When they got to the end of the cable it was obvious they had a problem.
“Morrison to surface.”
“Go ahead Morrison. Over” came a voice over the comm link.
“The cable is too short by about five feet. Over”
“Roger. I’ll tell the engineers. Over.”
“Like that’ll help.” Morrison thought to himself.
Stephens gave Morrison the WTF signal. Morrison shook his head. “How much slack do we have at the top?” he asked.
“Maybe two feet. Not enough.” Stephens answered.
“Fuck. Anyone got three feet of cable?”
Morrison let go of the end of the cable.
“Let’s get back in and discuss this. We’re just wasting gas.”
Washington was first above the water level in the ops room. He climbed out and started to pull off his gear. Stephens appeared right behind him. He pulled off his helmet. “Hey, where’s Kate?” he asked.
Washington turned around. “Not here. That’s for sure.”
Stephens felt Morrison tap him on the leg and climbed up out of the way.
When Morrison pulled his own helmet off he said, “Where’s Kate?”
“Question of the day.” Washington replied.
Morrison looked around. There was nowhere to hide. Then he noticed her suit was not on its usual pipe. “She’s in the water. Did either of you see her when you came back in?”
They both said no.
“Wait or search?” Morrison asked.
Stephens said: ‘Wait,” and Washington nodded in agreement.
“OK. We wait five then search. Damn tourists.”
As they were hanging their suits up, Kate’s face appeared above the water. She pulled her mask off. “Miss me?”
Stephens was fastest. “Nope.” he said.
Morrison and Washington both laughed but Morrison wasn’t amused.
“Mind telling us where you were?” he asked.
“I had an idea. Turns out I was right.”
“Perhaps we’ll judge that later.” Morrison said. “Care to share?”
Kate got out of the water. Washington held her tank as she slipped out of her gear.
“Thanks,” she said and walked over to the console still in her suit.
The page with the “No signal” message was till on the screen.
“Come over here and watch this,” she said.
Kate had a plastic box in her hand. She opened it, took out one of the pills looked at the number printed on the side and swallowed it.
“What was that?” Morrison asked.
“Look here and you’ll see.” Kate said. Then added, “Hopefully.” as she typed in the ID number for the pill.
As the acid in her stomach contacted the pill, it activated itself and the message on the screen disappeared and was replaced by a page of data.
“What’s all that?” Stephens asked.
“My bio info.” Kate answered him.
“OK, I’m lost.” Morrison said. “Interesting, I suppose, but what’s the point?”
“The bio pill is showing my general biological condition plus some very specific data. Look here.”
Kate pointed to a number on the screen.
“That’s my overall gas absorption number. In a few minutes it’ll work out numbers for the gasses in the mix we’re breathing. If I let it run for an hour or two it’ll figure out my rate of absorption. If the hab were ascending, you’d see a negative number. Essentially how fast I’m outgassing.”
Morrison still didn’t get it. “Fascinating. You just felt the need to know eh?” he asked.
“Yes. Absolutely. Because if we all take the pills we can track our outgassing rate exactly and…”
She didn’t get to finish. Washington cut her off.
“Figure out how fast we can get to the surface.” he said.
“Right!” Kate said.
Morrison looked at the figures. “Really? And it’s reliable?”
“Yes it is. This is what Dr. Ford used to measure all her test subjects with. It’s got tons of people-hours on it. Way better than guessing, or sticking to the maximum safe ascent rate.”
Morrison thought for a minute.
“OK, so if it’s accurate we might be able to go up faster and live to tell the tale then. I guess we can give it a try but we have another problem to fix first.”
Kate visibly slumped. “And what’s that?” she asked.
“The cable they sent down is a few feet too short. We need to lift the Pheia until it reaches.”
“I spoke to Babin while you were out.” Kate said. “She said they sent down another lifting bag. Did you not find it?”
“No.” Morrison said. “Either it’s still on its way down or it got stuck.”
Kate contacted the surface and confirmed with Babin that they had sent down a lift bag. “Well, it’s supposed to be here: she said.”
As the lift bag had slid down the cable, pushed by the collection of dive weights it had fluttered slightly from side to side. It was most of the way down to the Pheia before one of the dive weights jammed between the clip on the bag and the cable. It hung there limply in the water like a sad flag on a windless day.
They had all heard what Babin had said about the bag. She had also said that they would put some more weights around the cable and send those down. Perhaps that would get it moving again as it was obviously stuck somewhere. She had apologized twice before leaving to send down the extra weights.
“Is there anything else here we can use as a lift bag?” Morrison asked Kate.
“We have lots of trash bags but nothing to put them in.” she said.
“What about kit bags? Anything like that? Doesn’t need to be big if we have enough of them.”
Kate tried to go through her mental list of everything she had seen in the storage area. “There might be kit bags in the crew room. We all brought down a few spare clothes but there isn’t much space so we were told to limit it. I know there were some small backpacks but I don’t remember seeing anything large.”
“We’re being stupid.” Washington said. “We just need the surface to let out some cable. It doesn’t reach because there isn’t enough slack. Right?”
Morrison felt dumb. “I’m going to write this off to the pressure.” He pushed the talk button on the console. “Morrison to surface. We need you to pay out about 20 to 30 feet of cable. Over.”
Babin’s voice came over the speaker. “I should have thought of that. That’s the trouble with not being able to see. I had some other mental model of the situation. We are paying out the slack now.”
The divers suited up and went back in the water. Kate wanted to be with them. It was getting a bit old now, standing around in the ops room doing nothing.
When the divers reached the top of the pinnacle, the winch cable had a loop of about ten feet deep in it. Morrison and Stephens pulled up their short section a few feet and removed one of the clamps from its end to secure it temporarily as they took off the rest of the clamps.
Washington took one clamp from Stephens and swam the end of the short line to the bottom of the lift cable loop. He clamped it there. “Secure boss.” he said over the comm system.
Morrison and Stephens transferred the rest of the clamps and let the cable hang down. Washington swam it over to the top of the Pheia. The other two joined him and they clamped the cable in place.
“Morrison to surface. Are you receiving? Over.”
“Five by five Morrison. Go ahead.”
“We have the short section clamped in place. We will cut the loop out of the main cable now so you will lose the comm link. Over.”
“Understood. Wait one. Over.”
There was a pause and Babin came on the comm in Morrison’s helmet.
“Tell me how you plan to do this.” she said and then added “Over.”