I came here for the first time 50 years ago,
on my honeymoon.
It was certainly not my intention to be unfaithful,
but here on these cliffs I fell under the spell of a mistress.
One that has not released her grip in all these years.
I was just a young geologist,
fascinated by the layered rocks thrust up from the deep oceans,
millions of years ago.
Here is where I found
the very strange fossilised burrows
of an animal that lived hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs.
Only now, after 50 years,
do we have a chance to solve this great mystery,
and maybe catch the oldest living fossil on earth,
Paleodictyon Nodosum.
The research vessel Atlantis,
destination is the mid-Atlantic ridge system
500 miles ahead and 12,000 ft. down.
On board are some 58 sailors,
engineers, and scientists,
including geologist Peter Rona,
and palaeontologist Dolf Seilacher.
It was Peter Rona who found mysterious patterns of holes on the deep sea floor.
After many letters back and forth,
here we were,
two old fossils with the chance to solve a wonderful puzzle of science.
The deep ocean submersible Alvin.
She has spent more hours in the deep sea than all of the world's submersibles combined.
For the upcoming dives,
she is being outfitted with high resolution cameras
and 4000 Watts of illumination.
Great care is taken in the preparation of each dive.
For Alvin and her crew are bound for the harshest place on earth.
The search for the oldest living fossil actually began 30 years earlier
on a series of dives in another ocean entirely
the eastern Pacific.
Scientists were investigating a curious temperature differential in the water column.
What they found
was clearly some kind of a volcanic process that was building elaborate structures.
Water descending into fissures in the sea floor
was apparently interacting with the hot rocks beneath
to re-emerge as a black cocktail of poison chemicals.
While it was difficult for scientists to understand the geological processes at work,
the animals living on the chimneys were virtually impossible to comprehend.
The sub's temperature probes indicated water hot enough to melt lead
and it was heavily laden with hydrogen sulphide.
There should have been nothing alive here at all.
Among these amazing creatures was the worm, alvinella.
Like tiny court jesters mocking science itself,
they danced in and out of the poison water,
hot enough to boil a lobster bright red.
As sunlight creatures,
we didn't think to look in the dark for life,
nor did we think to look in water hot enough to boil us alive.
The discovery of hydrothermal vents in the Pacific near Galapagos
was the first step in a 30 year quest
to connect Silicer's ancient fossils on the cliffs of Spain
with the mysterious lifeforms on the mid-Atlantic sea floor.
Human exploration of the deep sea is a slow, complex and dangerous process.
Finding the target miles below the ship will be difficult enough.
Recovering a living specimen would be a triumph for the team.
On board this dive is marine geologist Peter Rona.
Chief pilot is Bruce Strickrott,
observer is palaeontologist Dolf Seilacher.
It will take over two hours for Alvin to make the 2 1/2 mile journey to the sea floor.
Within the first thousand feet,
all traces of sunlight will disappear.
As the sub descends,
there is always a chance scientists may glimpse a creature never before seen by human eyes,
and perhaps never to be seen again.
The soft-bodied creatures of the sea
will hardly ever leave a trace behind
no fossil that a palaeontologist could study millions of years later.
Yet these creatures were probably around hundreds of millions or even a billion years ago
there is just no way for us to know.
They are like phantoms of the sea.
Travelling to the sea floor and back
will use up five hours of Alvin's air supply and battery power,
leaving scientists with only four hours to find their target and recover their specimens.
Depending on ocean currents, however,
Alvin may have drifted well off course on the long trip down.
I was expecting only mud in every direction.
We had landed on the most fantastic landscape I had ever seen.
This was a very recent eruption.
I could easily imagine the red-hot lava boiling up from deep below,
creating almost animal-like shapes the size of a Volkswagen beetle.
It felt like a journey to the centre of the earth.
Here in the deep Atlantic where the American and European plates rub together,
Alvin can actually fly from the American plate to the European
in not much longer than the blink of an eye.
It is called, simply, the mid-ocean Ridge.
