Without taking his eyes off the monitor’s video feed, Gorski nodded.
“We got a steady signal from all three of you, plus the camera. We’re ready when you are.”
“Roger that,” Caesare replied, after a slight delay. The camera feed from one of Gorski’s divers, Jake Corbin, swept between them with its bright LED light showing their obscured faces as they stared back into the camera from behind the helmet portal.
The camera caught the last of Caesare before he raised his gloved hand and motioned downward. “All right. Descending now.”
Air suddenly erupted around them and surrounded the men in a curtain of rising bubbles. They were obscured for just moments before beginning to sink. It would take the men several minutes just to reach their new depth with each second being monitored carefully by Borger and Gorski. All the while, outside, several more engineers worked the feed lines to keep the thick umbilical cables moving at the same rate of descent. Too much slack could cause entanglement below the surface and too little would slow their descent, wasting precious time.
The second of Gorski’s men, Alan Beene, checked his dive computer. “Eighty feet.” The number matched the depth on Borger’s monitor.
Gorski’s new “hat” design had recently undergone a technological leap of its own. By adding an uplink to the back of the helmet, a diver’s wrist-sized computer could transfer its information wirelessly, piggybacking on the audio transmission. It was a clever design, which increased the electrical draw on the tiny computer only modestly.
“Slow and steady,” the older Gorski said, almost in a whisper. His concern didn’t originate from anything related to the men themselves. They were skilled divers, including Caesare. Instead his worry was of the unknown. SCUBA diving was wrought with danger, below the surface where it took time to return safely to the top. Anything from equipment malfunction, to rapid air depletion, to unpredictable physiological effects could spell trouble for anyone. At deeper depths, those dangers were radically increased. Pressure, and by extension compression, caused strange things to happen to the human body. Things that provided precious little margin of error if something went wrong.
Gorski had lost two men on a rescue dive several years before. On that dive, a sudden lateral shift in a damaged sub’s position caused his men to become trapped. The worry quickly turned to panic when the men were unable to move, held tight by their tethers. Turning to desperation as their heliox gas was slowly depleted, the men eventually succumbed to the inevitable. Their voices, and ultimately their final screams of helplessness, would remain in Gorski’s ears forever. Along with the anguish of being able to do nothing to help them.
Sounds he prayed he would never hear again, but feared he someday would. Because in an environment humans were never meant to tread, it was little more than wishful thinking to truly escape fate.
Beene called out their depth again as they passed 150 feet. The camera remained fixed on the side of the dark hull as the faint, remaining traces of ambient sunlight began to fade. Soon the only light was from their camera’s LED bulbs.
Against the hull, awash in that light, a small speck of red followed the men lower. A laser pointer tracked their every inch in three dimensions and transmitted the data above — like a high-tech equivalent of a tape measure. This one was much more sensitive, tracing the size, shape, and curvature of the hull down to a thousandth of an inch.
“Two hundred feet.”
“Okay,” Caesare’s voice responded. “Let’s slow it up.”
A deep burst of noise sounded as air was redirected into their BCD’s, causing the passing hull to slow before coming to a gradual stop.
“You guys still with us?” Caesare asked.
Borger nodded. “Yep, still here. Everything is reading fine.”
Caesare peered at his dive computer and nodded in slow motion. “Same here.” He kicked with his fins and moved out of the way of the camera, which was still focused on the hull. “No change in appearance,” he noted.
He moved in closer, together with Beene, and reached forward. Brushing his hand across the surface elicited the familiar glowing trail behind it.
“No change there either.”
Gorski cleared his voice. “How much farther down?”
A moment later, the camera pivoted and pointed down into the darkness. In the glow of bright light, the wall could be seen, descending until it disappeared into pitch blackness.
“Damn, this thing is big.”
Beene moved in and touched the wall after Caesare.
“No indication of where it ends. Looks like at least another couple hundred feet, if not more.”
Above them, still standing behind Borger, Gorski noticed something on the monitor and leaned forward. He peered at the readings from their dive computers. When his eyes returned to the video feed, the camera was panning back to the hull and caught Beene in the frame.
“Stop!” Gorski suddenly bellowed into the desk’s microphone. “Beene, don’t move!”
The sound of his voice crackled back over the speaker. “What? What is it?”
Gorski was quiet, still studying the screen. “Corbin, pan away and then back to him.”
A moment later, the frame of the live video moved away into blackness and then back to the figure of Beene with the dark hull behind him.
“Turn off the camera’s light.”
“You want me to turn off the light?”
“Affirmative,” nodded Gorski through his dark glasses. “But keep the camera on Beene.”
Floating next to the men, Caesare watched as the bright LED lamp went off a second later, leaving only the smaller lights on their helmets. Darkness quickly closed in around them.
The helmet lights illuminated only their immediate area and left their umbilical lines moving eerily behind them.
Gorski’s voice continued through their headsets. “Now, Beene, turn toward that hull again. Then back.”
Beene did so, wondering what Gorski was getting at. He turned back slowly to look at the dark wall, then back at the others.
Gorski’s voice came again. “Do you guys see it?”
Caesare nodded. “Yes. His helmet’s light is dimming.” He floated in closer. “Try it again.”
Beene repeated the movement, turning his head closer to the wall and back again.
This time, Caesare spoke to Gorski. “We couldn’t see it with the brighter lamp on.”
“That’s not all,” Gorski replied. “Beene, how much battery are you seeing on your dive computer?”
He looked down at his wrist. “Ninety-two percent.”
“Same here,” Gorski confirmed. “Now put your hand on the wall again.”
Beene complied, reaching out and pressing against the gray metal. He kept it there for a long time, watching as thin green lines rippled out from his gloved fingertips.
“Okay, now what does your battery say?”
Beene pulled his hand back and looked at the reading. “Eighty-nine percent.”
On the Valant, Borger watched the same number decrease on his screen and twisted around to Gorski. “Whoa.”
“Let’s make sure it’s not a faulty unit,” Gorski frowned. “Mr. Caesare, if you please.”
In the video, Caesare glided forward to the wall and reached out his own hand. After several long seconds, both Borger and Gorski watched the power gauge from Caesare’s battery begin decreasing.
“Same thing.”
Borger nodded from his seat and said what every one of them was thinking. “That thing is sucking energy right out of your units!”
Without the slightest hesitation, Les Gorski leaned past Borger toward the microphone and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.
“All three of you get to the surface. Right now!”