“You’re good to go,” Mullins said. “Check your gear for leaks as you descend.”
Gordon now gripped the sides of the hatch as he began to lower himself into the water. “Descending now.”
O’Keefe stood beside the hatch, slowly uncoiling the bundled umbilical hose to give Gordon some slack as the latter went down into the deep, dark abyss. “Give ’em hell, partner!”
18
THE COLD WATER NUMBED his hands somewhat, but Gordon maintained his grip on the ladder. The lights around the diving bell remained bright due to being so close to him, which felt reassuring before he had to go deeper into the thick, enveloping darkness beyond.
Gordon used tactical breathing, slowly inhaling while silently counting up to four, filling his lungs with heliox, before exhaling for another four seconds, then repeating the process. The water’s intense pressure felt like a vise around his ribcage, and every breath was hard labor. His eyes darted back and forth around the helmet’s interior, his skin trying to feel for any leaks. There were none.
Mullins’s calm voice over his communications unit continued to bolster his spirits. “Keep checking for leaks. You okay?”
“It’s all good,” Gordon said tersely. Looking down, he could see the tethered clump weight a few meters below him. This solid, rectangular bar of metal acted as a stabilizer to keep the diving bell upright, and also had wire baskets containing the tools he would need.
The pressure began popping in his ears once more, and Gordon pushed at the nose block, a device located just underneath his faceplate, which pushed up a rod into his nostrils so he could pinch it and equalize again.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Mullins said.
With no other worries for the moment, Gordon let go of the ladder as his umbilical began to extend behind his harness. Within a few seconds he landed on top of the clump weight, grabbing one of the tether cables to balance himself. Even though he was just a few meters away from the bell, the surrounding lights had become noticeably dimmer, a testament to the otherworldliness of the environment.
“I’m close to the bottom now,” Gordon said.
“Okay, the ROV should be by your side at any moment,” Mullins said. “Izzy will guide you towards the work area.”
Gordon bent down and opened the basket on top of the clump weight. “Do I need any tools from here?”
“Just get yourself a chipping hammer. Izzy’s got all the other tools you need on the side of the ROV.”
“Okay,” Gordon said as he grabbed the tool from the box and tethered it to his harness. After closing the basket he leapt from the clump weight and descended down to the seabed. When his feet touched the bottom, he nearly slipped but was able to keep himself upright. He had landed on some sort of sloped concrete base, and the surface was covered in sediment and partly corroded, making it slippery.
Looking up, he could see the diving bell’s hazy exterior, a solid glimmering sphere surrounded by a metal cage with attached gas tanks along its sides. Grabbing his umbilical with one hand, he gave a gentle tug, signaling O’Keefe to extend the line and give him some extra slack. Seconds passed, and more of the thick hose soon made its way down to him from the open hatch.
The particle-filled depths made him feel like he was standing inside of a gray raincloud, but the pressure made it all so thick that every movement was like being trapped in a gelatinous substance as his muscles ached with each step. Even his helmet light had dimmed to a dull amber hue.
Something big and fast moved just beyond the light. Gordon could sense it, but the visibility was so bad he couldn’t make it out. His heart started to pound as the rising fear made it to the top of his throat, quickly transforming into bile. He felt like puking out his breakfast, and used all his concentration to push the ever-growing lump in his throat back down to his stomach.
Tactical breathing, tactical breathing, he thought. Come on, you can do this.
Feeling something brushing up against his legs he looked down. A half meter long eel-like fish with a transparent body and large, googly eyes snaked around his ankles before disappearing into the gloom once more. In his many years of experience doing saturation dives, Gordon had seen all sorts of alien-looking sea animals, creatures that scientists had yet to identify. It was a common joke amongst the other divers that they had encountered more types of new species than all the oceanographers of the world had ever catalogued, yet their type of work gave them little time to bother with any newfound biological discovery.
Izzy’s feminine voice came over his helmet’s audio circuit, momentarily startling him. “Hey Gordy, I’m just ahead and above, to your left.”
The sound of her voice calmed him down somewhat, for her easing words reminded him of both Chloe and his girlfriend. Looking up, he could see a pair of distant amber lights coming closer towards him. Gordon sighed with relief, knowing that it was the ROV. “Okay, I see you.”
With a hull shaped like a box, the underwater drone had its own snakelike cable sprouting out from its rear, which allowed the topside handlers to control it remotely. The ROV’s outer shell had been painted yellow, but the gloom of the depths now gave it a dull orange look.
“Just follow me, Gordy,” Izzy said.
“Okay.”
Gordon began moving slowly, being careful not to slip on the surface. A strange popping noise could be heard somewhere out in the distance, but he wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Continuing on he soon saw a metal rod sticking out from the seafloor just a few paces ahead of him. The pole stood nearly two meters tall, its surface covered in reddish-brown rust.
“Don’t worry about those things, just keep going,” Mullins said through the intercom. His supervisor had apparently been closely monitoring him through the helmet camera.
“What are they supposed to be?” Gordon asked as he came upon a second vertical rod less than a meter to his left.
A third voice came over his audio circuit, and it unmistakably belonged to Sandor. “That part is classified. Just please keep following the ROV, and don’t touch anything else.”
Gordon bit his lip. What’s going on here? They’re not telling me a damn thing.
The ROV kept moving slowly ahead of him, its thrusters seeming to effortlessly glide through the water, despite not being streamlined. Gordon came upon two more rods, only this time he ignored them as he snaked around these mysterious obstacles, making sure his umbilical didn’t get caught up in them.
Less than a minute later, the ROV stopped and hovered lower, just floating above what seemed to be a bubbling crack on the seafloor.
“Okay, Gordy,” Izzy said through the intercom. “This is the spot. I’ve got a welding torch along the side of the ROV, just take it and start.”
Gordy walked closer and crouched down. It took him only a few seconds to realize he wasn’t actually on the seabed at all. He quickly remembered the digitized image of the underwater base that had been shown on the monitor screen during their meeting a few days before. The large, hangar-like structure had a sloping roof, and he was actually standing on top of it.
His hands were now partly numb from the cold, despite the thick gloves he wore. Running his fingers along the crack, Gordon felt an internal current seeping out from the structure’s interior. “What’s inside of this building? Did it get flooded due to the leak?”
Sandor’s voice was quickly heard, as if he was beating the others to make the reply. “You don’t need to know any of that, just follow your supervisor’s instructions.”
Gordon exhaled loudly. The cracked surface exposed a solid foundation of metal, at least several inches thick. This whole structure is built like a giant sat chamber, he thought. “So I just patch this thing up, is that it?”