A Deepness in the Sky

Vinh clamped down on his terror and coasted forward. They could use the emergency console. They could listen for word. They could use the local autopilot to fly to the surviving Qeng Ho forces. The pain in his head grew beyond anything Ezr Vinh had ever known. The little red emergency lights seemed to get dimmer and dimmer. He felt his consciousness squeezing down, and the panic rose and choked him. There was nothing he could do.

And just before things all went away, fate showed him one kindness, a memory: Trixia Bonsol had not been aboard thePham Nuwen.

EIGHT

For more than two hundred years, the clock mechanism beneath the frozen lake had faithfully advanced itself, exhausting the tension of spring coil after spring coil. The mechanism ticked reliably down through the last spring...and jammed on a fleck of airsnow in the final trigger. There it might have hung until the coming of the new sun, if not for certain other unforeseen events: On the seventh day of the two-hundred-and-ninth year, a series of sharp earthquakes spread outward from the frozen sea, jolting loose the final trigger. A piston slid a froth of organic sludge into a tank of frozen air. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then a glow spread through the organics, temperatures rose past the vapor points of oxygen and nitrogen, and even carbon dioxide. The exhalation of a trillion budding exotherms melted the ice above the little vehicle. The ascent to the surface had begun.

Coming awake from the Dark was not like waking from an ordinary sleep. A thousand poets had written about the moment and—in recent eras—ten thousand academics had studied it. This was the second time that Sherkaner Underhill had experienced it (but the first time didn't really count, since that memory was mixed with the vague memories of babyhood, of clinging to his father's back in the pools of the Mountroyal Deepness).

Coming awake from the Dark was done in pieces. Vision, touch, hearing. Memory, recognition, thought. Did they happen first one and then another and another? Or did they happen all at once, but with the parts not communicating? Where did "mind" begin from all the pieces? The questions would rattle around in Sherkaner's imagination for all of his life, the basis for his ultimate quest....But in those moments of fragmented consciousness, they coexisted with things that seemed much more important: bringing self together; remembering who he was, why he was here, and what had to be done right now to survive. The instincts of a million years were in the driver's perch.

Time passed and thought coalesced and Sherkaner Underhill looked out his vessel's cracked window into the darkness. There was motion—roiling steam? No, more like a veil of crystals swirling in the dim light they floated on.

Someone was bumping his right shoulders, calling his name again and again. Sherkaner pieced together memories. "Yes, Sergeant, I'm away... I mean, awake."

"Excellent." Unnerby's voice was tinny. "Are you injured? You know the drill."

Sherkaner dutifully wiggled his legs. They all hurt; that was a good start. Midhands, forehands, eating hands. "Not sure I can feel my right mid and fore. Maybe they're stuck together."

"Yeah. Probably still frozen."

"How are Gil and Amber?"

"I'm talking to them on the other cables. You're the last one to get his head together, but they've got bigger hunks of body still frozen."

"Gimme the cable head." Unnerby passed him the sound-conducting gear, and Sherkaner talked directly to the other Team members. The body can tolerate a lot of differential thawing, but if the process doesn't complete, rot sets in. The problem here was that the bags of exotherm and fuel had shifted around as the boat melted its way to the surface. Sherkaner reset the bags and started sludge and air flowing through them. The green glow within their tiny hull brightened, and Sherkaner took advantage of the light to check for punctures in their breathing tubes. The exotherms were essential for heat, but if the Team had to compete with them for oxygen the Team would be the dead loser.

A half hour passed, the warmth enveloping them, freeing their limbs. The only frost damage was at the tips of Gil Haven's midhands. That was a better safety record than most deepnesses. A broad smile spread across Sherkaner's aspect. They had made it, wakenedthemselves in the Deep of the Dark.