the strike. Alarmed by the sound of the sub's motors, the spider crab darted away.
The temperature climbed further as they descended. “Anyone for a hot tub?” inquired the technician.
“Pass,” Boyle muttered, eyes glued to the screen in front of him. The sea temperature had soared to 86°F as the smoker came into view. They were several yards up-current from the volcano that was spewing a plume of black, superheated seawater, hydrogen sulphide, and iron monosulphide into the surrounding sea. By rights, this area should have been devoid of life. There was no oxygen down here, and no light, only boiling liquids capable of stripping the paint off a ship's hull. And yet around the base of the smoker's funnel was a thriving community of life, life that would, perversely, find existence in a more conventional environment lethal.
“Jesus,” Boyle said under his breath.
As far as Boyle and Tanaka knew, this was the deepest anyone had ever dived on a smoker, and here laid out before them was an improbable Garden of Eden. The bed of worms had become denser and the creatures themselves were as big as anacondas. Shrimp the size of house cats darted between the tubes waving in the current. There were more giant spider crabs, and clams so big they looked like footballs. The tube worms and the mollusks had been well-documented phenomena present at other hy-drothermal vents at shallower depths, but those were nowhere near as big as the ones here. Strange fish neither scientist had ever seen before hunted over the tube worm beds, chasing smaller fish and shrimp. None of the life bore the usual hallmarks of fish found at this depth—the huge eyes and teeth and the lights swinging from various protuberances. There was so much life down here it was literally bumping into itself.
“Amazing,” Boyle said, awestruck by the information provided by the monitor. It'd been years of theoretical slogging to get to this point. There were moments when they'd been skeptical themselves about finding such a biologically diverse world at—he checked the gauge—nearly 21,000 feet. And yet here it was. This discovery alone would have made them famous, except that their research was classified. The people paying the bills, the U.S. Department of Defense, wouldn't have it any other way.
The technician sitting beside Tanaka tapped his watch. The Shinkai ran on battery power and the needles were leaning toward the red. They had an hour and a half at most before they had to start the climb to the Natusima. Tanaka nodded.
“Let's get to it,” agreed Boyle.
The technician turned to another panel and readied the Shinkai's arms. A thin appendage could be seen moving across the monitor, the clawlike hand flexing open and closed, ready to collect specimens. The motion reminded Boyle of the spider crab. And that thought reminded him there was a lot of work yet to be done.
* * *
The sea was flat; even the low swell of the past week had rolled onto the Japanese mainland beyond the western horizon. It was night and the Natusima could have been anchored on a lake of black glass. As he stumbled down the gunnel, Dr. Tanaka tripped on a part of the steel deck hidden in deep shadow. He swore under his breath and grabbed the railing to steady himself. He threw his head back to get some air and looked up into the cloudless night sky. The moon reminded him of a polished quarter, one that appeared glued to the Milky Way. The doctor managed to hum a couple of bars of “Moon River” before his stomach gave way, convulsing several times as a torrent of food and alcohol roared out of his mouth and spattered onto the sea below.
Vomiting made Tanaka feel better. He wasn't used to drinking alcohol—Red Bull was about as strong as his drinks got, and he never had more than three. But there was no Red Bull on board, so he'd been convinced to have an inch or two of Johnnie Walker. It was a celebration after all, and Boyle had been insistent. How many scientific quests end in failure? Tanaka didn't know the answer, but he reasoned the percentage would be high. And yet they'd struck gold on the very first day and bagged a huge variety of bizarre specimens. They'd had five days of uninterrupted diving and the hard work was largely done. Tomorrow, they would up anchor and leave, ahead of schedule. The ship's master informed them that the weather was