“That’s what I thought. But around the other side, where I am, you should be fine penetrating the hull providing you don’t disrupt anything. Thankfully our rebreathers don’t produce exhaust, so there’s no danger of creating air pockets that could crack any weakened structure. It’s pretty rusty in here.”
“We’ve seen the ship’s name on the bow. That’s all we need. We can leave now.”
“You’d kill me if I told you what I’d found but didn’t give you the chance to see it for yourself. Anyway, I’m in here already. You should be with me.”
“I’m trying to see the logic in that.”
“It’s called the buddy system.”
“Right.”
“Trust me. Follow the line.”
“Roger that.” Jack angled his body around, sensing the yawning chasm beneath him as the current took hold of his legs and swung them round until he was parallel with the hull. He knew that he was going to have to fin hard for a few strokes to regain the lip of the precipice, but that once he was in the lee of the wreck again, the water movement would slacken. He finned hard, but nothing happened. In a split second he realized his mistake. In the process of turning, he had allowed the current to take him crucially beyond the protective bulk of the wreck, and he was suddenly being swept along the edge of the drop-off. He felt a lurching sensation, as if he had jumped out of an aircraft, as if the bottom were falling out under him. The current had undulated downward, and he was dropping below the edge as fast as if he were riding a water chute into the void. His computer set off an audible alert and flashed red as it overrode the manual on his buoyancy system and bled air into his suit. The extra lift slowed him down enough for him to right himself and hit the alarm on the side of his helmet, activating a beacon that sent out a continuous sound-wave pulse. He smacked into something, and saw that it was a jagged lava pinnacle protruding from the cliff. He clung on to it, dragging himself up until he was straddling it, perched on an overhang between a mottled wall of rock rising high above and the sheer cliff dropping into the void below.
He looked with horror at his depth gauge: 149 meters. In a matter of seconds he had plummeted twenty-five meters below the level of the wreck. He peered at the rock face above, trying to calm his breathing. There were other protuberances, enough for handholds. It would have been a difficult ascent in the most favorable of conditions, with overhangs that would challenge the best free-climber. Down here, he was impeded by his equipment, by the current bearing down on him like an underwater waterfall, and by his inability to use footholds. He stared at his fins, fought against instinct and pressed the catch at the back of each ankle, causing the fins to draw up and mold around his calves. He would now have no chance against the current if he were swept off, but he knew they would be of little use anyway. At least now he could try to use footholds as if he were properly climbing.
He edged behind the outcrop, feeling the current slacken. There would be pockets of calm close to the cliff, beneath overhangs and inside fissures, and he needed to find those where he could. The air in his suit had caused his arms and chest to balloon out, reducing his maneuverability. He hit the manual override, bleeding off the air until he could move more freely. It was another counterintuitive decision, almost certainly sealing his fate if he were to be swept off, but it was his only chance of making any headway on the climb.
He tapped his intercom. He had heard nothing but crackling since being swept away. “Costas, do you read me. I’m at a hundred and forty-nine meters depth, over the cliff beyond the bow of the wreck, at least fifty meters southwest of my original position. I was swept over by the current and am attempting to climb back. Help would be appreciated. Over.”
There was still no response. He guessed that the rock face between them was impeding radio contact, but he knew that the sound waves from his beacon pulsing up the cliff face should be detectable by Costas’s homing device. He had to climb now, or give up any hope of survival. He released his hold on the protuberance and grasped another one above him, the jagged edges of the lava biting into the Kevlar of his glove. He pulled himself up, feeling almost impossibly heavy as he swung out against the current, every muscle in his body straining as he reached up with his other hand and found a hold. He kicked his feet back into the rock, finding a ledge and pulling himself onto it. Three meters done, twenty-two to go. He felt his heart pound, his breathing rate increase. He needed to be calm, measured, as he used to be when he had enjoyed rock-climbing, clearing his mind and focusing solely on his objective. He reached up to another handhold, and then another. Slowly, relentlessly, feeling as if he were carrying a sack of lead on his back, he fought his way up against the current, following the line of a fissure that seemed to offer the path of least resistance.
After another five meters he stopped again, his feet and hands wedged into the fissure. He tried another hold, slipped sideways and felt the current swing him around violently, crunching his rebreather backpack against the rock. He stayed still, watching with trepidation as his computer display flickered and wavered, trying not to think of the glitch in his manifold and what might trigger it again. Above him was an overhang he had seen from below but put from his mind, hoping that the fissure would continue through it. Now he saw that the fissure led into a collapsed cavern below the overhang, the remains of a lava tube. He would have to attempt the overhang like a free-climber, using only his hands, dangling over the void. Everything up to now would seem easy by comparison. He would be in the full force of the current again, fighting a downward pressure three or four times greater than anything he had encountered so far.
His arms felt heavy with the strain, and he was breathing hard. He thought of the bailout option, something he had refused to consider until now. He could let go and free fall into the void, no longer fighting the current but hoping that it would undulate back upward and spit him out above the ridge, allowing him to ascend to the surface. But that was hardly a viable plan. Even if he did make the surface, he would probably be miles away, dependent entirely on his beacon for any hope of rescue, being swept relentlessly out into the Atlantic by the heavy seas they knew were on the way. He tensed himself, focusing. He would only let that happen if his body gave way and he could physically hang on no longer. Until then, pressing on and reaching Costas was his only hope.
He pulled himself up, and hit his helmet on something. He shifted to one side, inching further up the fissure, attempting to avoid the unseen obstacle. He hit his head again, this time harder. He swung back, just in time to avoid being smacked in his visor. He stared at what was in front of him, and then felt an overwhelming rush of relief. It was an old-fashioned two-kilogram lead diving weight, suspended from a white nylon line. He looked up, his headlamp beam catching the line where it came down the overhang. He eased his feet out of the fissure, reached down with one hand to click his fins back into position and then grasped the weight with the same hand, letting go of the rock with the other and feeling the current pull him far out over the void. Ahead of him the line stretched taut to a point above the rim where he could just make out a beam of light below the bow of the wreck. He could feel himself being pulled forward, slowly but surely. The current slackened, and he was in the lee of the wreck over the rim of the cliff. He finned along the remaining length of line until he reached Costas, who had belayed it around a rock pinnacle just in front of the bows.
“Look what I caught,” Costas said.
Jack looked at the familiar stubbled face behind the visor, hardly believing what had just happened.
“The intercom went down as soon as you went over the drop-off. One of my design team in the engineering lab suggested that beacon with a magnified pulse array. All I had to do was activate my helmet display to locate it, and then go fishing. I think maybe we owe her a beer.”