Medusa

Austin clenched and unclenched his fists, impatient with the glacially slow pace. Other crew members now gathered around the screen, but no one spoke except for the quick communication between Austin and the ROV pilot. Austin mentally excluded everything in the room, pouring himself into the monitor as if he were riding atop the ROV.

Five more minutes passed.

The ROV’s methodical back-and-forth movement was similar to that of a lawn mower. The picture transmitted by its electronic eye was the same unchanging monotonous carpet of brownish green.

“Wait,” Austin said. He had seen something. “Go to the left.”

With a jiggle of the joystick, the pilot pivoted the vehicle so that it was perpendicular to its original path. The twin searchlights picked up mud splatter around the rim of a crater. A mud-covered, domelike shape protruded from the center of the crater. Now Austin saw why the B3 hadn’t surfaced; its flotation bags were buried deep in the mud. He asked the pilot to blow mud away from the bathysphere. The ROV’s thrusters kicked up a thick brown cloud that hardly made a dent in the heavy muck.

At Austin’s request, the pilot put the ROV on the bottom and pointed its searchlights at the sphere. Austin stared at the image, plumbing his training and experience.

He was pondering the technical challenge involved in freeing the B3 from the clutches of the sea when a shadow appeared on the right-hand side of the monitor. Something was moving. It was there for an instant, then gone.

“What was that?” the pilot asked.

Before Austin could venture a guess, the screen went blank.

CHAPTER 8

ZAVALA LAY ON HIS SIDE, HIS RIGHT ARM PINNED UNDER his hipbone, his left curled up to his chest. His legs were immobilized by a soft weight. Ignoring the jagged shards of pain stabbing under his ear, he lifted his head and saw Kane stretched belly down across his knees.

In the dim, battery-powered light, Zavala saw that the cabin was littered with papers, ditty bags, clothing, bottles of water, seat cushions, and other loose items. Zavala reached for his headset and held it to his ear. Silence. He tested Kane’s headset. Not even a hint of static.

The loss of communication was ominous, but Zavala’s optimistic nature would not let him dwell on such bad luck. He wiggled one leg, freed his foot, and used it to shove Kane’s body off the other leg. Kane rolled onto his back, and a low groan escaped his lips.

The painful exertion triggered waves of nausea in Zavala. He unclipped the first-aid kit from the wall and broke open an ampoule, waving it under his nostrils. The acrid odor snapped him to alertness.

He removed the good-luck cap. Gingerly probing his scalp with his fingertips, he found a lump that felt as big as an egg. He poured water from a canteen on a compress bandage and held it lightly against his head. Even the slight pressure was painful, but the throbbing eased.

Zavala tucked a seat cushion under Kane’s head. He removed Kane’s skullcap and applied the compress. Kane winced, and his eyes blinked wide open.

“Ow!” he said. A good sign.

Zavala lightened the pressure but kept the compress in place.

“Sorry, Doc, Florence Nightingale couldn’t make it, so you’re stuck with me,” Zavala said. “Try moving your toes and fingers.”

Kane flexed his hand and foot joints, then bent his legs at the knees, grimacing in pain. “Nothing seems broken.”

Zavala helped Kane sit up and handed him the canteen. He waited until Kane had slugged down a couple of gulps, then said, “What do you remember, Doc?”

Kane pursed his lips in thought. “I was looking out the window, broadcasting my observations.” He glanced at his headset.

“Don’t bother,” Zavala said. “The headsets don’t work.”

Kane’s face turned the color of oatmeal. “We’re not co

“Temporarily . . . Keep talking.”

Kane took a deep breath. “We saw some kind of weird big fish or whale. Next, I remember heading for the moon. Then blotto. What about you?”

Zavala jerked a thumb upward. “Same scenario. I went airborne and slammed against the roof. I put my hand out to soften the blow, but all I got for the effort was a sore arm. Good thing I’ve got a hard head.”

“From the sounds of it, the cable probably slipped on the winch drum.”

Zavala said nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Kane said. “Why haven’t they winched us up by now?” He noticed that the bathysphere was perfectly still, and he seemed to catch his breath. “We’re not moving, Joe. What’s happened to us?”

Zavala wanted to avoid panic, but there was no sugarcoating their situation. “We seem to be sitting on the bottom, Doc.”

Kane looked at the instrument panel and saw that the systems were operating on batteries. “If we were still attached, we’d have power. Oh, hell! The cable must have snapped.”

“That’s almost impossible. And there could be other reasons for the breakdown. We’re talking about maintaining contact over a cable through more than a half mile of ocean. Remember Beebe comparing the bathysphere to a pea on a cobweb? No man-made system is flawless, but this isn’t the Titanic. Even if we were no longer co

Kane brightened. “Duh, of course! Your flotation system.”

Zavala managed a smile. “What do you say we pop up to the Beebe lounge and mix a pitcher of margaritas?”

“What are we waiting for?” Kane was as ebullient as a condemned man given an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Zavala unclipped a nylon bag from the wall and asked Kane to clean up the cabin. Busywork would lift Kane’s spirits as well.

“The compressed-air tanks are in the center of the platform, and they feed into flotation bags that are stuffed into the skids,” Zavala explained. “When the GO switch is activated, doors open in the sides of skids, compressed air fills the bags instantly, and they lift us to the surface, where the ship can snag us.”

Kane rubbed his palms together in anticipation. “Margaritaville, here we come.”

Zavala slid over to the instrument panel. “Fu

“We can discuss the philosophical implications on the deck of the Beebe,” Kane said. “I’d be happy just to be able to stretch out my legs.”

Zavala turned his attention to a plastic box attached to the wall next to the instrument panel. He unsnapped the box’s cover to reveal a red button emblazoned with an arrow pointing up.

“This is a two-step process,” he explained. “This button arms the system, and that identical button on the control panel activates it. When I say go, you hit the switch, and I’ll do the same with mine. Then hold on. There’s a ten-second delay.”

Kane put his finger to the button Zavala had indicated. “Ready.”

“Go,” Zavala said.

Zavala had tested the escape system in a water tank and prepared himself for a muted bang and a whoosh, but nothing happened at the end of ten seconds. He told Kane to try again. Again, nothing happened. Zavala checked a troubleshooting display that would have indicated a system malfunction but saw nothing amiss.

“Why won’t it work?” Kane asked.

“Something must have gotten banged around when we hit bottom. Don’t worry, I programmed in a backup system.”

Zavala tapped a keypad to reroute the signal and told Kane to try again. Again, there was a failure to inflate. They would have to go with the manual switch. Zavala opened another plastic-covered panel and looped his fingers through a handle attached to a cable. Pulling the cable, he explained, would produce a small electrical current that would trigger the flotation mechanism.

He clenched his teeth and yanked. Nothing happened. He tried several more times, but it was no use. The manual trigger failed to activate.