4

The submarine sank swiftly.  It plummeted, bow first, to a thousand feet.  There, well beyond its test depth, the pressure hull finally gave way, in a dozen places at once.  Air rushed from ruptures of torn metal, the boat shuddered and torqued.  Its hydrodynamics destroyed, it began to tumble.

Down, down it went, passing through two thousand feet, then five thousand.  And with every thirty-three feet another fifteen pounds of water pressure forced the hull, rushed into tiny pockets of residual air and crushed them like grapes.  At ten thousand feet, more than two tons of water pressed against every square millimeter of steel, and the last scintilla of air popped from the shattered hulk and drifted upward in the darkness.

The submarine descended as if it were a discarded soda can, until finally it struck a mountainside, bounced and rolled in slow motion, throwing clouds of unseen silt and dislodging boulders that accompanied it into a stygian canyon.  There, at last, it came to a halt, a heap of twisted steel.

*          *          *          *          *

In the rubble of the bow, the huge box, cast of bronze, sealed with rubber, denied penetration to the seeking sea.

The silt settled, time passed.  Legions of infinitesimal organisms that patrolled the abyss consumed what was edible.

Calm returned to the ocean bottom, and the relentless cycle of life and death went on.