Free Flood Plains by Mark Wheaton Page A

felt the comparison apt.
    “You guys lost?”
    “Um, no, sir. We’ve got a crew working on the tank. We were heading home when we got a frantic call. They said to find you, find emergency services, security, some major catastrophe or break. They were panicked.”
    “At the tank?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Bartiromo sighed.
    The tank referred to the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, an underwater training lab where astronauts grew accustomed to working in a near-zero gravity environment. Bartiromo reached over to the phone and dialed the front office there. When there was no answer, he dialed the extension inside the tank room itself. As the room was notoriously loud, the ringer on that phone was all the way up. He’d been in there a couple of times when it had rung, making even the most steely-nerved astronaut jump out of his skin.
    When no one answered, Bartiromo leaped to his feet and nodded to Simon.
    “Have security and EMS meet me in the Buoyancy Lab.”
    The flight director hurried out of the MCC with the two contractors in tow and made a bee line for the tank. Johnson Space Center was laid out like a college campus, so Bartiromo and the contractors had to exit the MCC building and brave the lacerating rain. The wind blew so hard it was akin to walking through an ice storm. Making it worse, the exterior lights flickered and then faltered. The emergency generators instantly kicked on, but the lights were all dimmed to half-power.
    The group finally found their way to the tank building, aka the Sonny Carter Training Facility, and, upon entering, heard a loud alarm ringing out like a battleship’s klaxon.
    “Oh, shit,” Bartiromo grimaced. An alarm meant some kind of physical breach.
    He led the contractors down a short, dark corridor to the massive tank room at the center of the building. The lights here were at near-full brightness, showing off a space about the size and shape of an Olympic swimming arena, just without the bleachers or high dive boards. At the center of this was, technically speaking, the largest indoor pool on the planet. Only, instead of gazing into the clear blue water to the training mock-ups below (currently, a solar panel array off the International Space Station), it looked as if the pool had been filled with oil, the surface shimmering black.
    “Crap, the roof must’ve gone,” Bartiromo cursed as he looked up. He radioed the security office. “Major leak at the Buoyancy Lab. We’re going to need some kind of patch.”
    When no one responded, he cursed again.
    “Didn’t you say you had a crew down here?”
    “Four guys.”
    “Where are they?”
    The contractors looked around, their gazes finally settling on a couple of tool boxes on the far side of the pool. Everyone had the same terrible thought and peered into the black of the underwater lab.
    “Is that oil?”
    “Could be,” Bartiromo said. “Something off the hydraulics, something backed up out of the filters. Who knows?”
    Somewhere, someone shut off the alarm and the lab was cast into an eerie silence. Bartiromo tried to determine if something was leaking down from the ceiling, but the stillness of the pool’s oily surface made him reconsider his theory.
    As he took a couple of curious steps closer to the pool, however, the hairs on the back his neck rose as if something had walked up behind him. He shook it off and squatted next to the edge. He gingerly touched the liquid, collecting a little on the tip of his finger. It had the consistency of oil, but where it should’ve been smudged brown-black, it was streaked with red.
    Like blood.
    “Oh, shi…”
    Before he could finish his thought, he was hit from behind by a great force that knocked all the wind out of his lungs. He was still trying to catch his breath when it carried him up over the pool and held him in mid-air for a moment before dropping him. He hit the water with a slap, the thick oil giving it the consistency of yogurt. Sinking quickly, Bartiromo was paddling back