Medusa

They devoured their sandwiches, then Zavala closed his eyes and sat back in his chair.

“That may be the best meal I’ve ever had,” he said.

“I’ll refill your cup if you tell me what happened with the bathysphere,” Austin said.

Zavala held his cup out. The tequila helped loosen his tongue, and he described the harrowing plunge to the bottom of the ocean and the problem activating the flotation bags.

“I still can’t figure out how that cable snapped,” Zavala said with a shake of the head.

“It didn’t snap,” Austin said.

Austin opened the case he’d brought with him and extracted a laptop, which he set on the table. He showed Zavala the video the Hardsuit camera had filmed of his encounter with the AUV.

Zavala uttered an appreciative Ole! as Austin dodged the deadly pincers. When the video ended with Austin disabling the AUV, Zavala said, “Nice work, but don’t quit your day job to become a matador.”

“I don’t intend to,” Austin said. “Bullfighting technique aside, how hard would it be to program an AUV to cut the bathysphere’s cable?”

“Not hard at all, Kurt, but it would take some sophistication to build the AUV in the first place. It’s a slick piece of engineering. Very agile. Learns from its mistakes and is quick to adjust. Too bad you had to mess it up.”

“You’re right, Joe. I should have let it kill me, but I was having a bad-hair day.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Zavala said.

“Any idea where it might have come from?” Austin asked.

“There were at least two dozen boats watching the bathysphere dive. That hungry critter could have been launched from any one of them. Why do you think it attacked you after scuttling the B3?”

“Nothing personal. I think I was what the military likes to call collateral damage.” He pointed at the screen. “Someone sicced Fido there on the bathysphere. It went for me because I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“Who would want to torpedo the B3 project?” Zavala said.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Austin said. “Let’s see if Doc is awake.”

KANE WAS NOT ONLY awake but quite chipper. He had showered, wrapped his body in a terry-cloth robe, and was sitting in a chair chatting with the medic.

“Now I know what it feels like to be a ca

“It didn’t break,” Zavala said. “Kurt says that it was cut.”

“Cut?” Kane’s lower jaw dropped open. “I don’t understand.”

Austin showed Kane the video of the AUV, and said, “Can you think of anyone who would go through all this trouble to put the bathysphere on the bottom?”

Kane shook his head. “Nope. What about you?”

“Joe and I are as much in the dark as you are,” Austin said. “There’s no reason we can think of to scuttle a scientific and educational project.”

Ga

“Call coming in for Dr. Kane,” the captain said. “Can he take it?”

Austin plucked the intercom’s receiver from the wall and handed it to Kane.

Kane listened to someone on the line, and said, “That’s impossible! . . . Yes, of course . . . I’ll be ready.”

When Kane had clicked off, Austin asked, “Is everything all right?”

“Not really,” Kane said. His face had turned the color of cold ashes. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to talk to the captain.”

Kane asked the medic to help him get to the bridge.

Austin stared at the door for a moment, then shrugged and said to Zavala, “Come to the machine shop with me. I’ve got something to show you.”

The mandible Austin had wrested from the AUV had been wrapped in cloth and clamped in a padded bench vise. Using a set of thick work gloves, he removed the blade from the vise. It was about four feet long and six inches wide, curved along the i

Zavala whistled softly. “Beautiful,” he murmured, “a metal alloy of some kind. Whoever built it didn’t expect it to be twisted where it joined the AUV. That was the weak spot. The edge on this thing is as sharp as a samurai sword.”

“You can see how a pair of these butter knives could ruin your day.”

“Too bad Beebe isn’t around,” Zavala said. “It might change his mind about the dangers of the deep ocean being exaggerated.”

“The ocean didn’t produce this thing. It’s decidedly man-made.” Austin carefully turned it over. The metal had been perfectly forged except for a single flaw the size of a pinhead a few inches from where the blade had snapped off the AUV.

Austin rewrapped the blade and clamped it back in the vise.

“You spent quality time with Doc . . . Did he say anything that might shed some light on this mystery?”

“He talked about jellyfish a lot, but one other thing stood out.” Zavala dug into his memory. “While we were stuck in the mud, I asked him about his research. He said he was working on some research that could affect every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

“Did he elaborate?”

Zavala shook his head.

“I asked him about specifics. He said that if he told me what he’d been working on he would have to kill me.”

The right side of Austin’s mouth turned up in a lopsided grin.

“He actually said that? Seems ironic, considering that you were minutes away from what the tabloids call a grisly death.”

“We had a good laugh about it, but I think he was sincere.”

Austin pondered Zavala’s reply, and said, “What do you make of that call Doc got a few minutes ago?”

“Doc looked as if a horse had kicked him in the stomach.”

“He was upset, no doubt about that.”

Austin suggested that they talk to Kane again. As they stepped out onto the deck, they saw Kane and the captain. Kane was still somewhat stiff-legged as he walked in their direction with Ga

“We were on our way to see you folks,” said the captain, pointing to the lights of the approaching vessel. “That’s a U.S. Coast Guard cutter coming in for Dr. Kane.”

The cutter stopped around a hundred yards from the ship. Austin helped Kane put his flotation vest on and walked him to the ramp at the stern, where the Zodiac crew was waiting. He thanked Austin, Joe, and the captain for all their help.

“Sorry you have to leave, Doc,” Austin said.

“Not as sorry as I am to go.” He smiled, and added, “Beebe’s adventures pale by comparison to our dive.”

“Going back to Bonefish Key?”

“No, not for a while . . . I’ll be in touch.”

Kane got into the Zodiac. The inflatable pushed off into the chop and bounced over to the Coast Guard vessel, Kane was helped aboard, and it started to move away even before the inflatable made it back to the ship.

Austin, Ga

“We don’t really know very much about Doc,” Zavala said after the captain had left.

“It’s time we remedy that situation. I’ll ask the Trouts to check into Bonefish Key. In the meantime, British Navy regulations allow a second shot of grog.”

“This is NUMA, not the British Navy,” Zavala said. “And, technically speaking, tequila is not grog.”

“May I point out that we are in Bermudan waters and thus in British territory.”

Zavala slapped Austin on the back and said something in Spanish.

“My Espanol is a bit rusty, pal,” Austin said. “Please translate.”

Zavala lifted his chin and sniffed the air, as if he had smelled something unpleasant.