Nigel Thompson - Pheia

Kate went back to the portal and tried to look up but she could not see past the rock ledge. She looked over at the dive gear. It wasn’t appealing to go outside again but she really wanted to know how bad the damage was.

She walked over and pulled down the dive suit and began putting it on. The inside was damp. Everything was damp.

Once she got started, it wasn’t so bad, and after a quick self-buddy check using her list by the ladder, she put on fins and dropped into the water.

The water was cold and the chill helped her focus on the task. “Let’s not be down here all day,” she thought as she floated down through the moon pool exit and out under the hab’s weight stack.

Kate shone her light towards the wall but thought better of going that way. The hab was awfully close to the rock. If it shifted, she didn’t want to get trapped. She swam out from under the stack parallel to the wall and ascended beside the twin cylinders slowly, looking for signs of damage.

She remembered to look up just before she reached the rocky protrusion the Pheia had hit. It stuck out maybe forty feet. Enough to cover part of the hab, which was now hovering about five feet below it.

At the top of the hab, Kate saw that the ELF antenna went out around the rock. At least it was intact. Well, it looked intact from here but she could only see part of it so she swam out to the edge of the rocky overhang and shone the light up into the dark. The silvery rods seemed to go up forever.

Kate swam up a way until she could see the BC at the top. The antenna was intact. Looking down, the part of the hab she could see seemed much smaller below her. The water was perfectly clear and her light illuminated it like a small model. She dropped back down to the roof of the ops cylinder. Shining the light down, she could see the plumbing on the tops of the gas tanks closest to the wall was all bent. A few small bubbles were coming out, but there was no sign of the big leak she’d expected to see. The tank must be empty. She dropped down until her face was only a foot from the tops of the tanks and inspected all the pipework. It was bent where it had hit the rock. The Pheia must have been just close enough to catch the edge with the tanks. Kate wondered why it was so far under the ledge now. Surely it should be at the same distance from the wall it had been all along. Perhaps the sonar array that the Pheia used to measure lateral distance was damaged as well? Was that how it worked? She couldn’t remember. She mentally added that to the list of things to check before she went back in.

Kate ran her hands over the bent pipes feeling the undersides for damage. A few of the pipes had been flattened on top and bent out of shape but there were no apparent holes. She looked closer at the fittings where the pipes were attached to the tanks. A small bubble formed right where the pipe entered one of the fittings. The top of the fitting was scratched and a small piece of rock was lodged between the handle of the shutoff valve and the pipe. “Mystery solved.” she thought.

Kate closed the valve leading to the damaged fitting. If there was any gas left anywhere in the system, that might help. She knew she was kidding herself. Whatever hydrogen was in the tanks had leaked away by now and thanks to them all being connected to a common manifold, that meant they were all empty.

She thought about closing the other valves but decided against it. She didn’t really have a plan and knew very little about the way the Pheia was built.

Kate rolled over and looked up at the rock above her. It was still four or five feet away and hadn’t moved. So the Pheia was keeping position. That was good. She kicked forward and let out her breath. She glided down the side of the hab facing the wall. She was inverted and looking at the side of the hab as she went down. There were no signs of damage. But this was what she expected. The hab had clearly hit the wall from below, and it had stopped very suddenly so it had not had any chance to scrape along on its side.

Kate was looking for the sonar sensor that measured the distance to the wall, but she didn’t know what it looked like. Most of the Pheia’s outer surface was covered in gas tanks except where the portals in the cylinders were, or where the two tunnels joined the cylinders together.

Above the portal, on the ops cylinder, she found what looked like a white plastic dome about six inches in diameter. It was attached to a pipe flange that stuck out a couple of inches from the hab. She waved her hand in front of it but nothing happened. This was the only thing that looked like it might be a sensor. The only other attachments were the flood lights and the cameras.

She had forgotten about the cameras. The Pheia had several pointing out in all directions. Not that there was generally much to see on them. They mostly showed the black ocean or the wall.

Kate floated down until she found the camera on the ops cylinder below the portal. It was pointing at the wall. She shone her light over at the one on the crew cylinder. It was pointing down. A couple of light fin kicks brought her to it. She grasped it in one hand and the edge of the portal with the other and pulled. The camera came back up so it was pointing at the wall again.

Kate kicked away from the hab and as she did so she heard the drive motors spin up. The hab was moving away from her. Panicking, she kicked hard and grabbed the camera bracket. As soon as she grabbed it, the hab stopped moving. “What the hell.”

She moved off to one side and waited. Sure enough the hab started to move back slowly from the wall. It was moving slowly enough that she could follow with just an occasional light fin movement. After about fifteen seconds it stopped again. Kate looked back at the wall. “Ah. We are back in position.”

She realized that the cameras were used in some way to detect the wall’s position. “Stereo images to supplement the sonar?” she thought. She looked up and saw that the hab was now clear of the rocky ledge. “Time to go home.”

On the surface barge, Williams had gathered everyone into the galley for a meeting. There was a lot of loud conversation as small groups of two or three argued about what to do. Williams stood up. “OK, can we stop for a minute please?” He had to repeat himself twice before everyone became silent.

“So far as I can tell, the only things we agree on are that the Pheia has mechanical problems of some undetermined type and we are completely powerless to help. Is that about it?”

The group looked at him. One or two nodded but nobody spoke.

“I sent a message to Dr. Moss for more information but there has been no reply. I sent the request about half an hour ago. I do not want to read anything into the delay. We can probably assume the ELF radio is working because of Kate’s earlier message.”

He turned to the flip chart that stood by the galley table. “Let’s go through the ideas we have so far please.” He pointed to the item at the top. “Total failure.” He paused. “While I agree that this needs to be on the list, I want to ignore it for now since a total failure means we have no hope, and I’m not willing to go there just yet.” He drew a thin line through the item with a marker.

“Next we have loss of gas pressure.” This seems most likely to me if there was some mechanical event, which is likely given Dr. Moss’s message that the Pheia had hit the wall.”

He saw some nods and continued. “And we know that the most exposed parts of the Pheia are the gas cylinders and associated pipe work. Damage to the gas pipes on top of the cylinders seems likely if the impact was hard enough.”

Williams continued with the rest of the items. There was little conversation as most of the discussion had taken place earlier when they made the list.