Kaz, Adriana, and Dante nodded, mute with shock and dread.
The steady hiss of air suddenly jumped to a roar.
“I’m bleeding as much gas as I can into the cabin,” Vanover explained, “building up our pressure so the water doesn’t crush us.”
Star kept one eye on the Fathometer readout. They were passing through four hundred feet.
Still too deep. To stand a fighting chance, they’d need to reach two hundred.
One-fifty would be better.
The sub was vibrating dangerously as the captain fought to pull the vehicle out of the ocean’s abyss. He’s right, she realized. The weak thrusters weren’t designed to bring Deep Scout back to the surface — and certainly not when the submersible was weighted down with a half ton of mud.
The question is: How high can we get?
Three hundred feet. “Come on, girl,” grunted Vanover, bathed in sweat. “Don’t quit on me now.”
As they passed through 250 feet, the black of the ocean subtly morphed into an ultraviolet indigo. Proof that the sun was up there somewhere, far above them.
“Divers in the water,” came the report through the tinny speaker.
“Pray we’ll have work for them,” Vanover said grimly.
Two hundred and twenty feet. The first thruster failed and Deep Scout began to veer left, unable to maintain a steady course.
“Everybody flat on the deck!” the captain ordered. “When the sea comes in, it’ll bounce us around like Ping-Pong balls!”
As the interns struggled to arrange themselves on the tiny available floor space, the submersible went into a spin, crushing them together.
Vanover clung to the joystick like it was the saddle horn of a bucking bronco. “Ready to blow the hatch!”
Star risked one last look at the Fathometer: 206 feet. Were they high enough?
She never saw the hatch actually open. It was just gone, and Niagara Falls was roaring into Deep Scout. She pinched her nostrils and blew hard, but her ears still exploded with pain as nearly seven atmospheres of pressure brought the ocean down upon them. The impact was crushing, a full body blow that plastered her against the deck. The captain was swept out of his chair and flung into the heavy acrylic of the sphere.
Then, all at once, the tempest was over. Deep Scout’s cabin was filled with icy water — at two hundred feet, even a tropical sea was cold. Shivering, Star bit down on her regulator and began pushing the others through the open hatch. The nitrogen narcosis hit her almost immediately — an instant, pleasant wooziness that eased the chill and the salt sting in her unprotected eyes. It makes sense, she reasoned. I’m breathing compressed air at incredible depth.
Kaz was fouled in some wires that had become exposed when the onslaught of the sea had wrenched the data screen free of the control console. Star got him untangled and barked, “Go!” into her regulator, following his clumsy progress out of the vehicle. She hoped the others could figure out that they had to find the surface now. Surely they were just as narced as she was.
Star watched as Dante, Adriana, and finally Kaz began to kick upward. Exhaling a bubbly sigh of relief, Star followed. Yet through her nitrogen haze, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she’d forgotten something important, left a key task undone.
As she rose, a shape drifted out of Deep Scout twenty feet below her. Arms outstretched, it began to sink slowly.
The realization burned through the fog like brilliant sun: The captain!
She did a U-turn in the water, diving against her body’s natural buoyancy. With no weight belt, descent was difficult. She kicked hard against the sea’s resistance, her compact form tight and vector straight. Fighting the rules of physics, she closed the gap between herself and Vanover. Fifteen feet… ten… five… almost there…
That was when she realized that no bubbles were coming from his nose or mouth. The captain was dead.
His eyes were closed. He must have been knocked unconscious when the surging water slammed him against the sphere. His tank was gone too, probably ripped away by the same irresistible force. The laws of science and pressure — harmless and boring on a piece of paper in diving class. But here in real life — brutal, overpowering, deadly.
She grabbed his arm. It was lifeless, a piece of floating debris. There was one more chance. She pulled out her regulator and forced it between his gray lips.
Nothing. The man was gone.
She screamed with grief and sorrow, and didn’t stop until her own choking extinguished her voice.
Convulsed with coughs, she didn’t notice the explosion of bubbles soaring upward from her regulator.
Oh, no! The demand valve!
By the time she bit down on the mouthpiece, she knew that most of the air supply had already escaped. Only deep, wheezing pulls would draw anything from the cylinder. Below two hundred feet, gas went fast, compressed by the depth.
I’ve got to get out of here!
She shot for the surface, careful not to ascend faster than her slowest bubbles. She got two more gulps of air before the tank went empty, and she swallowed hard to force back her thirst for more.
Don’t hold your breath, she reminded herself. That was a good way to rupture a lung. All gasses expand on the way up, including the ones already in your pulmonary system.
One hundred and fifty feet. Hang in there! She knew she might get another inhalation if she could make it to one hundred — the traces of air in the tank would expand to provide one more suck. She checked her watch — 120 feet — and—
Right there, rising out of the bowels of the ocean, her heart stopped. Beside the Fathometer reading, a single word flashed on and off, accompanied by a high-pitched beeping.
DECOMP.
Decompression. She had spent too much time at depth. It was no longer safe for her to return to the surface without stopping to give her body a chance to expel nitrogen.
But I can’t stop! I’m out of air!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was every diver’s worst nightmare. The choice that was really no choice at all. Ascend to the surface and risk the harmful, even deadly effects of the bends.
Or drown.
Star made the decision in a split second. It was no contest. Drowning was a sure thing. I’ll take my chances with the bends!
Upward she soared, her feet kicking like pistons. As she passed through eighty feet, she managed to squeeze another fraction of a breath out of her empty tank. Then she swallowed again, fighting back the craving of her lungs. It was illogical, but she could almost feel the nitrogen bubbles frothing her blood into a milk shake as she rose to warmth and light.
No thinking, she exhorted herself. Swim!
Star broke through the waves to a world she’d thought she might never see again. Two huge gulps of air — pure heaven — and then the important business of yelling for help. “Hey! Hey!!”
Gasping, she tried to orient herself. The steely bulk of Scoutmaster’s stern loomed about fifty yards away.
Strong hands grasped her from behind, and she cried out in shock.
“It’s okay!” the rescue diver soothed her. “I’m here to help. Don’t worry — it’s over.”