Stranger Places

By Storm

Chip Morton gazed out the front view port of the DSV Sojourner and frowned. Something very strange was going on ahead of them - and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Problem, Chip?” came a velvety baritone from behind. He suppressed a wry smile; Admiral Nelson had obviously noticed his discomfort.

“Not really, Admiral,” he replied. “It’s just that I’m getting some very odd sonar returns from ahead.”

“What kind of returns?” This from their passenger, Dr. Wilton from Woods Hole. His evident interest reminded Chip that this entire expedition had started because of some odd sonar returns collected by a surface research vessel in this same area. Perhaps they were about to solve that little mystery. He gave a small headshake; they’d already seen something entirely unexpected on their first dive the day before, when Sojourner had blundered into a cloud of suspended sediment that turned out to be coming from a brine-mud volcano.

“Something very flat and smooth at the bottom of a large depression,” Chip told the researcher, who answered with a satisfied ‘Ah’. He took a quick glance at the Admiral, who was nodding in apparent agreement.

Well, he knew what that meant. He adjusted Sojourner’s course to head for the anomaly, since it was clear this was probably what they were looking for and aimed the DSV’s bright spotlights ahead.

As they proceeded cautiously through the inky darkness, he became aware of the presence of a darker line in the distance. As the DSV drew closer, the lights revealed a doughnut with a black center with what looked suspiciously like mist floating above it. Chip brought Sojourner to a halt and stared in disbelief.

It looked like a small lake, surrounded by a vast carpet of mussels on what appeared to be a shoreline.

“What the hell?” he heard Nelson mutter from behind.

What the hell, indeed. They were six thousand feet below the surface of the ocean. There was no way a lake could exist here, not one made from ordinary water anyway. Which reminded him again of the events of the day before; super-saline brine would run along the bottom like freshwater on dry land. Since they had already begun to suspect that this part of the Gulf of Mexico was littered with brine seeps, he supposed that brine had to go somewhere…..

“Brine, sir?” he suggested.

“Hmmmm.” Nelson looked intrigued and after a thoughtful moment, nodded in agreement. “You may be right, Chip. Let’s proceed on that assumption for the moment.”

Chip pushed the throttles forward, putting Sojourner back in motion.

As they cleared the edge of the ring of mussels and sailed slowly out over the dark center of the lake, Chip couldn’t help an atavistic shiver. The whole experience was surreal and the darkness of the brine - and he sincerely hoped it really was brine - gave the area a sinister aura. Fortunately the lake was only about fifty yards wide, so they soon reached the other side. As Chip brought Sojourner about, he could see that the mussels shared their habitat with crabs, sea stars, fish, and away from the lake, tube worms. That was reassuring; it meant the pool wasn’t creating a dead zone here on the bottom of the ocean, but was in fact attracting life.

He brought Sojourner’s bow around on a course that would parallel the edge of the mussels and dropped the DSV lower, while slowing their speed even more. Pointing the powerful lights straight down as the cameras whirred away, Chip had time to more closely study the dark pool.

There were tiny wavelets lapping at the ring of mussels. He felt an eyebrow go up. As he looked closer, it became apparent that some of the mussels at the very edge were dead. As near as he could tell just by looking, he got the impression the level of liquid in the pool had risen at some point in the past. Well, if the pool was as hyper saline as he suspected, even a brief emersion would be fatal to the surrounding sea life.

It took almost two hours to completely circle the pool. As he again brought Sojourner to a hover at the edge, Nelson leaned forward and spoke. “Chip, let’s submerge into the pool and see how deep it is.”

“Aye, sir.” Chip eyed the dark water warily, but eased the DSV forward towards the center. He looked around, but one spot seemed as good as another. It bothered him that the water didn’t seem to transmit light well, but that was probably a factor of the high salt content. He adjusted the ballast to settle the sub into the pool. Sojourner’s keel touched the surface…

And she bounced.

As a startled Morton brought the DSV to a stop, he heard the surprised exclamations of the Admiral and Dr. Wilton. All three men stared down at the surface of the pool for a long moment, watching as the ripples from their attempt to dive into the pool spread outward to lap up on the shores.

“Try that again, Chip,” said Nelson finally, “but slower.”

“If you say so, Admiral.” Chip couldn’t quite keep the dubious note out of his voice. He knew what the problem was, of course. Submarines lived with the ever changing density of the ocean’s waters. The more salt, the denser the water. If a sub entered a zone of less dense water and didn’t adjust her ballast, she would start sinking. If the surrounding water was denser than the water in her tanks, she’d rise. Given how thoroughly they’d just bounced, the water in this pool was probably even more saline than he’d first imagined.

Well, they’d just try that again. If he could get the ballast intakes low enough, they could probably suck up enough water from the pool to enable them to submerge into it.

Bringing the DSV back around to the same spot, Chip eased her down with a feather touch. She settled onto the surface of the water like a seagull settling on the surface of the ocean.

And stayed there. He revved the thrusters, trying to force the sub through the surface boundary of the pool.

It was rather like trying to dive into extra thick Jell-O.

After several moments he cut the thrusters and looked around at the Admiral, who was looking back with an expression that was almost bemused.

“I can’t get the ballast intakes low enough, sir. We’re stuck on this side,” he told his two passengers.

And they were. Sojourner sat serenely on the surface in the center of the brine pool, much like a water strider on a pond.

“See if you can get the arm to go through, Chip.”

Morton nodded. If they could do that, they might at least get a sample of the water and find out just how much salt was in it. He turned back to his controls and unlimbered Sojourner’s robotic arm, picking a sealable container from the rack before extending the arm away from the DSV. Rotating the container at the end of the arm, he drove it down towards the surface of the pool. To his relief, there was minimal resistance as it penetrated the surface of the pool. He triggered the seal, capturing his sample, then withdrew the arm and carefully placed the container in the collection basket.

“Got it, Admiral.”

Nelson clapped him on the shoulder. “Good work, Chip. Let’s head back to Seaview and see just what we’re dealing with here.”

“Aye, sir,” responded Morton as he shoved the throttles forward and pulled Sojourner’s bow up. He was very interested in seeing the results of the tests they would run himself. He’d thought the mud volcano the strangest thing he’d ever seen, but this odd lake under the ocean was even stranger.