Down and Out

By Ken Wharton

Excerpted with Permission from: Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories, Edited by Michael Brotherton, © 2017 Springer Science + Business Media.

Ogby trudged up the seamount, expanding her bladders as forcefully as she could, but the effort didn’t gain her much weight. Her body was becoming so light it felt like the current was going to sweep her away, footholds or no footholds.

The surrounding spectrum shifted oddly for a moment. Ogby paused in confusion until she saw three lampfish swimming just above her head, altering the artificial light patterns on the icy slope. She jealously watched the fish swim against the current. The biologists were now claiming that Rygors must have once been able to maneuver like fish, way back in their own evolutionary past. But her more recent ancestors had forgotten how to swim, spending their lives pinned to the bottom of the ocean by the bladders in each of their five feet. And while swimming might have been useful at these elevations, apparently her ancestors never had a need to come up this high. Or perhaps, considered Ogby, they had been petrified of being swept upward to their deaths.

She cautiously peered to the left to see how high they had come, and was struck by a vicious wave of vertigo. The city lights at the bottom of the seamount looked impossibly far away. Expanding her bladders helped fight the sensation, but not much; her muscles were weak after spending so much time in the Deeps. She closed her eyes and forced herself to draw in a long, continuous jet of water through her funnels. The feeling will pass, she told herself.

By the time she opened her eyes, the others had stopped ahead to wait for her. “I heard she was afraid of heights,” Roov was chroming to no one in particular.

Ogby flashed the group an apologetic pattern, while simultaneously soning for them to “GO AHEAD.” She was embarrassed to have slowed down the whole group, but they refused to move on until Ogby resumed her climb.

After another five milliflexes of hiking, Ogby finally joined the others at the top of the seamount. Her feet were tender and sore from stretching her bladders, but she had made it to the Boarding Station.

Roov was clearly not having the same troubles — he even let go of the footholds and performed a little hop to show his lack of fear. Ogby wondered who he was showing off for. Vyrv, perhaps? But Vyrv was already in the ship, beckoning the rest of them to enter.

Ogby tipped back her head and looked up at the cable, stretching from the top of the ship into the darkness above. She was worried. If she had been afraid of heights on the mount, how would she feel, suspended underneath the very roof of the world?

Intellectually, she knew it would be safe. She would be inside the entire time, at a controlled pressure. And even if the cable snapped, the ship had an active buoyancy control. But her fear was stronger than her logic, and a sudden wave of fresh panic nearly kept her from entering the ship.

In the end it was her scientific curiosity that won. The interesting research was happening Above. If she wanted to participate in the latest discoveries, she would have to conquer her fears. She grimly stepped inside the ship to join the others.

The workers closed the hatch, locking in the water pressure for the remainder of the journey. As Ogby stretched her sore fingers, one foot at a time, she noted that the cabin interior was almost identical to the ships she piloted down in the Deeps. On one side were the primary controls: wheels and levers that controlled the compressed air tanks to regulate the ship’s buoyancy. In the center were the cylindrical passenger benches, with those new plastic seat-covers made from greenfish oil. Ogby straddled a bench and strapped herself in. The other passengers did the same, all except Roov who took the control seat.

“I always insist on piloting the ship myself,” chromed Roov to the others. “Just in case there’s an emergency.”

Ogby tried not to show her exasperation. Roov was full of himself, but he was also one of the most influential scientists in the ocean. His discovery Above of the new element “gold” had made him famous with the average citizen, and he had been able to use his clout to funnel additional money into the overhead research and mining efforts. If it hadn’t been for Roov’s tacit approval, Ogby wouldn’t be here right now.

A sudden lurch, and then the ship was in motion. Ogby averted her gaze from the windows; the sight of the Boarding Station dropping away beneath her would do little to calm her nerves.

The altimeter needle on the control panel was rising rapidly; they were already a full kilolength above standard ground. Six more and they’d be at the top of the ocean.

