Meg: Origins by Steve Alten Read Free Book Online Page A

their skin flashing in rapid sequences as they twisted and looped and converged as one. The reforming mass of glowing bodies raced north through the submarine canyon like a slithering green-blue serpent.
    The Meg circled the scraps twice, its senses searching the area for its challenger. The female detected the Kronosaurus several hundred yards away, darting along the sea floor, following the reorganizing school of cuttlefish.
    Her appetite stimulated, the shark altered its course, homing in on its fleeing prey.

6
    Challenger Deep
    JONAS’S EYES DARTED from the depth gauge to the viewport, the last five hours of fatigue disappearing in the adrenaline rush accompanying the extreme depths.
    31,500 feet…
    31,775 feet…
    Debris rattled across the Sea Cliff ’s outer hull like hail on a tin roof. He eased up on the foot pedals, adjusting the submersible’s rate of descent.
    31,850 feet.
    An object bloomed into view in the small reinforced porthole by his stockinged feet, the DSV’s lights illuminating a swirling river of brown water. Jonas hovered the submersible fifty feet above the hydrothermal plume, fighting to adjust the trim against the rippling surge of the raging current.
    “Wake up, gentlemen, we’ve arrived at the gates of hell.”
    Michael Shaffer shook Dr. Prestis awake. “You need to get a new tagline, Jonas. How about, ‘Hey, Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’”
    Richard Prestis rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “That’s not new, every lame movie uses that line. How about, ‘Of all the deep water trenches in the world, she swam into mine.’”
    “Can you imagine looking out the viewport and seeing a mermaid?” Shaffer said, readying the ROV for deployment.
    “I prefer my mermaids with a D-cup or better,” Prestis joked. “Any mermaids surviving down here would be flat-chested from all the pressure… powering up the Flying Squirrel .”
    Jonas smiled. “I meant to ask you two—whose idea was it to name the ROV the Flying Squirrel ?”
    “Dr. Shaffer gets the credit on that one.”
    “What can I say, I’m an old Rocky and Bullwinkle fan.”
    Jonas struggled to control the DSV’s pitch and yaw as the Sea Cliff tossed above rolling wakes of cold water hitting warm. “Maybe we should call Danielson and Heller, Boris and Natasha.”
    Prestis grabbed for a handle bar, closing his eyes against the turbulence. “Which one’s Boris and which one’s Natasha?”
    Shaffer ignored him, reciting a quick prayer.
    “Heller should be Natasha,” Jonas responded, “he has nicer legs. Mike, you okay?”
    The submersible’s bow and tail teetered as if on a slow-moving see-saw. “Let’s just finish this damn mission and get the hell out of Dodge. Deploying Flying Squirrel .”
    Roughly the size of a go-cart, the rectangular, canary-yellow ROV decoupled from the DSV’s sled, its twin propellers rapidly moving it away from the submersible, while its docking berth fed out piano wire from the motorized spool.
    “Engines—check. Lights—check. Infrared—check. Night vision—check. Forward camera—check. Rear camera—check. Grappler—check. Richard, try the vacuum.”
    “Vacuum’s working. Go. Send your Flying Squirrel into Jonas’s hell hole and bring back some juicy nuts.”
    Shaffer mumbled, “I’ll settle for a dozen manganese nodules filled with Helium-3.” Using a joystick, the scientist maneuvered the ROV into a steep descent, aiming for a dark spot on the hydrothermal plume now appearing on his monitor. “Tears in his eyes as he lines up this last shot. A Cinderella story, outta nowhere… a former greens keeper, now about to become the Masters champion.”
    Jonas and Prestis looked at one another, grinning at their colleague’s dead-on imitation of Carl Spackler from Caddyshack . Together, all three yelled out, “It’s in the hole! It’s in the hole!” as the ROV punched through the warm layer of swirling soot, its reinforced chassis buffeted by the