10,000 ft. high, 500 mile wide,
and some 40,000 miles long.
It is the largest geological feature on the face of the earth.
The outer shell of the earth floats on a hot underlying layer.
Where the plates move apart,
magma rises, to form the mid-Ocean Ridge.
This volcanic system is the oven of planet Earth.
It bakes the earth's crust on a daily basis,
it boils sea water,
serving-up nutrients to creatures of the abyss and occasionally,
it roasts them alive.
In the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Mexico,
the animals were helpless in the face of molten lava
suddenly emerging from the surrounding crevasses.
Between one Alvin dive and the next,
an extraordinary world simply disappeared.
Replacing it, were sculptures of cooled rock,
left behind after most of the lava had flowed back down into the volcano.
It was like the ruins of an ancient civilisation.
A grim memorial to an oasis of life burned away,
perhaps never to return.
But when Alvin descended after the eruption,
scientist were puzzled by what they saw.
As they approached the volcano at 9?north,
mysterious spaghetti worms covered the rocks
and there were large anemones growing nearby.
Galatheid crabs,
numerous species of octopus,
including something that they named "Dumbo",
whose purpose at the edge of this poison oasis defied comprehension.
There was zoarcid fish,
giant tubeworms
and golden mussels everywhere.
There were billions of tiny white feather dusters,
filtering nutrients from the hot water emerging from the rocks.
Life had not just returned to the volcano at nine north
in a few short of years,
it was back with a scale and vigour almost beyond belief.
This was truly an extraordinary place, like no other on earth.
It had seen a billion years of darkness,
yet there was no night.
It was a place without seasons, without rest, without time.
A world driven by the rhythms of the inner earth.
At the centre of this strange resurrection of life
was a magnificent 40 ft. high volcanic monolith,
decorated with six-foot long tubeworms.
The tubeworms clearly prospered amongst the hottest water as the pillar grew upwards.
The most important clue lay at the bottom of the pillar.
Here, there were tubes, but no worms.
Unable to move, and left behind in the cold,
these unfortunate creatures had apparently starved to death.
With no mouth and no stomach,
and planted permanently in the rock,
the tubeworms at first seemed more like plants than animals.
Scientists, however, found specialised bacteria in the tubeworms' tissues
that were using chemical energy and hot water to make nutrients.
The bacteria were, in effect, turning poison into food
and sharing it with their host, the tubeworm.
The red filaments on the top of the worm
draw hydrogen sulphide from the water to feed the bacteria inside.
This miracle is called chemosynthesis.
Scientist were astonished to discover the tubeworms' red colour
comes from blood containing haemoglobin
very much like our own.
So who are these fantastic creatures of the dark,
who share with us the very blood that flows through our veins?
5 billion years ago, a giant star,
a 100 times greater than our own sun,
blew itself into a supernova.
Throughout the remaining cloud of gas and debris,
there accumulated enough matter to reignite new stars,
including our own Sun.
It is believed that the planets then formed,
orbiting round the Sun,
growing larger and larger as they acquired debris from space.
As the earth cooled and built a solid crust,
the oceans were able to form.
Life then flourished,
blanketing the earth with green plants
by harnessing energy from the Sun,
using photosynthesis.
We once believed the Sun's radiation to be the only source of energy for all life on earth.
But deep beneath the earth's crust, there remains an ancient furnace,
fuelled by decaying radiation from that long-ago giant star.
It is this energy that gives life to the extraordinary animals of the deep sea.
An eruption of life, driven by the embers of a dead star,
still burning, deep within the earth.
Over the years, as Alvin threw her beams of light across the abyss,
the spirit of this volcanic forces has begun to seem almost limitless.
Just as scientists managed to unravel one mystery,
another would loom out of the darkness.
They call it "lost city".
Vast cathedrals are formed as water descends into the mantle of the earth,
then heats-up chemically and reappears,
building enormous sculptures of limestone.
The bacteria living here,
and the ecosystem around them
are based on an ancient methane chemistry,
unlike any of the vents previously discovered.
