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We all live in a yellow submarine but our life is not of ease and the sea is not of green. We're operating in the Yellow Sea on the planet Cadiz, named for its walled continent, where the yellowness of its seas derives from this ocean's concentration of phytoplankton. To avoid disrupting the natural cycles of life, the scouts paint their subs to blend in with the ecology.
Behind the walls of the single continent, life apparently goes on but what life and how it operates remains a mystery, the hemispheric dome impenetrable to scans, whether in the visual spectrum or ultraviolet or infrared. So, we scouts sniffed around the oceans looking for clues, sidling up to the walls searching for ingress or evidence of egress but the continent remained locked away from investigation.
Impenetrable to more than our sensors, the domes stymied every investigative ploy we scouts could imagine driving the teams on planet below the ocean surface, the monitors orbiting, and the headquarters back in Known Space mad with frustration. Last week, against all policy as well as against all odds, my team surfaced, moved a boat up to the wall to attempt a physical insertion. Certainly, we realized success could trigger unwanted, unfortunate, unpredictable results but three years' frustration overwhelmed discipline, standing orders, and common sense. Failure, we reasoned, could trigger the same results that success might trigger. Assuming our presence to be unsuspected, an attempt at physical penetration might – hell, probably would – alert the residents to human presence. Still, we conned themselves into believing the attempt was for the best – the best reasons, the best motives, the best science.
Drawing operational command for this mission, I – my name is Mac - watched from the operations console while Manny and Moe made the trip. The cameras displayed their launch from the hull of the surfaced ship, their transit over the 200 meters of open water made less time consuming by the electric outboards that shallowing water eventually eliminated as an option. Mannie and Moe used oars to get their collapsible craft adjacent to the dome, reporting back to me that dome was a non-reflective colorless mass that extended into the water leaving no ground for them to stand on. Lacking purchase, the couple positioned their craft so that they could each pat the wall, first with an oar that met the stolidity of the wall with a jolt whose equal and opposite reaction caused them to reinsert oars into ocean to re-approach the wall.
Next, Mannie reached a gloved hand - they were suited for the occasion though the atmosphere did not demand this protocol but some precaution seemed prudent, even to a crew who abandoned protocol to make this foray - towards the dome. His gloved hand found the stolidity the same as the oar had found it: impenetrable.
His ungloved hand, though, slid through the stolidity, such an unexpected result Mannie came close to falling overboard, his body following naturally after his hand. He caught himself.
The discussion lasted no more than a minute, me agreeing with Mannie and Moe that one of them should make the incursion.