Duncan climbed out of the water and pulled off his face mask. “Nice job people.”
Chas smiled back. “That was definitely a bit creepy out there in the dark.”
Kate smiled at him. “You did great.”
Duncan looked at Kate. “So, Kate, are either of your parents fish?”
Perez and White both laughed. They knew what he meant but it was lost on the others.
“Yes, both.” She said.
“What does that mean?” Chas asked her.
“Nothing really,” she replied. “I just like being in the water.”
Most of the group was chatting about the dive by now. Duncan tapped a dive weight on the wall a couple of times. “Let’s get the gear rinsed properly and stowed people. We don’t need any equipment problems.”
The group became silent. They had all had lectures on how to rinse and dry the dive gear. The biggest worry was that salt crystals would form in the regulators and make them malfunction. On a sport dive, a stuck regulator was something that could be dealt with easily. At 4,000 feet there were going to be less options, and everyone understood that.
As the gear got put away, the group made its way one at a time through the tunnel to the storage room and up the ladder into the galley. Kayla Miller had laid out coffee, juice and freshly baked muffins. The galley was very noisy with tales of the dive.
Kate found herself between Duncan and Perez. “You guys having a good time?” she asked Duncan.
“Yes we are,” he answered honestly. Perez nodded. Duncan continued, “Your group are great to work with and we are all enjoying the job. It’s a real change from inspecting pier pilings or hunting for lost undersea cables.”
“Roger that.” Perez added. “Way better. Especially the food.”
Duncan laughed. “Yes, we usually get to survive on pre-packed sandwiches and stale coffee. I think we might try to recruit miss Miller for our next job.”
Kayla was behind him when he spoke. “I’d be up for that,” she said. “This underwater stuff is way more interesting than I’d expected and there are a lot less dead people down here too.”
Duncan turned to look at her. “What?”
Kate supplied the answer. “Kayla was an ER doc.”
“OK then,” Duncan added, “We can sign you up as medic and cook.”
Kayla refilled the coffee mugs. “So long as I get to do more cooking than body repairs, we have a deal.” She laughed. “And I never make pre-packaged sandwiches.”
Martin had come into the galley from the ops room in search of some fresh coffee. The ops room had a small sink, a kettle and some powdered coffee, but he much preferred Kayla’s. He had been standing in the doorway for a few minutes listening to the conversation and watching the group. It was obvious that most of them got on well together. He was very pleased with the team selection. It was looking like it was going to be a very successful expedition.
Anchoring
(4,500 feet)
Kate woke to the sound of the alarm on her phone. She looked at the phone wistfully. It’s not really a phone down here she thought. It’s a camera and an alarm clock. Phone service was now 4,500 feet above her at the surface of the warm Caribbean water. She briefly imagined the sunny beaches they had left behind. She missed the feel of warm sand between her toes as she strolled along the beach looking at the small waves lapping the shore.
“You up then?” Chas asked her. He too had woken at the sound of her alarm.
“Mmm. sort of. We must be about at the bottom. Damn that was a long night.”
Chas, Boris and Kate had been on watch duty the previous night as the habitat sank slowly on autopilot towards the bottom. Dr. Ford had administered meds to the entire crew just before they ended their shift and headed for their bunks. The night had been entirely uneventful. The computer system had kept the hab 30 feet from the wall and maintained position approximately under their surface barge as it descended. The sonar transducers on the hab that faced the wall and into the abyss below had kept watch for any large outcroppings of rock that the hab might run into on its descent.
Kate had spent most of the night reading, and occasionally watching the floodlit wall moving slowly upwards from the portal in the operations room. Boris and Chas had been playing chess. Boris had won every game, some of them very quickly but Chas was enjoying playing again. He had played as a kid in high school but given it up when he went to college. He viewed himself as mildly useless as a strategist but the romantic in him enjoyed the titles of the pieces and he always imagined himself on a horse as he moved his knights.
Kate found it unlikely that Boris and Chas could spend that much time together. Their personalities were so different. Boris was absorbed mostly by his own love for himself and Chas spent a lot of time in puppy dog mode when he was around Kate. Kate sort of liked the affection but wasn’t interested in Chas. He was just too much of an introvert for Kate. He almost never disagreed with her and mostly shied away from leading a conversation. She found him nice enough but that was not what she was looking for.
“I’ll wake Boris”, Chas said. “Breakfast? Or do you want to see where we are first?” he asked Kate.
“Let’s go to ops and see what’s happening,” she replied.
In the operations room, almost the entire crew were standing around except for the divers who were in the moon pool below getting prepped to go out once the hab was anchored.
Today’s main task was to anchor the hab to the rock in front of them. The hab was equipped with several telescopic arms that had explosive bolts at the ends to connect them to the rock. The use of the explosives had been very difficult to negotiate with the Cayman government who were very protective of their wall. Paul Martin had brought along several of the hab’s designers to the meeting and a lot of charts and photographs showing how the anchors worked. He had shown a video of some tests that had been run off the coast of Maine using a large concrete block to simulate the rock of the wall. The concrete of the test wall had been formulated to behave like the surface of the Cayman wall. The government people had watched as three thin rods extended towards the test wall. When all three were in contact there was a short pause followed by a small flash from the end of each rod and then a large cloud of bubbles.
Dr. Martin had explained that the explosives were quite small and operated a lot like a bang stick that divers used to defend against sharks. Their purpose was to fire some 12 inch long stainless pins into the wall. At the end of each pin another small charge caused barbs to be forced outwards securing the pins into the wall.
After a long discussion about the dangers of the wall collapsing (which Martin had worked very hard to explain would not happen) the Caymanian government people had signed a permit.
Martin now stood in front of the portal in operations looking at the wall. “What is our depth please?” he asked.
Newell looked at the main control display. “Four thousand five hundred and six feet” he read from the display.
“And our height above the bottom?” Martin asked.
“Looks like about two hundred and fifty feet”, Newell replied.
Martin pressed the button on the intercom for the moon pool. “Duncan, are you there?”
“Roger” Duncan’s voice came back over the intercom speaker.
“Can you see the bottom?” Martin asked.
In the moon pool, Duncan, White and Perez looked down into the moon pool opening.