For the next four days the Pheia descended the wall at about four inches a minute. The rate was so slow that a casual glance out one of the portals showed only slight movement of the wall upwards. After the second day of the descent the Pheia was over 500 feet below the surface and there was no sunlight left from above. The Pheia’s floodlights lit up the section of the wall immediately in front of the portals but all the light revealed was a drab grey rock with frequent sand patches and an occasional plastic bag or other man-made artifact. The sheer volume of trash in the ocean was amazing. Most of the plastic trash floated near the surface but once in a while a bag with something denser inside would drift down to find its final resting place in the dark on the side of the wall. With no UV to break down the plastic, most of the garbage at this level was likely to be here for many years until either a section of the wall calved off and took it deeper, or an unfortunate fish attempted to eat it.
As the Pheia descended below the surface and left the warm Caribbean sun above, the sea temperature dropped sharply. The aluminum structure of the hab contracted as it descended beside the Cayman wall. The Pheia’s gas system adjusted the gas pressure inside the hab to exactly equal the outside sea pressure. The water level in the moon pool room’s exit moved up and down slightly in response to the adjustments made by the gas system. The Pheia was in balance.
Jason Newell knew almost every inch of the Pheia. He had helped to select the companies chosen to manufacture the hull and the major systems. It had been hard work and kept him at his office for long hours as he reviewed bids and selected the suppliers.
As the Pheia descended, Newell wandered through the structure looking at all the pipes, fittings and control systems that made the hab work. The contraction of the hull occasionally made ticking sounds as metal surfaces adjusted lengths slightly. Newell heard the faint sounds as he moved around admiring the work. He had noticed that nobody else seemed to hear them. They were all busy talking, filled with excitement for the expedition
The non-pressurized design allowed the hull to be made from much thinner material which was both much cheaper and a lot lighter. The choice of aluminum for the hull material had been made over two years before the expedition and was based on availability, ease of manufacture and suitability for the purpose. The Pheia had been built from parts from more than one supplier. As Newell opened the hatch from the moon pool room into the lower tunnel that connected to the storage room in the other cylinder he looked at the round aluminum walls and remembered his first trip to the small company in Detroit that had made the tunnel sections. He had been pleased to award the contract to the small company which now occupied a site where his father had once worked on an automobile assembly line.
The company employed just five people; all skilled machinists, and was struggling to keep its head above water. The Pheia’s tunnel sections were really just a small bone thrown to a hungry dog but Newell was pleased to have been able to help them.
After a few steps he reached the door into the storage room. He turned around to admire the tunnel again. It was just a small piece of the Pheia but for him it was quite personal.
What Newell didn’t know was that the company that built the tunnels had ignored the specification for the material and used some stock left over from a previous project that had been cancelled part way through. The alloy was slightly different from that used to make the hull sections. It looked the same and nobody had tested the material before the tunnel sections were welded to the hulls.
Aluminum is tricky to weld correctly. Modern techniques have greatly improved the process but it is still important to use the right materials and the right fill materials and shield gasses. The assembly company in Maine had gone from the specifications in the plans. They had tested a sample of the hull material but assumed that the tunnels were the same. The result was a set of welds that looked perfect but which had not bonded well to the tunnel material.
Newell closed the hatch in the storage room and started his inspection of the stores before moving up through the crew cylinder. He was pleased with how things had turned out.
The rest of the crew of the Pheia settled into a routine of monitoring the habitat’s systems, taking the smart bio pills and receiving shots from Dr. Ford when she thought it appropriate. A lot of the time was spent either lying on a bunk reading or sitting in the galley drinking coffee and eating Kayla Miller’s food.
Kayla had ended up on the Pheia by accident. She had started her medical career as an ER doctor. Her parents had pushed her through med school and her father had arranged for her first job. Kayla’s interests were more for cooking than repairing gunshot wounds and she had wanted very much to open her own restaurant since she had been a teenager. He father’s money had paid for her medical training so she had started work at the hospital without any debt which was very unusual. Most medical graduates had huge student loans to pay off when they first began work. Kayla stuck with the ER work for two years before she found a restaurant for sale about two miles from the hospital. After a particularly brutal day in the ER dealing with the aftermath of a school bus accident she walked into the real estate office and signed for the restaurant hoping like hell she could cover the initial costs and persuade her father to loan her the rest of the money.
After quitting the hospital job, she found her father very unwilling to support her new role as an impoverished restaurant owner wannabe. She tried to find other backers but it became clear very quickly that her options were to go back to the hospital or find different work. Her father refused to fund the restaurant but offered to unload it for her so she could go back to work. Kayla signed over the restaurant to him, said thanks, and walked away. She drove from the hospital in Chicago to the Maine coast and got a job working in a diner. A chance meeting with a customer from the institute who was spending the weekend fishing led her to apply for the job of chef on the Pheia.
Once Dr Martin found out she was an ER doctor, he offered her the combined job of chef/medic. Kayla accepted at once and moved to a small apartment near the coast about two miles form the institute. She had learned to dive on a Mexican vacation but had no idea about anything more than about 50 feet below the surface. But that wasn’t important to Kayla. She had found a job where she could cook. And what’s more, the crew had no choice. It was her food or starve, so she looked forward to many happy days with vats full of chili or spaghetti.
Her role as the Pheia’s chef began a long time before the actual dive in Cayman. The crew had been assembled for training months before the dive and Kayla trained along with them. Nobody much cared for the cafeteria food at the institute so Kayla found herself cooking for them all in her apartment or one of the crew’s homes many days a week. She gained herself a family that liked to eat, and she had found a group of happy customers.
Half Way Down
(2,500 Feet)
Kate woke up to find Bazhanov staring into the bunk room mirror poking at his nose. The room felt clammy and a little chilly. She watched Bazhanov poke at his nose. He saw movement in the mirror and turned to see Kate rolling off her bunk.
“Good morning Kate.”
“Hi Boris. Working on some zits?”
“It seems that combination of humidity and Miss Miller’s food is not good for skin.”
“Not radiation burns are they?”
Kate didn’t like Bazhanov very much and found his interest in her distasteful. She tried her best to put him off but it didn’t seem to work. Bazhanov was immune to sarcasm, ignoring him, and direct attempts to fend him off. So Kate satisfied herself with occasional verbal jabs when she was in the mood and the opportunity arose.