The Age of Discovery, Chapter 7: The Hatch

Day 4: 0030 hours…

Before we unfurl our drift anchor and set the ship ready for the night I order the crew to make all hatches and other points of ingress doubly secure.  This does little to ease my anxiety.  At four bells on the first watch I distribute a jigger of whiskey to every man – to help settle nerves.  This is hailed as my best command decision to date.

Day 4: 0700 hours

The crew is on edge this morning, less congenial than normal, and I am fairly certain of the reason.  Like them, the incident with the mysterious intruder shook me to the very core of my scientific convictions.  There simply is no explanation for the disappearance of the remains of the algal protist – no answer to this mystery.  But I feel compelled to take action, to do something to preserve the mission and make my ship and crew safe.  I will therefore acquiesce to my urge to put some distance between the Cyclops and this region of the pond universe.   I acknowledge that to do so makes little sense – for the culprit is a mystery, therefore a solution to it is a mystery as well.  It is my hope that distance will lighten our hearts and help to reenergize our intrepid spirit.

Day 8: 0540 hours...

It has been three days since I last penned an entry into my exploration log, but in this realm three days may as well be three weeks.  I know not whether this is due to an anomalous time dilation created by our micro scale existence, or a sense that we are more removed than ever from the macro world.  But it is a certainty that as our mission takes us further and deeper into the unknown, the world of hearth and table takes on an ethereal and distant quality, as if the micro verse is now and has always been our true home, and we are only now realizing it.

Last night at five bells we completed our first crossing of the pond’s northern arm, making an average speed of seventeen meters per day for three and a half days.  Engine master Barron has been bragging about the feat to anyone in earshot, and the rest of crew is happy to allow him this conceit.  He is normally a reserved man, and we are all delighted to see him in this rare mood.  If I allowed myself the luxury of superstition, I would hope that this accomplishment portends good fortune for the Cyclops and her crew. 

After our recent mystery it was unnerving to cross that fathomless track, a black void below us day and night.  On the crossing we observed a diversity of phytoplankton, including species undoubtedly related to the old friends that are by now quite familiar.  None of these organisms were struck or wounded by the ship, and no specimen was brought aboard.  During the passage the Cyclops came to the surface twice.  The first time was to transmit a wireless update of our position and status to the receiving post back at Dragonfly Sky-base.  The second visit occurred with considerably less intention. 

Excerpt from Naturalist’s Log:
At two bells on the dog watch, we had just put away the evening mess.  I was on the observation deck of the pilothouse when Barron called up from the engine room to report a feedback vibration in the propeller shaft.  I heard the engine order telegraph ring 4-times, indicating that Jonathan had ordered all-stop.  Within seconds a vertical displacement wake off the portside sent us tumbling abeam.  As the ship righted itself, another wake even stronger, threw the Cyclops end over end.  I was able to gain purchase against the ladder with a clear view through the starboard porthole.
Outside, giant objects were rising up from the depths all around us.  There was something familiar about this phenomenon, something I had seen on still water many times in the late spring, on country lakes and ponds in southern Vermont, when I was a girl.  I knew immediately what was happening.
As soon as the ship steadied herself I hurried down to the observation deck to report.   I found Jonathan helping Gyro with the wheel, meaning that the ship’s rudder was being slammed by the turbulence.  Through his clenched jaw Jonathan asked if I had any idea what was going on outside.  I explained that we were caught in the middle of an insect hatch, a warm season occurrence in temperate wetlands when an entire population of insects emerges from its aquatic pupa stage, rises to the surface en mass, and takes to the air as flying adults of the species.  The huge columns of turbulence outside were insect pupae, rising to the surface!
                                                                      As entered by Lyra Saunders, MS Cyclops

No sooner has Lyra delivered her report, than the deck begains to tremble, each small vibration building upon the previous one, a crescendo that can only culminate in catastrophe.  I barely have time to give the order to makefast all steering surfaces.  As the crash shutters are closing over the windows of the observation deck we are thrown to the floor as upward acceleration presses us into the floor.  It is as if a huge elevator is lifting the entire ship rapidly upward, but more powerfully than any I have ever experienced, even in the modern lifts in the towering twenty-story skyscrapers of New York and Chicago.  And then…

I am floating above that same deck in a state of freefall.  Gravity is no more.   Gyro, clutches the ship’s wheel, stares over his shoulder at me with dismay with saucer eyes.  I’m sure my expression of one of equal consternation.

“Skipper!” shouts Lyra.  But before she can complete her sentence we were slammed back to the deck, and our ears assaulted with the sound of metal complaining. 

Then all is still.  The deck cants several degrees to starboard.  The Edison lamps flicker, then go dark.  Rays of golden daylight stabb into the darkened pilothouse through watch-holes in the crash shutters.

“Where are we?” asks Gyro.

I press my face to the watch-hole.  We are surrounded by sunshine, unfiltered by water.  I give the orders to open the crash shutters.

The Cyclops is resting on the impenetrable surface of the endless pond – a featureless plane that extends to a hazy indefinite horizon.  And we are stranded upon that unbreakable expanse, as solid as stone to us.  Unless we find the means to break through the water’s surface tension, we are stuck, with no way to resume our journey.