to her examination of a carving. "This one's a beautiful . . . it's a dolphin."

Her husband was preoccupied with his own discoveries. He picked up a thin, flat stone plate with scribed marks that resembled cuneiform. "This is some sort of document. It looks like a form of writing. Do you realize what this means, Love?"

He closely studied several more of the stone relief carvings, but he had no idea what the strange markings meant.

A retching noise broke his concentration. He looked up just in time to see his wife lose her breakfast.

"What's the matter?" he shouted.

Without looking up, she pointed to a spot near the far end of the cave. "Over there by the rock." Her voice was punctuated with gurgling and spitting.

He climbed over to the location that she was pointing to and immediately discovered why she had become sick to her stomach. A bloody carcass lay sprawled behind a rock, stretched out by bindings around its wrists and ankles. Much of its flesh appeared flayed--neatly sliced away--exposing bones held together by ligaments. Most of the abdominal cavity's contents were missing. Only the organs under the stripped ribcage remained.

His own stomach became queasy when he saw a wet suit and scuba gear lying nearby.

"Yuck! I thought this place smelled a little rank."

"Oh, Eric, they're cannibals!"

Eric held his hand up to cover his nose. "No, Love. They're carnivores, not cannibals. Cannibals eat their own kind."

Despite the gruesome appearance of the corpse, it continued to intrigue Eric. Curiosity was too strong to resist. But, he paid the price when he looked at the face.

After he retched, he looked over what was left of the corpse's head. The eyes were gone, the empty sockets revealing nothing of their fate. The lower mandible was cracked loose to reveal a wide mouth cavity with no tongue, only the tongues bloody base revealing its fate.

The skull was the real shocker. The top section had been neatly removed. An empty container remained.

Ugh! They must like brain.

His attention turned south.

Must be a male, judging by the shape of the ileum.

He cringed when he noted that the genitals had been sliced off.

I hope they did that after he died.

He played his lamp around the immediate area. Off to one side, he found heaps of bones, many of human origin. Most of the long bones had been cut in half to get at the marrow, he assumed. Some of the ribcages were intact, but most had been disassembled into components segregated into neat piles. The empty eye sockets of a large pile of skulls with no tops stared out at him, silently telling him that he was in big trouble.

A noise near the cave entrance grabbed his attention and raised his heart rate. The three creatures had climbed up the slope and were peering into the cave.

"Are they going to eat us?" Margaret sounded apprehensive but not panicked.

At least not yet.

Eric felt a shudder run up his spine. "I don't know. Ah . . . why don't you throw me the camera. I'll quickly make a record of all this stuff and we can get the hell out of here . . . I hope."

Margaret didn't throw the camera; She brought it over to him, preferring to be near the protective presence of her husband.

Eric recorded as much of the interior of the cave as he could, making sure that he had detailed scenes of the artifacts as well as the dead human.

Eric took a deep breath to steady his nerves. "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; for my soul trusteth in thee; yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge; until these calamities be over-past."

His wife looked at him with a look of incredulity. "Are you praying again, Dear?"

"I don't know . . . perhaps, it's the only thing left to do."

Margaret kept staring at her husband as if she were trying to discern his mental health, but he made no more attempts at praying.

The two scientists built up sufficient courage to slowly crawl to the cave entrance. To their surprise, the creatures moved aside to permit escape. As Eric and his wife made their way down the rocky slope, the two adults and the juvenile clung to rocks and followed the movements of the human visitors with their mysterious eyes.

The Humans wasted no time retrieving their gear and packing it into the mini-sub. Margaret quickly tucked her body into her seat. She turned to see that her husband was not following her lead. He couldn't resist waving to the inhabitants of the cavern.

"Come on, Dear. They're not your adoring fans."

He grinned at her. "I'm just trying to be friendly."

"Would you get in here!"

His grin removed, he climbed into the mini-sub and latched down its canopy. After flooding the ballast tanks and advancing the throttles, Eric guided the sub quickly to the blackness of the shaft. He turned on the running lamps while his wife activated the sonar, but the device was next to useless inside the confines of the narrow shaft.

Eric turned around to look back. He was surprised--and elated--to find that the three creatures were following the mini-sub, but his momentary distraction allowed the vessel to become lodged in a crevice. He immediately reversed the engines in an attempt to back out, but the mini-sub was hopelessly trapped and the observation canopy was wedged shut preventing escape. Eric alternately applied power, reversing the engines several times, hoping to rock the craft loose from its deadly entrapment.

The maneuver failed. After several more attempts, the battery power quickly dropped to a point at which the running lamps glowed a dull red and the screws only turned a few useless revolutions per minute. Even if they could have escaped their underwater coffin, they faced a long and difficult swim to the entrance of the shaft. They had insufficient air in their portable tanks to do so, but even if they had, they risked the bends if they surfaced too quickly. Their safe passage back depended on the auxiliary air tanks strapped to their trapped craft.

The creatures swam around and around the sub, circling like sharks waiting for the kill. The thought crossed Eric's mind that this was nothing more than a well-engineered plot to acquire more human food, now that they had tasted of it. Maybe they considered human flesh a delicacy. How interesting. He and his wife were to become the meals of the very creatures that they had pursued so diligently. The hunters had become the hunted. How ironic.

A fusillade of muffled clicking noises suddenly broke the silence of the impending underwater gravesite.

"What's happening?" Margaret asked, straining to peer over her husband's shoulders. "How did you get the sub to move?"

"It's not me, Love. I'm not doing anything."

"I can't see a damn thing out there," she said, rubbing the canopy with her hand. "If the batteries are dead, how in the hell are we moving?"

Eric flicked on one of the portable lamps and beamed it out the sides of the mini-sub's observation canopy. "Holy hell! I don't believe this. There's a creature on each dive wing and they're pushing us." He pointed at the stern. "Look. The juvenile is shoving the sub's tail to guide it."

"Are they making all those clicking and popping sounds?"

"Must be, Love. They're obviously using echolocation like dolphins and whales to guide us through the shaft. Maybe they're some variant of a dolphin."

Margaret stared blankly at him for a minute. Then she turned away. "I wonder where they're taking us."

"I'm scared too, Love. But I wouldn't miss this for anything." He aimed a weak smile at her. "Just think of the great stories we can tell our grandchildren."

"Grandchildren?" Her eyes widened. "We don't even have children."

"Just kidding, Love."

Her eyes narrowed. "How the hell can you joke around at a time like this?"

"Beats falling apart."

A low-level light penetrated the canopy.

"They've pushed us out of the shaft," Eric said. "Maybe they're kicking us out."

His wife was not so sure. "I just hope they're not going to push us out into the open sea. We'll never get back to the Nautilus."

Eric smiled. "On the contrary. I think we're going to get back to the Nautilus much faster than we thought."

She gave him a surprisedlook.