At the far end of the van was Captain Jameson, absently sucking on a toothpick. In front of him were the controls that formed an extension of the bridge. Even though the ship’s propellers and thrusters were being controlled by computer to keep it stationary over the well head, Captain Jameson could override the system if the need arose during diving operations.
“God damn it!” Mark spat. He slammed a pencil he’d been unconsciously torturing to the countertop and stood up. “What’s the divers’ depth?”
“Passing through six hundred ten feet, sir,” the winch operator reported.
“Try the Oceanus again!” Mark barked to Larry. He started to pace back and forth. He had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it was getting worse. He began to lambaste himself for encouraging Perry Bergman to go on the dive. Being personally aware of Dr. Newell’s interest in the seamount and her desire to make purely exploratory dives, he worried that she might try to impress the president to get her way. That might mean she’d pressure Donald to do things he might not normally do, and Mark was aware that Dr. Newell was the only person on the ship who potentially had that kind of influence over the normally strictly-by-the-book ex-naval line officer.
Mark shuddered. It would be a disaster of the first order if the submersible got wedged in a fissure or a crevice where it may have descended to examine a particular geological feature up close. That had almost happened to the submersible Alvin , out of Woods Hole, and the near tragedy had been on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, not that far away from their present location.
“Still no response,” Larry said after several unsuccessful tries to raise the Oceanus on the UQC.
“Any sign of the submersible on side-scan sonar?” Mark demanded from the sonar operator.
“That’s a negative,” Peter said. “And bottom hydrophones have no contact with their tracking beacon. The thermocline they found must be impressive. It’s like they dropped down into the ocean floor.”
Mark stopped his pacing and looked back at the clock. “How long has it been since that tremor?” he asked.
“That was more than a tremor,” Larry said. “Tad Messenger measured it four point four on the Richter scale.”
“I’m not surprised-it knocked over that pile of pipe on the deck,” Mark said. “And as much as we felt it up here, it would have been a hell of a lot worse on the bottom. How long ago was it?”
Larry looked down at his log. “It’s been almost four minutes. You don’t think that has anything to do with our not hearing from the Oceanus, do you?”
Mark was reluctant to answer. He was not superstitious, yet he hated to voice his worries, as if articulating them made them that much more possible. But he was concerned that the 4.4 earthquake may have caused a rock slide that trapped the Oceanus. Such a catastrophe surely wasn’t out of the question if Donald had indeed descended into a narrow depression at Suzanne’s insistence.
“Let me talk to the divers,” Mark said. He walked over to Larry and took the mike. While he pondered what he wanted to say, he glanced up at the monitor where he could see the tops of the heads and the foreshortened bodies of the three men.
“Shit, man!” Michael moaned. “You just kicked me in the balls!” His voice came out as a series of squeaks and squeals that would have been mostly unintelligible to normal humans. The distortion was a function of the helium he was breathing in place of nitrogen.
At the equivalent pressure of 980 feet of seawater, nitrogen acted as an anesthetic. Replacing the nitrogen with helium solved the problem but caused marked changes in voice. The divers were used to it. Although they sounded like Walt Disney’s Donald Duck, they could understand each other perfectly.
“Then get your balls out of my way,” Richard said. “I’m having trouble getting these freaking fins on.”
All three divers were wedged up inside the diving bell, whose pressure hull was a sphere a mere eight feet in diameter. Crammed in with them were all their diving equipment, many hundreds of feet of looped hose, and all the necessary instrumentation.
“Get out of the way, he says,” Michael jeered. “What do you want me to do, step outside?”
A speaker crackled to life. It was mounted at the very apex of the sphere next to a tiny camcorder fitted with a fish-eye lens. Although the divers knew they were being constantly observed, they were totally indifferent to the surveillance.
“Let me have your attention, men!” Mark commanded. In contrast to the divers’, his voice sounded relatively normal. “This is the operations commander.”
“Holy crap!” Richard complained as he eyed the swim fin that was giving him the problem. “No wonder I can’t get this freaking thing on. It ain’t mine. It’s yours, Donaghue.” Without warning Richard clobbered Michael over the head with the flipper. Michael was troubled by the blow only because it knocked off his prized Red Sox cap. The cap tumbled down into the trunk, coming to a rest on the sealed hatch.
“Hey, nobody move!” Michael said. “Mazzola, get my hat for me! I don’t want it to get wet.” Michael was already fully outfitted for the dive in his neoprene dry suit complete with the buoyancy control vest and weights. The ability to bend over, as would be required to retrieve the hat, was out of the question.
“Gentlemen!” Mark’s voice was louder and more insistent.
“Screw you,” Louis said. “I might be bell diver, but I’m not your slave.”
“Hey, listen up, you animals!” Larry’s voice yelled from the tiny speaker. The sound reverberated around the cramped sphere at a level just shy of pain. “Mr. Davidson wants a word with you, so shut up!”
Richard shoved the flipper and its mate into Michael’s hands, then looked up at the camera. “All right already,” he said. “We’re listening.”
“Stand by for a moment,” Larry’s voice said. “We didn’t realize the helium unscrambler wasn’t on line.”
“So let me have my fins,” Richard said to Michael in the interim.
“You mean the ones I have on aren’t mine?”
“Duh!” Richard voiced mockingly. “Since you’re holding yours in your hands they can’t be on your feet, birdbrain!”
Michael squatted awkwardly, clutching his fins under his arm, and stripped those from his feet. Richard snatched them away disdainfully. Then the two divers clumsily bumped into each other as they struggled to slip on their respective flippers at the same time.
“Okay, men,” Larry’s voice said. “We’re on line with the scrambler so stop screwing around and listen up! Here’s Mr. Davidson.”
The diver’s didn’t bother to look up. They slouched against the sides of the PTC and assumed bored expressions.
“We haven’t been able to raise the Oceanus on the UQC or track it on sonar,” Mark’s voice said. “We’re anxious for you to make visual contact. If you don’t see them when you arrive at the well head, let us know and we’ll give you further instructions. Understand?”
“That’s affirmative,” Richard said. “Now can we get back to getting ready to dive?”
“That’s affirmative,” Mark said.
Richard and Michael stirred, and by giving each other an iota of leeway they managed to get their flippers on their feet. Michael even tried to reach his hat while Richard proceeded to don his buoyancy vest and weight belt, but it was beyond his grasp, as he’d feared.
Five minutes later the winch operator’s voice told them they were passing through nine hundred feet. With that announcement the descent slowed appreciably. While Richard and Michael tried to stay out of the way, Louis readied the hoses. As the bell diver it fell to him to handle the lines.
“Powering the exterior lights,” Larry announced.