Michael Crichton - Sphere

“Why don’t you guys pay attention to briefings?” Barnes said. “That’s exactly what they do. You’ll have to wear a talker all the time you’re down here. At least, if you want anybody to understand you. Still cold?”

“Yes,” Ted said.

“Well, hang on, you’re almost fully pressurized now.” Then there was another hiss, and a side door slid open. Barnes stood there, with light jackets over his arm. “Welcome to DH-8,” he said.

“You’re the last to arrive,” Barnes said. “We just have time for a quick tour before we open the spacecraft.”

“You’re ready to open it now?” Ted asked. “Wonderful. I’ve just been talking about this with Norman. This is such a great moment, our first contact with alien life, we ought to prepare a little speech for when we open it up.”

“There’ll be time to consider that,” Barnes said, with an odd glance at Ted. “I’ll show you the habitat first. This way.” He explained that the DH-8 habitat consisted of five large cylinders, designated A to E. “Cyl A is the airlock, where we are now.” He led them into an adjacent changing room. Heavy cloth suits hung limply on the wall, alongside yellow sculpted helmets of the sort Norman had seen the divers wearing. The helmets had a futuristic look. Norman tapped one with his knuckles. It was plastic, and surprisingly light. He saw “JOHNSON” stenciled above one faceplate.

“We going to wear these?” Norman asked.

“That’s correct,” Barnes said.

“Then we’ll be going outside?” Norman said, feeling a twinge of alarm.

“Eventually, yes. Don’t worry about it now. Still cold?”

They were; Barnes had them change into tight-fitting jumpsuits of clinging blue polyester. Ted frowned. “Don’t you think these look a little silly?”

“They may not be the height of fashion,” Barnes said, “but they prevent heat loss from helium.”

“The color is unflattering,” Ted said.

“Screw the color,” Barnes said. He handed them light-weight jackets. Norman felt something heavy in one pocket, and pulled out a battery pack.

“The jackets are wired and electrically heated,” Barnes said. “Like an electric blanket, which is what you’ll use for sleeping. Follow me.”

They went on to Cyl B, which housed power and life-support systems. At first glance, it looked like a large boiler room, all multicolored pipes and utilitarian fittings. “This is where we generate all of our heat, power, and air,” Barnes said. He pointed out the features: “Closed-cycle IC generator, 240/110. Hydrogen-and-oxygen-driven fuel cells. LSS monitors. Liquid processor, runs on silver-zinc batteries. And that’s Chief Petty Officer Fletcher. Teeny Fletcher.” Norman saw a big-boned figure, working back among the pipes with a heavy wrench. The figure turned; Alice Fletcher gave them a grin, waved a greasy hand.

“She seems to know what she’s doing,” Ted said, approvingly.

“She does,” Barnes said. “But all the major support systems are redundant. Fletcher is just our final redundancy. Actually, you’ll find the entire habitat is self-regulating.”

He clipped heavy badges onto the jumpsuits. “Wear these at all times, even though they’re just a precaution: the alarms trigger automatically if life-support conditions go below optimum. But that won’t happen. There are sensors in each room of the habitat. You’ll get used to the fact that the environment continually adjusts to your presence. Lights will go on and off, heat lamps will turn on and off, and air vents will hiss to keep track of things. It’s all automatic, don’t sweat it. Every single major system is redundant. We can lose power, we can lose air, we can lose water entirely, and we will be fine for a hundred and thirty hours.”

One hundred and thirty hours didn’t sound very long to Norman. He did the calculation in his head: five days. Five days didn’t seem very long, either.

They went into the next cylinder, the lights clicking on as they entered. Cylinder C contained living quarters: bunks, toilets, showers (“plenty of hot water, you’ll find”). Barnes showed them around proudly, as if it were a hotel.

The living quarters were heavily insulated: carpeted deck, walls and ceilings all covered in soft padded foam, which made the interior appear like an overstuffed couch. But, despite the bright colors and the evident care in decoration, Norman still found it cramped and dreary. The portholes were tiny, and they revealed only the blackness of the ocean outside. And wherever the padding ended, he saw heavy bolts and heavy steel plating, a reminder of where they really were. He felt as if he were inside a large iron lung-and, he thought, that isn’t so far wrong.

They ducked through narrow bulkheads into D Cyl: a small laboratory with benches and microscopes on the top level, a compact electronics unit on the level below.

“This is Tina Chan,” Barnes said, introducing a very still woman. They all shook hands. Norman thought that Tina Chan was almost unnaturally calm, until he realized she was one of those people who almost never blinked their eyes.

“Be nice to Tina,” Barnes was saying. “She’s our only link to the outside-she runs the com ops, and the sensor systems as well. In fact, all the electronics.”

Tina Chan was surrounded by the bulkiest monitors Norman had ever seen. They looked like TV sets from the 1950s. Barnes explained that certain equipment didn’t do well in the helium atmosphere, including TV tubes. In the early days of undersea habitats, the tubes had to be replaced daily. Now they were elaborately coated and shielded; hence their bulk.

Next to Chan was another woman, Jane Edmunds, whom Barnes introduced as the unit archivist.

“What’s a unit archivist?” Ted asked her.

“Petty Officer First Class, Data Processing, sir,” she said formally. Jane Edmunds wore spectacles and stood stiffly. She reminded Norman of a librarian.

“Data Processing…” Ted said.

“My mission is to keep all the digital recordings, visual materials, and videotapes, sir. Every aspect of this historic moment is being recorded, and I keep everything neatly filed.” Norman thought: She is a librarian.

“Oh, excellent,” Ted said. “I’m glad to hear it. Film or tape?”

“Tape, sir.”

“I know my way around a video camera,” Ted said, with a smile. “What’re you putting it down on, half-inch or threequarter?”

“Sir, we use a datascan image equivalent of two thousand pixels per side-biased frame, each pixel carrying a twelvetone gray scale.”

“Oh,” Ted said.

“It’s a bit better than commercial systems you may be familiar with, sir.”

“I see,” Ted said. But he recovered smoothly, and chatted with Edmunds for a while about technical matters.

“Ted seems awfully interested in how we’re going to record this,” Barnes said, looking uneasy.

“Yes, he seems to be.” Norman wondered why that troubled Barnes. Was Barnes worried about the visual record? Or did he think Ted would try to hog the show? Would Ted try to hog the show? Did Barnes have any worries about having this appear to be a civilian operation?

“No, the exterior lights are a hundred-fifty-watt quartz halogen,” Edmunds was saying. “We’re recording at equivalent of half a million ASA, so that’s ample. The real problem is backscatter. We’re constantly fighting it.”

Norman said, “I notice your support team is all women.”

“Yes,” Barnes said. “All the deep-diving studies show that women are superior for submerged operations. They’re physically smaller and consume less nutrients and air, they have better social skills and tolerate close quarters better, and they are physiologically tougher and have better endurance.