Free The Magister (Earthkeep) by Sally Miller Gearhart Page A

this depth.  Some of it's our own noise echoing back as we cut the water.  Some of it is just the so-called big groan, the Ocean's residual expression of Her own presence.  Some of it is shore noises — boats, top slaps, currents, tides.  Clicks and whistles and gongs.  Over hundreds of miles.  Maybe even drags and creaks from the destroyer.  All of it amplified for your delight."
    Tiny's voice intruded. 
    "Looking good, Commander Maiz.  Still on course, bearings on the money.  Do you read 260.3 meters?"
    "Affirmative, Mariner.  We're full ahead."
    They were settling into the motion of the phaeton now.  For a short time Maiz let Zude control the craft from a remote helm, guiding her carefully as the Magister made minute course or attitude changes and then corrected them, each time with more confidence.  Handling a circular vessel, with pitch that became yaw and yaw that became pitch again, proved far more demanding than Zude had anticipated.  She sat in a dark world, delicately poised between flipping over and tumbling over, every cell in her body ablaze with each small triumph of skill.  Finally she shifted the helm back toward Maiz. 
    "That made my day, Commander.  Thank you."
    "You'd be a good undersea pilot, Magister," Maiz said as she transferred the helm back to her own station.
    As they sailed deeper and deeper into a new world, the darkness outside the vessel seemed complete.  Tiny Nauru spoke at greater intervals.  "On course, Sojourner .  At 7.3 and 155."  Or, "At 343 meters, Commander Maiz."  Maiz would confirm briefly.
    They paused to examine a pocket of bioluminescence that sparkled like a host of fireflies just beyond the vessel.
    "An angel!" Regina said in hushed tones.
    "Patches of bacteria," said Maiz.  “They show up now and again."
    They sat in silence as the pocket of light floated to the side and upward, soon to be lost in their own wake.  Enrique waved goodbye. 
    "Are you all right, Sojourner ?"  Nauru's voice came through.  "We read your drive at one-third."
    "A little sight-seeing, Mariner," Maiz assured the control room.  "We're on our way again."
    Regina and Enrique, still side by side, let Maiz guide them as they manipulated far-reaching search lights that pierced the blackness around them. 
    Nicola Maiz spoke into the comfield.  "44.8 atmospheres and approaching the trench."
    Ria sat upright.  "The trench?  How far?"  She began adjusting her holocorder equipment. 
    "Less than a minute. We'll circle above the edge so you can see what we'll be going down into."
    Zude was alert now, peering into the tunnel that Regina and Enrique were making with the lights.  Maiz leveled the phaeton and added more beams from the ship's full perimeter until the whole ocean on all sides of them was illuminated. 
    "We'll keep those lights pointing downward, Reggie," she said, urging Enrique's joystick forward with her finger.  She kicked back the pod's advancing motion to half impulse.  "What looks like the bottom of the ocean should be coming up any moment now."  She divided her attention between the bathometer and the height soundings of the vessel's belly sensors.
    Ria saw it first.  "There!" she pointed. 
    Dimly emerging below and in front of them was a change in the ocean's texture.  It looked to Zude like the ocean floor below them was bisected by a straight line.  Just beyond them lay the edge of a cliff. 
    Both children bent and craned.  Maiz swung the phaeton out and over the precipice.  Ria and the children shifted to keep the cliff in view.
    "It's huge," said Ria.  "Can you take us back and over the edge again?  So I can get the approach?"  She altered the holocorder's settings.
    "Done," said Maiz, upping impulse power and spinning easily into a wide arc over the chasm below and back toward the cliff top.  She ducked the phaeton until it was closer to the floor, easing it back into a slow approach to the drop-off.
    "Good," Ria muttered, stretching the