Sphere (novel) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding, along with U.S. Navy personnel, are dispatched to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to explore a crashed spacecraft.

To their surprise, they discover the spacecraft is not alien, but an American spacecraft constructed in the future and apparently sent through time, crashing 350 years before its creation. On further exploration, the team discovers a mysterious spherical artifact, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, which quickly becomes the focus of their attention. Harry becomes quite certain that, because the ship's future builders didn't seem to learn that their ship had already been discovered, the members of the team aren't likely to survive. At this point, a storm traps the scientists on the ocean floor without contact or support from the surface for over a week.

The crew soon focuses on asking questions about the sphere and then on attempting to open it and learn about its nature, contents, and origin. Harry eventually succeeds in opening it and goes inside. Upon returning, he has a terrible headache and he remembers little about what happened inside or how he opened it. The scientists are eventually contacted by an intelligent, seemingly-friendly lifeform which calls itself Jerry, apparently from within the sphere. It first contacts them via a numeric code, which Harry translates. But while they struggle to communicate with Jerry, increasingly bizarre and deadly events occur, including the appearance of sea creatures that Beth claims don't exist. Jerry tells them he is "manifesting" the creatures. Members of the team start to die in various attacks by sea life, and the dwindling survivors struggle to placate the unthinkably powerful, childlike, and temperamental Jerry.

Norman suddenly has an important role when he realizes he must use psychology to keep the surviving team (now only himself, Beth, and Harry) alive by placating Jerry. Translating the original code himself, though, Norman discovers that Jerry is actually Harry: by entering the sphere, Harry acquired the power to manifest his subconscious thoughts into reality. As Harry noted his childhood fears of squids and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he has unconsciously created them as an enemy.

Beth and Norman tranquilize Harry with a powerful mixture of sedatives and wait for contact to be re-established with the surface. However, although Harry is sedated, the manifestations continue. Beth accuses Norman of having entered the sphere and gaining access to the power. Though unable to recall this incident, Norman is close to yielding until he watches a security video of Beth entering the sphere herself. Concluding that Norman is a threat to her, Beth irrationally plants potent explosives around the spacecraft and habitat and then attempts to suffocate Norman with the habitat's climate systems. Norman escapes to the spacecraft and, figuring out at last how to open it, enters the sphere. Norman begins to ascend by himself in the submarine, but realizes that he could never leave the others to die. Now with the same power of thought as Harry and Beth, Norman fights Beth and brings both her and Harry to the escape submarine before the explosives destroy the site.

Afterward, while in a surface decompression chamber, the three survivors ponder what to tell the Navy about what happened. Realizing they could not control the power, they decide to use the power to remove it from themselves and their memories simultaneously, replacing it with memories of a technical failure. Afterwards, as they mourn the colleagues lost to this scenario, Norman compliments Beth's appearance, saying that she looks lovely despite their hardship in the deep. Beth only smiles.