Meg: Origins Read Free Page A

that followed, no human had returned to dive the Mariana Trench.
    Jonas Taylor had been preparing for the Challenger Deep for six months. His nerves were rock-steady, his attitude evolving from “cavalier cowboy” to a higher, zen-like state once he’d entered the DSV’s titanium sphere—a claustrophobic life support chamber somehow deemed large enough to accommodate three passengers for upwards of twenty hours.
    The top-secret mission was as straightforward as it was dangerous; Jonas would pilot the DSV six miles down, hovering just above a silty warm oasis of ocean created by the superheated mineralized water pumping from the abyss’s hydrothermal vent fields. Once in position, the two scientists on-board would release a robotic drone which would enter the Challenger Deep and sink another five thousand feet to the bottom where it would gather samples of manganese nodules via a remotely-operated vacuum assembly.
    Jonas had no idea what was so special about these pineapple-sized chunks of rock, nor did he care. As he told Danielson at their first meeting, “To me, the descent becomes routine the moment we pass beyond the light, right around twelve hundred feet. There’s a lot going on in the universe outside that porthole—bioluminescent creatures, mating rituals, schools of jellyfish and things that glitter in the night—but until I get down to the basement, all I’m watching are my control panels. I don’t want to know what’s out there, I don’t want to think about anything other than operating the DSV. Once I slip on my headphones and tune into some classic rock, I’m pretty much on auto-pilot for the next fifteen hours.”
    The first descent, eight days ago, had changed his tune.
    Deep dives into the Hadal zone meant longer missions, the additional “on” time affecting the pilot’s mental and physical attributes. Like an airline pilot or radar control operator, stress and fatigue quickly become a dangerous twosome, compromising the mind’s ability to reason. Work-rest cycles of both submersible pilots and their surface support crews have to be strictly monitored, with back-up personnel on hand lest mental acuity be affected.
    Diving the Challenger Deep was like nothing Jonas had ever experienced. The water pressure was tremendous, causing an unnerving rattle in the titanium sphere. Worse was the hydrothermal plume. Temperatures below this raging river were tropical, above the layer near-freezing, and the temperature differential created unpredictable water currents that threatened to flip the submersible into oblivion. It was like hovering above Niagara Falls while balancing on a tightrope.
    Sixteen hours after the first dive had begun, the DSV surfaced. Jonas had been so exhausted that he had to be carried out of the sub.
    Two more dives had followed in less than a week. Over fifty hours spent in a six-foot titanium sphere with two scientists, and now they wanted him to do it again.
    Every man has a limit. Jonas knew he had surpassed his after the last dive when he could no longer tell if he was piloting the Sea Cliff or dreaming that he was piloting the Sea Cliff .
    · · ·
    Dr. Frank Heller may have been a first generation medical man, but he was third generation Navy, his grandfather having served in World War II aboard an aircraft carrier, his father and two uncles assigned to the battleship USS Missouri during the Korean war. Younger brother Dennis was an Assistant Chief Engineer aboard a Los Angeles Class attack sub, their older sister a former diving officer.
    Heller knew that Chief Warrant Officer Carolyn Heller-Johnston would never have certified the pilot seated on his exam table as dive-ready. But then, his big sister didn’t have to deal with a pencil-pusher like Dick Danielson or the other desk jockeys back at the Pentagon.
    Taylor’s last dive had yielded the type of manganese nodule the team of scientists had apparently been hoping for. Now they were demanding that Taylor make