DEAD SPACE MARTYR PART FOUR THE DESCENT Part 35
35 A week later, they arrived, and everybody was eager to get to work. They started by taking readings from the surface, from a launch that rose and fell with the swell of the waves. Field was with him at first, taking readings of his own and double-checking Altman’s, though he became greener and greener as the afternoon went on. He spent the last hour of the day hanging over the launch’s side, retching. By the next morning, a groaning, vomit-flecked Field had been shipped back to the floating compound and it was just Hendricks and Altman. They brought the bathyscaphe down a thousand meters and took their readings there, waiting for confirmation from Markoff to descend farther. When it came, they went down to two thousand meters and repeated the process. “Seems straightforward,” said Altman. Hendricks shrugged. “More or less,” he said. “Only problem is that down this deep, communication gets erratic. It’s hard to know if they’ll receive the data we’re sending.” “We might be cut off?” asked Altman. “It com…
