Ice-Driller continued his slow silent swim with the squid. The creature wanted to break into a full out dash, but each time he squelched its need for speed. He could hear the guards now, and they were swimming up the same ice shaft, but wouldn’t notice them at this distance. They were unprepared; they spread no net between them.

The surrounding terrain had a maze of cracks, interstitial lakes, and curved thawed formations, as ice continually twisted and refroze. The broken ice had created a maze with many dead ends. Ice-Driller had always imagined that The Great Attractor had pulled away at one or two equatorial bulges. As opposed to the Great Squeezers, who thought a different force pushed on the poles. Either way, the terrain was superb to evade someone in.

The poles had the broader system of cracks, and society had a long history of polar exploration. Thus the reason for the research station being located. Bulge and anti-bulge locales contained thicker ice.

The planet’s rocky core also had more geologic activity, thus more cities near the poles. Deepvent, his city, was on the opposite side of the planet from Hotsmoke [[authors note, I may change relative location]]. Routes through cold water were taxing, but if one traveled the archipelago of small communities: Coldseep, Brineshore, Musselbed, Alkalivent, Sulfideseamount, you would spend more food paying for tolls than protection from sea creatures in the wilder waters.

He backed his squid up into a small vertical crack. It ran parallel to the main branch. With one arm he clutched a popper from his saddlebag, a small charge, a decapod-deafener rather than anti-shark device. The plan was to stay wedged in this crack, silent and cool. As long as the guards didn’t send an active ping in his direction, they would be undiscovered. Then he could guide the squid down and join the main branch behind.

There were still many moments before they would pass. He sat and waited, calming down his hearts with slow rhythmic passing of water through the gills.

Ice-Driller again thought about Deepvent. The economy had boomed in the last few lifetimes. Chemistry had morphed from alchemy into a proper science. Hot hydraulic presses created metal products in any shape, which enabled the rock grinding guilds. Better breeding of bacterial mats and cross-trade between the cities led to an abundance.

His thoughts swam back to the present. Calm down Druk. Two of his tentacles stroked the flanks of the nervous animal.

The two guards continued their approach, every so often sending a loud ping up the crack to sense surroundings. They were trying to be stealthy, but without the navigational imprint, it proved impossible.

Ice-Driller slowed down his hearts.

From the guards’ ambient sounds and echoes from occasional pings, Ice-Driller could envisage them: two body lengths away from each other, and holding a formation. Ice-Driller figured a net was now spread between them. Together, they only covered about one fourth of the shaft’s cross section. More than enough to get through.

They also had short bolts and hooks. The softer items on their backs were probably an extra net or rope. Their holsters seemed occupied, but Ice-Driller didn’t know if gas-powered ranged weapons would operate at this pressure. It seemed like dead weight to him. More to slow them down.

One guard sent pops and whistles instead of a full ping. This gave a slightly different resolution.

“What’s that,” one whispered. The terrain was alien to them. These were city guards, used to seeing only silt, sharp-angled stone buildings, and domesticated creatures. They had trouble interpreting the strange sounds of this new icescape.

A distant rumble of shattered ice pulsed through the area.

Ice-Driller now saw the problem with wedging himself at this location. Farther down, the space was larger, and the guards wouldn’t need to ping so often without hitting a wall. Ice-Driller might have slipped by unnoticed if he had continued. But here in this shattered scene, the guards had to ping constantly to visualize the surroundings.

They will see me.

He slowly reached back with two of his tentacles and readied the popper countermeasure.

That one was directed to the opposite side of the shaft. Fractured echoes lit up his area. The guards continued to bob their heads up and down as the reverberations of the sound rang between the ice. They would have detected them, if they had pointed their echolocation organ their way.

They sent small chirps and pops to give the guards a complete spherical sense of the surroundings.

Eight of Ice-Driller’s other limbs held tight onto the darter-squid. Now they were almost at the level. Two other arms clung to the popper.

Druk sensed his rider’s rising tension—

And darted down.

Ice-Driller was already upon them by the time the ping returned to the sender. They didn’t need to make sounds. A large squid carrying a net of rolled metal pictures and a cylinder with small bubbles was easy to spot. He pulled the release on his popper and cast it behind them.

--

A Fizzle! Barely loud enough to deafen. No matter. “GO,” he called out loud to Druk, who was already doing that which was instinctive: fleeing! Ice-Driller grabbed another popper and readied it before realizing the low pressure was the problem. Speed was the only solution now. The two guards in coral pressure suits were no match for a mounted decapod. He didn’t even bother to ping back but retrieved a different countermeasure, plain silt, which could not be foiled by lower pressure or water chemistry.

“GO!” He shouted at Druk. “Go! Squid, go,” the creature began pumping with all its might. It followed pure instinct and fled. The fantastic burst of speed almost swept Ice-Driller off, while his eight arms still clasped to the beast. They went slower, though the creature pumped harder and harder. It jerked and squealed. Ice-Driller couldn’t rationalize the frantic pumping coupled with the declining speed.