Without these new discoveries in the deep sea,
mysteries like those found on the cliffs in Spain would remain forever locked in stone.
The fossils Dolf Seilacher found here
are among the first evidence that life on earth would learn to build complex structures,
but how?
And why?
Paleodictyon is a living fossil.
The oldest were simple meanders,
made by animals struggling in the mud.
But over hundreds of millions of years,
the tunnels became more and more elaborate
until these creatures learned to build a perfect hexagonal pattern.
This creature and its tunnels survived mass extinctions that killed
almost all other life on earth.
So what was it is wonderful secret?
Once scientists knew where to look,
they began to find an almost limitless variety of hydrothermal structures
growing along the mid-Atlantic ridge.
They make possible a fantastic wilderness of life as rich as anywhere on earth.
It was very difficult to imagine that these structures
were not created for the animals inside.
The bowls are so perfect to serve up the soup of bacteria for the shrimp to eat.
Everywhere we went, the geology was as-if alive.
Massive structures growing not in millions of years,
but almost before our eyes.
For years, almost every dive would produce more questions than answers,
around almost every corner, another puzzle.
But after decades of exploration and study,
some mysteries began to unfold.
At the centre of the relationship between the animals
and the flow of energy from the chimneys,
are hundreds of species of specialised bacteria
growing on the rocks.
The bacteria use chemical energy from the hot water
to produce nutrients necessary to sustain their metabolism.
The shrimp grazing on the rocks use the bacteria as food.
For the shrimp there is a fine line between a good, solid meal and getting burned alive.
The white shrimp at the top of this mound
has burned off most of its extremities whilst grazing among the hot rocks.
What began as a curiosity in that Pacific
has become a vast worldwide phenomenon.
Dozens of new sites have been explored throughout the mid Ocean Ridge system.
Scientists were not expecting much of interest on the mid-Atlantic ridge.
What they found was the most fantastic vent of them all.
The size and shape of a football stadium,
they dubbed it the Houston Astrodome.
Chemosynthetic bacteria, it turns out,
were not just growing on the rocks, but on the shrimps, themselves.
The shrimp are coated in a slimy layer of bacteria,
which they scrape off and eat.
The shrimp seem to fight for position in the hot water,
in order to feed their coat of bacteria.
When scientist began to look beyond the obvious feeding patterns of the animals,
and probe deeper into the chimney walls themselves,
they made perhaps the most astonishing discovery.
In total darkness,
bathed in the poison breath of the inner earth,
at 3500 lb. of pressure per square inch
and temperatures exceeding 230?Fahrenheit,
lives the microscopic hyperthermaphile.
We did not even think to look here for life.
There is no harsher environment on earth.
There is no creature more alien to us.
Yet as we journey down deeper among the molecules of its DNA,
we reach the four base chemicals of life's universal alphabet.
This is the language of human DNA.
And in this, we are most certainly related.
There is a good chance that this is where life began on earth.
And here among the embers of that long ago dead star,
is where we began our journey, 5 billion years ago.
With the discovery of microbes living in the vents,
perhaps miles below the sea floor,
scientist began to consider that most of the biomass on earth might well live here,
beneath the volcanoes of the deep sea.
No one knows how or why a vent shuts off,
but here, where billions of creatures once thrived,
all that remains are great mounds of minerals.
Iron, zinc, silver and gold
once spewed from the furnaces beneath.
There is little in this metallic desert to sustain life.
To survive here
would require an entirely different strategy than a tubeworm,
a clam, or a shrimp could muster.
While most scientists barely noticed this place on their way to the hot spots nearby,
Seilacher and Rona was search here
among the remnants of a dead volcano
for their mysterious crop circles of the deep
and a creature that thrives were others cannot.
We looked in the area people call the 'valley of paleodictyon'.
I was surprised that we should be looking where there was no obvious life,
but that is perhaps the animals' secret.
I certainly had not expected to find so many.
They were all over the place by the thousands.
