Devil's Gate

“Matador, this is Grouper…”

He’d been at it for thirty minutes. What else could he do? Their only hope was for the Matador to send down the ROVs and try to dig them out. That is, if they could be found and if they weren’t under a hundred feet of sediment.

So Paul continued to try. Matador, this is Grouper. Matador, please respond. And each time he spoke the words, the sound grated on her nerves like some form of Chinese water torture.

There had been no response for thirty minutes. There would be no response in the next thirty, or the next thirty thousand, if he tried. Either the ante

Taking another calming breath, she rubbed his shoulders.

“They might be able to hear us,” Paul told her. “Even if we can’t hear them.” She nodded, twisted herself around in the other direction, and checked on their air status. They had nineteen hours of air left. Nineteen hours of waiting to die. In a ma

A wave of claustrophobia swept over her so powerfully that she began to shake, began to wish they’d been killed in the landslide or that she could just open the hatch and let the water pour in and crush them. It was irrational, it was panic, but it was astoundingly real to her.

“Matador, this is Grouper … Do you read?”

She held herself together, fighting back tears that were threatening to break through.

Uncomfortable sitting with her head bowed in the cramped vehicle, she lay down and closed her eyes, resting her face against the cold metal of the floor like one might rest on the tiles of the bathroom after a heavy night of drinking.

It calmed her nerves a bit, at least until she opened her eyes and noticed something she hadn’t seen before: a drop of water trickling down the side of the metal plating. Any hope of it being condensation was erased as another drop quickly followed, and then another.

Drip… Drip… Drip…

Perhaps they wouldn’t have nineteen hours after all.

“Matador, this is Grouper …”

There was no point in telling Paul. He would know soon enough, and there was nothing they could do about it anyway. At 16,000 feet, the pressure outside was almost 6,800 pounds per square inch. The slow little drips would quickly become faster drips as the water forced the plates apart, and at some point it would start spraying, blasting them with a jet of ice-cold water powerful enough to cut a person in half. And then it would all be over.

Gamay glanced around the cabin for other leaks. She saw none, but something new caught her eye: light emanating from the tiny screens in her virtual reality visor.

She grabbed it. The screens were still functioning. She saw a metallic wall and sediment floating around. The particles swirled and caught the light.

“Rapunzel survived,” she said quietly.

“What was that?” Paul asked.

“This is a live shot,” she said. “Rapunzel ’s still functioning.” Gamay pulled the visor on and then her gloves. It took a moment to orient herself, but she quickly realized that Rapunzel was floating freely. She had the little robot do a 360-degree turn. Open water beckoned through the same gaping hole that Rapunzel had used to enter the ship.

“I’m bringing her out.” “How are we still in contact with her?” Paul asked.

“Her umbilical cables are eight feet long where they hit the Grouper. They must be sticking out of the sediment.” “That means we’re not buried too deep,” Paul said. “Maybe she can dig us out.” Gamay maneuvered Rapunzel out of the ship, while Paul began to watch the monitor on his control panel.

“Take her up,” he said. “We need a bird’s-eye view.” Gamay nodded and had Rapunzel ascend. She rose vertically for a hundred feet, high enough to get a better view but still close enough that her lights and her low-light camera could make out the ship and the seafloor.

The avalanche had changed everything. The Kinjara Maru now rested on her side like a toy that’d been knocked over. The bow was almost buried in sediment, and the ground underneath was flatter and smoother. Gamay guessed that the avalanche had moved the ship a hundred yards or so.

“Any idea where we are?” she asked.

“We were headed to the bow,” he said. “No idea what happened after the landslide hit.” Gamay guided Rapunzel toward the bow of the ship and then out over the field of sediment. After ten minutes of up-and-back passes, neither she nor Paul had seen any sign of themselves.

In some corner of her mind, the oddness of the situation struck Gamay. How strange, she thought, to be consciously looking for yourself with no idea where you might be.

After another pass she asked. “You see anything?” “Nothing.”

The cables that were signaling Rapunzel and receiving her signal had to be sticking out, but a foot or two of cable would be hard to spot on a seafloor now littered with debris.

Still lying on her back, Gamay started Rapunzel on another pass. As she did, the touch of icy water reached her elbow. She lifted the visor for a second. A small pool was forming beside her, maybe two tablespoons’ worth. The drip was coming faster.

She pulled the visor back down. They had to hurry.

“Maybe if you were closer to the seafloor,” Paul said.

It would increase the resolution but narrow the field of view, the difference between looking for a contact lens that had fallen out of your eye from a standing position or crawling around on the floor, sca

“I’m taking her higher,” she said.

“But we can barely see as it is.” “Blow some of the air,” she said.

Paul did not immediately answer.

“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Even if they didn’t hear us, the Matador knows were in trouble. They’ll have ROVs down here pretty soon.” “It will help us,” she said.

Still, he hesitated.

“Even if they send ROVs, they’re going to need to know where we are,” she said.

“Okay,” he said finally, perhaps responding to the desperation in her voice, perhaps realizing that she was right.

“Get Rapunzel to whatever depth you think is best,” he added. “Tell me when, and I’ll vent the cylinder we’ve been drawing off of. It’s half empty.” Gamay guided Rapunzel back out over the sunken freighter’s bow and let her rise to the very brink of visibility. It gave them the widest field of view.

“Ready,” she said.

Paul turned a lever and locked it. With his other hand he reached over and pressed the emergency vent switch. There was a hiss of air through the lines, the sound of bubbles exploding and then turbulent water churning. It lasted for about fifteen seconds and then slowly waned. The silence that followed was eerie.

“Do you see anything?” he asked.

Gamay was guiding Rapunzel forward, turning her head left and right, looking for what should have been a telltale rush of bubbles catching the light. It should have been easy to see and unmistakable, but neither she nor Paul caught it.

“It has to be there.” “I don’t see anything,” Paul said “Vent another bottle,” she said.

He shook his head. “Two cylinders is a quarter of our air.” “It’s not going to matter,” she said.

“Of course it matters. If we’re buried, it’s going to take a while for them to dig us out. I don’t want to suffocate while they’re still digging.” For the first time she heard real stress in his voice. So far, he’d been business as usual. The strong, silent Paul she knew. Perhaps that was for her. Perhaps he was as afraid as she was. She had to tell him the truth.