“This is your first time up, too?” Vyrv asked her.

“Yes,” chromed Ogby. “I’ve spent a lot of time in these ships, but never way up here.”

“Oh?” Vyrv seemed surprised. “Where, then? Down in the Deeps? Didn’t think there was much down there. Just ice.”

“There has to be something,” Ogby insisted. “Whirlpools must go somewhere.”

Roov joined his colors into the conversation, ignoring the controls now that the counterweight was lifting them at the proper speed. “Whirlpools are an anomaly; everyone knows that ice is heavier than water. The way I see it, natural causation moves downward, with us Rygors the ultimate consequence at the bottom. Think about it. We eat the fish, which in turn eat the microscopic life, which in turn feed off the vents we’ve found Above. But what powers the vents? What’s above the Above? Why does the ground flex in such a predictable rhythm? When we get to the top I’ll show you the new excavation; we’ve dug higher up into the rock than ever before. I’m sure that one day we’ll break through to Outside, find out that our ocean is just a small part of a much bigger universe.”

“You believe in Outside?” Vryv asked wryly.

“There must be an Outside,” chromed Roov in all seriousness. “Yrvo’s voyage proved that you can drift around the world, proved the ocean is a spherical shell. Something has to be outside.”

“Not necessarily,” flashed Ogby, hoping she wasn’t being too impertinent. “For all we know, the rock up there goes out to infinity.”

Roov turned his full attention in her direction, and paused before responding. “Instead of trying to disparage our work, you might take a look at your own. You’ve been digging in the ice for a kiloflex, and what have you discovered?”

Ogby didn’t respond. In all of her Deep excavations, she had found precious little of interest. All of the major new discoveries had been made Above: the new elements, the new lifeforms, the Vents, the bubble factories. Below she had found only ice.

“I’m not disparaging you,” Ogby insisted. “I would like very much to join your team.”

“If so,” chromed Roov, “the first thing you’re going to have to do is prove you can handle the height.”

Roov’s colors dimmed, and little else was discussed for the remainder of the journey. Eventually the ship lurched to a halt. They had arrived at the top of the ocean.

After docking with the main habitat, the hatch opened and warm water diffused into the cabin. This was a curious fact no one had yet explained, Ogby knew. Up here the water was slightly warmer than down below. Yet the super-hot water from the Vents was heavy and carried the nutrients straight down to the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t make sense to her, but then again, a lot of things about gravity didn’t make sense.

Ogby was the second passenger to step out into the cylindrical walkway. The corridors were thinly air-cushioned; not so deep that she couldn’t get traction, but still more comfortable than a solid floor.

Roov began the tour when everyone had left the ship. “Over here,” he chromed, “are the intake valves. Specially designed to keep the water fresh without changing the interior pressure. But I’m sure you’ll be more interested in the Vents. Come this way.”

As Ogby approached the observation deck she had a premonition of disaster. Yes, she was interested in the Vents, but somehow she hadn’t considered that in order to see outside of the habitat there must be windows. And with windows, she might look down. There would be no pretending that she was in a structure at the bottom of the ocean; her tremendous height was about to become very obvious. The thought made her fingers twitch in nervous anticipation.

And the reality was even worse. Instead of simply a room with glass portholes in the walls, the floor was also covered with small windows. She forced her attention upward before stepping in.

The observation deck was a circular platform built next to a particularly large Vent. The Vent itself looked like a narrow upside-down seamount, made out of rock instead of ice. Ogby kept her gaze high, examining the less-interesting upper portions of the Vent. Streaks of color told most of the geological story; some sort of material had sprayed out of the bottom of the Vent and then oozed up the sides before solidifying.

But the others were all looking through the floor, filling the room with color as they chromed their appreciation. Reluctantly, curiously, Ogby lowered her gaze.

It was a fantastic display. Superhot squirts of water pulsed regularly from the opening, so hot that they glowed in the far red. The surrounding water was also quite warm; a faint glow surrounded the entire bottom half of the Vent.

