“Nobody had ever tried building anything like the Trieste before. Space shuttles, sure, but in space you’re dealing with an absence of pressure. You can put on a suit, step out, float around. Try and do that down here and . . .”
“Flesh pâté.”
“Bingo. They had to bring the station down in sections. Lots of trial and error, lots of problems. Dropped them with heavy weights, collected them with robotic dive craft. Every section came down encased in a protective shell, with a seam of foam sandwiched between. They got slotted together, riveted by the pressure-resistant robo-divers, foamed, then the shell was cracked away. The station was designed in the principles of orb physics; the egg was the designer’s blueprint. Push on the sides of an egg, right, and it’ll break. But if you press on the top and bottom, it’s nearly unbreakable. A miracle of nature, or so they tell me.
“Plus the material the station’s made out of . . . it’s metal but not metal. Some kind of high-tech, ultra-state-of-the-art polymer core—it allows the tunnels to flex and bend and . . . bubble, I guess you could say? Instead of cracking under pressure, the material will expand the way rubber does. The water can warp it, but it won’t burst through.
“Anyway, once the pieces of the station were all slotted together, someone had to go in and open it all up from the inside. There was this membrane linking each section that had to be cut and foamed simultaneously; if it sprung even one leak, the whole structure would flatten. Otto Railsback—that was the name of the guy. Wee scrap of a thing. Asingle man did the whole job. You want to talk about a real hero? I brought Otto down. He was the first man inside. I attached to the entry port, cracked the hatch, then he went inside.”
“So what happened?” asked Luke, now fascinated.
“Well . . . I remember the smell that came out at first,” Al said. “My family ran a ranch in Colorado. There was this cave system where I lived, Cave of the Winds. The main part was a tourist trap—drunk dudes wandering around with miner’s helmets, calling themselves spelunkers. But the whole thing sprawled twenty miles underground. You could enter it through a vent in the forest floor about a mile from my home. Just a dark cut into the rocks, right? I went down there one day, alone. I was thirteen, fourteen. Thought I was a badass. I had a flashlight and a sack lunch.
“Predictably, I got lost. Thought I knew where I was going. Didn’t. It got so deep and twisty that if it weren’t for gravity, I wouldn’t have known up from down. My flashlight went on the fritz. I sat in the dark with the rocks dripping around me.” She paused, wrapped in the memory. “That darkness had weight , Doc. As a kid, it seemed hostile —like it wanted to keep me right where I was. And I was scared for practical reasons, too. I could’ve missed a step, slid down a shaft, and busted a leg. I’d have died down there. But I’d gotten into it, right? I had to get out. So I just listened. The dripping water helped. I figured it had to be trickling down , so I just had to follow it up. It was way past my curfew when I reached the cut. My dad skinned my ass raw.”
She sipped water from a silver pouch that reminded Luke of a Capri Sun drink.
“Anyway . . . the smell in that cave was the same as what came out of the Trieste . This overwhelming reek of darkness. A raw mineral smell; it had presence, an aliveness, like in Cave of the Winds. It freaked me out—no good reason; just that old childish worry—but Otto went right in. He sealed the compartments, made the Trieste truly safe for habitation. After that, others came down to set up the gennies, the air purifiers. But Otto was the guy who got it all rolling. He was the only one who died in the Trieste , too.”
“Jesus. How?”
“He just never came back out,” said Al. “I waited and waited, but when he didn’t show up they told me to
“Flesh pâté.”
“Bingo. They had to bring the station down in sections. Lots of trial and error, lots of problems. Dropped them with heavy weights, collected them with robotic dive craft. Every section came down encased in a protective shell, with a seam of foam sandwiched between. They got slotted together, riveted by the pressure-resistant robo-divers, foamed, then the shell was cracked away. The station was designed in the principles of orb physics; the egg was the designer’s blueprint. Push on the sides of an egg, right, and it’ll break. But if you press on the top and bottom, it’s nearly unbreakable. A miracle of nature, or so they tell me.
“Plus the material the station’s made out of . . . it’s metal but not metal. Some kind of high-tech, ultra-state-of-the-art polymer core—it allows the tunnels to flex and bend and . . . bubble, I guess you could say? Instead of cracking under pressure, the material will expand the way rubber does. The water can warp it, but it won’t burst through.
“Anyway, once the pieces of the station were all slotted together, someone had to go in and open it all up from the inside. There was this membrane linking each section that had to be cut and foamed simultaneously; if it sprung even one leak, the whole structure would flatten. Otto Railsback—that was the name of the guy. Wee scrap of a thing. Asingle man did the whole job. You want to talk about a real hero? I brought Otto down. He was the first man inside. I attached to the entry port, cracked the hatch, then he went inside.”
“So what happened?” asked Luke, now fascinated.
“Well . . . I remember the smell that came out at first,” Al said. “My family ran a ranch in Colorado. There was this cave system where I lived, Cave of the Winds. The main part was a tourist trap—drunk dudes wandering around with miner’s helmets, calling themselves spelunkers. But the whole thing sprawled twenty miles underground. You could enter it through a vent in the forest floor about a mile from my home. Just a dark cut into the rocks, right? I went down there one day, alone. I was thirteen, fourteen. Thought I was a badass. I had a flashlight and a sack lunch.
“Predictably, I got lost. Thought I knew where I was going. Didn’t. It got so deep and twisty that if it weren’t for gravity, I wouldn’t have known up from down. My flashlight went on the fritz. I sat in the dark with the rocks dripping around me.” She paused, wrapped in the memory. “That darkness had weight , Doc. As a kid, it seemed hostile —like it wanted to keep me right where I was. And I was scared for practical reasons, too. I could’ve missed a step, slid down a shaft, and busted a leg. I’d have died down there. But I’d gotten into it, right? I had to get out. So I just listened. The dripping water helped. I figured it had to be trickling down , so I just had to follow it up. It was way past my curfew when I reached the cut. My dad skinned my ass raw.”
She sipped water from a silver pouch that reminded Luke of a Capri Sun drink.
“Anyway . . . the smell in that cave was the same as what came out of the Trieste . This overwhelming reek of darkness. A raw mineral smell; it had presence, an aliveness, like in Cave of the Winds. It freaked me out—no good reason; just that old childish worry—but Otto went right in. He sealed the compartments, made the Trieste truly safe for habitation. After that, others came down to set up the gennies, the air purifiers. But Otto was the guy who got it all rolling. He was the only one who died in the Trieste , too.”
“Jesus. How?”
“He just never came back out,” said Al. “I waited and waited, but when he didn’t show up they told me to
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