As soon as I got there and looked at the hexagon shape,
and the arrangement of the holes,
I knew this was my paleodictyon nodosum.
The creature is probably farming bacteria
like the shrimp and the tubeworms.
But unlike them, it must be very efficient because the nutrients are so sparse.
We had very little time left so the sub pilot went to work, right away.
After all the trouble of finding them,
collecting some samples would be fairly easy.
At last, after eight hours in the sub and 50 years on the cliffs of Spain,
we finally had the paleodictyon.
It was a great moment.
We fully expected the creature to come swimming out at any moment.
But she did not.
Then we went in after it.
It was important for me that the tunnels would be there.
And the tunnels were there.
But not a creature in any of them.
Nothing.
There have been a dozen dives to the Valley of the paleodictyon over 10 years.
They have not yet found the animal itself,
but they have discovered its secret.
They believe the creature is farming bacteria in its tunnels,
and this enables it to live frugally on the sparse chemical remnants
of the dead volcano.
Because their tunnels match those on the cliffs of Spain,
it suggests they have outlived almost all other forms of life on earth.
The important thing is that it is still alive and digging it is wonderful burrows.
The same as the fossils I found 50 years ago on my honeymoon.
But she is very shy and we have not seen her.
And I probably never will.
But that is better, I think, because I can still imagine anything I want.
And my wife, Edith,
would have been happy that I never found my mistress of the deep.
As long as we have had eyes to see,
we have gazed into the night sky
and tried to imagine what might be bathed in the light of distant stars.
