“How are you doing. Homer?” greeted the Hewitt’s CO with a forced smile, as he positioned himself beside his medical officer.
“I’m Captain Stanton. What the doc here says is true. We’re your friends, and we’ve come to help you. But before we can do that, you’ve got to relax and trust us. Is there anything we can get you?”
This question generated silence, and the medical officer intervened.
“Homer, I want you to take a couple of deep breaths, and then tell me what’s bothering you so.
Does it have anything to do with the location of your shipmates?”
Homer Morgan’s eyes opened wide, and he began babbling.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I swear! All I did was shoot the trash!” “Where are your shipmates, Homer?” asked Stanton.
“You’ve got to tell us!”
Homer’s expression was one of pure bewilderment as he stared out at the forward bulkhead and cried out.
“I killed them all!”
Lieutenant Kelso picked this emotional moment to return with a blanket. The medical officer wasted no time wrapping it around Homer’s shoulders, and took this opportunity to wrench the book from Homer’s grasp. Thomas Moore was the first to examine it, while the doc turned his attention back to his sobbing patient.
“It’s the ship’s log!” exclaimed Moore, who excitedly turned to the last entry.
What he saw there caused him to gasp, and he struggled to find words.
“I know that this is going to sound utterly illogical,” he managed while skimming the page.
“But the Lewis and Clark’s last log entry was dated only yesterday, when the sub was transiting the waters between Andros Island and Nassau.”
“But that’s on the other side of the world!” objected Chief Daley.
“Tell that to the person who wrote this entry,” retorted the perplexed investigator, whom fate had picked to solve this strangest of nautical mysteries.
4
The Mir habitat program was an immediate byproduct of a United Nations effort to encourage the peaceful exploration and development of the sea floor.
For the first time, scientists, marine architects, and engineers from around the world, collaborated to create a self-sustaining, underwater community, capable of sheltering a group of humans for an extended period of time.
One of the primary objectives of the program was to tap the virtually unexploited resources of the continental shelf, the richest and most accessible region of the ocean. This portion of the sea floor hugged the earth’s major landmasses, and extended to a depth of six hundred feet before dropping off to the black depths. It was home to abundant oil, natural gas, and various minerals such as manganese, gold and even diamonds.
It also provided the ideal location for undersea fish farms and other aquaculture ventures.
By having a stable base on the sea floor, divers would no longer have to decompress each time they surfaced at the end of a day’s work. Decompression was time-consuming and dangerous, and was a necessary evil that divers never looked forward to. A liveable, undersea habitat would free them of this often-painful ordeal.
After searching the world’s oceans to find a suitable place to locate the Mir habitat, it was decided that the waters of the Bahamas offered the best advantages.
They were readily accessible, of the proper depth, and filled with an abundance of marine life. An ideal location was then found off the northeastern coast of Andros Island.
The habitat itself consisted of four major structures, the largest of which was called Starfish House.
This comfortable, underwater villa had five rooms radiating from a central core. One arm was reserved for a complete marine laboratory, while the others held the crew’s sleeping quarters, kitchen, and diver’s ready room.
In addition to Starfish House, there was a domed structure called Habitat One. This all-important building was where the air tanks were stored, and it was here that electricity and water were produced. The team’s mini sub was stored in an onion-shaped hangar, that had a supply warehouse and several fish pens attached to it.
Designed and constructed by a worldwide consortium, the various pieces of the habitat were shipped to Nassau from the far corners of the planet. Here they were put together and towed to the sparkling blue waters off Andros.
It took over two hundred tons of lead ballast to anchor the habitat to a coral shelf, sixty feet beneath the sea’s surface. Once this was accomplished, the world looked on as five brave divers donned their scuba tanks and descended towards the sea floor, to become Starfish House’s first full-time inhabitants.
This multinational group of aquanauts had lived in this watery environment for over three weeks now, and they hoped to extend their stay to over two months if possible. Leading the team was Pierre Lenclud, a fifty four-year-old, retired French naval officer, who was known simply as Commandant to his co-workers. The bald-headed, debonair Frenchman was a former submariner, whose current interest was in the field of marine biology.
Dr. Ivana Petrov was the team’s geologist. A graduate of the Soviet Union’s famed Black Sea Institute, the tall, attractive redhead was also an archaeologist, who gained world renown when she discovered the long-lost remnants of an ancient Greek city, buried beneath the Mediterranean seabed off the Peloponnesian coast in the late 1980s.
From Osaka, Japan came thirty-three-year-old Tomoyaki Nakata, one of the world’s foremost authorities in the field of aquaculture. Tomo as he was called, had already designed several profitable fish farms in the Sea of Japan. While stationed aboard the Mir habitat, he was monitoring the growth rate of several species of edible sea plants, and conducting experiments on the farming of the local sea conch.
The team was also extremely fortunate to have the expert services of a talented, resourceful marine engineer, who at twenty-four years of age was also the group’s youngest member. Karl Ivar Bjornsen had been born in far-off Haugesund, Norway, where he worked as a North Sea oil-rig diver. The likable blond could fix almost anything, and was a self-avowed workaholic.
Rounding out the group was Lisa Tanner, a pert, twenty-five-year-old kiwi from Auckland, New Zealand. Lisa was a premed student, who had been recruited to be both the habitat’s cook and its nurse. She did both jobs extremely well, and was also responsible for making Starfish House a real home, by providing atmosphere in the form of posters of her beautiful homeland. She managed to tack them to almost every available vacant wall space.
Regardless of what was on the menu, mealtime was an event inside Starfish House. It was a time for the group’s members to relax and interact, and this evening’s dinner proved no exception.
The dining table had been set up in the central module, beside a large picture window. Currently seated around the red-checkered tablecloth were all the members of the team, except for their young engineer.
Tomo had picked this evening’s music, and in the background sounded the haunting, new-age strains of Kitaro’s “Silk Road.”
“I’m sorry that the only vegetable that I had to serve this evening is cabbage,” apologized their cook.
“But all the canned veggies that they sent down on the last shipment seemed to be spoiled.”
Ivana Petrov cut into a piece of raw, salted herring and bitterly voiced herself.
“That’s what we get for having a Russian supply ship.”
“I should be able to provide us with a good quantity of fresh sea grasses, in another week’s time,” offered Tomo.
“When steamed, this particular variety is most palatable, with a taste much like spinach.”
“I congratulate you on this conch meat, Tomo,” said Pierre Lenclud, who sat at the head of the table sipping a glass of white wine.