“Well done Boris,” Kate said and threw him a towel.
“Thank you Kate. I need to warm up. Coffee please.”
Boris made his way to the large galley table and sat down shivering. “Not so cold really he said and pulled off the wetsuit hood. His long hair looked wild and matted.
Kate poured him coffee. “Did you see the suits?” she asked.
“Yes, but I could not carry everything. Must make second trip as I said before.”
Kate looked at Boris. He really did seem OK, just a little cold and it looked like he was getting over that.
Chas had put the regulator on the tank and checked it. “You have tons of gas,” he said to Boris.
Chas had briefly wondered if he should offer to go on the second trip, but he well knew there were bodies of the divers in the moon pool room and he just couldn’t face them. He had been tempted to ask Boris if he had seen them but decided not to. He must have seen them. They had nowhere else to go.
Boris finished his coffee. “I get suits now. I also try to get BCs and more tanks. I will leave them in storage room. Then we can bring them all up in one go.”
Boris handed Kate his towel and put the mask back on his face. He breathed a couple of deep breaths, held the third one and dropped into the water.
He had forgotten to put the hood back on, and immediately noticed how cold his head was. He had to carry the tank as he had no BC to strap it into but despite that, just being able to breathe made the task of re-entering the moon pool room much easier.
It took him four trips to bring three suits and three complete sets of scuba gear back into the storage area. Once he had it all on the floor, he decided to go back once more. He needed to take a look up into the control room to see if the hatch there was intact. He was very cold now and could barely hold the tank valve he was shivering so badly.
Despite his discomfort he made it back to the pool room. He had to push the body of White out of the way to get up the ladder that led to the operations room. He pushed his head up far enough to see. The wall lights were still working and the view was clear and surreal. Bodies of the crew floated everywhere. He tried to ignore them and looked at the hatch. It was open and he could see the black sea through it. The tunnel must have been ripped from the side of the hab. He had seen enough and made his way back down to the pool room and from there back to the storage room.
When he got into the storage room he was too cold to do much more than grab the ladder and pull himself up.
In the galley, Kate and Chas helped Boris to sit down and dried him off with towels and then covered him with more dry towels. The towels had been a good find. A whole box of them in the storage room had seemed like something they didn’t really need but had nonetheless found its way into the galley with everything else.
Kate looked at Boris. He was shivering uncontrollably.
“I’ll get the gear,” she said and took the mask Boris had dropped on the table.
She stripped down to pants and the sports bra she preferred to wear when working. Donning the mask she dropped into the cold water.
Kate was horrified at how cold it was. The shock really surprised her and it took her a moment to remember why she was in the water.
She grabbed at the first things she could reach from the pile of gear and thrust it up above her head where Chas’ legs had appeared at the top of the ladder. A hand appeared and took the gear. Kate reached down again for another load and repeated the hand off to Chas. She was out of breath and getting very cold. She pushed her head above the water and gasped in a lung full of air. “Damn it’s cold”
Kate did four more dives to bring up all the gear and joined Boris at the table wrapped in her own pile of towels. Chas stood by the ladder looking at them. “You guys look terrible,” he said, then thought badly of himself for saying it. They were both working to get them all out of here and he was making stupid comments. “Sorry,” he said. “You look great. More coffee anyone?”
After they had all warmed up again, Kate assembled the dive gear and looked at the pile of suits Boris had recovered. Her own suit was on top of the pile. “Lucky me. I get my own suit, but it looks like you two will need to pick from these.”
Boris looked at the pile of suits. “One of us should stay here. Not necessary for us all to go.”
“I’m not staying here on my own” Chas said. “If you two don’t come back, I’m not being left alone.”
“I agree with Chas. We all go.” and Kate picked up her suit. She tossed suits to the other two. “Those look like they might fit” she said, smiling. One of the suits was obviously much to large for either of the men. “Let’s agree who is doing what before we get into the water.”
Boris got the large suit but didn’t seem to care. “I go first and close tunnel hatch. When it is closed, we try to get gas into chamber. While it repressurizes, we need to move the bodies down into the moon pool. They will stink up the place if we let them stay.”
Chas looked ashen. He had forgotten about the bodies. He looked at Kate who didn’t look much happier. “What do we do with them once they are in the moon pool room?” she asked.
“We tie weights to them and drop them out the opening. It will only take a kilogram or two. They are well saturated by now.”
“How can you be so dispassionate?” Chas asked him
Boris looked hard at him.
“I am not dispassionate, but I am a realist. If you want to see sunshine again there are many things we have to do, and I have no pleasure in doing them with the bodies of our comrades looking on.”
“I saw cable ties in the storage room.” Kate said. I’ll get some as we go through. We can use them to attach some of the dive weights to each body.”
“You too?” Chas asked.
“I guess so. I’d like to go home, and I also have no interest in doing any of this with a bunch of dead and decomposing corpses watching me.”
“What do we tell the families when we get back?” Chas asked.
Kate looked taken aback. “I… hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she said.
“It is tradition to bury the dead at sea.” Boris said. “This is a fitting place to leave them.”
Chas nodded agreement. “Yes, OK, you’re right but I’m not sure I can do it.”
“Then it’s my task” Kate said. “You can take care of the gas system.”
Each of them pulled a dry-suit over there normal clothing. Normally they would have used the fleece underwear that came with the suits but who knows where that was, and in any case it was going to be waterlogged and no use as insulation.
Kate had an odd feeling as they prepared to enter the water again. “Anyone else having difficulty leaving the one dry place we have?” she asked.
The other two either didn’t hear or ignored her.
Boris went down the ladder first followed by Chas. As Chas dropped below the surface Kate felt suddenly very alone.
“OK” she said to herself. “Let’s do this,” and dropped into the cold water.
As she entered the storage room, she saw Chas was already entering the tunnel. She also noticed how much warmer she was. She knew that wasn’t going to last but it was hard not to compare this relative luxury with the stark cold of her previous dive into the room. She adjusted her buoyancy so she could stand on the floor and walked with her arms making swimming motions over to one of the plastic storage bins that were all floating up under the shelves above where they had been stacked. She pulled out the one with the cable ties and opened it. A large bubble of gas escaped and the contents of the bin floated up with the gas bubble. Kate grabbed a bundle of cable ties and turned to face the tunnel. There was no sign of Chas or Boris now. She wished they had the full-face masks and comms equipment so she could talk to them.