Ogby had never seen natural light before. To her, all light came from animals, Rygors, or Rygor-made objects like sonoluminescent lamps. On some primal level she felt the natural beacon summoning her, just as it must have summoned the creatures that teemed in the red glow. There were no familiar deep-water fish, but plenty of new species: a fish with far more fins than seemed necessary, another organism shaped like a slow-moving net, even a little 5-legged cutie which looked almost like a miniature Rygor.

This was where life started, she knew. This was where she needed to be. Up here she could find the answers she was looking for, figure out how the world worked. Down below lay only....

Down below.

Ogby couldn’t help herself, and once she looked down it was impossible to stop. There were tiny lights down there, she saw, swimming against the black background. Black, because the bright lights from the cities couldn’t reach these heights.

The distance hit her all at once. I’m too high, she thought. I’m too high.

Now the others were trying to talk to her, trying to get her to respond, but she didn’t dare move. She wanted more than anything to get back to the ship, to get back to the ground, but she couldn’t even walk off the deck.

She dimly realized she was being carried somewhere, with her eyes closed. Still, the fear wouldn’t stop. “WAKE,” someone soned at her, the sound reverberating painfully from the habitat walls. She felt herself shutting down, ancient survival mechanisms having their way with her body. At last her consciousness drifted deeper than even the bottom of the ocean, and all was dark.

*

“You’ve got to get back out there,” Boro insisted, back in Ogby’s underground web three flexes later.

Ogby watched her mate disinterestedly, wondering if she’d even keep him for another season. “What does it matter?” she chromed dimly. “I had one chance. I blew it. Roov won’t let me try again.”

Boro shook his middle legs before continuing. “I’m not telling you to get back up there. Just get back to work. There’s plenty of interesting science you can do down here. The techs in the factory have been asking about you since yesterflex.”

“I don’t want to do science anymore,” she responded. “I just want to be left alone.”

“So you’re through? You can’t go Above, so instead you’re just going to quit everything?” Boro turned away from her, but continued to chrome from his back. “What about your pressure calculations? I know you still think there’s something under the ice.”

“NO,” she soned at him, but Boro didn’t even turn around. In fact, now he was leaving, just like she had asked. She almost soned him to STOP, but her pride kept her quiet, and soon he was out of the web completely.

Still, maybe Boro was right. After seeing the splendor of the Vents and the mysteries they contained, she had forgotten about the more mundane problems she studied down here.

The physics had been known even to the ancients. A flexible bladder of air would change its size depending on elevation, and that in turn would change its weight. The fact that bladder size was proportional to weight had been known for hundreds of generations, possibly even megaflexes. But only recently, using the new excavators, had anyone been able to measure the effect deep below ground level.

Ogby herself had spearheaded the largest excavation yet, melting a kilolength deep into the ice. Roov was correct that she hadn’t discovered anything down there, but she had discovered that the gravity continued to rise, even deep underground. And when she extrapolated the curve, it looked like gravity should go to infinity just 2.8 kilolengths below standard ground.

According to most other scientists, this was nonsense. Infinities were mathematical, not real. Yes, the ocean was a spherical shell, so they admitted something odd might happen down at the very center. But based on the calculations from Yrvo’s round-the-world voyage, the distance to the center should have been megalengths, not kilolengths. No, the other scientists insisted, the change in gravity must slow with depth.

But despite the soundness of their logic, Ogby’s numbers had shown no such trend. The only way to test it, she knew, was to dig down to minus 2.8 kl and see what happened. But at the rate she was going, it would take more than her lifetime to get that far.

Although… what had Roov said about the excavations Above? They were digging up there, too, but that was rock. And you couldn’t melt through rock.

A milliflex later she was out of her web. Boro was already long gone, so she began cantering towards town. A new rain of bubbles had just fallen; pools of methane and carbon dioxide lay in the low valleys. She deflated her bladders and skidded across a small airpool, enjoying the smooth sensation on her feet.

