He could see his former dive partner’s face once again. Jesse Gemmel’s yellow, corpselike features seemed to float effortlessly out in front of him, like a ghost beckoning Gordon to join him in his cold, watery grave. Jesse held out his bony fingers, gesturing for him to take the easy way out, to just give it all up.
Gordon cursed as he blinked his eyes rapidly and began his tactical breathing technique. It can’t be Jesse. The gas mix and all this pressure is making you see things that aren’t there. Get it together!
O’Keefe’s voice came back over the communication circuit. His current partner’s calm, steady voice had a sudden calming effect on Gordon’s nerves. “The bell’s half flooded! I think the clump weight might have gotten torn off.”
The other man’s words were enough to bring Gordon back to reality. He began to pull himself up using his own umbilical hose in a desperate attempt to return to the diving bell. “I’m trying to make my way back to you right now.”
“Hurry, bro. You gotta get back in here before they bring the bell to the surface.”
Gordon grimaced as he continued to pull himself up. He could see the lights of the diving bell and felt an extra tug as O’Keefe was also busy pulling the umbilical hose back through the still open hatch on the capsule’s bottom.
He could see the clump weight through the murk now. Gordon’s mouth hung open as he noticed one of the cables that was once attached to the bar had snapped, making the entire bell unstable. “The clump weight’s broken! One of the cables is—”
Without warning, the diving bell above him shook, as if a giant invisible hand was rattling it. One of the cables attached to the top part of the module suddenly tore itself loose, and the capsule tilted sideways once more.
Gordon cried out as the diving bell itself began to descend, and one of the torn cables had wrapped itself around the clump weight, entangling his own umbilical with it.
Shouting out in alarm, Gordon tried desperately to swim around the mass of coiled lines so he could get his umbilical free, but a sudden shifting of the currents sent the diving bell careening sideways, and the next thing he knew the clump weight had collided with one of the hyperbaric chambers of the undersea habitat, dragging him right along with it.
The diving bell seemed to shudder before the outer lights flickered and died for a short instance, only to be replaced by dimmer versions of themselves. Gordon instantly knew that the attached cables on the top of the bell must have been either damaged or severed.
“Don, can you hear me?” Gordon asked. His breathing became tight. It was obvious the air line coming from the ship had now been cut off.
There was no response. The now disconnected diving bell continued its slow descent as the powerful currents began to sweep it past the edge of the undersea habitat’s lower building, before making an inevitable plunge even deeper into the bottomless abyss, dragging everything that was attached down with it.
Gordon knew the affixed gas canisters along the sides of the diving bell were still giving him some much needed air, but he would certainly die unless he could climb back into the capsule, close the hatch, and blow the ballast tanks to enable the bell to float back towards the surface.
“Don, speak to me,” he said.
Precious seconds passed. O’Keefe was either dead or unconscious, and the diving bell was rapidly descending until its already faint lights became a distant flicker in the thick darkness. Gordon’s umbilical started to get taut once again. In a matter of minutes it would all be over.
And then he remembered. He wasn’t even sure if it was O’Keefe, or Langley, or Haakon who told him. But the details stood out in his mind.
The habitat was closer to him. And one of his teammates had told him there was a hyperbaric lifeboat attached to it. He now realized it was his only chance if he wanted to keep on living.
Using both hands and feet, Gordon swam as fast as he could until he floated right beside one of the habitat’s main support struts. His umbilical kept trying to pull him away, and there was no time and no slack on the line to wrap it around the column. Pulling out a small glowstick from one of the pockets in his harness, he snapped it on before dropping it onto the seafloor.
Gordon reached over to the side of his helmet and twisted open the emergency valve, activating the bailout bottle strapped to his back. He now had a separate air supply, but at this depth it would last for just a few minutes, and he needed to get rid of his umbilical before it dragged him away.
He tried to disengage the air and communication lines attached to his helmet first, but for some reason his hands kept slipping off. To make matters worse, his umbilical now acted like a stretched rubber band as he was being pulled away from the habitat.
The lights had gone out, and all he could do was go by feel now. In desperation he reached down and pulled out the knife that was strapped to his hip and quickly began to cut through the thick umbilical, hoping he could sever it before he was dragged too far.
Gordon’s entire body shuddered in the numbing cold as he continued to cut. The hot water that had been keeping him warm was gone, and the seeping chill of the dark watery depths made him feel like he had jumped into an icy pool while naked.
With one hand holding the umbilical, he kept sawing away using the other, feeling the blade slicing through the thick rubber hoses. The knife connected with something solid, and he knew it was probably the wiring for either the video or the communications link, and that material was the hardest part of all.
He couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but his continued awareness of what was happening indicated that he was still alive, at least. When his knife hand could no longer feel any resistance and the pull suddenly stopped he knew he was free. Now all he had to do was to try and find his way back to where the habitat was before his air ran out.
Looking around, he saw a faint light in the distance. Letting go of the knife, he swam with numbed arms and legs towards it. Sure enough the dim beacon grew brighter, until it flared into a neon green hue. It was the glowstick he had dropped just before he was dragged away.
Gordon looked around as he picked up the glowstick. At that very moment the heliox from his emergency tank finally ran out. He could no longer draw in a breath of air. All he had now was a few seconds before he blacked out and joined the countless others who were lost at sea.
Tilting his head up, he saw it. A hatch that seemed to lead into one of the undersea habitat’s sealed chambers. He wasn’t even sure if there would be any breathable air inside of the place, but he had to try.
His lungs aching for air, Gordon swam upwards in a desperate surge of adrenaline. He had to reach it, get it open somehow, and climb inside. It looked like he had to swim another ten meters just to get his hands on the hatch levers.
Gordon could no longer feel his arms and legs, but he could still tell he was making progress as the hatch loomed ever closer.
Go, go! You can make it, he thought. Swim! Swim!
27
ISABEL “IZZY” KOZLOWSKI’s friends were all commercial divers, and she’d wanted to get into it too, only to panic during her first underwater exercise at the commercial diving school she had enrolled in. A short time later Izzy realized that she just couldn’t take being immersed underwater without seeing anything, and promptly dropped out of the course.
Not long after that ignoble beginning, she ultimately made it to working on a diving support vessel, only this time as an ROV operator. Izzy had finally discovered her true talents; namely having near perfect hand-eye coordination, the type of skill that made her a natural choice to pilot these remotely operated submersible drones from the relative comfort of a shipboard control room.