The Deep by Nick Cutter Page B

polymers. A marvel of engineering. It of course had no mind, no will. And still . . .
    It was awful. He couldn’t isolate what repelled the eye, the revulsion that squatted so leadenly in the lizard brain. It was snakelike, for one—of course it was: the Trieste was all tubes. They spooled along the ocean floor, which was clad in a powdery drift of marine snow. The tubes were oddly segmented, branching off at unnatural angles, as to appear vaguely arachnid: long dark legs extending from a central hub.
    There was a manic union between its various parts; it shouldn’t cohere as a structure. Its angles were bizarre and somehow despairing. Some tubes appeared to end abruptly . . . that, or they burrowed into the sea floor like an enormous worm.
    Maybe the pressure exerted the same warping effect it had on Challenger 4, bending each angle slightly out-of-true—which, cumulatively, made the Trieste look disgustingly alien. Or maybe it was the fact that the bulk of it hadn’t been assembled by human hands: robots had no sense of beauty or symmetry; they simply slotted link A to coupler B. The structure throbbed with a numbing hunger—but for what ? Luke was overcome with a sinister shrinking sensation, as if his soul had dwindled to a pinprick and the Trieste had swarmed in to fill that space, reducing him under its brooding, inanimate power. Luke couldn’t shake the ludicrous sense that the Trieste had built itself to serve a purpose known onlywithin itself. It seemed sentient, watching like a snake coiled in placid contentment under warm desert rocks. Knowing, in the seething core of itself, that it need only to wait.
    “It’s got a certain look to it,” Al said.
    “You’ve been inside?”
    “A few times. Not for long, and only to drop off supplies. To speak the truth, none of us like spending all that much time down here. Docking’s the trickiest part.”
    She edged them toward the Trieste . The Challenger swayed under the enormous pressure of water, which no longer shushed and gurgled against its hull but instead pushed back with leaden insistence as if they were moving through hardening concrete.
    As they approached, Luke saw what had made those initial pinpricks of light: windows, same as the porthole on the submarine, dotted the length of one tube. Weak fingers of light spilled from each.
    One of Al’s navigational tools pinged as she zeroed in.
    Five feet, four, three, two . . .
    Al guided the sub to the porthole and cut the engines. The Challenger met the Trieste with the sound of a locket snapping shut.
    Other sounds: whirrings, clickings. A pneumatic whine—the noise you’d hear in a mechanic’s shop when they’re tightening the lug nuts on your all-seasons.
    “It should be sealed now.”
    Luke said, “And if it’s not?”
    Al gave him a grim smile. “We won’t feel a thing.” She unsnapped her belt. “You’re going to have to step through first.”
    “Me? Why?”
    The flesh tightened around Al’s eyes. For the first time, she got that mildly irritated look a person gets when they’re dealing with a newbie.
    “I’ve got to keep an eye on things from this end, Doc.”
    There isn’t anything on the other side of that hatch , said an unsteady voice in Luke’s head. Nothing but your brother and another wonk and a few dogs and bees.
    Luke wondered: had Dr. Westlake told himself the very same thing the first time he stepped inside?
    “Once you’re through and I’ve shut things down, I’ll follow,” said Al.
    Luke laid his hands on the hatch. The metal thrummed with an odd tension, as if a heavy motor was running behind it. His biceps tensed in expectation—but after the slightest strain, the wheel turned easily.
    “That’s good.” There was relief in Al’s voice. “The seal’s tight.”
    The hatch swung open. The thinnest trickle of saltwater beaded along the upper curve of the hatch, a single drop falling— plip! —to splash the metal. The light inside the Challenger wept