andall Nightingale is the leader of a survey team on the planet Malieva III, which has been traveling for thousands of years through an interstellar dust cloud which has changed it into a frozen world. The mission quickly ends in disaster, however, when most of his crew is killed by swarms of birds, and the survivors flee, leaving one lander behind.
Twenty years later, the science vessel Wendy Jay returns to Malieva III, now renamed Deepsix, with hundreds of physicists and planetologists. They have come, not to explore Deepsix, but to record its destruction as it collides with a rogue Jovian planet. As they prepare to record Deepsix’s demise, they discover a tower on the surface that is evidence of intelligent life--but the Wendy Jay has no landers that can reach the planet’s surface.
The nearest archeological vessel, captained by Pricilla "Hutch" Hutchins, is diverted to Deepsix to investigate. Nightingale is a passenger on the ship. Less than two weeks before the planet’s surface will be destroyed, they arrive and take a small team to investigate the tower. Meanwhile, a luxury liner filled with hundreds of rich tourists arrives to view the cataclysm. Among the passengers is Gregory McAllister, world-renowned author and feared iconoclast. He convinces his captain to allow him and a beautiful young reporter to take their only lander to the tower to retrieve artifacts.
When an earthquake destroys both landers and several members of the crew, Hutch, Nightingale, McAllister and the other survivors’ only hope for escape is to travel by foot to retrieve the lander abandoned 20 years before. Meanwhile, scientists on the Wendy Jay make an astounding discovery--the drifting remnant of a space elevator that may provide the only means to rescue the humans stranded on Deepsix.
A hybrid hard SF novel
Deepsix combines two of the forms of science fiction for which Jack McDevitt is best known, the planetary disaster novel and the alien archeological SF story. McDevitt also adds another staple of hard SF, the desperate struggle of a small group of space explorers shipwrecked on a harsh alien world who must survive a perilous trek across the planet to survive. The novel’s protagonist, Pricilla Hutchins, also appeared in McDevitt’s 1994 novel, The Engines of God.
All of the elements of McDevitt’s novel will be intimately familiar to any veteran science fiction reader. But McDevitt handles the mixture well, and adds sufficient surprises to keep the narrative interesting throughout the book-- with the exception of some rather tedious interludes involving the scientists and tourist volunteers working to engineer the astounding device that might allow some of the humans on Deepsix a chance to be rescued. One occasionally yearns to return to the more compelling story of the group trying to survive on the planet.
The characterization in the novel is above average for hard SF, with both Hutch and Nightingale being quite likable, and McAllister being most interesting. The main characters, especially McAllister, evolve during their travails, and are clearly changed by their experiences.
Deepsix may not contain much novel or new--except possibly the exact manner of the final rescue, which I will not reveal--but it is a satisfying blend that incorporates many of the most reliable tropes and themes of the genre.
