Starfish

Joel nudges the rudders a bit to port. They've been cruising just off the southeastern shoulder of the rift, floodlights doused; sonar shows a featureless landscape of mud and boulders. The rift itself is another five or ten minutes away. On the screen, the tourist program talks about giant squids attacking lifeboats during the Second World War, offers up a parade of archival photos as evidence; human legs, puckered with fist-sized conical wounds where horn-rimmed suckers cored out gobbets of flesh.

"Nasty. We going to be seeing any giant squids?"

Joel shakes his head. "Different tour."

The program launches into a litany of deepwater nasties; a piece of flesh washed up onto a Florida beach, hinting at the existence of octopus thirty meters across. Giant eel larvae. Hypothesized monsters that might once have fed on the great whales, anonymously dying out for lack of food.

Joel figures that ninety percent of this is bullshit, and the rest doesn't really count. Even giant squids don't go down into the really deep sea; hardly anything does. No food. Joel's been rooting around down here for years, and he's never seen any real monsters.

Except right here, of course. He touches a control; outside, a high-frequency speaker begins whining at the abyss.

"Hydrothermal vents bubble and boil along spreading zones in all of the world's oceans," the program chatters, "feeding crowds of giant clams and tubeworms over three meters long." Stock footage of a vent community. "And yet, even at the spreading zones, it is only the filter-feeders and muckrakers that become giants. The fish, vertebrates like ourselves, are few and far between — and only a few centimeters long." An eelpout wriggles feebly across the display, looking more like a dismembered finger than a fish.

"Except here," the program adds after a dramatic pause. "For there is something special about this tiny part of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, something unexplained. Here there be dragons."

Joel hits another control. External bait lights flash to life across the bioluminescent spectrum; the cabin lights dim. To the denizens of the rift, drawn in by the sonics, a veritable school of food fish has suddenly appeared in their midst.

"We don't know the secret of the Channer Vent. We don't know how it creates its strange and fascinating giants." The program's visual display goes dark. "We only know that here, on the shoulder of the Axial Volcano, we have finally tracked the monsters to their lair."

Something thumps against the outer hull. The acoustics of the passenger compartment make the sound seem unnaturally loud.

At last, the passengers shut up. Mr. Codpiece mutters something and heads back to his seat, a giant chloroplast in a hurry.

"This concludes our introduction. The external cameras are linked to your headsets and can be aimed using normal head movements. Focus and record using the joystick on your right armrest. You may also wish to enjoy the view directly, through any of the cabin viewports. If you require assistance our guide and pilot are at your service. Seabed Safaris welcomes you to the Channer Vent, and hopes that you enjoy the remainder of your tour."

Two more thumps. A grey flash out the forward port; a sinuous belly caught for a moment in the headlight, a swirl of fin. On Joel's systems board, icons representing the outside cams dip and wiggle.

Superfluous Preteela slides into the copilot's seat. "Regular feeding frenzy out there."

Joel lowers his voice. "In here. Out there. What's the difference?"

She smiles, a safe, silent gesture of agreement. She's got a great smile. Almost makes up for the striped hair. Joel catches sight of something on the back of her left hand; looks like a ref tattoo, but somehow he doubts that it's authentic. Fashion statement, more likely.

"You sure they can spare you?" he asks wryly.

She looks back. The cargo's starting up again: Look at that. Hey, it broke its tooth on us. Christ aren't they ugly —

"They'll manage," Preteela says.

Something looms up on the other side of the viewport: mouth like a sackful of needles, a tendril hanging from the lower jaw with a glowing bulb on the end. The jaw gapes wide enough to dislocate, snaps shut. Its teeth slide harmlessly across the viewport. A flat black eye glares in at them.

"What's that?" Preteela wants to know.

"You're the tour guide."

"Never seen anything like it before."

"Me neither." He sends a trickle of electricity out through the hull. The monster, startled, flashes off into the darkness. Intermittent impacts resonate through Ceratius, drawing renewed gasps from the cargo.

"How long until we're actually at Channer?"

Joel glances at tactical. "We're pretty much there already. Medium-sized hot fissure about fifty meters to the left."

"What's that?" A row of bright dots, evenly spaced, has just moved onto the screen.

"Surveyer's stakes." Another row marches into range behind the first. "For the geothermal program, you know?"