“Topside,” the diver said, “you seeing this?” His voice sounded tinny. Clarence could hear the man’s breathing increase.
“Roger that, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Nobody said it was going to be pretty. You’re almost there. Just get the job done.”
“Roger,” the diver said. “Moving in.”
Clarence could imagine the diver’s stress. Nine hundred feet below the surface — a depth that would kill him without the suit — he was surrounded by corpses while violence and uncertainty swept across the ship above him. The diver, Tom, he had to have giant balls of steel.
Technically, Clarence was the current representative of the scientific team. If needed, he had an override button he could hit and speak directly to the diver. If any major issues popped up, Clarence could route the diver-cam view to Margaret’s heads-up display, let her decide what needed to be done.
The dive master’s voice sounded loud and clear in the speakers. “Diver One, move forward through the torpedo room to the nose-cone airlock.”
“Roger that, Topside.”
“Diver Two,” the dive master said, “position yourself at the entrance point and maintain safety of Diver One’s umbilical.”
“Diver Two, confirmed,” came a third voice, the voice of a woman.
Of course they were using a safety diver. Oddly, that made Clarence nervous — the Brashear only had two ADS 2000 rigs. If something went very wrong on this dive, there was no way to get another person down to the wreck without flying in additional suits. Even on a rush order, that might take a day or more.
“Topside, Diver Two,” the woman said. “Feeding Diver One’s umbilical.”
The ADS onboard air meant the divers didn’t need air tubes. What they did need, however, was a communication cable a thousand feet long — if Tom cut his on some jagged piece of wreckage, the Brashear would lose his visual and audio signals.
On the screen, Clarence saw racks of long, gray torpedoes. A body sat there, ass on the deck, back against one of the racks, chin hanging to chest as if the man was only taking a catnap.
“Topside, Diver One,” the diver said. “I have reached the nose-cone airlock. It’s open.”
Clarence looked at the sub’s schematics. The nose cone had a small external airlock, for loading material from the outside directly into the negatively pressurized minilab, and it also had an internal airlock, allowing the science crew to enter the lab from the ship proper.
“We see it, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Proceed.”
The images on the screen blurred: the diver turning, slowly pulling in the slack on his umbilical cord. He turned again, then stepped through the airlock door into the small area beyond.
The room looked tilted, of course, about a thirty-degree slant down and to the right. Every wall had racks. Most of the racks were empty — they had been meant to hold small, airtight cases, cases that now bobbed against the ceiling. The cases held various scientific equipment: microscopes, voltage meters, hardness-testing kits and a dozen other devices that might help in identifying alien material.
“Topside, no bodies here, room is empty,” the diver said. “Moving toward the objective.”
He turned to the right, his light moving past the empty racks.
Clarence saw something. He slapped at his “override” button.
“Wait! Look left again!”
The dive master’s voice came back angry and impatient. “Who’s on this goddamn channel?”
“This is Agent Clarence Otto. Sorry. Listen, Tom… I mean, Diver One… can you turn to the left again?”
The dive master spoke again. “Diver One, stand by! Agent Otto, this is dangerous work. We finish the recovery first. Diver, stay with the mission par—”
A no-bullshit female voice cut in. “This is Captain Yasaka. Facilitate any and all requests of Agent Otto, as long as those requests do not compromise diver safety.”
Clarence waited through a short but uncomfortable pause.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the dive master said. “Diver One, do as Agent Otto asked.”
“Roger that, Chief,” Tom said. “Diver turning left.”
The image on the screen slewed left again.
“Look down,” Clarence said.
The diver did. The image of a black shoe appeared.
“Just a shoe,” Tom said. “It’s stuck in some kind of brown stuff, looks like sediment has leaked in through a crack somewhere.”
Clarence remembered when Murray had come to his house, remembered the picture drawn by Candice Walker.
“Move closer,” Clarence said. “Pan up a little bit.”
“Diver moving closer,” Tom said. “I don’t… wait, I think there’s a foot in that shoe, and the leg is buried in the… oh my God. Are you guys seeing this?”
“Uh… roger that,” the dive master said. “Stand by.”
Clarence leaned closer to the monitor. Wedged between a pair of equipment racks was a body. Unlike the sitting-down-and-napping body in the torpedo room, however, this one was encased in something, something attached to the hull, the deck, even crusted up over the equipment racks. Tom’s light played off of a brown, bumpy surface that covered the unknown sailor’s torso and half of his face while leaving the mouth and nose unobstructed. The right eye stared, wide and forever frozen open. A left hand stuck out from the brown mass, fingers curled in a talon of death, just a bit of blue shirtsleeve still visible. Clarence saw a second left hand — there were two people in there. At least. Just as in the drawing made by Candice Walker.
“Diver One to Topside, what the hell is this?”
Tom’s voice sounded ragged, like he was becoming overwhelmed.
“Ignore it, Diver One,” the dive master said. “Proceed to your objective. Tom, stay cool.”
Clarence could barely blink, barely breathe. Tom again turned right, toward the room’s main storage locker. It looked like a horizontal, flat-topped freezer, the kind usually kept in a basement, only this one was military gray instead of the white. Inside, Clarence knew, was the soda-can-sized object the Los Angeles crew had collected days earlier.
Tom moved slowly toward it.
On the locker, a tiny keypad glowed green — it had its own power supply, which was obviously still functioning.
“Topside to Diver One, great work, we’re almost home. Prepare to enter access codes.” The dive master read off the sixteen-digit code. Tom read it back. Clarence saw Tom extend his suit’s pincer hand. The pincer ended with a stiff rubber stud, small enough to press the keypad digits.
The last button drew a beep from the crate, audible over the speakers. The keypad’s glow shifted from green to orange.
The crate’s lid slowly rose on a rear hinge, pushed up by steel pistons on either end. The diver’s lights shone on a small, black, cylindrical container. It wasn’t much bigger than a travel mug.
Hidden inside of that, a piece of an alien spacecraft.
“Topside, Diver One, I see the objective.”
“Visual confirmed, Diver One. Retrieve the objective and then exit the vessel.”
The hard blue spheres — inside of which were Tom’s hands — reached into the crate, toward the objective. The black pincers opened wide, ready to grab the black tube, then paused.
“Diver One to Topside, I know I was briefed that this is safe, but… well, are you sure?”
“Diver One, retrieve the object,” the dive master said. “It’s safe, Tom, just don’t pretend you’re making a James Bond martini, okay?”