He found his associates gathered around the open hatch, facing the head and upper body of a full grown bottlenose dolphin. Known to all as Dolly, the dolphin was their link to the support ship that always remained on station above them.
Dolly was responsible for delivering the mail, various foodstuffs, and other items such as the spare parts that Karl Ivar was waiting for. She carried these objects in a watertight pressure cooker, with a specially designed strap, which fit over the dolphin’s blunt snout. One of these pressure cookers lay beside the hatch, next to the bell that Dolly was trained to ring to announce her arrival. Remembering well the day that Uige arrived in just such a manner, Lenclud walked over to greet their newly arrived guest. “Ban soir, ma cherie. What did you bring us from above?”
Lenclud kneeled down to scratch the underside of Dolly’s neck, and the dolphin responded with a burst of animated clicks and whistles.
“You don’t say,” deadpanned the Frenchman, who reached into a nearby bucket, and fed Dolly a mullet.
Meanwhile, Karl Ivar anxiously unscrewed the lid of the newly delivered pressure cooker. Much to his disappointment, it held only a single white envelope, which he pulled out and handed to Ivana.
She opened it, and read its contents out loud.
“Dear Dr. Petrov, I regretfully inform you that I am unable to grant your request at this time. Because of mechanical difficulties, both of our diving saucers have been indefinitely taken out of service.
We are currently waiting for newly designed spare parts to be flown in from the rodina. Will advise upon their receipt. Yours truly. Admiral Igor Valerian, Commanding Officer, Academician Petrovsky.”
Disgustedly flinging this dispatch to the deck, Ivana sarcastically added, “So, they’re going to have newly designed spare parts flown out to us from Mother Russia. Now that’s a joke if I ever heard one. Such a thing could take months to happen.
And in the meantime, all of us will be long gone from this habitat. Why did the U.N. have to go and provide us with a Russian support ship?
Now I’ll never be able to learn the extent of my new find.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Doctor,” advised the Norwegian.
“Why don’t I go and take another look at Misha. There’s got to be something that I can do to get that charge to hold.”
With practiced ease, Karl Ivar slipped on a wet suit and shouldered a scuba tank. He then signed the diving log, spit into his face mask, pulled it over his head, and joined Dolly in the water.
“Come on. Dolly,” he said before putting the regulator hose in his mouth.
“We’ve got some work to do.”
He left with a thumbs-up, and seconds later, disappeared beneath the water with the dolphin close at his side.
“Don’t look so glum, mon amie,” said Lenclud to his sulking co-worker.
“If anyone can fix Misha, it will be Karl Ivar. So let’s return to the others, and finish our film, before the popcorn goes cold.”
Admiral Igor Valerian stared down at the black waters from the Academician Petrovsky’s prow, visualizing the unique collection of structures lying on the sea floor sixty feet below. The sixty seven-year-old Russian naval officer had to admit that when he first saw the original plans to the Mir habitat, he didn’t think that the project would go beyond the planning stage. But reality had proved him wrong, and the underwater habitat had been home to a group of five aquanauts for three weeks now.
The mere thought of men and women actually living beneath the seas amazed the whitehaired oldtimer. He had certainly seen his share of astounding scientific advances. And the Mir habitat was only another example of the rapid pace at which modern technology was moving.
In many ways, the vessel that he currently commanded was yet another example of this new, hightech generation. The Academician Petrovsky was officially classified an oceanographic research ship.
Launched in 1990 from Leningrad’s United Admiralty complex, the three-hundred foot long, steam turbine-powered vessel was built with no expense spared. Its operational systems thus incorporated state-of-the-art Soviet marine design.
A crew of ninety manned the ship. They were a mix of civilians, scientists, and naval technicians.
They also carried along three representatives of the United Nations, whose flag they currently sailed under. Such a dual loyalty was new to Valerian, who was used to sailing beneath the red banner of the Russian fleet. But these were new, so-called enlightened times, and as a veteran survivor of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin’s bloody purges, he had long ago learned to swim with the tide of change, and to not fight a current which one couldn’t alter even if one wanted to.
They had left their home port on the Baltic four and a half weeks ago. After stops in Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom, they crossed the Atlantic, making port in New York City. This was Valerian’s first visit to the place known as the Big Apple, and he’d never forget his first view of the Statue of Liberty, and the amazing island of Manhattan.
Never before had he seen such incredible buildings. And there seemed to be people everywhere.
It was in New York that they picked up the observers from the United Nations, and then set sail for the Bahamas, where they had been since.
Unlike many of his fellow sailors, Igor Valerian had never liked duty in the tropics. He was a native of Siberia, and his solid, six-foot-four-inch frame was stilled by constant heat and humidity. His body thrived on fresh, cool air, and it was in a vain search for this rare commodity that he left his cabin below deck, and climbed up to the Academician Petrovsky’s prow.
The night was but a carbon copy of all the others. The air was thick and heavy, smelling richly of the sea. An occasional breeze blew in from the east, though its oppressive heat was far from refreshing.
Doing his best to make himself comfortable, Valerian wore a lightweight pair of white cotton slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. Yet sweat constantly poured off his forehead, and it was an effort merely to breathe.
To ease his discomfort, he brought along a bottle of his finest potato vodka. Without bothering to use a glass, he brought the bottle to his lips and swallowed a long, satisfying mouthful. The vodka had been distilled alongside the shores of Lake Baikal. Its sharp, distinctive taste coursed down his throat like a red-hot flame and hit his belly with a jolt, making him feel truly alive again.
Oblivious to the gently rocking deck beneath him, and the distant, muted cry of a lonely gull, he let his thoughts go back to his beloved homeland.
Soon he’d be forced to retire, and a life spent sailing the planet’s oceans in defense of the rodina would be over.
It was at the tender age of seventeen that Valerian first put on the uniform of the Soviet Navy.
With his childhood prematurely shortened by the invasion of the Nazi horde, he became a man beneath the frozen Arctic sea, when he was assigned to a submarine that was based in the besieged city of Murmansk. An exploding German depth charge all but deafened him, and to this day he still heard a ringing in his ears, to remind him of his shipmates who never survived this same blast. Yet another physical legacy of the Great Patriotic War was the patch that he wore over his left eye. This was the byproduct of a Nazi artillery barrage. He was assigned to Naval headquarters in Leningrad at the time of this near-fatal injury, and he came to the attention of his superiors when he all but refused treatment so that he could continue on duty.
Hard work and the ever-present hand of fate guided his career, and by the time the war was over, he was a full-fledged captain. The postwar years were a time of unparalleled growth for the Soviet Navy. From a mere coastal defense force, the fleet grew into a legitimate blue water navy, capable of reaching the farthest corner of the planet.