Soon she came to the largest airpocket in the city. This was the primary local factory, much larger than any of her personal airlabs, but similar in concept. It had taken forever to dig the huge hole, let alone fill it up with carbon dioxide, but the goods produced here had already paid back its cost many times over. This factory specialized in plastics and steel, and trade with other cities brought in more exotic items.

With a long-practiced move she stepped onto the enormous bubble, inflated her bladders to maximum, and then inverted herself. It was a sensation that bothered many Rygors, but it felt perfectly natural to Ogby. Fully inflated, her bladders were so heavy they acted as anchors from which she could pull herself downward. Her ankles flexed 180o, and then she was dangling upside-down inside of the air pocket, barely touching the water with her five feet. The trick was mental reorientation: she told herself that she was actually standing right-side-up, her feet floating on the surface of the water. It was a ridiculous image, but it enabled her to avoid the unpleasantness experienced by many of the others.

It was unpleasant not being able to breathe, but Ogby was better than most at holding her breath. Only six or seven times each work period did she have to duck her head in the water tanks. And being in the air pocket allowed for other benefits. She began to refresh the stale air from her bladders, first from her central cavity, and then one foot at a time. It felt good.

But she still had to find Boro. Walking along the surface of the water Ogby presently arrived at the smallest forge, where Boro spent much of his time. She climbed up the stairs, opened the hatch, and there he was, just closing the thermal shielding around the primary steel cauldron.

“I’m surprised to see you,” Boro chromed.

Ogby skipped the small talk. “Those excavations Roov is doing Above. He’s not melting through, like we do. He’s actually digging?”

Boro rippled a ‘no’. “Blasting, I think. You know about those new compounds they’re making, over in High City? I think he’s using those, setting them off from a distance.”

Ogby stood stunned for a moment. She had thought explosives were still in the research phase. Roov was already putting them to use? Science was progressing so fast these days that she couldn’t even seem to keep up.

“Well,” she said at last, “why can’t we use them, too? I’m sure it would speed up the dig. Maybe we could even blast down far enough to test my calculations.”

“Do you have any idea how much those things cost?” Boro replied.

“I don’t need many to start with. Let’s buy a few, give it a try in Deep 4.”

Boro looked concerned. “If you really want to blow the last of your research money.... Oh sure, why not. I’ll pilot the ship again, if you’d like.”

“I’m piloting,” Ogby chromed with a literal flash of defiance.

“You haven’t piloted since we broke 800 lengths. You’ve just had a minor breakdown, and—”

“I can handle it, Boro.”

Boro stared at her for a long time before responding. “Okay. I think I believe you.”

Ogby flashed a contented pattern, then turned to leave. A strange noise made her stop, though, and when she looked back around she saw that Boro was soning her through the air. She was surprised; soning in air was incredibly painful. If he had simply wanted to get her attention....

“I wanted to tell you,” Boro chromed, “it’s good to have you back.”

Ogby felt a sudden wave of attraction for Boro, the first such wave in many flexes. Was it her season already? She checked her specialized fingers on her third foot, somehow already knowing what she would find.

“What is it?” Boro asked.

Ogby wiggled her third foot at him enticingly. “I don’t think we’ve ever done it in the air before.”

He didn’t look pleased. “Not now, Ogby.”

Ogby was stunned. How could he resist…? But of course. There was no water to carry her scent. She walked over to him, reached for his third foot with her own, and made the transfer directly.

Boro put up no further resistance — not until he ran out of breath and desperately leaped into the emergency water tank. Ogby followed him right on in.

*

Deep 4 was the largest excavation in the ocean, far from the nearest city. Here the ice naturally dipped to half a kilolength below standard ground, and the entire valley would have been below air if not for constant maintenance.

