A tiny monster bumps the port. Needle teeth so long the mouth can't close, an eel-like body studded with glowing photophores— fifteen, twenty centimeters long, tops. It's not even big enough to make a sound when it hits and then it's gone, spinning away above them.

"Viperfish," Jarvis says.

Joel glances around at his passenger, hunched up beside him to take advantage of what might laughingly be called "the view". Jarvis is some sort of cellular physiologist out of Rand/Washington U., here to collect a mysterious package in a plain brown wrapper.

"See many of those?" he asks now.

Joel shakes his head. "Not this far down. Kind of unusual."

"Yeah, well, this whole area is unusual. That's why I'm here."

Joel checks tactical, nudges a trim tab.

"Now viperfish, they're not supposed to get any bigger than the one you just saw," Jarvis remarks. "But there was a guy, oh, back in the 1930s— Beebe his name was, the same guy they named— anyway, he swore he saw one that was over two meters long."

Joel grunts. "Didn't know people came down here back then."

"Yeah, well, they were just starting out. And everyone had always thought deepwater fish were these puny little midgets, because that's all they ever brought up in their trawls. But then Beebe sees this big ripping viperfish, and people start thinking hey, maybe we only caught little ones because all the big ones could outswim the trawls. Maybe the deep sea really is teeming with giant monsters."

"It's not," Joel says. "At least, not that I've seen."

"Yeah, well, that's what most people think. Every now and then you get pieces of something weird washing up, though. And of course there's Megamouth. And your garden-variety giant squid."

"They never get down this far. I bet none of your other giants do either. Not enough food."

"Except for the vents," Jarvis says.

"Except for the vents."

"Actually," Jarvis amends, "except for this vent."

The transponder line swings past, a silent metronome.

"Yeah," says Joel after a moment. "Why is that?"

"Well, we're not sure. We're working on it, though. That's what I'm doing here. Gonna bag one of those scaly mothers."

"You're kidding. We going to butt it to death with the hull?"

"Actually, it's already been bagged. The rifters got it for us a couple of days ago. All we do is pick it up."

"I could do that solo. Why'd you come along?"

"Got to check to make sure they did it right. Don't want the canister blowing up on the surface."

"And that extra tank you strapped onto my 'scaphe? The one with the biohazard stickers all over it?"

"Oh," Jarvis says. "That's just to sterilize the sample."

"Uh huh." Joel lets his eyes run over the panels. "You must pull a lot of weight back on shore."

"Oh? Why's that?"