Three hundred and ninety years after their distant ancestors fled the sea, two humans returned in search of an even older mystery. Their changed bodies could no longer tolerate the ocean so they would ride in a bubble of titanium hung with thrusters and lights, pierced by ports and a hatch, and graced with the name Omega, painted on the stern in neat block letters.
Standing in the hatch at the pilot’s launch position, Devon Lucas rested one hand on a first-seized bolt while the other blocked the glare from the two-hundred-foot research vessel Aurora. Beneath short red hair, her lined green eyes studied the steel cable that lowered the research submersible like a metal spider towards the luminous blue of the waiting South Pacific water, so clear that i t didn’t look substantial enough to support several tons of metal.
But it did.
When the yellow hull kissed the sea Devon release the steel hook from the big eyelet behind the sail, dropped through the single hatch, and pulled it shut. Her ears popped and, as always, her nose twitched at the sudden exchange of fresh salt air for stale sweat and plastic and ozone.
The round cockpit was crammed with displays and equipment. She placed one foot on a black-taped junction box and dropped into the left seat, on the way down brushing shoulders with the scientist who would be her passenger.