Currently most of the crew was cowering in the generator shelter, but Ogby wanted to be outside when the package landed. Boro stood next to her nervously, along with three of the braver technicians. The lip of the circular excavation was just a few lengths away.

“It should have reached the bottom by now,” chromed a tech. “I don’t—”

At that moment the blast hit. Even with the pads over Ogby’s sonar receptors, even with the explosion over a kilolength below, it felt like a series of body-blows.

Boro shuddered after the waves had passed. “Next time I’ll be in the shelter,” he chromed unhappily.

Ogby shook off the sensation and pushed Boro toward the edge. She was worried that the explosion would propel fragments of ice up in their direction. “Look down, see if there’s any debris coming this way. I’m getting into the ship.”

Now that the blast had arrived, every microflex counted. It was cold in the deeps, and only artificial heaters kept anchor ice from filling in the hole. Ogby had to get down there quickly if she was going to wire up the new heaters.

She started to close the ship’s hatch, making sure everyone was at their stations. A final glance at Boro confirmed that no debris was going to endanger her. Thanking him, she shut herself inside and ran a cursory check of the equipment. Fuel, batteries… check. The comm light was on, but she never trusted it blindly. She activated the microphone with her first foot.

“TEST,” she soned into the mike.

She looked out of the port window at the giant spool of cable, 2.3 kilolengths long, which connected her ship to the shelter. Fortunately the sound was converted to electrical signals, or else the communication would have been unbearably slow. After a moment the words “test received” sounded from the ship’s speaker. The cable was operational.

Now came the scary part; going over the edge. Ogby positioned herself in front of the controls and began adjusting the ship’s buoyancy. After lifting off the ice, it only took a single thrust to position herself directly over the hole. It was a long way down, Ogby knew, but that was exactly where she had to go.

“DROPPING,” she soned into the mike, while simultaneously shifting the plunger controls to negative buoyancy. In a moment she was plummeting into the cold, watery depths.

“FIRST HEATERS OKAY,” she told base control as she passed the glowing devices. Aiming the ship’s outer lights, she saw that the powercord was still firmly attached to the walls of the pit. Everything looked fine. She tipped the spotlight downward and continued her descent.

The view out of the lower window was the first indication that something was wrong. The bottom of the pit was still beyond the power of the ship’s lights, but instead of trailing away into darkness, the depths suddenly turned a foamy white. And the whiteness was rising, fast.

Uh oh, was all Ogby had time to think before the first jolt hit the ship.

She was tossed to one side, and her head collided painfully with the cabin wall. After a moment the acceleration stopped, and Ogby quickly strapped herself into her seat.

What’s happening? she asked herself. Debris from the explosion? No, any debris would have arrived with the original blast. It must be a second explosion, she decided, but how was that possible? They had only dropped one package—

Another, stronger jolt shook the ship, but the straps held. Then another, and another, and Ogby began to worry about the ship coming apart at the welds.

The view out the window offered little information. A dark froth of water and ice swirled past meaninglessly. “HELP,” she soned, hoping the mike could pick up her voice from across the cabin. “EMERGENCY.”

The buffeting continued, for ages, but just as she thought she could stand it no longer, cabin stopped shuddering. Now the window lit up with a brilliance she had never imagined possible. She narrowed her eyes, averted her head, but light was too strong, too painful.

And then, with a massive jerk, came the largest jolt of all. Ogby felt the straps cut into her body, and a tiny ‘ping’ sounded from the speaker just as gravity turned itself off.

The light from the window was slightly more bearable now, but she barely noticed. Down here gravity wasn’t infinite; it was zero! The bladders in her feet felt no force at all; it didn’t matter whether she clenched them or not. She didn’t know how this was possible, but it was the discovery of a lifetime. She looked up toward the microphone…

…and her heart broke. The light was off. That ‘ping’ noise; it must have been the cable snapping. Communication was now impossible. Whatever was going to happen to her, whatever she encountered, she now had to face it alone.

