The Pheia had risen so that the weight stack was now almost level with the cave mouth. Kate kicked out from the cave and angled her body down slightly towards the bottom of the weights. She glided easily under the structure and up into the moon pool room. She shone the light around inside the room to light up the few dark spots in case the shark had decided that this too might be an interesting cave to go hunting in. Kate knew the shark wasn’t dangerous to her. At least not in any way other than to be a bit scary when encountered in the dark. In fact, she thought that the combination of the isopod find and the shark sighting made the whole dive a great idea.
Back in the ops room she took off her suit and hung it up. She unclipped the stack of dive slates from her BC and went over to the control console intending to write up a detailed description of the dive and her finds. She had just entered the current depth and started writing a description of the cave when the ELF radio sounded the arrival of a new message.
For the past two hours Williams had been watching the weather forecast. It was not unusual to have a storm come through at this time of year, and it was probable that the one currently between Haiti and Jamaica would miss them completely. Its current track predicted that it would pass 50 to 60 miles south of their position. What worried Williams was that the reports from Haiti ,where it had passed over a few hours before, were very severe. If the storm’s track shifted to the north, even slightly, it might hit Grand Cayman. The barge’s position in West Bay should protect it from the heavy seas which would hit Cayman’s East end first, but once the storm was on top of the island, if it lingered there, things could get bad very quickly. The vessel was large enough that it could ride a moderate sea, but strong sustained winds would make it hard to keep on station. Not to mention the potential for sea sickness amongst the crew from the mainland. If the conditions looked like they might be bad then they would probably have to motor around to the lee side of the island and given the barge’s only moderate speed, they were going to have to depart at least a couple of hours before the storm arrived.
For the moment, the weather was calm and sunny, but Williams knew that if they had to move they might lose ELF contact with the Pheia and he didn’t want to have to tell Kate they were leaving in a hurry. He sent a message with his assessment of the situation to the Pheia and wondered what Kate would make of it.
Kate read the message. “Great. No support if the storm hits.” she thought. But she wasn’t really worried by the message. These tropical storms rarely lasted more than a day, and she was still several days from the surface. “They’ll be back when it’s over.”
She typed up as detailed an account of her dive as she could manage. With nothing else to do it helped pass the time. She even went though the text when she had finished the first draft and edited it. Satisfied it was a solid report of the isopods and shark, she sent it to the surface. “Pity there were no pictures.”
Williams expected some sort of question from Kate about the storm and was quite surprised an hour later to be reading a report of a dive she had done. He was partly horrified that she was outside for no good reason, but very interested in what she had found. He didn’t know how to respond, and decided to talk to Subramanian about it.
Williams found Subramanian in the galley where he seemed to spend most of his time talking to the engineers. They were a new breed for him. Most of his research had been conducted on military personnel. These engineers thought quite differently from the soldiers and sailors he had experimented on. He had made up a joke for himself but was not yet ready to share it with them: “How do you stress an engineer? Give him a week’s worth of work and ask for it in two days.” This seemed to be a recurring theme in their conversations. According to them, they were often asked to do work in time periods much shorter than they thought it should take. And it wasn’t because they were lazy. Evidently both Leclerc and Babin worked very long hours for a fixed salary. What drove them crazy was having to compromise on quality. They would put all kinds of effort into completing a project so long as they could complete it the way they thought it should be done. And what they seemed to detest the most was a non-engineer as a manager. They had great distain for managers in general who they considered to be parasites attached to their project, rather than a form of help. Subramanian was in the middle of a discussion about the merits of management when Williams arrived. Williams had a somewhat distressed look.
“What is the problem Dr. Williams?” Subramanian asked.
Williams took a moment to respond. He was debating asking to talk to Subramanian in private but changed his mind.
“It seems that Dr. Moss went on what I might call a science dive. She made some quite interesting discoveries. I am, on the one hand quite excited by the news of what she found, but I am very worried about her making unnecessary dives. I was going to ask her not to do any more dives but I thought I’d ask your opinion first.”
“What was the tone of Kate’s message?”
“It was in the form of a scientific report.”
“Yes, I’m sure it was, but what was the tone? Did she sound excited or bored or frightened?”
“Oh, I see. Yes, she sounded very positive. I suppose that was what made me excited when I read it.”
“Then I think you should make a comment on the content of the report but not on the dive itself. That way you are providing positive reinforcement for her work, but not condoning or censuring the fact that she conducted the dive. I suspect that Kate went out because she is simply tired of sitting in the habitat doing nothing. She is evidently a competent diver and the risk of this dive seems to me to be way below the risks associated with getting the vessel to the surface.”
Williams thought about what Subramanian had said. He had not been thinking about how Kate was spending her time.
“OK, that’s a good idea, but do you think I should discourage her from doing more dives?”
“Oh, certainly not. I am quite sure that Kate’s response to that would be to go out on another dive right away.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Kate does not care for authority figures, and you would be setting yourself up in exactly that position.”
Williams raised his eyebrows.
“Dr. Moss works for me,” he said.
“Yes, she does, but in her day to day work she generally sets her own goals etc., yes?”
“Yes, she does. I approve the general direction of the research she does and help with funding, but you are right, she then decides for herself how she will conduct the research.”
“Then I think you should consider the next few days as a research project, and let Dr. Moss find her own path through them. The reality is that we need her mentally alert in case there is another problem she needs to deal with, and having her mind engaged in some research which she finds interesting will help pass the time, and keep her in top mental gear.”
“I’m just worried about her.” Williams replied.
Babin and Leclerc had been following the conversation in silence. Babin waited until Williams had left then added her own disdainful comment. “Managers!”
Back in the comm shack, Williams asked if he could get an electronic copy of Kate’s transmission. The tech had him enter his email address and tapped a few entries on the screen to send the text.
“There you go.”
“Thank you,” Williams replied and left to get his laptop.
Back in the bunk room, Williams reviewed Kate’s paper. It was well written and she had obviously taken great care to edit it. It was a shame it had no pictures, but both the isopod and the frilled shark had been photographed before and he was sure he could find some images online somewhere. The number of scientific deep dives was very limited. He knew only too well how much it cost to equip an expedition like this. It was no surprise that when one was conducted it found something new or at least interesting. Mankind knew more about the surface of the moon that it did about the deep sea. He’d repeated that line at more fundraising events than he could remember. Kate’s paper was evidence that there were still things to discover and all the more reason to repair the Pheia and strive to conduct more deep sea exploration expeditions.