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think we need to … y’know.”
    Neither man was particularly excited. If anything, Danzig thought they sounded bored. Silence for two seconds. Then:
    Connick: “Hey, what …?” Startled.
    Evangeline: “Oh, my God! It’s …!” Clearly terrified.
    Werner: “Evangeline, what …?” Surprised, but not scared.
    A sudden bang, followed by a sharp snap. Then silence; the wavefile flatlined until it reached the audio track’s right margin.
    “That’s it,” Rita said. “That’s all we got. But notice this …”
    She pointed to the timestamp at the bottom right corner of the audio track: 01:34:03. “That’s when we lost telemetry … a little more than an hour and a half on the mission clock.” Then she pointed to the time stamp at the bottom of the video image: 01:34:01. “That’s when that picture was taken.”
    Danzig shrugged. “Yes? So?”
    “When we compared the timestamps to each other, we noticed that the video image was transmitted about two seconds after Evangeline reacted.” Danzig shook his head, not comprehending what she meant. “That means Evangeline was startled by something which she says she didn’t see and wasn’t captured by the camera until two seconds later.”
    “Yes, but she says she knew the creature was there because it hit the bathyscaphe.” Danzig thought about what he’d just heard on the audio. “Besides,” he added, “Connick reacted before she did. And he and Werner were the ones able to look outside.”
    “No, not exactly … listen again.” Rita skipped back two seconds, and again Danzig heard Connick’s voice: “Evangeline, what …?” Rita stopped the wavefile. “Doesn’t that sound more like he’s about to ask her what she’s doing, not about anything that’s happening outside the sub?”
    “You’re making an assumption.” Tired of looking at her upside-down, Danzig slipped his foot from the ceiling rung and did a half-gainer that put him rightside-up. “I’d like to know what’s led you to this, and where you think you’re going with it.”
    Rita didn’t respond, but instead entered another command into her keyboard. A holo appeared in midair above her console: a three-dimensional image of something that looked a little like a shrimp, only much larger.
    “ Branchiotremata europum ,” she said. “The Europan mariner, as we call it. The most common of the half-dozen or so creatures we’ve discovered so far, and also the largest. Remember when I said that the thing the DSV caught on camera might be only twenty millimeters long? Well, the mariner is about 150 millimeters in length.”
    “Which makes them giants so far as the native fauna is concerned.” Diaz smiled. “Some of our people are even wondering if they could be steamed and eaten. I haven’t given them permission to do that, but it’s tempting.”
    Rita ignored the captain. “If there’s something else down under the ice that’s big enough to attack a bathyscaphe, then it would have to subsist on a diet of mariners.” She shook her head. “In evolutionary terms, that doesn’t make sense. Size tends to be limited by available food supply, so …”
    “That’s not all.” Clutching the ceiling bar, Diaz leaned forward to lay a fingertip against the translucent holo. She carefully moved her hand forward, repositioning the holo until it hovered a few centimeters in front of the screen. “Do you see?” she asked as she pulled her hand away. “The mariner looks a bit like what the camera caught, only out of focus. Like it swam right up to the lens and was photographed before it had a chance to autofocus.”
    Danzig studied the two images for a few moments, absently tapping a forefinger against his lower lip. The woman waited patiently for him. From the corner of his eye, he happened to notice Dylan McNeil. The chief engineer was about to leave the command center, and it occurred to Danzig that he still hadn’t thanked him for saving his life. This wasn’t the time to go