Movement through the window caught her eye and she stared through it, amazed. The scene was bright, but no longer too bright. There was no water. Instead she saw a beautiful icy landscape, covered with fractures and lines. The colors were remarkable; new minerals shouted to her with their unique spectra, arrayed in branching linear patterns. And the whole landscape was growing, filling the window with its details, coming closer and closer…

A sudden crunch of metal, a terrible pain, and all went black.

*

Ogby regained consciousness slowly, vaguely aware that the water around her was cold. Too cold. Ice was already beginning to form in the upper corners of the ship.

She almost drifted back to sleep, almost content to die to this way. Then her curiosity got the better of her.

Even before unstrapping herself, she noted that gravity was pulling her to the bottom of the cabin with just as much force as ever. Perhaps the zero-gravity moment had only been a dream.

The pain, however, was real. Wincing as she moved her bruised body, she stepped over to check the controls. The batteries still had some power left, and the heaters were nearly on full. So why was the water so cold? She maxed out the heaters and moved over to the window.

The outside view was so strange that it took her a long time to parse it into something she could understand. The ship apparently lay on the underside of a giant, bright, icy plain; she had probably crashed into it from below. The ship must be buoyant here, she realized, as if she was inside a giant air pocket.

Her mind reeled with questions. Had she penetrated the ice, broken through to the center of the ocean? Why was there no water here? Why was it so bright? What was this place?

Closer to the ship, she saw that the icy plain was scarred, rippled in a circular pattern. And into the center of the ripples snaked a black line, coiling around itself until it disappeared into the ice.

The cable!

Her mind started to piece together a story. Something had sucked her down through the ice. Her ship had come flying through, launched down into the air pocket, stretching the cable tight. The cabin had jolted as the cable had snapped. Then the ship had reversed direction, and crashed upwards into the ice. But why? None of this made any sense to her.

Still, that cable… that was her link to a world that made sense. If she could reconnect it to the ship, she could call for help. There might even be enough slack to reach. But the only way to do it was to go outside, and the only way to go outside was to open the hatch, spilling out most of her water. She’d never survive long enough to be rescued.

Still, the ice in the cabin was continuing to spread — if she didn’t act soon she’d be frozen solid, and no one would ever know what had become of her. Making a run for the cable would surely be better than that.

Steeling her resolve, she began to hyperfunnelate, readying her system for what lay ahead. She knew that the area outside must be very cold — the evidence was quickly crystallizing all around her — so she spent a few moments hunting for something to wear on her feet. But the only free objects were the plastic seat-cover slabs. She grabbed three of them with three feet, hoping they’d provide enough insulation.

Ice had already started to form on the hatch, but she broke it free with the plastic slabs and started turning the primary release wheel with her two free feet. One turn, two turns…

Without warning the door flew outward, pulling Ogby with it. Water spurted out around her, erupting into a frenzied boil. Panicked, she clung to the wheel, feeling the water rush past her as it left the ship.

She had been wrong about the temperature. If the water was hot enough to boil, she would be roasted alive in seconds.

But even as the water frothed around her, she noticed that it was quickly freezing onto the surface of the icy plain. Could it be cold after all? Her body was becoming uncomfortable, first aching all over, and now flaring with pain. Then she noticed that her air bladders were inflating on their own accord, and she had to clench them tightly to keep them under control.

Gravity wasn’t infinite here, she suddenly realized. But the pressure was very low — maybe even zero. Zero pressure meant infinite volume, and her own bladders were struggling to obey that particular law of physics. Ogby recalled the evacuated chambers from the airlabs, and quickly guessed that she had just entered an enormous vacuum.

The water from the ship had now emptied completely. A quick glance inside told her that everything else had frozen solid. There would be no reserve to breathe later. And if she was in a vacuum, she knew there wasn’t much time. She had to get to that cable quickly, before her body could no longer contain the pressure inside of her.

