Helen found herself out on the windswept deck wondering if it had indeed really happened. The surf lifted itself above the handrails and drove into her. She felt cold and miserable as the ship heaved beneath her.
“To have faith and hope is to survive,” she had told Marsh. And now it was all in vain.
She looked at the grey, beckoning sea and pushed the thought from her mind.
Marsh sat slumped in his seat, the agony of despair and hopelessness weighing on him like a physical burden. He stared at the instrument panel without seeing it. The images in his mind were not those in front of him, but dark, coalescing images of revenge and despair. He wanted to reach up and tear the black heart from Hakeem Khan, from Malik, from Batista, from them all. But he could not; he had no hope. Even while his heart beat strongly within him, he knew this would be the end. He lifted his head and breathed in a sigh of deep despair and closed his eyes. Now there was only blackness where there should have been light.
Beneath the dark waters he imagined the warmth of the sun in his mind; its caress like the touch of a woman. He rolled his head back and imagined the fragrance of flowers, of new mown grass, all offering a pleasure as tangible and apposite as the fear now crawling round in his belly.
He blinked and shut the hallucinatory images from his mind, bringing it to bear on the dreadful predicament he was in. He knew there was no way out of his prison and he knew that there was no way Khan would return to rescue him from his misery. He was cocooned in an environment that was designed to support life yet ironically; it was holding him in a deadly embrace and eventually he would die.
Marsh wondered what death would be like. Would he succumb to insanity before death took him? Would he grow weary and eventually suffocate in his own, exhaled carbon dioxide? Would he just fall asleep and not wake? Would he be given the last, immeasurable pleasure of being with Helen, even if only in a dream?
He shook his head vigorously and snapped out of it and began to apply his mind to the problem again. He knew that to give up so soon was to accept the inevitability of death. He checked the power meters; the instruments that told him how much longer Challenger’s own batteries would last and how much oxygen was left in the cockpit.
He knew that if the oxygen content fell below a dangerously low level, the automatic valves of the oxygen bottles would bleed a steady amount of life giving gas into the bubble’s atmosphere so that life could be sustained until an orderly recovery or rescue could be carried out.
But if the submersible’s power became low and unstable, there was a risk that the bottles could eventually pressurise the cockpit and kill him.
He began to shut down various systems that were no longer need to conserve battery power. He extinguished the low grade cockpit lighting, relying instead on the glow from the instrument panel.
After about two minutes of technical distraction, he found himself devoid of ideas and things to do. He knew the was no hope of anyone finding him on the sea bed, so his last hours would be painfully slow and would probably end in insanity.
“Damn you Khan!” he shouted suddenly. “Why didn’t you just put a bullet in me?”
His shoulders sagged and he slumped back in his seat. That was the first sign of the loss of control. How long would it be, he wondered, before he was clawing at the smooth walls of the bubble in a manic, pitiful attempt to escape? He let his mind drift again, peering out into the deep, mindful yet mindless.
How long Marsh sat in torpid despair, he didn’t know, but suddenly he sat up straight. The diving tanks! God in heaven, why didn’t he think of it?
Marsh kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier but put that down to his state of mind. He forced himself to think clearer now because he believed this would be his best chance of getting out of this alive. By blowing the water from the diving tanks and the decompression chamber, he would lighten the load and greatly increase lift, and the upward thrust of the air, less the weight of the water, should overcome the force of the clamps.
He began switching Challenger back on to full power. He knew he was taking a chance because of the drain on the batteries, but it was his only hope. Once the computer signalled that all systems were operational. Marsh keyed in the commands that would open the air valves. He listened to the rush of compressed air leaving their cylinders and flowing into the diving tanks and the decompression chamber.
All at once the sea boiled around him as the Challenger purged herself of the surplus sea water, and something moved beneath him as the enormous thrust of air fought to break the power of the clamps.
“Come on, damn you” he mumbled through clenched teeth. “Come on!”
He could feel Challenger straining at every limb to break free of the deadly grip of the clamps.
“Come on,” he urged again. “Get up, get up!”
He moved his body, pounding the seat with his own weight as if to add impetus to the mighty struggle going on beneath him.
“For God’s sake, Challenger, break free damn you! Break free!”
The noise of the rushing air reached a crescendo of sound and then began to subside until finally the pressure in the tanks and the decompression chamber reached that of the air cylinders.
“No, don’t stop now!” he beseeched her. “Not now! Please, not now!”
Challenger seemed to give one last desperate heave and then succumbed to the awesome strength of the clamps.
She didn’t move.
“No. Oh God, no” Marsh looked around him imploringly. “Please Challenger, please. Don’t let me down. Please.”
But Challenger had lost the battle, surrendering herself to the deadly embrace of the clamps.
Marsh stopped shouting and cursing. His mouth fell open as tears streamed down his face. He could taste the salt on his lips and he kept blinking the wetness from his eyes. His head fell forward into his hands and he kept asking ‘why?’
He cried alone in his tiny world; a ball of encircling light, holding life like a baby in the womb, suspended in dark waters. He cried until there were no tears left to cry and soon his mind closed down and he drifted off into the merciful world of sleep.
Marsh woke in a sleepy haze, his mind unable to focus at first on his surroundings. Sleep had robbed him for a moment of the ability to recognise or be aware of anything. But quite soon, recognition dawned on him and the awful truth of his dilemma swung down on him like the sword of Damocles.
He was aware of condensation building up on the inside of the smooth polymer. It gathered in small droplets of water; like pearls in a polymer oyster. He glanced at the power meters and saw there was little left in Challenger now. Soon the valves on the oxygen bottles would open. He reached up and closed the valves, prepared now to suffocate in his own exhaled air as the oxygen fell below the danger level. Once the carbon dioxide was concentrated enough inside the bubble, he would drift off in to an eternal sleep.
Marsh thought of pleasant things, but mainly the yard back at Freeport. He thought about the Helena, their own submersible that was still not quite ready for sea because their mechanic had not yet completed fitting the explosive collar.
The explosive collar!
Marsh sat bolt upright. Could he do it, he wondered?
He opened the valves on the oxygen bottle, switched to manual and immediately felt an uplifting sensation as his brain responded to the sweet, life giving air.
“Careful, Marsh,” he counselled himself. “It may not work.”