We know now,
that the spirit of life also thrives in darkness,
among the embers of the dead stars,
and we must try to imagine that as well.
50年前，我第一次来到这里
那时我正在度蜜月
我并非有意不忠于我的妻子
但是这里的悬崖对我来说 却有着情人般的魅力
这些年来它一直使我魂牵梦萦
那时我只是年轻的地质学家
痴迷于亿万年前隆起自深海的古老岩层
我在这里发现了
非常奇怪的石化洞穴
它可能是某种比恐龙还要 早几亿年的动物的住室
直到50年后的今天
我们终于有机会解开这个谜团
甚至有可能捕获地球上最古老的活化石
蜂巢状古网迹
考察船“亚特兰蒂斯号”
正驶向长500英里、 深12000英尺的大西洋中脊
船上大约有58名水手、工程师和科学家
其中包括地质学家Peter Rona
古生物学家Dolf Seilacher
Peter Rona找到了深海海床上 那些神秘的洞穴标本
经过多次书信往来， 我们最后聚到了这儿
两个老顽固一心想要 解开这个有趣的科学谜案
深海潜水艇“阿尔文号”
它的深海作业时间比世界上 其它所有潜水器的总和还要长
为了准备下一次潜水
它已配备了高清晰摄像镜头
和4000瓦探照灯
每次潜水都得精心准备
因为“阿尔文号”和里面的工作人员 将驶往地球上最严酷的地方
加拉帕戈斯海沟 太平洋 8600英尺
搜寻古老活化石的工作开始于30年前
潜水作业几乎遍及另一片大洋
东太平洋
科学家们研究了海水 垂直面存在的奇异温差
他们发现
海底显然存在着一些 正在创造复杂地形的火山活动
涌入海底裂缝的海水
立刻与下面的炙热岩石发生反应
喷射出一股股乌黑的化学毒烟
了解这些地质活动的过程 对科学家们来说已属不易
然而以浓烟为生的动物 则是彻底的令人费解
潜水艇上的温度计显示 这里的水温高到足以熔化铅
而且充斥着大量硫化氢
这里本不应该有生物存在
这些奇异的生物中 有一种叫做庞贝虫的蠕虫
它们就像是戏弄着科学的宫廷小丑
在这些足以烫熟龙虾的 剧毒泉流中搔首弄姿
我们是依赖阳光的生物
并不指望在黑暗中遇见生命
我们也不可能在足以 把我们煮熟的沸水中四下寻觅
勘探太平洋加拉帕戈斯群岛 附近的热液喷口
是30年来研究工作的第一步
以此了解Seilacher那些 西班牙悬崖上的古老化石
和中大西洋海底神秘生命形态的关系
人类的深海探险是一个 缓慢、复杂而又危险的过程
寻找船舶下几英里的目标极为困难
对于研究小组来说， 捕获活的样本便已是成功
……1号舱门，你得抓住这边， 如果你想用右舷的，你就得抓住另一边
你的操控杆在那里
那是操控杆
小心点
对，得小心，尤其是到达海底时
参加这次潜水的有 海洋地质学家Peter Rona
领航员Bruce Strickrott
观察员古生物学家Dolf Seilacher
“阿尔文号”得行驶2小时以上 才能完成2.5英里的航程到达海底
在最初的1000英尺
阳光逐渐消失
随着潜艇的下沉
科学家们总能发现 人类以前从未见过的生物
而且以后恐怕也见不到了
这些身体柔软的海洋生物
几乎不会留下任何踪迹
不会有化石供几百万年后的 古生物学家研究
然而这些生物很有可能 已存在了数百万年，甚至数十亿年
我们对此无从得知
它们就像是海中的幽灵
深入海底的往返旅程
将使“阿尔文号”消耗掉 5小时的氧气和电力
因此科学家们仅有4小时的 时间寻找目标和采集标本
可是，由于洋流的影响
“阿尔文号”很可能 在漫长的行程中偏离航道
我料到这周围都是同一种泥岩
我们降落的地方有一组 我所见过的最古怪的地貌
这是最近的一次喷发
不难想象炽热的岩浆流 从地底深处喷涌而出的情景
它们变成了动物一样的形状， 足有大众甲壳虫轿车那么大
我感觉像是在经历一趟地心之旅
这片大西洋海床是美洲板块 和欧洲板块的磨合边缘
实际上“阿尔文号” 从美洲板块驶进欧洲板块
只是一眨眼的功夫
它叫做中洋脊
高10000英尺，宽500英里
长度约为40000英里
