Read Rolling in the Deep for Free Online Page A

that would send the first probe down into the dark.
    Alexandra’s water sampling probes were wonders of engineering in their own right, built for her by a friend of a friend who was always happy to rise to a challenge. While she hadn’t been able to explain exactly where the Atargatis was going or what it would be doing there, thanks to the NDAs she had signed, she had been able to provide rough figures on how deep she needed her probes to go, what kind of pressures they needed to endure, and what they would need to do while they were down there. Superficially, they resembled stainless steel disco balls, big spheres covered in tiny geometric planes. They had no propulsion systems, no way of steering themselves through the dark below. That wasn’t their purpose.
    As they descended, those tiny geometric planes would begin to open, one at a time, shooting out even tinier tubes that would take samples of the surrounding water. Each sample would be held in isolation within the body of the probe, allowing Alexandra to analyze them at her leisure. She had seven probes, all told, each representing several thousand dollars of materials, and several hundred hours of design and engineering work—and even that hadn’t been enough. Her testing tubes had sharp edges, for one thing, because there hadn’t been time to grind them all down without damaging their structural integrity.
    And it would all be worth it, if she could find something that would confirm her belief that truly deep waters—like the water in the Mariana Trench—had a different chemical and biological makeup than water found in the relative shallows.
    The sun never pierced the Mariana Trench. Many metals and chemicals were actually heavier than water, and would be inclined to sink, while the deep-sea currents would keep them from ever settling fully to the bottom. It was a good theory. It was a theory with both military and practical applications—a better understanding of the composition of deep water would allow for quieter submarines, more effective communications, while private concerns would want to analyze those chemicals, find uses for them and ways to recreate them in the lab—but until she could prove it, she might as well have been chasing, well, mermaids.
    Alexandra blinked, and then laughed to herself. Here she was, along with every other scientist on the Atargatis , laughing at the Imagine Network’s viewers for seeking proof of mermaids, while they were doing the exact same thing. Sure, new types of algae and unidentified deep water proteins were slightly different than women with fish tails, but it was the same in theory. They all wanted to find something no one knew for sure existed.
    The probe hit the water, seemed to float for a moment, and then sank rapidly out of sight. The wire that was keeping the probe connected to the Atargatis and to Alexandra’s command computer spooled out easily, behaving for once exactly as it had been intended to. She resisted the urge to punch the air with joy, and moved instead to sit at her tiny portable desk and monitor the probe’s descent.
    The expedition was finally well and truly underway, for all parties involved.

Like most vessels of its size and class, the Atargatis was designed to anchor in shallow waters and estuaries, not in the middle of the open sea. Upon reaching its assigned destination, the Atargatis came to a stop, dropping six anchor chains. These chains did not reach the bottom; while they provided drag, they did not prevent all drift. Instead, the crew depended on constant monitoring and personnel awareness to remain in position. Meanwhile, the passengers began doing exactly what they had been contracted to do: they began interacting with the sea.
    Inside of a day, the Atargatis disrupted the local ecosystem with vibrations, minor but unavoidable pollutants, scientific testing and sampling, and human bodies, bringing with them the chemical taint of modern life.
    If there was anything at all