The blue water, Dante reminded himself. Think in color.
That was easier said than done. His little “problem” —
That’s a private matter! Nobody’s business!
The headlines in the clippings in his mother’s scrapbook appeared in a collage before his eyes. 13-year-old Wins Adult Photography Prize; Prodigy Behind the Lens; Move Over, Ansel Adams… The critic from the New York Times wrote that his use of light and shading was representative of an artist four times his age.
And that should have been enough for them, right?
But the next line was always the same: Can you imagine what he’ll do with color?
Well, that mystery was over. He knew exactly what he was going to do with color. He was going to butcher it. He was going to make the sea purple.
That’s why he had jumped through hoops to learn to dive — a talent he could have been very happy without. A coral reef was the most colorful item on a planet full of color. If the rich hues and tones couldn’t reach out to imprint themselves on his artistic sense in this place, then it was never going to happen. And coral reefs didn’t exactly turn up on every street corner. You had to go where they were — and that meant underwater.
Quit complaining. You’re here. You’re diving. You haven’t drowned yet…
But would they ever get to dive again? Who knew how Cutter would react when he found the four of them lying in wait on the Ponce de León?
At long last, sleep claimed him. But it was uneasy sleep, marred by dreams of everything that could go wrong on a dive.
Descend too fast without equalizing pressure… bust an eardrum… excruciating pain…
He tossed in the narrow berth. Amazingly, that was one of the milder diving hazards.
Nitrogen narcosis — the rapture of the deep… dissolved nitrogen gas causes a state almost like drunkenness…
Dante had never been drunk. But he was pretty sure a hundred feet below the waves wasn’t the place to do it. There were horror stories of “narced” divers who actually forgot which way was up until they ran out of air and drowned. But that still wasn’t the ultimate scuba nightmare.
The bends… bubbles in the bloodstream… tiny time bombs in the body… all you can do is wait to see if you’re crippled for life or even…
“Killed!” He sat bolt upright in his bunk. The Ponce de León was moving. He could feel and hear the thrum of the engine.
He opened dry crusty eyes and found himself gawking at the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen — tall and tan, with long dark — brown? — hair.
She seemed just as surprised to see him. Then she smiled. “Look, Chris,” she called through the low hatch. “Stowaways.”
A bearded man appeared beside her, his arms laden with gear. He looked at Dante in dismay. “The kids!”
“We’re all here,” Dante managed, trying to keep from staring at her. “Tad said you wanted our — help.”
She grinned even wider — a magazine cover smile. “I’m Marina Kappas, Poseidon, San Diego. The sourpuss here is Chris Reardon.” She held out her hand. “We could really use you today.”
Dante scrambled from his bedroll and shook it. It was electric just touching her. “Dante. Dante Lewis.”
“The photographer!” she beamed. “I’m really excited to take a look at some of your work.”
Reardon seemed bewildered by the friendly exchange. “Marina — can I talk to you?”
“Not now.”
“But—”
A cloud passed briefly over her perfect features. “I said not now. Why don’t you go on deck and tell Tad the good news.”
Dante set about rousing his teammates with the information that they had been discovered.
“You mean Cutter walked right in on you?” asked Kaz, scrambling out of his bunk.
“Not Cutter — Marina.” Dante couldn’t resist adding, “Wait till you see her!”
“Was she mad?” Adriana probed.
“Actually, she seemed kind of happy to see me,” he replied honestly. “Her friend wasn’t all that thrilled, though.”
Topside, they introduced themselves to Bill Hamilton, captain of the Ponce de León. Cutter was half buried in the motor of a Brownie floating air compressor, tinkering with a wrench.
Noticing them, the team leader grunted, “Good. You’re up. You’ll be logging a lot of dive time today — too much for scuba. But this big baby can keep you down there for hours.”
Their uneasiness quickly turned to confusion. Cutter was acting as if their presence today was not only expected, but vital. As if he hadn’t been dodging them for close to a week!
Kaz spoke up. “It takes so long to clean a sonar tow?”
“Oh, I checked that; it’s fine,” Cutter assured them. “We need you for something much more important. There are a lot of caves down there that the sonar won’t pick up. We need you to find them for us.”
“And explore them?” Star asked eagerly.
Cutter shook his head. “Too dangerous. Just tag the mouth with one of these marker buoys. That’ll fire off a float to the surface. Then we’ll catalog the location from topside. Got it?”
There was genuine excitement as the four divers suited up.
“Maybe we were wrong about Cutter and his people,” Adriana suggested, pulling the thin wetsuit material until it fit snugly at her wrists. “It looks like they’re really going to let us do some work this summer.”
Star was skeptical. “I’ve seen a lot of reef maps. They don’t have caves marked on them.”
“This one will,” put in Dante, detaching his regulator from its tank. On this dive, they would be breathing air directly from the Brownie, via long flexible hoses. “Remember, Poseidon’s number one. They do everything to the max.”
Seeing Star limp as she stepped into the lightweight suit, Marina rushed over to steady her.
Star wheeled away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Her outrage was so genuine, so harsh, that the researcher was struck momentarily dumb.
“Leave her alone, Star—” Dante began.
“Do you think I’m a beginner at this?” Star persisted.
Marina found her voice at last. “I saw you stumble. It happens to everyone in rolling seas — even top divers.”
“Thou shalt not help Star,” Kaz intoned apologetically. “That’s kind of the eleventh commandment around here.”
The slight girl glared at him as Marina went back to help Cutter with the compressor. “You’re hot for her! You too, Dante!”
“So what if we are?” Dante shot back at her. “You’re our dive partner, not our mother. What’s it to you?”
Star’s anger did not fade until she had slipped beneath the choppy surface. It was impossible to stay mad down here, in the crystalline waters, passing through a school of chromis, swimming in tight formation, an orange cloud.
Sure, she was sensitive about her handicap. But she certainly couldn’t blame Marina Kappas for being beautiful — or Dante and Kaz for noticing.
Anyway, underwater, Star Ling had no handicap. This was her medium, the world her body had been designed for. She slowly fan-kicked her flippers on the descent. If, at that moment, she had suddenly woken up with amnesia, she would have noticed no weakness at all on her left side. And that was exactly the way she liked it.