Hamling stared at the diagrams, trying to translate them into an image. “Which way does the lifeboat door open?” he asked.
"Good question,” said Markey, lifting an eyebrow. “Where are those plans, Ed?”
“Wait a minute.” Jensen got the stack of printouts, shuffled through them. “Here we are.” He pushed across a plan and elevation of the lifeboat. "The door opens inboard into the passage, and the hinge is on the left as you face the tube.”
Hamling nodded. “All right, so if there is a handrail, it'll be on the right side. Next question: Is this tube port or starboard?”
“Starboard,” said Markey. He picked a photograph out of the pile of papers and showed it to Hamling. “Copter got this with a telephoto lens—you can see the empty tube right here.”
Hamling examined the photograph. “When was this taken?”
“This morning.”
“Looks like the swells are coming in from her starboard quarter. Every time one of those swells hits the tube, there’s going to be a hell of a surge. What are the chances the weather will be calmer in a day or two?”
“Zero,” said Markey. “Typhoon Tony is due to pass over us two days from now.”
They were silent a moment. “If it was up to me,” Markey went on, “I’d wait for decent weather. But there are civilians on board with urgent appointments. CINCAF wants us to get them off right now, if not sooner.”
“When do you want us to go?”
“Oh-four-hundred tomorrow.”
Hamling was silent for a minute. “We can do it.”
“Sure?” asked Markey.
“Yes.”
“All right, now here’s the other part of the problem. We can't get near Sea Venture in daylight, and we don’t dare use a minisub—they might be listening for the motors. The best we can do is drop you before dawn, as near as we can get to the position where Sea Venture ought to be when she surfaces. That’s going to be partly guesswork. How close do you want to be to make that swim underwater?”
“Anything up to five miles would be good.”
“All right, that we can do. If we don’t, though, your men are going to have to stay in the water, holding onto the raft, until we can pick you up after nightfall. It’ll be a long day.”
“I understand.”
50
In the cone of yellow light from the helicopter, all they could see was the raft bobbing on the swells and the gray water around it: the rest of the world was empty black. They swam to the raft and climbed in; already the copter was rising. The light blinked out, the blackness pressed closer.
As the dawn light spread over the silvery wrinkled sky, Hamling stood up on the pitching raft, supported by Martinez and Orr, and began to scan the ocean with his binoculars. For a long time nothing happened.
“There it is.” The upper works of Sea Venture were thrusting above the horizon.
“How far?”
“Wait a while—she isn’t all the way up yet.” Hamling watched, and finally said, “Five miles, maybe six.” He lowered the binoculars and tucked them into his belt pouch. “You want to swim a little, or would you rather hang around all day to be picked up?”
The men helped each other on with their liquid-air tanks, checked regulators, rubbed the compound on their faceplates. Orr and Martinez opened the valves of the flotation cells. As the raft sank, the five men slipped into the water.
After the fourth hour, Hamling surfaced long enough to catch a glimpse of Sea Venture and adjust the lubber line on his compass; then they went down again to five feet. An hour later, the hull of Sea Venture loomed ahead of them. They swam toward the stem. Hamling surfaced once more and peered at the black opening just above the waterline.
As each swell struck, the gray water foamed into the tube. He timed the surges: each one took six seconds, and the tube was barely emptied before the next one went in.
He tried to visualize what was happening inside the tube. The water hurtled in at an angle, slapped the forward side, filled the open passenger entrance, then rebounded from the back of the tube and washed out again. The direction of the surge was in their favor, but the water was going in at roller-coaster speed. Unless position and timing were exactly right, a man would come back out with broken limbs or a concussion.
Hamling uncoiled a line from his waist and handed the end of it to Martinez, signaling the others to link up. He turned on his back and swam close to the hull. Overhead he could see the pearl-gray lines of the troughs going in. He let himself become part of the rhythm. He visualized himself rising, catching the surge. He did not think of failure.
He counted seconds, then turned onto his side and propelled himself upward with three powerful strokes. He felt himself hurtling inward: in the blinding smother, he reached out, caught the smooth rail just where it ought to be, and hung on with all his strength as the backwash tried to suck him out again. Gasping and triumphant, he pulled himself into the passenger corridor and tied his line to the handrail. When the next surge went out, he tugged on the line. After a moment he felt it go slack, and pulled it in hand over hand as fast as he could. Martinez, with his face mask knocked awry, came in over the sill.
When they were all inside, Hamling waded to the watertight door at the end of the passage. The control wheel was in the center of the door. He turned it counterclockwise. It was frozen at first, then it gave. He pushed it open. While the rest of them got out of their gear, Martinez took a rubber wedge from his kit and drove it under the door with blows of a mallet. He tested the wedge with his hand and held up thumb and forefinger in an “OK” sign.
51
At twelve hundred hours, when the shift changed, Bliss dropped in at the Control Center for a look around before lunch. Ferguson was just being relieved by Deputy Womack; the new comm officer was Peter Gann. At twelve-fifteen. Bliss was on the point of leaving when Womack sat up straight and said, “Chief, you’re not going to believe this, but we’ve got another lifeboat-door signal. It’s the same one as before—Lifeboat Fifty-three.”
Bliss said nothing. Now what? Could somebody have got out through the empty tube? What would be the point of that? Or—oh, God—could somebody have got in? “See if you can shut the door,” he said.
Womack shook his head. “It’s still telling me the door is open. Maybe just a malfunction?”
“No. It isn’t. Try opening the door, then closing it.”
“I’m getting a status signal—door opening.”
“Close it.”
“Door closing." After a moment Womack turned. “Still the same signal—it isn’t shut.”
Bliss looked at the clock. How long had it been since the signal came on? Five seconds, ten? If they were really there, what were they doing now?
Under their wetsuits, the five men were dressed in white skivvies and shorts. They took Navy Colts from their pouches and belted them on. Martinez stood guard at the entrance to the lifeboat bay; the rest, with Hamling in the lead, set off up the corridor at a trot.
“Down to plus one seventeen, Mr. Womack.”
“Plus one seventeen? Yes, sir.” After a moment he said, "Chief? If that door’s really open, we’ll flood the Boat Deck.”
“I know,” said Bliss.
When the next surge came, an inch of water flooded into the lifeboat bay where Martinez was standing. Instead of washing out again, the water rose. Suddenly there was a clangor of alarm bells. Martinez saw the watertight door descending just in time to grab an air bottle and shove it underneath.