It wasn’t far to the cable, only about thirty lengths. And now that she was out of water, the weak gravity pulled her upwards, directly toward the ice. She glanced in the other direction…

The view below nearly made her faint.

Directly beneath her, visible now that she was out of the ship, sat an enormous brilliant sphere, banded with swirling colors as if it were chroming to her in another language. A smaller yellow sphere floated on top of it, casting a shadow on the large sphere’s misty surface. The large sphere also had a second shadow, although Ogby couldn’t tell what was casting it. There must be an even brighter light source somewhere else....

Distractions, she told herself. She had to concentrate on the cable if she was to survive. Still, those spheres looked so far away that her vertigo was starting to kick in.

With a flash of insight she decided to try the reorientation trick she used in the factory. That’s not down, she told herself, still staring at the spheres. That’s up. The ice is down.

She positioned her legs accordingly, touched the three plastic slabs to the ice, and let go of the wheel. In a moment she was trotting across the surface towards the free end of the cable.

Yes! she mentally cheered herself on, imagining the world turned upside-down. I’m running on the ice, on top of the ice, on the outside…

Outside. Even as she approached the cable she knew it was true. She wasn’t inside the ocean at all. The light source casting those shadows wasn’t visible, so it had to be on the other side of the ice. The second shadow might even be her entire world!

She picked up the cable, her mind so busy that she barely appreciated the connector was still intact.

If she was Outside, then her entire worldview must be wrong. What she considered “up” was actually toward the center of her world; Roov’s excavations through the rock could only break through to the other side of the ocean. The Cities were on the outer edge of the ocean, and the Rygors spent their lives with their feet pointed outwards and their heads pointed to the center. Yes, the ocean was a spherical shell, but it wasn’t curved in the way that everyone had assumed.

Ogby was almost back to the ship now, her body ablaze with pain. The plastic slabs were already freezing in her grip, but she wouldn’t let them go. She pulled more of the slack in her direction, shifting the cable connector in her grip, and at that moment her second foot exploded.

Agony flooded through her nervous system. Her airbladder was broken, in tatters, and she watched numbly as her juices quickly oozed out of the wound. Some corner of her mind knew that this was the end, this was where her internal pressure would equalize with the vacuum of this alien space. She had been so close…

But she wasn’t dead yet. Ignoring the pain, she clenched the fingers on her second foot, applying pressure to the wound as best she could. She felt her second leg shudder, but the oozing slowed to a halt.

Somehow she reached the ship, plugged in the cable, climbed through the hatch. Her first foot did all the work, locking it shut behind her and moving over to the buoyancy controls.

Ogby needed pressure fast, and the tanks of compressed air were her only hope. Normally the air was released into the flexible buoyancy chamber, not the main cabin, but a few flipped levers rerouted the valves. Even as she felt her life slipping out of her second leg, her soning receptors began to pick up the unique noise of hissing air.

She rested for a moment as the pressure built up, feeling the pain in her foot subside. There was ice in the bottom of the cabin, but she knew she would never breathe again. All she had left to accomplish in this life was to communicate her findings down below.

Wincing with the effort, she pressed her receptors directly over the speaker. The device was designed to sone through water, not air, but her body seemed to work as a decent medium. Immediately she heard the faint words:

“orange, green, blue, yellow. speak. orange, green, blue, yellow. please speak.”

They were calling her, spelling out the colors of her name as best they could via sound.

She soned a reply, expecting it to hurt more than it did. Compared to the rest of her injuries, the sensation of soning through air felt almost pleasant. Their response came quickly.

“received. received. where you? whirlpool here.”

A whirlpool? The explosion in the hole had triggered a whirlpool! It all made sense to her now; whirlpools were simply the sucking of water from the high-pressure ocean, through the ice, to the zero-pressure of Outside.

She began to explain the situation to whomever was listening. It would have been a difficult explanation even if she could chrome, let alone using the paltry soning vocabulary, but somehow she managed to convey the basic story: she had discovered Outside.

