Stephens had grabbed the small bag of tools they had left in the cage which was empty now.
Morrison gave the thumbs up sign and they all swam out from under the Pheia towards the wall ascending as fast as they could swim.
At the top of the Pheia, Morrison and Stephens attached the lift bags to the top of the ops cylinder and inflated them. The bags were small but when both were inflated the Pheia slowed down noticeably. It was still sinking, but the rate was very slow.
Morrison looked out over the side of the Pheia. The surface had paid out a lot of line and the line was quite heavy. He thought it was probably pulling the Pheia down but he couldn’t ask them to pull it up; not while the sea was still heavy. One more yank on the ops cylinder and the Pheia would be split in two completely. That made him think. “Washington. See if you can shut off the gas connections to the crew cylinder.”
“On it,” came the reply.
Stephens was next to Morrison. “What next boss?”
“I want to pull up the winch cable and see if we can secure it to the wall.”
“How the hell are we going to do that? It’s probably too heavy to swim with.”
“Right but let’s give it a shot.”
They swam down to the bottom of the Pheia leaving Washington to work on the gas lines.
When they reached the cage, the cable was still a long way down below them.
Morrison swam down with powerful kicks, Stephens right at his side.
When they reached the loop in the cable they were nearly a hundred feet below the Pheia. Morrison grabbed the bottom of the loop and started swimming towards the wall. Stephens grabbed on just behind him and followed.
They reached the wall easily. They only had to pull the cable sideways. The weight wasn’t a problem yet.
“Look for a pinnacle” Morrison said. “Let me have the cable. Go left. I’ll go right.”
They split up and swam in opposite directions. Morrison dragged the cable along. It was awkward but not as hard as he thought it might be. The wall was blank. There were a few hollows and some small protrusions but nothing to hang the cable on.
Stephens was about forty feet from Morrison. “Got something below me boss. Move fast.”
Morrison reversed direction and swam towards Stephens descending rapidly as he did so.
When he reached Stephens he could see a big pinnacle a few feet below them. It was coming up towards them as the Pheia sank and they sank with it. The surface barge was still paying out cable and the loop Morrison had grabbed was now quite a way up from the actual loop in the bottom of the cable. He and Stephens swam in towards the wall with the cable and prepared to loop it over the pinnacle, which was just below them now.
The Pheia had been drifting closer to the wall as it sank. Kate watched the wall getting very close to the portal. She keyed the talk button. “Hey guys. The hab is now almost in contact with the wall.”
The divers all looked up just in time to see the weight stack under the ops cylinder strike the wall and give off a big cloud of dust. The Pheia stopped descending and started to rotate out from the wall as the weight stack stuck on a small ledge.
Washington swam down to the others, and between them they made a loop of cable above the pinnacle. Morrison took two cable clamps from his tool pouch and quickly attached them to the cable making a fixed loop. “I hope this holds,” he said.
Kate held on to the console as the Pheia tilted over as it rotated out from the wall. It was at almost 45 degrees when the weight stack slipped off the ledge that was holding it up. Kate fell over as the cylinder righted itself and started to sink again.
The divers held the loop of cable out between them and sank down over the rock pinnacle. The cable drifted down over the top and stopped when the pinnacle widened out.
The Pheia sank slowly down. Washington swam up to it and put his hands on the edge of the weight stack. He pushed his feet out onto the wall behind him and pushed hard. The hab moved out slightly. “Help me,” he said over the comms.
Morrison and Stephens swam up and helped push. The mass of the hab was hard to shift but they moved it out enough to clear the pinnacle as it passed by.
They let go and watched the Pheia sink slowly down now clear of the wall. The ops cylinder was almost upright but the crew cylinder stuck out at a crazy angle. The two parts were held together by a collection of gas lines and electrical conduits.
The loop of cable below the Pheia rose up past the bottom and came taut as the hab sank below the pinnacle.
A great cloud of dust filled the water as the cable pulled tight around the rock. Morrison held his breath and watched the cable. It stayed put.
Kate felt the Pheia stop moving. She expected more of a jolt but it wasn’t moving very fast when the cable stopped it. “Way to go guys,” she said over the comm system.
The Pheia hung against the wall by the cable, the dust suspended in the water above it like a cloud.
“Morrison to surface. Hold that cable. Pheia is stable.”
“Roger. Winch stopping,” came Leclerc’s voice.
Morrison watched as the cable stopped moving. “Well done guys, ” he said, then spoke to Washington. “Did you get the gas lines shut down?”
“I closed all the valves on the cylinders around the crew cylinder but when I got done I realized that doesn’t do any good if the lines rupture,” Washington said.
Morrison nodded and Washington continued: “I don’t see any leaks but some of the pipework is pretty mangled. It’s not going to last long if anything moves much.”
Morrison swam out to the far end of the crew cylinder. It was angled at about 45 degrees now. He was wondering why the weight stack at the bottom of the cylinder hadn’t pulled it back into the upright position.
As he swam past the end of the cylinder he saw why. Only one plate was left. The others had been torn off when the winch cable had pulled the cylinder sideways. The one remaining weight ring wasn’t enough to completely counter the buoyancy of the cylinder.
The winch cable was still moving. He pushed his talk button. “Morrison to surface. Secure the winch. Confirm. Over.”
After a short delay he felt the cable stop moving and he heard Williams’ voice. “The winch is already stopped. What is the problem?”
“Let me talk to the engineers. Over.”
Babin’s voice came back immediately. “Babin here. Over.”
“The crew cylinder has lost most of its weight stack. It has one ring left. It’s at about 45 degrees and held to the ops cylinder only by the gas and electrical connections. The sling cables to the ops cylinder are OK, but the ones to the crew cylinder are mostly slack. I don’t think it’s safe to haul like this. We have no way to shut off the gas lines and if they break we’re screwed. We need some way to stabilize the structure. Over”
“Understood. Are you OK for a while? I need to discuss this with Leclerc.”
“Roger. We’ll go back inside for now.”
Morrison made swimming signs with his fingers to the other two divers and they headed back inside the hab.
Rigging
(750 Feet)
Williams stood at the rail of the surface barge. The sea had flattened out again over the past few hours. The sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. The engineers were still discussing what to do with the Pheia and he had nothing left to contribute.
He had sent a report to the Pheia about the engineering discussions, but there was little to say. Kate had told him she was playing trivial pursuit with the divers and was winning. It was hard for Williams to image the scene in the Pheia, or what remained of it. Morrison’s account of the cable event and the loss of the weights made it sound as though there wasn’t much left. Babin had told him she thought it very unwise to try to bring it up any further with anyone inside and Williams had rather uncharacteristically said: “Duh.”