Michael Crichton - Sphere

There was a thump as a tentacle swung against the habitat. “Jerry!” Ted shouted. His voice was high, strained with tension.

The squid paused. The body moved laterally, and they could see the huge eye staring at them.

“Jerry! Listen to me!”

The squid appeared to hesitate.

“He’s listening!” Ted shouted, and he grabbed a flashlight off a wall bracket and shined it out the porthole. He blinked the light once.

The great body of the squid glowed green, then went momentarily dark, then glowed green again.

“He’s listening,” Beth said.

“Of course he’s listening. He’s intelligent.” Ted blinked his light twice in rapid succession.

The squid blinked back, twice. “How can he do that?” Norman said.

“It’s a kind of skin cell called a chromatophore,” Beth said. “The animal can open and close these cells at will, and block the light.”

Ted blinked three times.

The squid blinked three times. “He can do it fast,” Norman said.

“Yes, fast.”

“He’s intelligent,” Ted said. “I keep telling you. He’s intelligent and he wants to talk.”

Ted blinked long, short, short.

The squid matched the pattern.

“That’s a baby,” Ted said. “You just keep talking to me, Jerry.”

He flashed a more complex pattern, and the squid answered, but then moved off to the left.

“I’ve got to keep him talking,” Ted said.

As the squid moved, Ted moved, skipping from porthole to porthole, shining his light. The squid still blinked its glowing body in reply, but Norman sensed it had another purpose now.

They all followed Ted, from D into C Cyl. Ted flashed his light. The squid answered, but still moved onward. “What’s he doing?”

“Maybe he’s leading us…”

“Why?”

They went to B Cyl, where the life-support equipment was located, but there were no portholes in B. Ted moved on to A, the airlock. There were no portholes here, either. Ted immediately jumped down and opened the hatch in the floor, revealing dark water.

“Careful, Ted.”

“I’m telling you, he’s intelligent,” Ted said. The water at his feet glowed a soft green. “Here he comes now.” They could not see the squid yet, only the glow. Ted blinked his light into the water.

The green blinked back.

“Still talking,” Ted said. “And as long as he’s talking-” With stunning swiftness, the tentacle smashed up through the open water and swung in a great arc around the airlock. Norman had a glimpse of a glowing stalk as thick as a man’s body, and a great glowing leaf five feet long, swinging blindly past him, and as he ducked he saw it hit Beth and knock her sideways. Tina was screaming in terror. Strong ammonia fumes burned their eyes. The tentacle swung back toward Norman. He held up his hands to protect himself, touched slimy, cold flesh as the giant arm spun him, slammed him against the airlock’s metal walls. The animal was incredibly strong.

“Get out, everybody out, away from the metal!” Fletcher was shouting. Ted was scrambling up, away from the hatch and the twisting arm, and he had almost reached the door when the leaf swung back and wrapped around him, covering most of his body. Ted grunted, pushed at the leaf with his hands. His eyes were wide with horror.

Norman ran forward but Harry grabbed him. “Leave him! You can’t do anything now!”

Ted was being swung back and forth in the air across the airlock, banging from wall to wall. His head dropped; blood ran down his forehead onto the glowing tentacle. Still the arm swung him back and forth, the cylinder ringing like a gong with each impact.

“Get out!” Fletcher was shouting. “Everybody out!” Beth scrambled past them. Harry tugged at Norman just as the second tentacle burst above the surface to hold Ted in a pincer grip.

“Off the metal! Damn it, off the metal!” Fletcher was shouting, and they stepped onto the carpet of B Cyl and she threw the switch on the Green Box and there was a hum from the generators and the red heater banks dimmed as two million volts of electricity surged through the habitat.

The response was instantaneous. The floor rocked under their feet as the habitat was struck by an enormous force, and Norman swore he heard a scream, though it might have been rending metal, and the tentacles quickly drew down out of the airlock. They had a last glimpse of Ted’s body as it was pulled into the inky water and Fletcher yanked down the lever on the Green Box. But the alarms had already begun to sound, and the warning boards lit up.

“Fire!” Fletcher shouted. “Fire in E Cyl!”

Fletcher gave them gas masks; Norman’s kept slipping down his forehead, obscuring his vision. By the time they reached D Cylinder, the smoke was dense. They coughed and stumbled, banged into the consoles.

“Stay low,” Tina shouted, dropping to her knees. She was leading the way; Fletcher had stayed behind in B.

Up ahead, an angry red glow outlined the bulkhead door leading to E. Tina grabbed an extinguisher and went through the door, Norman right behind her. At first he thought the entire cylinder was burning. Fierce flames licked up the side padding; dense clouds of smoke boiled toward the ceiling. The heat was almost palpable. Tina swung the extinguisher cylinder around, began to spray white foam. In the light of the fire Norman saw another extinguisher, grabbed it, but the metal was burning hot and he dropped it to the floor.

“Fire in D,” Fletcher said over the intercom. “Fire in D.” Jesus, Norman thought. Despite the mask, he coughed in the acrid smoke. He picked the extinguisher off the floor and began to spray; it immediately became cooler. Tina shouted to him, but he heard nothing except the roar of the flames. He and Tina were getting the fire out, but there was still a large burning patch near one porthole. He turned away, spraying the floor burning at his feet.

He was unprepared for the explosion, the concussion pounding his ears painfully. He turned and saw that a firehose had been unleashed in the room, and then he realized that one of the small portholes had blown or burned out, and the water was rushing in with incredible force.

He couldn’t see Tina; then he saw she had been knocked down; she got to her feet, shouting something at Norman, and then she slipped and slid back into the hissing stream of water. It picked her up bodily and flung her so hard against the opposite wall that he knew at once she must be dead, and when he looked down he saw her floating face-down in the water rapidly filling the room. The back of her head was cut open; he saw the pulpy red flesh of her brain.

Norman turned and fled. Water was already trickling over the lip of the bulkhead as he slammed the heavy door shut, spun the wheel to lock it.

He couldn’t see anything in D; the smoke was worse than before. He saw dim patches of red flame, hazy through the smoke. He heard the hiss of the extinguishers. Where was his own extinguisher? He must have left it in E. Like a blind man he felt along the walls for another extinguisher, coughing in the smoke. His eyes and lungs burned, despite the mask.

And then, with a great groan of metal, the pounding started, the habitat rocking under jolts from the squid outside. He heard Fletcher on the intercom but her voice was scratchy and unclear. The pounding continued, and the horrible wrenching of metal. And Norman thought, We’re going to die. This time, we’re going to die.

He couldn’t find a fire extinguisher but his hands touched something metal on the wall and Norman felt it in the smoky darkness, wondering what it was, some kind of protrusion, and then two million volts surged through his limbs into his body and he screamed once, and fell backward.