She told them that for the next expedition, they should bring pressure suits, heaters, thermal shielding, light filters, cameras and recording equipment. She told them to watch the colored spheres and figure out what they could tell the Rygors about the rest of the universe.

It was only at the very end that she realized she had been soning with Boro for the entire conversation. She couldn’t hear any emotion in his electronic voice, but somehow it still came through when he said goodbye.

Ogby somehow found the strength to sone one last sentence.

“WE MEET WHEN YOU COME OUTSIDE.”

Leaning back on the remnants of her frozen water, Ogby’s gaze through the window fell upon the large sphere that she had just discovered, far below. Was the sphere chroming to her? she dimly wondered. Telling her all the secrets of the universe? She tried to focus, but the last shreds of her attention could only note the sphere’s most prominent feature, gazing back at her. When Ogby’s consciousness finally slipped away, her final mental image was of that great, red spot.

Afterword

The appearance of the great red spot at the end of this story is supposed to indicate the setting. Specifically, this story takes place in the interior of Europa: an icy moon of Jupiter with a large ocean under the ice. Despite the very low surface temperatures, Europa’s ocean does not freeze solid thanks to “tidal heating” from a slightly-eccentric orbit around Jupiter (in turn due to another moon, Io). The slight deviations in the distance between Europa and Jupiter result in a cyclic compression of Europa, with the same frequency as Europa’s orbit. Europa’s orbital period is the duration of the unit “flex” used in the story, as these compressions would be measurable from inside the moon.

The Rygors are an advanced lifeform living in Europa’s ocean, very roughly modeled off octopi. The food chain is powered by hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, similar to known deep-sea ecosystems on Earth. But the Rygors are not neutrally-buoyant like most terrestrial ocean creatures. Instead, each of their five arms has a small air bladder, which pulls them up to the top of the ocean, on the underside of Europa’s crust-ice layer. (Presumably the Rygors use some biochemical reaction to produce a gas that can fill these bladders.) There are no hydrothermal vents up at the ice, so all of their food supply has to come via fish-like organisms that swim in the ocean.

The story is told from the Rygors’ perspective: the underside of the ice is their “ground”, and the buoyancy force from their air bladders defines the direction “down”. From their perspective they walk on the “ground”, and are pulled to it by “gravity”; from our outside-Europa perspective they are simply buoyant.

This inversion of our usual perspective makes for some unusual situations. We humans don’t have a fear of being swept upwards to our death if we climb a high mountain. But this what induces Ogby’s ‘fear of heights’; not falling, but being swept “upwards” if she gets too “high”.

The analogous concern from our perspective would be a scuba diver who gets too deep. Divers wear a Buoyancy Compensator device, or “BC”, that can be inflated or deflated as desired. If a diver did not properly regulate the BC, descending into regions of higher pressure causes the BC volume to be compressed by the surrounding water. This would make it less buoyant — in principle sending an unwitting diver to the bottom of the ocean. (Archimedes’ Principle tells us that the upward buoyancy force on an object is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid.) As the diver’s BC gets compressed, it displaces less water, and becomes less buoyant. Flip this picture upside down, and this scenario is exactly what Ogby feared in the opening scene: that she would be unable to physically counter the exterior pressure, and she would find her air bladders compressed to the point where they provided very little buoyancy. From her perspective, buoyancy is gravity, so the gravity diminished as she climbed the mountain.

Hopefully the above explanation is enough physics background to follow some of the other curious aspects of the story. At one point I toyed with the idea of making this the beginning of a much longer story, allowing Ogby to be rescued on the surface of Europa by human visitors. The present version doesn’t say what happens next, one way or the other, so it’s not necessarily a sad ending. It just requires your imagination to continue the tale.

© Ken Wharton 2016

Biography of Ken Wharton

You can find more stories like this one in Science Fiction by Scientists: An Anthology of Short Stories

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