“It’s fine, Spencer,” Nichols said, though he sounded unconvinced of that himself. “Just an unexpected swell.”
“The hell you say.”
Hodges echoed the captain’s reservations. “If this keeps up, cut the damn thing loose. We’ll destroy it with explosives and that will be the end of that.”
“No!” Ophelia almost screamed the denial. Dorion could not recall her ever sounding quite so desperate. “You must not. I forbid it.”
Hodges appeared unimpressed by her outburst, and several of the crewman seemed poised to do as he had instructed, but before anyone could move, something erupted from the center of watery hill. Dorion spotted something that looked like an enormous black inner tube on the crest of the tidal bulge, and then, as if breaking through had somehow pierced an invisible membrane holding its shape, the water simply fell back into the ocean.
The Explorer’s decks heaved back and forth as the ship strained against its anchors. Hodges cast a baleful glare in Ophelia’s direction, but after a few more seconds, the turbulence seemed to abate and everyone aboard the research vessel could clearly see the flotation airbag bobbing on the surface less than a hundred feet off the stern.
“Reel it in,” shouted Nichols. “We’ve got it now.”
There was a mechanical whirring as the slack was taken out of the lift cable, then without warning the deck lurched beneath Dorion’s feet. The cable hummed and the entire structure of the boom crane began to groan in protest.
“It’s okay,” Nichols said. “This is normal.”
Dorion detected a note of uncertainty in the man’s tone, as if his assurance was as much for himself as the rest of them. The noise grew louder, supplemented by the whine of the cable winch straining against the load, but at the end of the line, the giant pillow-shape of the flotation bag was rising perceptibly. After a few seconds, it cleared the wave tops and through the curtain of runoff, Dorion could see, nestled in the embrace of the cargo slings, a spherical object. The titanic tug-of-war continued, the crane creaking as if on the verge of collapse, the Moon stone rising inch by grudging inch higher above the ocean’s surface.
“It’s a bit heavier than I thought it would be,” Nichols muttered, sounding even less confident than before.
Dorion’s concerns however were easing by degrees. Every inch won would greatly reduce the overall load on the cable, decreasing the likelihood that it would snap. The possibility of some other catastrophic failure remained, but if the crane’s engineers had done their job correctly, the cable would be intentionally designed to fail before the framework supporting it gave way.
The struggle reached a tipping point, figuratively speaking, when the load was brought above the level of the Quest Explorer’s main deck. Nichols gave the order to swing the boom over the deck and the anxious spectators cleared out of the way as the Moon stone was brought aboard the ship.
The crane operator reversed the direction of the winch but despite the fact that the cable was being paid out in miniscule increments, when the burden finally touched the deck, there was a resounding thump, like the impact of a car crash.
Dorion realized he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a long sigh. It was done. All the years of searching, all the sacrifice, had been leading him to this moment. For better or worse, they had found the prize. He glanced over at Ophelia and saw the same emotion writ large in her reverent gaze. Then, a flash of sunlight hit his face, momentarily blinding him. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, and saw that the sun was low in the western sky, its daily journey through the heavens nearly complete.
That’s odd. Where did the day go?
Jade’s last breath burned in her lungs as, clinging to Professor’s arm, they cautiously ascended through the gloomy waters toward what she hoped was the underside of the Quest Explorer’s hull. If they surfaced out in the open, they would be instantly visible to whoever had just tried to kill them, and she was pretty sure that was everyone on the ship’s crew.
She followed Professor’s lead, trusting his combat-tested instincts to guide them to where they needed to be. Although she was an experienced diver, and had dealt with more than her share of sticky situations, this was definitely his area of expertise, which became evident when Jade glimpsed the dark outline of the hull looming overhead.
She broke the surface as cautiously as her urgency would allow and greedily sucked in breaths until the throbbing in her chest finally relented. Beside her, Professor did the same, while gingerly probing the back of his head.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
“Someone sucker punched me. Barry, I think. Should have known better than to turn my back on him.”
“I don’t think he’s working alone.”
Professor nodded. “Well, I’m still seeing the world a little cross-eyed, but I think I’ll live.”
“Good. What do we do now?”
“Well, assuming that everyone on this tub is gunning for us—”
“You think Paul and Ophelia are in on this, too?”
He inclined his head. “Okay, maybe not them, but assuming that almost everyone on this tub is gunning for us, we have to stay out of sight. The good news is that they must think we’re already dead.”
As if to underscore this supposition, they heard the noise of machinery moving on deck. The crew was moving ahead with the recovery of the Moon stone.
“I’d like to wait until night fall, but that’s a long time to spend dangling our legs like shark bait.”
Jade looked down into the water nervously; that thought had not even occurred to her.
“So,” Professor continued, “What we’re going to have to do is shimmy up the anchor chain, and when no one is looking, sneak aboard. There are lots of places to hide on a ship this big, and unless I’m mistaken, they’re going to be otherwise occupied for the next hour or two.”
“Do you think Paul and Ophelia are all right?”
He shook his head, wincing as movement aggravated his injury. “Hard to say. I think maybe whoever’s running the show has explicit instructions to keep her safe. Remember how Barry pulled her aside last night, just before they tried to smash us with the submersible?”
Jade nodded. “If they’re both safe, then maybe all we need to do is lay low until the ship returns to port. After that…?”
Professor heaved a weary sigh. “After that, I just don’t know. Let’s get on board and worry about the rest as it comes.”
As Professor had predicted, the full attention of the crew was fixed on the task of bringing the Moon stone to the surface. He barely made a sound as he climbed up the anchor line and pulled himself through the hawsehole on the starboard bow. Jade was not quite as stealthy, but she could have been banging a drum and still gone unnoticed. The air aboard the ship was filled with a discordant symphony of electric motors straining and metal groaning under tremendous stress.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Jade whispered as she cleared the hawsehole. Professor touched a finger to his lips and then motioned for her to seek concealment behind a stack of shipping pallets. The noise continued for several minutes, during which time Jade wondered if the ship was going to shake itself apart.
“What time is it?” Professor asked.
“Time for you to get a watch,” she retorted, in a misbegotten attempt to lighten the mood. She slipped the chronograph off her wrist and handed it to him, but did not fail to notice that both clock hands were close to the twelve o’clock position. “Is that right?”
Professor glanced at the watch, as if that was all it took to confirm what he already knew. “According to this watch, and my body clock too, for that matter, it’s just after noon. But the sun is going down.”