The Deep House

Three hundred metres down, thirty-one times the weight of the sky is pressing on the walls.

Immy Roake and her saturation crew will live in the Pelagia Research Habitat for thirty-five days, breathing helium, speaking in squeaks, and sealed away from the surface by a trunk of steel and a rule nobody is allowed to break. Above them, in the dry control module, sit the people who can bring them home. Below them, on the dark Kessler Shelf, something has begun to rise.

The first message arrives wi...