“Got me, beautiful. We talking dinner? A movie? Something wonderful?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Dokey’s tone did not change. He stayed calm, almost bored. “Tell me about, would you? Environmental systems?”
“They’re fine, Okey. One of the weights is hung up.”
As Otsuka reported on each of the monitoring systems, Brande activated the control panel in front of him, fed power to the ROV, and switched on the robot’s video camera and lights. He put Atlas’s view on the starboard screen.
He saw a waterscape of nothing that faded into darkness. Gripping the joysticks lightly, he eased the left one forward, and the ROV began moving, slipping out of its sheath, dragging its cable behind. It began to appear in the porthole in front of him.
Dokey’s voice continued to come over the instrument panel speakers, slow and easy. “So you’ve got a blinking LED? Try the emergency drop?”
“Yes,” Otsuka said, “with no luck.”
“Dane going to play with Atlas, now?”
“She’s out of the sheath now, turning to look underneath us.”
“Don’t tire her out, Dane,” Dokey said.
Brande watched the video monitor. A little right stick, and the robot began to turn. A little down, and little forward thrust, and she dove beneath the submersible.
He backed off with the left joystick, to stop forward momentum, and raised the ROV’s nose by pulling back on the right stick. A view of DepthFinderʼs underside appeared. He could see the wire-enclosed sheath and the two concave depressions that extended from bow to stern between three hull ridges. The robot’s bright lights made the hull blindingly white against the blackness of dark water.
Incongruously, he thought of the Crest Girl. Smile.
He saw the empty cavity where the port weight had been, and he saw the starboard weight hanging partly out of its cavity, the back of it down, but the front end lodged in place.
“The cable!” Connie Alvarez-Sorenson yelped.
The tow cable for SARSCAN had been allowed too much slack when he had brought the sub to a stop. It had looped up into the forward release mechanism for the starboard weight.
While he studied the situation, the submersible suddenly lurched and tilted bow down.
“Eek!” Alvarez-Sorenson gulped.
“That’s just SARSCAN dropping to the end of its tether,” Otsuka reassured her.
“I don’t know if I want to expand my horizons any further,” Alvarez-Sorenson said.
“Sure you do,” Brande said. “You’re a natural flyer, Connie.”
“Uh-huh.”
The fiber-optic tow cable went taut as SARSCAN sank, but the short loop was still caught in the release mechanism.
Brande eased in forward power, and Atlas approached the weight. He stopped about four feet away, judging by the screen.
Moved his hands to the manipulator controls.
Using the right stick, he reached out with the manipulator, then stopped it just short of the looped cable. With the slide switches, he opened the claw, then stretched the arm out, then closed the claw gently on the cable.
He sensed that the women had quit breathing. Beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead, despite the chill of the interior.
Moving his left hand back to the ROV stick, he eased in reverse power and tugged gendy at the cable.
The loop tightened, but did not free itself.
More power.
Nothing.
“Please don’t sever the cable, Dane,” Otsuka said. “We don’t want to lose SARSCAN.”
“It’s a tough cable, Kim.”
More power.
Nothing.
Brande brought the controller back to neutral.
“The cabled lodged damned tight,” he said. “The forward edge of the weight has it clamped against the hull cavity.”
Otsuka relayed that report to Dokey.
“Forget the cable, Dane,” Dokey called back, “Concentrate on the weight itself.”
“Good idea,” Brande said, and Otsuka relayed that comment also.
With the manipulator controls, Brande released the ROV’s grip on the cable, and pulled the arm back.
He maneuvered Atlas downward, then nosed up to vertical, and pressed the manipulator arm against the rear of the hanging weight. In the peripheral view of the camera’s eye, he could still see the small loop of cable hanging from the front release.
Using the left joystick, Brande started easing in forward power.
The robot surged, pushed, seemed to grunt against the weight.
Shoved in full power.
The weight jiggled from side to side, rose a fraction, and jiggled some more.
The robot arm started slipping sideways, sliding off the weight.
A little left with the right stick.
The weight rose another fraction.
The loop of cable slowly sank from the crevice between weight and hull.
Brande backed off on the power, went to reverse, and the ROV scooted out of the way just as the weight came loose and dropped in slow motion out of the camera’s vision.
The submersible began to rise.
Otsuka said, “Very nice, Dane.”
“Damn,” Alvarez-Sorenson said, “we’re going home.”
“Sure,” Brande told her, “and you get to drive. It’s about a three-hour trip”
Now, eight hours later, DepthFinder was back on the bottom. During the crew and battery pack changeover, they had replaced SARSCAN’s fiber-optic tow cable, just to be on the safe side. Rather than switch to Sneaky Pete, Dokey had opted to use Atlas for the visual search, in addition to the sonar. The larger ROV used electrical power at a faster rate than Sneaky, but Dokey did not want to waste time on the surface making the switch.
Within forty minutes of Brande, Otsuka, and Alvarez-Sorenson crawling out of the pressure hull, SARSCAN had been lowered back into a sea that seemed enraged, followed by the submersible.
Rae Thomas was at the controls of the sub, Dokey was in the right seat, Bob Mayberry was in the back, and Brande was in the lab, hovering over the operations desk, worried.
He had not worried much before.
Not since the tragedy with Janelle.
Brande knew that his emphasis on safety arose out of the simple accident that had killed Janelle. He and his engineers triple-checked, then triple-checked again, every design and every procedure.
He was not worried about DepthFinder; Atlas, or SARSCAN.
Maynard Dokey and Bob Mayberry had over 4,000 dives between them.
Rae Thomas had probably dived over a thousand times in submersibles.
But he was worried about her.
Sitting there between Paco Sanchez at the acoustic telephone and Larry Emry with his search monitor, Brande was dimly aware of the beating of rain against the superstructure and the groan of the diesels as they struggled to maintain position in the worsening seas.
His eyes were focused on the bulkhead above the workbench, and he was seeing pale blue eyes laughing with him, platinum hair spread against the pillow, remembering his fingers on velvety flesh, the soft cushion of her lips, the pulse of her throat, the heat in her cheeks. He loved the way she talked back to him, spoke her mind.
Slugging himself mentally, Brande cursed his inability to stay away from her. This was precisely why he had passed his own law to remain aloof from his employees.
…do you think you could love me, Dane?
I’m trying my best.
I’m being serious, damn it.
Rae…
I love you.
And with the firm lips smiling at him from his own shadow and the light blue eyes studying him from the bulkhead above the workbench, Brande kept thinking of the thousands of tons of pressure being exerted on the hull of the sub.