Williams was quite excited about the idea of doing some fund raising for a follow-on expedition, but then he came to his senses. Most of the Pheia’s crew was dead. Kate was the only survivor. The press would write this up as a disaster, and the public, who Williams generally referred to as the great unwashed, would see the entire thing as a waste of lives, money and time — in that order. The only upside to the situation was that the bulk of the people who donated money for deep sea research were well educated, intelligent people with a sense for adventure. He’d had many donors ask if they could go as part of the crew. To them it was as exciting as getting a seat on a rocket ride into space. They would mourn the loss of life and hand over more money. So far as the loss of life was concerned, expedition members were in the same camp as test pilots, astronauts, and race car drivers. Death was a consequence of what they did when the odds ran out. And for most of them, they’d also tell you what they did was safer than driving a car on the public roads.
He was thinking about memorial services for the crew when the boat captain put his head around the door.
“The storm track has shifted. I’d say we’re 50/50 in terms of being able to stay on site.”
Williams thanked him and went back to making notes about the services they would need to conduct.
Storm
(1,500 Feet)
Babin woke up when a coffee cup fell on the floor and broke. She had been dreaming of swimming with a huge shoal of small fish above a brilliantly lit coral reef; her body moving to and fro with the action of the waves in the shallow water.
When she opened her eyes she could see nothing in the dark room, but her senses told her that the barge was wallowing in a heavy sea.
She sat up slowly and swung her feet out onto the cold floor, then reached out and flipped on the light
The wind was howling outside and she could hear voices shouting. Her watch said 5:00 AM. She was inclined to go back to sleep. Her normal hour for getting up was still a long time away, but the raised voices outside made it sound like there was a problem. She heard mattress springs moving above her and a voice. “Bon matin.” Leclerc was awake.
Babin had spent a lot of time on her uncle’s shrimp boat when she was young. She liked the motion of the sea and she was constantly impressed by the power of the waves. A boat caught between a wave and a rock was usually about to get damaged. Boats were sometimes even crushed just by the waves alone, although seas big enough to do that were more common in the North Atlantic than in the Caribbean. She had worked on a job on the Grand Banks one summer and although the weather never got really bad, the seas had been huge at times. To look at them as they approached the boat was both exciting and terrifying at the same time. The really big rollers had a deep blue at the base as they rose, the wind ripping water from the tops and spraying her in the face where the salt accumulated in the corners of her eyes.
Learning about the physics of waves at school had been one of the things that pushed Babin towards engineering. At first it seemed inconceivable to her that waves could be described with mathematics, and in truth, the waves in the sea needed a lot of math, but the overall concept of wave motion and the interaction of waves with stationary objects and other waves could be described quite well with quite simple equations.
The boat rocked again as Leclerc climbed down from the upper bunk. He wobbled and fell on the deck groaning. He hadn’t realized he was sea sick until he tried to stand up.
Babin recognized the symptoms immediately. The look on Leclerc’s face was enough to tell her he was in a bad way. She grabbed him by one arm. “Get your coat on. We’re going outside.”
“Non. Merci. Je vais rester ici.”
Babin laughed.
“No, you really don’t want to stay in here. You need to get outside where you can see the horizon.”
She helped him into his coat and put her own rain gear on. Out on the deck the combination of rain, wind and waves in the early morning light took her right back to her childhood fishing trips.
Babin looked at the sea. It was a lot bigger than she had expected. It must have picked up during the night. She turned to Leclerc. “Right now Kate is having the best ride.” She smiled at him.
“Yes, I will trade with her now.” Leclerc replied and promptly doubled over and threw up on the deck.
Babin grabbed him around the waist and moved him to the railings. “Stay here.” she told him. “Try to watch the horizon. It will help your brain reconcile the images from your eyes with the signals from your ears.”
Leclerc retched again but nothing came up. “Quoi?”
“Just look at the horizon. You’ll feel better. I am going to get you something to help.”
“OK. Je vais rester ici.”
Babin made her way to the galley, which was empty. The better sailors were no doubt still in their racks, she thought. She rummaged around and found what she was looking for. On the way out she grabbed a bottle of water.
Back at the railing she saw Leclerc was staring at the horizon.
“I’m back,” she said to him. “Here. Drink some water and eat this.” She offered him the bottle of water and the sandwich she had made.
He drank a mouthful of water and handed the bottle back to Babin.
“I don’t want to eat anything.” he told her.
“I know you don’t, but you need to have something in your stomach or you will damage the lining if you keep retching. Trust me, you’ll like this.” She offered him the sandwich again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Strawberry jelly.”
He just looked at her.
“I learned about this from an English sailor. They call it a strawberry jam sandwich, but it’s the same thing. It is easy to eat because it’s sweet. The bread gives it some bulk you can throw back up if you need to. But the best part is that it tastes the same going down as coming back up!”
Leclerc retched again and all the water came back up.
“Please,” Babin said. “You must drink and eat.”
Leclerc drank some more water and took a bit of the sandwich. The sweet jelly tasted good.
He watched the horizon. “It is getting darker again.”
Babin turned to see where he was looking. Straight into the wind. The clouds were very black in that direction. If this kept up, she was sure they would have to move off station. There was really no risk to the steel-hulled barge but the thrusters would find it difficult to maintain the boat’s position if the wind got much stronger. And most of the crew would soon be useless. She thought about Kate again. It would be calm and peaceful down there for now. But if the sea was still rough in a few days when the Pheia surfaced, things would be very different. She was thinking about the damage Kate had described. If the tunnels had separated, the Pheia could break up in even a light sea, let alone what they had now. Kate would need to leave the hab well before it got to the surface. She decided to go and wake up Williams and talk to him.