For Susan Oshanek, on the off chance that she's still alive. And for Laurie Channer�who to my unexpectedly good fortune, definitely is. Prelude: Ceratius The abyss should shut you up. Sunlight hasn't touched these waters for a million years. Atmospheres accumulate by the hundreds here, the trenches could swallow a dozen Everests without burping. They say life itself got started in the deep sea. Maybe. It can't have been an easy birth, judging by the life that remains�monstrous things, twisted into nightmare shapes by lightless pressure and sheer chronic starvation. Even here, inside the hull, the abyss weighs on you like the vault of a cathedral. It's no place for trivial loudmouth bullshit. If you speak at all, you keep it down. But these tourists just don't seem to give a shit. Joel Kita's used to hearing a 'scaphe breathe around him, hearing it talk in clicks and hisses. He relies on those sounds; the readouts only confirm what the beast has already told him by the grumbling of its stomach.…