Before Zero

By Storm

 

 

The earliest days aboard Seaview, when John Phillips was in command

 

“Sir,” said the rating sitting at the sonar consol, “there’s something odd about the bottom up ahead.”

 

Captain John Phillips, commanding officer of the research submarine Seaview looked up from the chart table and said mildly, “Be more specific, Kowalski. Define odd.”

 

“Sir, it looks like several hills sticking up from the bottom of the channel.” The rating fiddled with his equipment for a few seconds, then added. “The top of the biggest comes to about seven hundred feet below the surface. There‘s a couple more around it.”

 

Captain Phillips let his eyebrows rise. They were in the Santa Barbara Channel, just ten miles south of the city of Santa Barbara itself, taking the opportunity to run more calibration tests on their equipment as they brought the submarine from the east coast to what was to be her permanent home.

 

There shouldn’t have been any surprises here.

 

Curiosity aroused, the captain walked over to peer over the sonar man’s shoulder. The return echoes were quite clear - several conical mounds, with the largest at least six stories high and about the length of a football field. As Seaview was running slow at three hundred feet , she had plenty of clearance. Still, it was a bit odd. He reflected for a moment, then picked up the mike.

 

“Admiral Nelson, this is the captain. We have an anomaly on the sea bottom and I was wondering if you wanted to take a quick look.”

 

 “What sort of an anomaly, John?” can the query.

 

“Seems to be conical hills.”

 

“Hills? In the channel?” There was a brief pause as the sound of papers being hastily shuffled together filtered through the overhead speaker, followed by, “I’ll be right there.”

 

Phillips grinned. He’d had a feeling that an unexpected mystery so close to home would bring Nelson out of his cabin. The Admiral had been going nonstop for the last six weeks since Seaview’s christening, occupied largely with paperwork that seemed endless. Since one of Seaview’s purposes was scientific research, this was something that had been profoundly ironic, particularly since they had taken five weeks to make the voyage from New London to Santa Barbara around Cape Horn. The time should have provided ample opportunity for scientific exploration - and hadn’t.

 

It had been obviously irritating to the endlessly curious Nelson - and the frustration was starting to show in a shortened temper.

 

The sound of the hatch opening brought Phillips out of his muse and he quickly put on a serious face as Nelson strode briskly up to the sonar console and leaned over the sonarman’s shoulder to study the display.

 

After a moment, Phillips saw the auburn eyebrows rise and a look of speculation fill the Admiral’s face.

 

“John,” said Nelson thoughtfully, “let’s go down and take a look for ourselves.”

 

Phillips nodded. He’d been expecting that - indeed he’d have been astonished if Nelson hadn’t been keen to investigate the mystery. The captain lifted his head to the XO, who’d come over to hover expectantly at the chart table.

 

“Mr. Morton, take us down to 650 feet, ahead slow. Make a pass across the tallest hill and make sure the cameras are rolling.”

 

“Aye, sir,” answered the blond officer, before turning away to give the orders.

 

Phillips turned back to Nelson. “The observation deck?” he asked, but Nelson had already started forward. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he noted dryly as he turned to follow in Nelson’s wake. “Mr. Morton, you have the conn,” he added as he stepped out through the hatch at the forward end of the control room.

 

By the time the two had gotten to the observation deck, Seaview was dipping gently down, her spotlights cutting through the deep gloom. At 300 feet, where they’d been cruising, there was some light, but as they dove deeper, the dark blue shifted towards black.

 

The sub eventually leveled off. Both officers peered intently downward, searching for the surface of the hill below them. As it came into sight, Phillips blinked in astonishment.

 

The top of the hill looked like black pavement.

 

“What the hell…?” Phillips looked over at Nelson in bafflement. The admiral’s eyebrows were threatening to disappear into his hairline. Phillips picked up the mike. “Control room, come to dead slow.”

 

“Dead slow, aye,” came the prompt reply. The great sub slowed to an almost imperceptible crawl, giving the two men a better look at the surface below them.

 

It was still the color of road tar.

 

It was also inhabited. Not as densely perhaps as a hill made of rock - which this clearly wasn’t - but there was bottom life here. Anemones, sponges, soft corals, brittle stars were scattered across the surface, along with the occasional fish. Intermittent curtains of bubbles drifted upward from some of the cracks in the surface - bubbles most the aquatic life seemed to avoid, though there appeared to be mats of - something - coating the edges of those cracks.

 

“What is this, sir?” asked Phillips, concern in his voice. He’d never seen anything like this before!

 

Nelson was looking at the seascape before them with the faint hint of a smile playing about his face. “Without a sample I can’t be absolutely certain, John, but it looks like asphalt.”

 

“Asphalt? How could anybody dump that much?”

 

“Not dumped,” answered Nelson, “Erupted.”

 

“What?”

 

“You’ve been to La Brea, haven’t you?”

 

Phillips had - he’d taken his family there shortly after they’d moved to Santa Barbara, because his oldest daughter had a keen interest in paleontology. But that didn’t look anything like this this. He paused, considering. Stuff did tend to react differently immersed in saltwater or under pressure. This was both.

 

“So it built a hill instead of making a pool?”

 

Nelson nodded and indicated one of the bubble curtains. “I suspect those bubbles are methane gas. That would have made the hot asphalt both buoyant and fluid enough to flow..”

 

“And the cold of the water would have cooled it enough to make it stiff after the methane escaped.” Phillips nodded in understanding - buoyancy was something submarines lived and died by. “I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

 

“I doubt that it occurs often on land, if at all,” responded Nelson. “The temperature and pressure requirements are unlikely to be met except in very unusual circumstances.”

 

Phillips eyed the alien landscape bathed in the light of Seaview’s powerful lights. “No doubt, sir. Interesting to find something so unusual so close to home though.”

 

Now it was Nelson’s turn to shake his head. “It just demonstrates how little we know about the oceans, John. I have no doubt that we’ll see much stranger things in the future. But we do need to come back here once we have Sojourner or the Flying Sub built and take a closer look. Who knows what else is here.”

 

What else indeed, though Phillips to himself. He had a sudden premonition that life aboard the Seaview was going to be unlike that of any vessel he’d ever served on before. Whether or not this was a good thing remained to be seen, but it promised that his life would never be dull.

 

 

Author’s note: This story is set in my cross-currents universe and takes place (obviously) before the events in the episode Eleven Days to Zero. I’ve always felt IA didn’t do justice to the character of Captain Phillips, because he was never mentioned again in any episode that I can recall.