它是地球表面最大的地形
地球外部的地壳漂浮于炙热的岩流层上方
在板块分离的地方
熔岩上涌，形成了中洋脊
这些火山系好比地球上的火炉
日复一如地烘烤地壳
煮沸海水
为深海生物提供营养， 偶尔也将它们活活烤死
在东太平洋的墨西哥海岸外
动物们对周围裂缝中 突然喷涌出的熔岩无所适从
仅仅是在“阿尔文号”两次潜水之间
一个奇异的世界完全消失了
取而代之的是大部分熔岩返回 火山后留下的一座座冰冷的石像
它仿佛是古代文明的废墟
记录了生命绿洲烧毁时的惨象
也许再也不能回到从前
可是当“阿尔文号”下潜到喷发后的海底
科学家们看到的情景却使他们大为不解
在北纬9°的火山附近
岩石上爬满了神秘的扁蛰虫
附近还生长着大型海葵
刺铠虾
种类繁多的章鱼
包括一种绰号为“小飞象”的章鱼
它来到这个剧毒绿洲边缘的 目的着实令人费解
这里有绵鳚
大管虫
金色的贻贝遍地都是
无数微小的白毛掸虫
从不断涌出岩石的热水中 过滤着营养物质
生命回到了北纬9°的火山附近
短短几年内
这里生机勃勃的景象已超出人们的想象
这确实是个奇异的地方， 和地球上其它地方都不一样
这里经历了数十亿年的黑暗
然而却从来没有夜晚
这是个没有季节、 没有静止、没有时间的地方
一个由地心律动控制的世界
在这个生命复活的中心地带
雄伟的火山巨石矗立高达40英尺
上面布满了6英尺长的管虫
管虫在沸水中的兴盛 显然伴随着石柱的升高
最重要的线索位于石柱底部
这里只有管室，而没有虫体
既不能动，又得面临寒冷
显然这些不幸的动物是死于饥荒
由于没有口和肠胃
而且定居在岩石上
管虫给人的第一印象 更像是植物，而并非动物
不过，科学家们发现， 管虫体内的特化细菌
能利用化学能和热水制造营养物质
实际上，细菌把“毒药”变成了食物
并和它的宿主——管虫一起分享
虫体顶部的血红羽鳃
能从水中吸收硫化氢， 提供给体内的细菌
这一奇迹称为化能合成
科学家们吃惊地发现，管虫红色 血液中的血红蛋白与我们的非常相似
这些黑暗中的珍奇生物究竟是什么呢
它们体内为何流淌着 和我们血管中一样的血液呢
50亿年前，一颗巨星
一颗比我们的太阳还要大100倍的星球
爆炸成一颗超新星
残留的星云由气体和尘埃组成
积累的物质足以重新凝聚成新的星球
包括我们的太阳
人们认为，随后形成的行星
一边围绕太阳转动
一边从宇宙中吸收尘埃，越长越大
由于地球冷却并有了坚硬的地壳
于是海洋开始形成
生命随后繁荣起来
布满全球的绿色植物
利用太阳的能量
进行光合作用
我们曾经认为太阳辐射是 地球上所有生命的唯一能量来源
但地壳深处却有一口古老的大熔炉
远古巨星的衰变辐射使它燃烧至今
这些能量为那些奇异的 深海生物带来了生机
生命爆发的动力来自死亡恒星的灰烬
它们至今仍在地球深处燃烧
数年来，“阿尔文号”的 光束不断穿透深渊
这座火山森林开始展现出它的无穷魅力
科学家们刚解开一个谜团
又有另一个从黑暗中隐现出来
他们称之为“失落之城”
“大教堂”的形成是因为 海水沉降至地壳内部
经由化学加热后再次涌出
从而形成了巨大的石灰岩柱群
在这里生长的细菌
以及它们周围的生态系统
都依赖于古老的甲烷化学作用
这与之前发现的热液喷口有所不同
如果没有这些深海里的最新发现
西班牙悬崖上的那些谜团 永远不可能水落石出
Dolf Seilacher在这里发现的化石
是最早证明地球生物 学会建造复杂结构的证据之一
那是怎么回事呢
又是为什么呢
古网迹是一种活化石
最早以前只是蜿蜒的形状
由泥沙中挣扎的动物制造
可是几亿年之后
这些隧洞变得越来越精致
直到这些生物学会建造 完美的六边形住室
这种生物和它的住室从几乎消灭 所有地球生命的大灭绝中幸存下来
那么这个有趣的谜底到底是什么呢
科学家们一旦得知该去何处寻找
他们便开始堪察沿着中洋脊 分布的无数种热泉构造
它们使这片神奇的生命旷野 变得与地球上其它地方一样富饶
很难想象这些结构 并非为里面的动物而建
完好的石碗为小虾们 提供了一碗碗可口的“菌汤”
我们所到之处，地面仿佛都是活的
巨大的结构体并非形成自亿万年间
却几乎就在我们眼前生长
数年来，几乎每次潜航都会 带来更多的疑问，而并非答案
几乎每一个角落都存在着另一种困惑
