Carver made notes on his tablet. “OK, then. I’ll talk to Martin about how we get you out of here.”
“I’m not going back in the water. You have to take the habitat back up.”
“I’ll talk to Martin,” Carver said, and left Ramirez alone in the bunk room.
In the crowded operations room, Martin was talking quietly to Duncan and White about the dive.
“Do you think he’s safe?” Martin asked them. He glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard.
Before either could answer, Carver chimed in. “It doesn’t matter what they think, Eric has had enough. He wants us to take him back to the surface.”
“If he wants to go up, we can have Duncan take him. The crew needs to stay here to complete the pre-dive cycle. If we go up now, we’ll lose at least a day.”
Carver nodded to Martin then turned to Duncan. “Can you take him?”
“Sure,” Duncan replied. “I can take him”
“He might be difficult to get back in the water,” Carver said.
“Great,” Duncan replied.
Martin sighed. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’ll understand we can’t all go back up”.
Martin’s conversation with Ramirez was difficult. He could tell Ramirez did not want to go back in the water but the scientist in him recognized that he was perhaps being irrational.
“I just don’t want to meet any more sharks.” Ramirez said looking at his feet.
“I think Duncan expects the two of you to do a slow ascent right up the umbilical to the support barge. Given the time we’ve been down, Duncan says you’ll need to do a decompression stop to be safe but otherwise it’s a straight trip to the surface.
Ramirez continued to look at his bare feet. “OK. I guess that’s OK.”
A little while later, Carver and Martin went down to the moon pool room to see Ramirez off. When they got there, Duncan and Ramirez were geared up and getting into the water.
As Duncan and Ramirez dropped below the surface of the moon pool, Carver looked at Martin and said: “Thank God that didn’t happen at the bottom.”
“Hmmm,” Martin replied. “Why didn’t you know about his issues? You profiled everyone months ago. Does this mean we might have issues with other people?”
Before Carver could respond, Nicole Ford said: “Well, to be realistic Dr. Martin, the sorts of tests that George has done might possibly have identified Ramirez as a problem but since everyone was already qualified as a sport diver, what he was specifically asked to look for were the kind of traits that might indicate a susceptibility to nitrogen narcosis. If you remember, we did air dive tests to 135 ft and had everyone do numerical problems to detect any nitrogen narcosis effects. Almost everyone had some measurable effect and Ramirez’s results were about normal. There was nothing to indicate he’d have any worse issues than anyone else.”
Martin nodded. “OK, but at no point did we not ask him if he was afraid of sharks?”
“No, of course not” Carver replied. “We did lots of standard psychological tests but we didn’t have a list of specific fears. It would have taken forever, and in any case none of that has any bearing on susceptibility to nitrogen narcosis which is what Dr Ford was most concerned about. She told us it was about the best indicator we’d have.”
Ford added: “I know it seems odd to be looking for nitrogen effects when we are in a hydreliox atmosphere, but susceptibility to nitrogen narcosis was the best test I could come up with that related to what we would be doing.”
Martin looked at Ford then Carver. “OK, then. Let’s hope we don’t have any more personnel issues. Once Duncan gets back down, we can resume the pre-dive sequence Dr Ford?”
“Well, yes. There really is nothing more to do other then to spend tomorrow at this depth to ensure everyone is stable on the hydreliox. Then we can begin the descent.”
Martin looked down into the moon pool. The water below them was quite black. It was hard to imagine being 4,000 feet further down. They had only made it 100 feet before the first problem had happened. It was a lot further to the bottom.
Duncan had decided that taking Ramirez all the way to the top himself was unnecessary. He had called the surface barge and spoken to one of the crew who he knew to be a competent diver. He had asked Jorgensen to come down and meet them at the Pheia. By the time Duncan and Ramirez were out from under the weight stack, Jorgensen was on his way down.
Getting from the surface to the top of the Pheia only took a few minutes. As Jorgensen arrived at the top of the Pheia he saw Duncan and Ramirez below him. Their bubbles were streaming up past him. He waited for the two divers below him to come up to his level.
Duncan spoke to Ramirez over the comm system.
“This is Jorgensen. He will take you up to 20 feet and do a decompression stop there with you. On no account must you get above Jorgensen until he says your deco time is up. OK?”
“Yes, I understand.” Ramirez replied. “And I’m sorry again for the trouble.”
“No problem man. Enjoy the sunshine.”
Duncan pointed to Jorgensen then at Ramirez, then held his two index fingers together in the buddy sign. He looked at Jorgensen and gave him an OK sign to ask him if he understood.
Jorgensen Replied with an OK sign then pointed at Ramirez and gave Duncan the buddy sign.
Duncan then held up his hand in the stop sign then flashed ten fingers twice.
Jorgensen signed OK. He would stop at 20 feet as they had discussed when he was on the comm link from the surface.
Jorgensen looked at Ramirez and gave him the thumbs up and OK signs asking if he was ready to go up.
Ramirez responded with a thumb up and then an OK and they began their ascent.
Duncan stayed at the top of the Pheia and watched until he saw them stop at 20 feet. Once he was sure Jorgensen was doing the decompression stop he flipped over and swam back down the side of the hab.
In the crew compartment Kate was sitting on her bunk talking across the small room to Chas Dunsworth.
“It’s a shame to lose Ramirez. I’m sure he would have been OK if it wasn’t for that damn shark. He was as excited as anyone to be on this expedition. “
Dunsworth nodded. “Yes. Bummer for him.”
“And,” Kate continued, “I now have to do his work as well as mine. OK, actually it’s all my work. But he was supposed to assist.”
Chas saw an opportunity to spend more time with Kate.
“Is there some way I can help? I won’t have much to do once we get down there other than organize gear and I was scheduled for at least one or two dives. If you need a hand setting up the grid or holding stuff or whatever, I can do that.”
“Thanks. Yes, I will need some help. Mostly with taking pictures. I will need you to either hold the ruler I use to get comparative size data or take pictures while I’m pointing at something. It’s kind of grunt work really but it’s important to get the right kinds of pictures.”
“Piece of cake,” Dunsworth said.
“You might find it more difficult than it seems. You absolutely must not touch the worms or the bottom for that matter as that will stir up the silt and screw up the pictures. Mostly you’ll need to float slightly head down and stay in one place. It’s not too hard if you control your buoyancy with your lung volume and only use your fins for movement — no hands. You can swim backwards right?”
“What, with fins?”
“Yes. With fins.”
“I don’t know if that’s even possible is it?”
Kate laughed.
“Well you might not think so but with a bit of practice you can actually move back slightly by flexing your ankles. It’s not fast or anything but if you are floating too close to the subject with the camera in both hands it’s all you’ve got. You can practice the next time we go out.”