“We’ll cut the cable just above the clamp at the pinnacle first. Then we’ll go down to the top of the Pheia and cut it lose from there. We have the short link as tight as we could make it so the drop should only be a foot or so. Over.”
Babin agreed with the plan.
Morrison sent Stephens with a large cable cutter to go up and cut the lift cable free at the top of the pinnacle.
When Stephens was swimming up he saw a patch of yellow above him. “The lift bag just got here. I’ll snag it.”
“Rog.” Morrison replied.
Stephens unclipped the bag from the line and attached it to his harness. Then he put the big cutters around the lift cable and squeezed. The cutter had a ratchet action and he had to pump it a couple of times to slice through the steel wires.
The cable drifted away from the cut and drooped down. Stephens checked the clamps on the short section as he swam back down and joined the other two on top of the Pheia.
Morrison pointed to the lift bag on Stephens’ belt. Stephens nodded. He removed the bag and clipped it to the top of the collection of lift cables where they joined the main cable from the barge.
The bag was large and took a while to inflate. As it took shape it took some of the weight of the Pheia from the main cable. Stephens added more gas to the bag until the main lift cable went slack. “Good to go,” he said.
Washington took the cutter from Stephens and swam out a way with Morrison. They cut the cable that was holding the hab to the pinnacle on the wall. “We’re free,” Morrison announced.
The Pheia floated up slowly, lifted by the huge bag attached to the cables.
Stephens swam to the vent port on the bag and let gas out until the ascent stopped. It took a minute or so, and in that time the Pheia had risen past the pinnacle.
Morrison was watching from the wall. “It’s moving up too fast.”
“I’m on it,” Stephens replied as he let out more gas.
The Pheia halted its ascent and floated stationary in the clear water just a few feet from the wall.
Morrison pushed the talk button on his comms gear. “Morrison to surface. We are free. Over.”
He listened to the acknowledgement then waited. The view was spectacular. The huge structure hung silent in the water, its flood lights illuminating the wall.
A few seconds later he saw the cable start to move as the winch on the surface barge took the tension. When the cable was holding the Pheia, he pointed to the lift bags and Stephens opened the dump valves fully to empty them.
Very slowly the Pheia moved up as the winch lifted it and it started to drift away from the wall.
Morrison spoke to the team. “Let’s watch for a minute and make sure nothing breaks.”
The divers floated beside the giant structure as it crept slowly up past the wall. The assortment of cables held the two cylinders, set at their ungainly angle. Morrison thought it looked very feeble. He hoped it would hold until they got to the surface.
Kate was sitting on the floor with her back to the console. She had been listening to the comm circuit on the headphones. She looked up at the portal and saw the wall was moving again. A great wave of relief swept over her. She was going home.
Final Ascent
(400 Feet)
The surface barge had changed position overnight so that it was several hundred feet further from the edge of the wall. Nobody wanted any chance that the hab could hit the wall again in its fragile state. The sun was shining brightly and the sea was a glassy green with a slight swell on it.
400 feet below the surface, Kate had woken up and been surprised to see the portal looked black. For so long, it had provided a dull glow from the reflected floodlights.
She looked at the divers. They were all still asleep. Morrison had told her that life in the Navy had taught him to sleep whenever and wherever he could. Evidently the training worked because she had seen him fall asleep as soon as his head went down.
Kate got up and walked to the portal. The floodlights were still on and in the distance she could just make out the wall but there was no detail and no sign they were ascending. She walked over to the console and tapped on the screen. The depth read 400 feet. That meant they had about a day to kill and then they could get out. She wasn’t looking forward to that last dive. They had talked this over with Williams and the engineers and everyone agreed that the Pheia should be held somewhere between 50 and 100 feet and the divers should swim to the surface from there. They would need to take their time and for safety there would be two decompression stops. The first was to be at 50 feet and the second at 20 feet. The surface crew had already arranged for four sets of scuba equipment to be lowered to 50 feet for the first stop and a set of hookah lines connected to tanks on the surface barge to be lowered to 20 feet for the second, longer stop. Williams had also checked with the Caymanians to make sure that the decompression chamber on the island would be available if they needed it.
Kate had done a lot of sport diving, and most of those dives had included a three-minute safety stop at 15 to 20 feet. But these were not decompression dives. The stops were just a precaution. She always found them relaxing. There was usually a line or bar under the boat to hold on to and she could just float there looking down at the fish below her.
Tomorrow’s stops would be different. For one thing they were necessary, not just a precaution, and for some reason that made her more nervous. The bio pills they had all taken were reporting the expected gas saturation figures, so at least she knew they were in the right place on the curve. This was science, not just guessing, but all the same it held some mystery. You couldn’t tell if bubbles were forming in your blood until later when the damage had already started and the joints in your arms started aching. You had to follow the rules, take the decompression stops, and be sure to maintain a slow rate of ascent at all times.
Kate knew all this and had even done a lot of reading before the expedition to try to understand what she was going to experience. But still she was nervous. Whether that was because of the decompression stops or just the excitement of getting back to the surface she didn’t know.
The other aspect about the stops the next day that would certainly be different is that they would both be blue water stops. The wall was too far away to be a visual reference so they would essentially be just floating in the ocean on the end of a line from the barge. Around her would be miles and miles of open sea. And perhaps some fish, although most of the small fish tended to hang out near the wall.
She heard movement behind her and turned around to see Stephens digging through the food pile. “Morning,” she said to him.
“Hmmm. Morning,” he replied. “What I want are two eggs sunny side up with some bacon and hash browns. And coffee.”
“Try the other boxes,” Kate said with a smile.
“Right. Protein bars it is then.”
Kate walked over and filled the kettle with water. “I’ll get the coffee going.”
Stephens walked over to the portal. “I see they have moved us away from the wall. It’s amazing how clear the water is down here. Way better than many of the dives we’ve done in harbors and river estuaries.”
Kate spooned coffee crystals into mugs. “What is that like?”
Stephens turned around to face her. “Crappy. Some of the water is so murky that you literally cannot see you hand if you push it out in front of you.”
“So what’s the point of being down there if you can’t see?”
“We are usually doing inspections. Looking at welds and fittings. So long as you can find your way down there, once you are up close you can see well enough. And if it’s really bad you can take down a plastic bag full of clear water to look through.”