不过经过数十年的勘探和研究
一些谜底终于开始浮现
动物和喷口中的流动能量 息息相关，这一关系的核心
是数百种生长在岩石上的特化细菌
细菌利用热水中的化学能
制造必需的营养物质 以维持它们的新陈代谢
在岩石上觅食的虾则把细菌当成是食物
对于虾来说，吃上一顿美味大餐 和被活活烫死仅有一线之隔
趴在石丘顶部的白虾
在灼热岩石上觅食的同时， 也把自己推向了死亡的边缘
热泉最初只是太平洋的珍奇事物
如今却成为了全世界普遍存在的现象
中洋脊系中已勘探出数十个新的地点
科学家们本不期望 大西洋中脊能有什么惊喜
但他们发现了最不寻常的热液喷口
它的大小和形状和一块足球场差不多
他们把它叫做“休斯顿天文体育馆”
这里的化能自养细菌
不只是生长在岩石上，还生长在虾的身上
虾穿上了一件粘糊糊的细菌“外套”
不时把它们刮下来取食
虾似乎得在热水中抢夺位置
以养活它们身上的菌落
当科学家们开始探寻 并非显而易见的动物取食方式
并探察喷口深处的石壁时
他们有了或许是迄今为止最惊人的发现
在这个彻底黑暗
充斥着地心毒气
压力达3500磅/平方英寸
温度高达华氏230度的地方
生活着微小的嗜热生物
我们甚至并不指望在此找到生命
地球上再也没有比这更极端的环境
也没有比这更使我们觉得 像是来自外星的生物
然而当我们继续深入， 研究它们的DNA分子时
我们发现了通用的生命符号 ——4种碱基分子
这也是人类的DNA代码
就这点而言，我们肯定是有关系的
这里很有可能就是地球生命的起点
在这些远古死亡恒星的灰烬中
我们于50亿年前开始了我们的生命之旅
由于在喷口附近发现了微生物
可能还存在于海底之下几英里处
科学家们开始认为，在火山和深海之间的 这个地方才是地球上生物量最大的生命绿洲
没有人知道喷口关闭的原因和过程
可是这里曾经是 无数生物繁荣昌盛的家园
如今却只剩下了一座座巨大的矿山
铁、锌、银，还有金
都是从地底大熔炉中喷涌出来的
这片金属沙漠中 几乎没有什么能维持生命
若想在此生存
需要采用与管虫、蛤、虾等 完全不同的策略
大部分科学家在寻找附近热泉的 途中仅仅只是注意到了这里
Seilacher和Rona却在这里堪察
在这些死火山的残骸中
搜寻神秘的深海“麦田圈”
以及唯一能在此繁衍的生物
我们在一个被人们叫做 “古网迹山谷”的地方搜寻
我感到惊讶的是，我们拜访的 这个地方看似没有生命
但却可能藏有动物的秘密
我没有料到竟然能找到这么多
它们遍布这个地方，有好几千个
我在那儿看到了 六边形的洞和它们的排列形状
我马上意识到这就是我的蜂巢状古网迹
这种动物很可能养着细菌
就像虾和管虫那样
可是和它们不同的是，它必须非常有效率， 因为这里的营养物质相当匮乏
我们的时间不多了， 所以潜艇领航员立刻开始工作
相比搜寻时的所有困难
现在的取样工作则要轻松得多
好了，Bruce，慢点，再慢点，向右
好，开始吧，放下去，你正好在它上面
慢慢地放下去，你能看到它吗
往下，就是那儿，对了
最后，经过8小时的潜航 和50年的西班牙攀岩
我们终于获得了古网迹
这是伟大的时刻
我们一直期盼着这只动物随时游出洞外
可它没有
于是我们只能进去找它
对我来说很重要的一点是， 样本中必须有隧洞
而里面确有隧洞
可是哪里都没有动物的踪影
什么也没有
过去10年来，已有十多次潜航 到达过“古网迹山谷”
可是他们也没有找到动物
不过他们发现了它的秘密
他们认为这种动物在隧洞中养着细菌
使得它能最节省地利用稀少的 死火山化学残留物维持生计
由于它们的住室和西班牙 悬崖上的那些非常吻合
说明它们的历史远比地球上 几乎所有其它生命形态都更悠久
重要的是它们仍然还活着， 仍在海底建造着精致的“小屋”
就像我50年前度蜜月时 找到的那块化石上的一样
可是它很害羞，我们都没有见过它
可能我永远也见不到它了
不过我想这也许更好， 因为我依旧可以想我所想
我的妻子Edith
应该会非常高兴，因为我永远 都不能与深海里的情人相会
自从我们有了眼睛
我们不时地瞭望夜空
想象着那些遥远星球的 光辉中笼罩着些什么
我们如今知道
生命的活力同样在无尽的黑暗中奔腾
在死亡恒星的灰烬中爆发
也许我们也应该想想这些