H2O (exotic ices), C, N, O, H2O, S, PO4: mobile submarine heterotrophs in reducing aquatic medium in presumed symbiosis with unknown deep marine auto- or chemotrophs.
Human presence: The Murdock Expedition of 2238 established the existence of large deep-marine organisms known as cuttlewhales. Subsequent research at the colony designated Murdock Base demonstrated possible intelligent activity, and attempts were made to establish communications in 2244. Contact with the colony abruptly ended in early 2247, and there has been no futher contact since… .
The Commonwealth government had decided that word from the research colony on the ice out there on Abyssworld was too long overdue, and they were dispatching a small Navy task force and some Marines to find out what had happened. The Marines were volunteers drawn from First, Second, and Third Platoons, plus the headquarters platoon of Bravo Company, forty-two men and women in all, and all of them blooded both by combat and by experience on extrasolar worlds. Lieutenant Lyssa Kemmerer, Captain Reichert’s exec, would be leading us.
The five Navy Corpsmen, however, were not volunteers. Where the Marines went, we would go as well.
The company’s senior Corpsman was Chief Richard R. Garner, an old hand with gold hash marks running halfway up his dress uniform sleeve, each stripe showing four years of good-conduct duty. He was a bluff, craggy, no-nonsense sort, and when he barked at you he meant business.
Garner called us to a briefing the next morning. There were four of us sitting in the lounge in front of Garner—me and Dubois, plus HM1 Charlie “Machine” McKean and HM2 Kari Harris.
There was another man present as well, a Navy lieutenant commander with the gold caduceus at his throat indicating he was Medical Corps.
“Good morning, people,” Garner began. “We’ve been tapped as tech support for an important mission, and it’s important to get this off on the right foot. We’ll be transferring to the USRS Haldane tomorrow. There’s a download waiting for each of you giving billeting information and duty schedules.”
DuBoise and McKean both groaned. Harris remained impassive.
“Knock it off,” Garner said. “First off, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Lyman Kirchner, fresh up-El from Sam-Sea. He will be our department head on this expedition.”
I looked at Kirchner with curiosity. He was a small older man with an intense gaze that made me uncomfortable. If he was from SAMMC, though, he would be good. I wondered about his age, though. His white hair was thickly interspersed with black, and his face, with deep-set wrinkles, was an odd mixture of weathered skin and baby-pink new.
Anagathic treatments. He was under treatment for that most deadly of the diseases to afflict Humankind—old age.
“Dr. Kirchner,” Garner continued, “was chief of the xenopathology department at Sam-Sea, so he will be our expedition xenologist as well as ship’s doctor. We’re very lucky to have him on board.”
And that was a relief. I’d been wondering since Singer had told me I was being assigned to this mission whether we’d have a medical officer on board. I knew that Garner was IDC, but none of the rest of us were.
Independent-duty Corpsmen were the medical department on ships or bases too small to have a ship’s doctor, and that was a hellacious responsibility. Oh, we operated independently in the field as often as not … but it was always good to have a real doctor backing you up.
You know, even today, we still hear the story of an independent-duty Corpsman during the Second World War—we were called Pharmacy Mates in those days—who successfully performed an appendectomy while on board a submarine, the USS Seadragon, while she was on her fourth war patrol, in 1942. He was twenty-three-year-old PhM1/c Wheeler B. Lipes—a first class, like McKean.
In fact, though it’s not well known, there were three emergency appendectomies carried out by Pharmacy Mates on board Navy submarines during that war, this when the only commonly available antibiotics were powdered sulfanilamide and phenol, and the only anesthetic was ether. My God! The responsibility those guys faced was staggering! But, damn it, when there were no qualified surgeons within a thousand miles, you did what you had to do… .
Kirchner stood and acknowledged Garner’s introduction. “Thank you, Chief.” He glared at us. “No speeches, people. I know you’re well trained, I know you’re experienced, and I know you’re going to do your jobs competently and well. With pre-screening of the ship’s complement, we shouldn’t have any major health issues, and Haldane’s medical department will be able to focus on the tech support at GJ 1214. So do your jobs, do what you’re told, and we’ll all get along just fine. Chief Garner?”
“Thank you, sir.” Garner turned to face us again. “Okay, I want all of you to pull down the Abyss Deep docuinteractive from the Clymer’s library. On your own time.”
“Aw, Chief,” Dubois said. “What for? The place is nothing but a freaking ice ball.” He’d been angry ever since his orders had come down telling him he was deploying to Abyss Deep, and he didn’t mind letting everyone else within range know it.
“Can the gripeload, Doobie. That goddamn bleak ball of ice can kill you faster and in more ways than a Qesh Daitya platform.”
McKean and Harris both grumbled a bit, too, and, I have to admit, I did as well. Sailors hate having official shit intrude on their precious downtime, and I already had the extra duty tagged onto my daily schedule by my NJP. But as the ancient adage has it, a griping sailor is a happy sailor. Garner had scored a point by bringing up the Daityas, heavy-weapons platforms named for a class of giant or demon in Hindu mythology. We’d faced Qesh Daityas out on Bloodworld, and had a healthy respect for the things.
“Okay,” Garner went on, “we’re slated to board the Haldane tomorrow evening. Our civilian … guests will be joining us on board. They are Dr. Carla Montgomery and Dr. Raúl Ortega. Montgomery is an expert on exobiology. Ortega is an expert on planets and environments with extreme temperatures or other exotic conditions.
“We have absolutely no idea what happened to Murdock Base. None. The last report from there, via robot courier, mentioned sightings of the autochthones, the native life, but no contact … and no danger. The next courier was due from them four days later. It’s been three weeks, now, with no word from them whatsoever. We must assume that the base has suffered some significant problem. It may be as minor as a failure in the AIs they use to launch and transmit to the couriers. Or it may be more serious. A lot more serious.
“So they’re sending in the Marines. And us.”
More download information flooded through our in-heads, a schematic view of a multilevel dome equipped with living quarters, common areas, airlocks, and a large central laboratory space.
“The base,” Garner went on, “is a standard nano-grown all-climate dome, with several outlying structures … but only the main dome is pressurized. The colony consists of eighty-five men and women—mostly science staff, but including admin and support—plus twelve M’nangat in four family triads. The M’nangat are there to liaise with the EG, if need be, in order to conduct deep research on any locals that they might manage to contact.”
The Brocs had become more and more important as we researched the labyrinth of data that was the Encyclopedia Galactica. Our best guess right now is that we have been able to access something less than one hundredth of 1 percent of the EG data that’s out there, and we wouldn’t have been able to tap that much
