"I'm going in."
"Colonel, the environment down there is pretty hairy. Rotting beams. Floating wood. I wouldn't. At your age. I mean-"
"Step out of the suit now," Smith repeated.
Without a word. the diver handed Smith his flashlight as Smith helped him off with his oxygen tanks. Smith stripped to his gray boxer shorts and T-shirt. The suit was a snug fit. The tanks felt like booster rockets on Smith's spare frame.
Smith blew into the mouthpiece to clear it, and trying not to trip over his flippers, simply walked down the steps into the coldest, blackest water he could imagine.
He thumbed on the light. The water closed over his head. He could hear his own pounding heart, his labored, ragged breathing, and a faint gurgling. Nothing else. The world he knew was replaced by an alien environment that pressed its swirling cold fingers into his ribs. Steeling himself, he launched himself from the security of the steps.
There was a heart-stopping moment of disorientation. The floor and ceiling became indistinguishable.
Smith had done demolition work for the OSS during his war days. Long ago. His underwater craft came back to him. He pushed after the cone of light he held before him.
He swam the length of the ninth floor-actually the twentieth, counting down from the desert-going from room to room, his light probing. Fortunately, the Condome project had not reached the furnished state when it had been stopped. There were few floating objects to navigate around. Just wood flotsam and algaelike jetsam.
Other divers joined him, adding their lights to his. Not wanting to be distracted by their activity, Smith motioned for them to follow his lead.
The ninth floor proved disappointingly empty. He swam past the elevator door to the propped-open fire doors and enjoyed the eerie sensation of swimming down a long flight of stairs.
The next floor was devoid of even floating detritus. So was the floor beneath it.
Smith persisted. He glanced at his borrowed chronometer, then realized he had not asked the diver how much air remained in his tanks. Grimly he pressed on. He must be sure before he abandoned the search. Although the thought crossed his mind that if the Master of Sinanju truly lay in this watery realm, he had been here for nearly three months. Smith's heart sank. What did he expect to find? Perhaps only a corpse whose spirit demanded proper burial.
That and no more. Meanwhile, the world marched toward the Red Abyss of Kali. And if they went over the precipice, there might be more dead to bury than living. But since he was powerless to affect the situation otherwise, Harold Smith pushed on.
In the end, Dr. Harold W. Smith gave up only when he found himself gasping for oxygen. Frantically he reversed course and swam for the stairs. His heart pounded. His ears rang. Then his vision turned as red as the roaring in his ears.
Smith broke the surface gasping, his mouthpiece ejecting like a throat-caught bone.
"I'm sorry, Colonel," Lieutenant Latham said, leaning down to pull him up to a safe step.
"I had to see for myself," Smith said hollowly.
"Shall I call off the search?"
Smith coughed a dry rattling cough.
"Yes," he said quietly. His voice was charged with defeat.
Two engineers assisted Smith to the surface. His lungs labored. His breath came out in wheezes of agony. He carried his uniform and shoes.
"Maybe you'd better rest a few moments," one of the pair suggested.
"Yes, yes, of course," Smith gasped.
They all sat down on the steps, saying nothing. The divers continued on in their bare feet.
"Too bad the elevators aren't working," one grumbled to the other. "Save us the climb."
Smith, in the middle of a cough, looked up.
"Elevators?" he gasped.
"The're not working," Lieutenant Latham told Smith. "We might be able to jury-rig a stretcher if you don't think you can manage-"
Smith grasped his arm. "Elevators," he repeated hoarsely.
"Sir?"
"Did . . . anyone . . . check the elevators?" Smith wheezed out.
"I don't know." The lieutenant looked up. "Hey, Navy. The colonel wants to know if you checked the elevator shaft."
"Couldn't," a diver called back in the murk. "All the doors are frozen shut below the nineteenth floor.
"The cage," Smith croaked, "where is it?"
"We don't know. The unsubmerged section of the shaft is clear, so it must be down below."
Using the engineers for support, Smith clawed himself to a shaky standing position.
"We're going back down," he said grimly.
"Sir?" It was one of the divers.
"We must investigate that elevator."
They returned to the dry tenth floor in silence. Using pry bars, they separated the elevator doors. Smith looked in. He saw dancing water with rust specks floating on top less than four feet below. The cable disappeared into the murky soup.
"Check the cage," Smith ordered.
Lieutenant Latham gestured to the open doors. "You heard the man."
Without protest, but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, two of the divers donned their breathing equipment and climbed in. Slithering down the cable, they disappeared with barely a splash.
Their lights played down below, faded, and then disappeared entirely. Time passed. Throats were cleared nervously.
"Either they found the trap," Latham ventured, "or they're in trouble."
No one moved to investigate.
It was the better part of ten minutes before a sudden hand reached up, like a drowning man returning to the surface. Smith's heart gave a leap. But the hand was encased in rubber. A rubber-encased diver's head popped into view next. The hand peeled the scuba mask back.
"We found something," the diver said tensely.
"What?" Smith asked, tight-voiced.
"It's coming now." The diver returned to the water.
He was back in less than a minute, joined by his teammate.
They bobbed to the surface in unison, cradling between them a small bundle wrapped in wet purple cloth. Flashlights came into play.
"My God," Smith said.
Reaching down, he touched a cold, bony thing like a slime-coated stick. It was as white as a fish's underbelly. The surface slipped under his grasp with appalling looseness, considering it was human skin.
Resisting an urge to retch, Smith pulled on the dead thing. Other hands joined. Using the heavy cable for support, the divers lifted their burden.
As they wrestled the soaking cold bundle to the floor, Smith saw that he had hold of a pipestem forearm. The hand attached to it was clenched into a long-nailed fist of anguish. The skin over the finger bones was hung slack and transparent. It reminded Smith of a boiled chicken wing.
"It was in the elevator," one of the divers muttered as he climbed out. The other joined him, saying, "He was in a fetal position. Just floating like a ball. Isn't that weird? He went out the way he came into the world. All curled up."
Harold Smith knelt over the body. The head rolled, revealing a face that was stark in its lack of color. The wrinkles of the Master of Sinanju's face were deeper than Smith had ever seen. The head was like a shriveled white raisin, the lips parted in a grimace, exposing teeth that looked like Indian corn. His hair clung to his temples and chin like discolored seaweed.
It was a corpse's face.
Still, Smith put one ear to the sunken chest. The wet silk was clammy. He was surprised that the muscles had not gone into rigor mortis.
"No heartbeat," he muttered.
"What do you expect, Colonel? He's been immersed for the last three months."
Smith looked back at the face.
"Just a body," he said huskily. "I came all this way just for a body."
Behind Smith's back, the others exchanged glances. They shrugged.
Silence filled the dim corridor deep in the sand.
Smith knelt with one hand over the body's head.
Under his fingers he detected something. Not a heartbeat-exactly. It was more on the order of a slow swelling, like a balloon. It stopped, or paused. Then the swelling retracted with studied slowness in the next breath.