"Is that it?" whispered Irene.
He followed the line she was pointing, expecting to see the buoy left by Severin. But Irene was calling attention to something else; a faint gleam in the depths, which might have been reflected moonlight, except for its golden hue.
Kismet nodded. The luminescence from beneath the sea underscored the second reason for his attempting another dive on the golden ship after nightfall. Because the ship was a superior source of light, it would be much easier to find in the dark. He had gambled on being able to visually pinpoint the exact location of the ship from the surface, and that risk had paid off.
Irene helped Kismet don the completely repaired diving suit. Anatoly dropped the bow anchor, although the seas were calm enough to prevent the boat from drifting without its help. That was about to change. Still positioned in the bow, Anatoly pitched two small packages, both wrapped in several layers of plastic sheeting and taped watertight, into the water.
The packages vanished toward the bottom, leaving concentric ripples that disrupted the reflected star field. "Get ready!"
Fifteen seconds later, the improvised depth charges erupted silently in close succession. Two enormous bubbles of gas raced upward, heralding a tremendous shock wave. When the bubbles broke the surface, they released not only the smoke and noise of the underwater explosions, but also the destructive force. The trawler pitched back and forth in the center of the detonations.
The tumult subsided after a moment however, with no injury to any of its occupants. A few seconds later, other shapes broke the surface; dozens of fish, stunned or killed by the explosions. The way to the golden ship was now clear.
Anatoly dropped another parcel into the water. This package was substantially larger than the homemade depth charges and did not destroy itself in the course of its downward passage. Two magnesium flares tied to the bundle blazed with solar intensity as it spiraled toward the sea floor.
Irene placed the helmet over Kismet's head and locked it in place. She then lifted the telephone handset they had rigged, and spoke into it. "Can you hear me, Nick?"
"Loud and clear," was the tinny reply. "I just hope we insulated that cable well enough."
"Are you ready?"
"Ready or not, let's go."
Anatoly joined them. "The equipment is down."
"Start the compressor."
As soon as air started flowing into the helmet, Kismet made his way to the stern and lowered himself into the dark waters. This time however, he would not be descending in lonely silence.
"I'm drifting away from the wreck," he called into his microphone. "There must be a current here."
Irene stopped the unreeling of the cable, while Anatoly jockeyed the boat's engines to give Kismet a better shot at landing precisely on the site. "That's good," he called. The downward journey resumed, and a few minutes later Kismet was standing once more on the bottom, facing the wreck of the golden ship.
Its light was brilliant against the ebony expanse above. He could not see the stars, much less the keel of the trawler. The perimeter of sentry fish was gone; the depth charges had removed that barrier to the wreck, but he had no idea how extensive the shockwave had been, or how long it would take for other marine creatures to investigate and replace their decimated ranks. He knew only that time was in critically short supply.
His greatest concern in utilizing the depth charges had been a fear of smashing the golden ship flat. Not only had the blast left the ship undamaged, at least so far as he could discern, but it had served to scour away several layers of sediment, exposing even more of the vessel's hull.
He did not immediately approach the wreck. His first task was to locate the equipment package that had preceded him. He saw its flares blazing a hundred yards from the ship, and hustled toward it. "I'm going after the gear," he reported. "I'd say it got caught in the same current that I did. Probably some kind of upwelling from the depths beyond the shelf."
He was speaking primarily to maintain contact with his friends above. As long as he kept talking, Irene would know that he was in no danger.
"Everything looks fine up here," she answered. "I think Severin is going to leave us alone tonight."
"Let me know if anything changes up there." A few minutes later he reached the bundle and quickly cut away the magnesium torches; they had served their purpose. The parcel was wrapped in canvas tarpaulins and tied with ordinary ropes.
He gripped one of those ropes and commenced dragging the package along the sea floor, toward the golden ship. This labor took several more minutes, and Irene could hear him grunting across the telephone line, though he said nothing until he had accomplished the task.
After untying the package, he began shuttling the different articles within to various points around the golden ship. When only the canvas tarps remained, he picked these up also, draping them over the decks, both fore and aft.
"I'm going into the hold now."
He approached the colonnaded superstructure cautiously, as if expecting the electric torpedo rays to materialize at any moment and assault him, but nothing happened. When he pushed the hatchway open, only a rush of air bubbles greeted him.
Nearly a third of the enclosure, everything above the level of the sideways doorpost, was clear of water. During the twenty-four hour period since his opening of the Fleece's cask, a great quantity of seawater had been converted into its constituent atomic components. Kismet smiled and backed away from the enclosure, pulling the door shut as he went. So far, everything was going according to plan.
He spent nearly an hour moving around the wreck, securing the tarpaulins in place with lengths of rope. Doing so required him to dig underneath the hull, which he did using an old entrenching shovel that had come down with the equipment package for just such a purpose. But that was not the strangest article in the bundle. Large eye-hook screws, truck tire inner-tubes, fishing nets cut to resemble enormous hammocks, and pieces of air hose, spliced together like enormous arteries-all of these came out of the bundled tarps, and were secured to the hull of the golden ship. The eye-hooks he screwed directly into the metal and wood, while ropes attached the rest of the items.
"I think I'm just about done down here. Get ready to bring me up."
He made a final survey of the wreck, convinced that everything was in place, and then signaled Irene to take him to the first decompression stop. He would make several more stops, using up most of the night in the process of evacuating excess nitrogen from his bloodstream. Finally, at about four a.m. Anatoly and Irene pulled him onto the trawler and helped him out of the diving suit. Irene threw her arms around him before he could wrestle free of the heavy boots, almost knocking him off his feet. He didn't mind.
"I hope I never have to lay eyes on that thing again," he said, gazing at the helmet. His clothes were damp with sweat, leaving him at the mercy of the night air, but zipping into his heavy leather jacket helped ward off the chill. He carefully dried the kukri and returned its sheath to his waistpack. Then, he ran down his mental checklist, wondering what he had forgotten. He could think of nothing.
"Let's do it."
The golden ship on the sea floor was connected to the trawler by two different lines, set in place by Kismet and brought back to the surface. One was a heavy cable, of the same gauge as the one used to lower him into depths. The other line however was hollow and incapable of lifting any weight. It was an air hose — actually it was several short lengths of hose, cannibalized from numerous sources and spliced together. The line from the diving suit was removed from the compressor, and the second, piecemeal line was clamped to the fitting.