James Cambias - A Darkling Sea

For my father

By the end of his second month at Hitode Station, Rob Freeman had already come up with 85 ways to murder Henri Kerlerec. That put him third in the station’s rankings—Josef Palashnik was first with 143, followed by Nadia Kyle with 97. In general, the number and sheer viciousness of the suggested methods was in proportion to the amount of time each one spent with Henri.

Josef, as the primary submarine pilot, had to spend hours and hours each week in close quarters with Henri, so his list concentrated on swift and brutal techniques suitable for a small cockpit. Nadia shared lab space with Henri—which in practice meant she did her dissections in the kitchen or on the floor of her bedroom—and her techniques were mostly obscure poisons and subtle death traps.

Rob’s specialty was underwater photography and drone operation. All through training he had been led to expect he would be filming the exotic life forms of Ilmatar, exploring the unique environment of the remote icy world, and helping the science team understand the alien biology and ecology. Within a week of arrival he found himself somehow locked into the role of Henri Kerlerec’s personal cameraman, gofer, and captive audience. His list of murder methods began with “strangling HK with that stupid ankh necklace” and progressed through cutting the air hose on Henri’s drysuit, jamming him into a thermal vent, abandoning him in mid-ocean with no inertial compass, and feeding him to an Aenocampus . Some of the others on the station who routinely read the hidden “Death To HK” feed had protested that last one as being too cruel to the Aenocampus.

Rob’s first exposure to killing Henri came at a party given by Nadia and her husband, Pierre Adler, in their room, just after the expedition support vehicle left orbit for the six-month gimelspace voyage back to Earth. With four guests, there was barely enough room, and to avoid overloading the ventilators they had to leave the door open. For refreshment they had melons from the hydroponic garden filled with some of Palashnik’s home-brewed potato vodka. One drank melon-flavored vodka until the hollow interior was empty, then cut vodka-flavored melon slices until one was too drunk to handle the knife.

“I’ve got a new one,” said Nadia after her third melon slice. “Put a piece of paper next to Le Nuke for a few months until it’s radioactive, then write him a fan letter and slip it under his door. He’d keep the letter for his collection and die of gradual exposure.”

“Too long,” said Josef. “Even if he kept it in his pocket it would take years to kill him.”

“But you’d have the fun of watching him lose his hair,” said Nadia.

“I would rather just lock him in reactor shed and leave him there,” said Josef.

“Who are they talking about?” Rob asked.

“Henri Kerlerec,” whispered Alicia Neogri, who was squeezed onto the bed next to him and half drunk on melon.

“Irradiate his hair gel,” said Pierre. “That way he’d put more on every day and it would be right next to his brain.”

“Ha! That part has been dead for years!”

“Replace the argon in his breathing unit with chlorine,” said someone Rob couldn’t see, and then the room went quiet.

Henri was standing in the doorway. As usual, he was grinning. “Planning to murder somebody? Our esteemed station director, I hope.” He glanced behind him to make sure Dr. Sen wasn’t in earshot. “I have thought of an infallible technique: I would strike him over the head with a large ham or gigot or something of that kind, and then when the police come, I would serve it to them to destroy the evidence. They would never suspect!”

“Roald Dahl,” murmured Nadia. “And it was a frozen leg of lamb.”

Henri didn’t hear her. “You see the beauty of it? The police eat the murder weapon. Perhaps I shall write a detective novel about it when I get back to Earth. Well, good night everyone!” He gave a little wave and went off toward Hab Three.

This particular morning Rob was trying to think of an especially sadistic fate for Henri. Kerlerec had awakened him at 2100—three hours early!—and summoned him to the dive room with a great show of secrecy.

The dive room occupied the bottom of Hab One. It was a big circular room with suits and breathing gear stowed on the walls, benches for getting into one’s gear, and a moon pool in the center where the Terran explorers could pass into Ilmatar’s dark ocean. It was the coldest room in the entire station, chilled by the subzero seawater so that condensation on the walls froze in elaborate geometrical patterns.

Henri was there, waiting at the base of the access ladder. As soon as Rob climbed down he slammed the hatch shut. “Now we can talk privately together. I have an important job for you.”

“What?”

“To night at 1900 we are going out on a dive. Tell nobody. Do not write anything in the dive log.”

“What? Why tonight? And why did you have to get me up so goddamned early to have this conversation?”

“It must be kept absolutely secret.”

“Henri, I’m not doing anything until you tell me exactly what is going on. Enough cloak-and-dagger stuff.”

“Come and see.” Henri led him to the hatch into Hab Three, opened it a crack to peek through, then gestured for Rob to follow as he led the way to the lab space he shared with Nadia Kyle. It was a little room about twice the size of a sleeping cabin, littered with native artifacts, unlabeled slides, and tanks holding live specimens. Standing in the middle was a large gray plastic container as tall as a man. It had stenciled markings in Cyrillic and a sky blue UNICA shipping label.

Henri touched his thumb to a lock pad and the door swung open to reveal a bulky diving suit. It was entirely black, even the faceplate, and had a sleek, seamless look.

“Nice suit. What’s so secret about it?”

“This is not a common sort of diving suit,” said Henri. “I arranged specially for it to be sent to me. Nobody else has anything like it. It is a Russian Navy stealth suit, for deactivating underwater smart mines or sonar pods. The surface is completely anechoic. Invisible to any kind of sonar imaging. Even the fins are low-noise.”

“How does it work?” Rob’s inner geek prompted him to ask.

Henri gave a shrug. “That is for technical people to worry about. All I care is that it does work. It must—it cost me six million euros to get it here.”

“Okay, so you’ve got the coolest diving suit on Ilmatar. Why are you keeping it locked up? I’m sure the bio people would love to be able to get close to native life without being heard.”

“Pah. When I am done they can watch all the shrimps and worms they wish to. But first, I am going to use this suit to observe the Ilmatarans up close. Imagine it, Robert! I can swim among their houses, perhaps even go right inside! Stand close enough to touch them! They will never notice I am there!”

“What about the contact rules?”

“Contact? What contact? Didn’t you hear—the Ilmatarans will not notice me! I will stand among them, filming at close range, but with this suit I will be invisible to them!”

“Doctor Sen’s going to shit a brick when he finds out.”

“By the time he finds out it will be done. What can he do to me? Send me home? I will go back to Earth on the next ship in triumph!”

“The space agencies aren’t going to like it either.”

“Robert, before I left Earth I did some checking. Do you know how many people regularly access space agency sites or subscribe to their news feeds? About fifty million people, worldwide. Do you know how many people watched the video from my last expedition? Ninety-six million! I have twice as many viewers, and that makes me twice as important. The agencies all love me.”