"Hear, hear," Beth said.
"I personally feel you're overwrought," Ted said.
"I personally feel you're an egomaniacal asshole," Barnes said.
"Just a minute, everybody," Harry said. "Does anybody know why Levy went outside in the first place?"
Tina said, "She was on a TRL."
"A what?"
"A Timeclock Required Lockout," Barnes said. "It's the duty schedule. Levy was Edmunds's backup. After Edmunds died, it became Levy's job to go to the submarine every twelve hours."
"Go to the sub? Why?" Harry said.
Barnes pointed out the porthole. "You see DH-7 over there? Well, next to the single cylinder is an inverted dome hangar, and beneath the dome is a minisub that the divers left behind.
"In a situation like this," Barnes said, "Navy regs require that all tapes and records be transferred to the sub every twelve hours. The sub is on TBDR Mode-Timed Ballast Drop and Release - set on a timer every twelve hours. That way, if somebody doesn't get there every twelve hours, transfer the latest tapes, and press the yellow 'Delay' button, the sub will automatically drop ballast, blow tanks, and go to the surface unattended."
"Why is that?"
"If there's a disaster down here - say something happened [[ 205to all of us - then the sub would automatically surface after twelve hours, with all the tapes accumulated thus far. The Navy'd recover the sub at the surface, and they'd have at least a partial record of what happened to us down here."
"I see. The sub's our flight recorder."
"You could say that, yes. But it's also our way out, our only emergency exit."
"So Levy was going to the sub?"
"Yes. And she must have made it, because the sub is still here."
"She transferred the tapes, pressed the 'Delay' button, and then she died on the way back."
"Yes."
"How did she die?" Harry said, looking carefully at Barnes.
"We're not sure," Barnes said.
"Her entire body was crushed," Norman said. "It was like a sponge."
Harry said to Barnes, "An hour ago you ordered the EPSA sensors to be reset and adjusted. Why was that?"
"We had gotten a strange reading in the previous hour."
"What sort of a reading?"
"Something out there. Something very large."
"But it didn't trigger the alarms," Harry said.
"No. This thing was beyond alarm-set parameters."
"You mean it was too big to set off the alarms?"
"Yes. After the first false alarm, the settings were all cranked down. The alarms were set to ignore anything that large. That's why Tina had to readjust the settings."
"And what set off the alarms just now?" Harry said. "When Beth and Norman were out there?"
Barnes said, "Tina?"
"I don't know what it was. Some kind of animal, I guess. Silent, and very big."
"How big?"
She shook her head. "From the electronic footprint, Dr. Adams, I would say the thing was almost as big as this habitat."
BATTLE STATIONS
Beth slipped one round white egg onto the stage of the scanning microscope. "Well," she said, peering through the eyepiece, "it's definitely marine invertebrate. The interesting feature is this slimy coating." She poked at it with forceps.
"What is it?" Norman said.
"Some kind of proteinaceous material. Sticky."
"No. I mean, what is the egg?"
"Don't know yet." Beth continued her examination when the alarm sounded and the red lights began to flash again. Norman felt a sudden dread.
"Probably another false alarm," Beth said.
"Attention, all hands," Barnes said on the intercom. "All hands, battle stations."
"Oh shit," Beth said.
Beth slid gracefully down the ladder as if it were a fire pole; Norman followed clumsily back down behind her. At the communications section on D Cyl, he found a familiar scene: everyone clustered around the computer, and the back panels again removed. The lights still flashed, the alarm still shrieked.
"What is it?" Norman shouted.
"Equipment breakdown!"
"What equipment breakdown?"
"We can't turn the damn alarm off!" Barnes shouted. "It turned it on, but we can't turn it off! Teeny - "
" - W orking on it, sir!"
The big engineer was crouched behind the computer; Norman saw the broad curve of her back.
"Get that damn thing off!"
"Getting it off, sir!"
"Get it off, I can't hear!"
Hear what? Norman wondered, and then Harry stumbled into the room, colliding with Norman. "Jesus..."
"This is an emergency!" Barnes was shouting. "This is an emergency! Seaman Chan! Sonar!" Tina was next to him, calm as always, adjusting dials on side monitors. She slipped on headphones.
Norman looked at the sphere on the video monitor. The sphere was closed.
Beth went to one of the portholes and looked closely at the white material that blocked it. Barnes spun like a dervish beneath the flashing red lights, shouting, swearing in all directions.
And then suddenly the alarm stopped, and the red lights stopped flashing. Everyone was silent. Fletcher straightened and sighed.
Harry said, "I thought you got that fixed - "
" - Shhh."
They heard the soft repetitive pong! of the sonar impulses. Tina cupped her hands over the headphones, frowning, concentrating.
Nobody moved or spoke. They stood tensely, listening to the sonar as it echoed back.