Sam tied the Zodiac up alongside one of the larger pleasure cruisers and climbed on board. Tom pulled himself up over the railing, and the two of them made their way across the series of tied-together boats to the main diving platform.
Sam glanced behind him. Tom had a slight grimace he appeared to be working hard to conceal, but otherwise managed to step from boat to boat as nimbly as ever.
“How’s the leg?” Sam asked.
“Fine. Never better.” Tom grinned. “I told you it was a minor wound, I just needed to rest it for a day.”
“That’s right. And have some fluids, a dozen stitches, and some antibiotics.”
Tom shrugged. “Those, too.”
Sam stopped at the main event.
On the surface of the sea, the diving barge was a swarm of activity as well. Competition divers waited their turns to dive.
“How long has it been?” Tom asked.
“Since we last dived here?”
“Yeah.”
“Gotta be fifteen years at least.”
Sam completed his registration and safety briefing. Afterwards, he waited in silence, making the mental preparations for the dive. Both men had once held record-breaking dives at the site, but that had been a long time ago. Sam had no erroneous belief that he would score highly today. For him, it wasn’t about the competition, so much as simply enjoying the event and the rare beauty of the location.
And it was stunningly beautiful.
Sam’s eyes greedily raked the wonder before him. The Great Blue Hole was one of many such sinkholes around the world, but maybe the most famous and almost certainly the most beautiful and unusual. In contrast to the green of the surrounding sea, the sinkhole boasted intensely blue water, a result of its depth. Once situated high above the sea, it had begun its life as a cave, complete with karst sandstone stalactites and stalagmites.
The reef was the only remaining vestige of the surrounding land in which the sinkhole had formed, in four events taking place hundreds of thousands of years ago. When the top of the cave had collapsed, the resulting sinkhole descended through what was once about one hundred and thirty feet of surface strata before opening into the cave system, for a total of over four hundred and five feet. Then the sea levels had risen with the melting of the ice caps at both poles, submerging the land and the sinkhole alike. What was once an interesting geological phenomenon was now a spectacular one, beautiful both from above and below, and carrying a mystique that caught the imagination of divers and non-divers alike.
This sinkhole was particularly dangerous for free-diving, though extremely popular. Not recommended for the inexperienced, recreational diving here carried with it the potential to become lost within the stalactites and stalagmites protruding from the back-sloped walls that had formed before the area was submerged. In addition, the speleothems were off-vertical by a consistent five degrees, indicating a land shift and tilting of the underlying plateau in addition to the flooding by a rise in sea level. A diver could become disoriented among them.
Because of those back-sloped walls, diving in the center required absolute buoyancy control to prevent sudden plummeting, as there was nothing to grab and stop one’s rapid and likely fatal descent. The depth of the hole meant it was, for all practical purposes to a human being, bottomless.
It would require all of Sam’s skill to compete in this annual spectacle.
There was a total of eight freediving disciplines in which people competed around the world. Today, Sam was participating in what was known as a Variable Weight free dive. The concept was to use a heavy sled to sink rapidly, feet-first, before dropping the weight, and using an inflatable balloon to return to the surface. In this case, Sam was wearing a purpose made free-diving vest, which utilized a high-pressured canister of air to rapidly inflate. It had been lent to him by one of the organizers of the event.
Sam’s name was called, and he was told to prepare for the next dive.
Tom shook his hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
“Stay safe out there.”
Sam grinned. “Of course. I’m not going for any record. I just need some time to clear my head and relax.”
Tom smiled with genuine pleasure for him. “Good for you. You deserve it. Take all the time you’d like. Preferably under three minutes though…”
“I’ll try my best not to stay down too long.”
Sam stepped off the diving barge and dipped into the water feet first. The temperature in the Blue Hole at a hundred and thirty feet is a constant seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit all year round, and on the surface, it was closer to eighty. It felt like diving into a bath, only a little cooler than the outside temperature — and yet instantly refreshing.
He surfaced and made a signal to Tom that everything was all okay, before casually swimming across the surface to the weighted dive sled. It was being held by a rope and diving crane that reached out several feet from the diving barge. Two safety divers on the surface gripped either end of it to keep it steady. Sam had always felt the name, diving sled, was wrong, giving a false impression. Unlike a sled, it appeared more like an iron pogo stick crossed with a heavy spade. There was a sixty-pound nose in the shape of a wide shovel, followed by two horizontal pegs on which to stand his feet. At his chest height, was a t-shaped handlebar. All of it was made of iron and came to a total weight of one hundred pounds.
Sam placed his feet on the pegs, and grasped the heavy metal bar. Another diver helped slide a small rubber clasp over his feet to stop him from slipping off and coming away from the sled during his rapid descent.
The judge then said, “Dive when ready.”
Sam closed his eyes. He slowly went through the time-honored process of preparing for a free-dive, by reducing his metabolic rate through meditation. He took slow, deep, full breaths, blowing off any excess carbon dioxide in his system, sending his body into a slightly alkaline state and consciously slowing every individual system down. His heart rate dropped from eighty beats per minute down to a staggering forty beats per minute.
He opened his eyes and nodded at the two divers who were keeping the sled from dropping. They let go — the sled lurched downward, and Sam began his race to the bottom of the Great Blue Hole.
Chapter Fourteen
The dive sled picked up speed.
Soon Sam reached a descent rate of two to three feet per second. As cooler water rushed past his face, his mammalian dive reflex kicked in, and the ancient adaptation for conserving oxygen consumption underwater started to manifest.
Blood volume and flow was redistributed toward vital organs, as his peripheral blood vessels constricted. His heart rate slowed further to twenty-eight beats per minute. He swallowed constantly, to equalize the pressure in his middle ear.
Four feet to his left, the vertical dive line raced by.
He closed his eyes.
And found the sort of solitary calm and mental tranquility he’d been unable to achieve in any other place on Earth.
For less than two minutes, his mind was completely empty.
He no longer cared about the unforgiving celestial object rapidly approaching humanity, soon to complete its invisible thirteen-thousand-year-old celestial orbit, that would have it return to Earth.
Nor did he care about the potential conflict between the remaining Master Builders — who he was no longer certain had the best interests of mankind at heart.