He twisted his sound organ to look behind him and sent small bursts to the two objects he was towing. At the bottom of the net, right above the rope that connected to Study-Up’s research tube, was a metal hook with rope attached.

He could sense from their constant that one guard had control and was fighting to secure it to a cleft of ice. The other guard darted to help.

“Stop in the name of Deepvent.” The approaching guard called.

“Faster!” Ice-Driller ordered his squid. He partially dismounted, threw silt into the water for cover, and crawled back to the grappling hook.

Something popped.

Ice-Driller could hear the cargo net straining, and he fully dismounted. and nine tentacles were holding on to the net while one had a small knife. He let out a small ping and focused on the attached cable, but the darter squid and the tugging guard didn’t make the situation better.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

Snap. Ice-Driller cut the rope, but not before the net ripped loose. He, the darter squid, and initially the cargo of rolled metal pictures plummeted down the ice chute into the dark water.

Meanwhile, the buoyant tube of Study-Ups research (along with the attached cord and small part of the cargo net) halted, reversed directions, and floated up to the guards. Ice-Driller reached out with two free arms towards the tube.

He missed, but caught the torn end of the net.

“Gotcha.”

Now his body was being pulled down and up, resulting in strange noises as his body contorted. He squealed, but now five arms each were holding the upwards package and the lower cargo.

A few metal sonographic pictures fell out of the ripped net because of the darter-squid’s speed and riderless disposition.

With the cast-off silt. The guards were momentarily blinded. Ice-Driller had covered his exit. Eventually he tied the net back together with Study-Up’s tube connected by rope. Finally, he crawled into his seat on the squid. It surged swiftly through the sea.

At first, he only thought of the lost images that were falling down toward the seabed. He’d have to go through them later and see which ones he still kept.

But then it hit him. He had saved Study-Up’s experiment. ‘Most will only believe what they can taste and sample.’ he remembered her saying.

Ice-Driller took a circuitous route to Blowout Base. The water was frigid, and Ice-Driller felt lethargic. The wraps provided little insulation, and he wished for the warmer waters of Deepvent. He was in a half dreamy state when the darter-squid moved up the last crevasse.

Blowout Base was a small encampment originally built to study the effect of explosions on the shell between their universe and Nullworld. Mostly they released minor explosions and attempted to measure the non propagation of sound waves on the mysterious empty universe above.

The most recent explosion, the most interesting in his mind, also did not endear the Deepvent governance to their research. It began the chain reaction of sentiment and led to the current fiasco Ice-Driller found himself in. About thirty tides ago, they built and exploded the largest device they had ever constructed.

Icy water had burst forth into the Nullworld and eventually settled and coated the topside of the ice with a completely smooth surface. It was a massive explosion. It kept flowing and flowing past all their time and volume estimates.

During the outflow, sealed in the Blowout Base, Ice-Driller had for one split second thought his critics were correct, that the ice was a protective bubble that kept their universe from dying by being blasted into nothingness. But after the explosion, they sensed a slowing of flow.

Eventually, after three sleeps, the flow was down to a trickle, and eventually it stopped.

After more safety checks, they went up and investigated the surface with their sonar. They had made an extremely flat surface. They had impacted Nullworld from the bottom and bust through.

But they had done the damage to the society’s psyche. Tabloids told exaggerated fish-stories that the public gobbled up: ‘The explosion was so big it could have destroyed the universe,’ read the headline. It could have drained the entire sea if it was just a few percent bigger—all detritus, of course. They only quoted shrill scientists to sell subscriptions, and not the sane sober sounds of those actually doing the research.

They then applied the line of reasoning in reverse, huge explosions above the ice could be responsible for the sporadic impacts that were recorded by ancient texts of the original ice-explorers. Some of which triggered extinction events. The ice-shell had never been an impossible barrier. Though it still was a mental barrier for the public.

Ice-Driller approached the base and let out a soft call. “I’m here.” He rubbed the darter-squid on the flanks and got it to calm down. Then he dismounted.

“You’re back!” Study-up said.

He looked back at her and let out a subtle sound.

“I saved most of our research.” He showed her the net of his research, not observing that the tube of Study-Up’s research was not floating above him.

Study-Up came down and looked at it. She noticed the small hook through the soft part of the tube.

“It's no longer sealed. It was breached!” She flashed colors of anger and let out chirps of annoyance.

“I couldn’t help it.” Ice-Driller defended himself.

“Food is the ONLY thing the public is interested in.” She continued to flash blue. “Now breached, the Academy will marginalize me. ”

“I tried—I’m sorry. I held on with everything I had.”

Study-Up swam up with her research, leaving Ice-Driller alone with the squid.