According to the gauge, the pressure was already equivalent to a depth of 660 feet. It’s happening, Adriana thought to herself. We’re really going to do this.
Henri’s voice came through the interphone box. “Can you read me in the pot?”
They could hear Dante in the background. “Hey, what does this switch do?”
A quick, sharp slap was clearly broadcast over the hookup, followed by Star’s voice: “Cut it out, Dante!”
“Topside, we read you,” English reported with a sigh. He added, “Please do not let that annoying child touch anything.”
The Adventurer’s powerful spotlights came on suddenly, capturing the bell like a stage performer. Inside, tubes of light leaped from the round ports. There were a few minutes of equipment checks, followed by the roar of the winch. The bell lifted shakily off the deck.
“Stand by in the pot.” There was a jolt, and they were in the water, sinking through deepening shades of blue.
Adriana was amazed at how quickly the sweaty heat deserted them. She hugged her bulky dry suit. “Is anybody else freezing?”
English nodded. “This is normal. The helium — it makes you lose warmth faster than air.”
As they descended quickly, English checked the umbilicals, which were really several different lines, taped together like bundles of spaghetti strands — breathing supply, phone cable, safety rope. There was also an extra hose so that hot water could be pumped through a system of tubing that crisscrossed the fabric of their dry suits. This would provide warmth against the icy chill of the deep sea.
All at once, English announced, “We are arrived.”
“So fast?” blurted Adriana.
Seven hundred feet may be an alien world, she reminded herself. But the actual distance to the surface is a little more than an eighth of a mile.
English pushed aside cables, welding torches, and a few plastic sandwich bags of high-energy snacks to clear the bell’s work-lock beneath their feet. He opened the double hatch to reveal water the color of intergalactic space. The blackness washed upward at first, as if it were about to flood the bell. But then the pressure equalized, halting the ocean’s advance.
English helped Kaz and Adriana seal the big fiberglass helmets to their suits before donning his own. Suddenly top-heavy, Adriana overbalanced and conked her Rat Hat into the wall of the bell. “I’m okay,” she muttered, recovering. The heliox tasted metallic in the close quarters of the headgear.
“Topside,” English reported. “Hats on.”
Adriana heard Henri’s voice coming from a small speaker by her ear. “Comm. check. Everybody reads me, yes?”
“Loud and clear,” she replied into the helmet’s built-in microphone.
“Me, too,” said Kaz. “Man, this sure beats scuba!”
The three divers stepped into flippers. “Locking out,” reported English.
And they dropped into the molasses-dark.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Adventurer’s topside dive station was an odd place for a communications center. The roar from the compressors in the gas shack made it nearly impossible to hear. But Henri, Star, and Dante bent over the console, listening to every word from seven hundred feet.
The divers had been out of the bell for an hour already, and they still hadn’t been able to locate the wreck site.
“Don’t you remember?” Star said urgently into the microphone. “There was junk scattered all the way down the slope, but the main shipwreck landed on kind of a shelf.”
“Well, we found the slope,” Adriana reported, her voice distorted by helium. “We just can’t find the shelf.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find it?” Dante demanded. “The coordinates are right, the depth is right—”
“It’s a little dark down here, Dante,” Kaz squeaked, annoyed. “I can’t even see Adriana and English unless there’s a light shining right on them.”
“But it’s there,” insisted Dante. “It has to be!”
“Enough!” English’s voice was stern, despite the high tone. “This is not the time for the debate. We search. And if we find nothing, we go home. Alors, this is all we can do.”
“But Cutter’s getting Tin Man tomorrow,” Dante reminded them. “That’s in seven hours!”
Star pulled him aside. “Let them work in peace,” she said in a low voice.
“That’s in seven hours!”
“They know that,” she assured him. “But scaring them isn’t going to help them find anything—”
Dante wheeled away from her and faced Henri. “I want to go down there.”
The dive master frowned. “English says—”
Dante cut him off. “I see things that other people don’t. I’ll find that wreck site.”
“No way,” said Star. “You don’t take a guy who isn’t comfortable diving and send him to seven hundred feet.”
“You do if he’s the only guy who can find a billion dollars!”
“It’s too late anyway,” Star told him. “We’ve only got one bell.”
Dante pointed to the lift basket that hung on the smaller winch next to the crane that controlled the bell. It was to be lowered to the wreck site to be filled with treasure. “It’s going down anyway. What’s the difference if I hitch a ride on it?”
“You must descend very slow,” Henri said thoughtfully. “Two hours, maybe more.”
“Yeah, right,” Star snorted at Dante. “You’re afraid to scuba dive, but you can sit in a cage for two hours watching the water around you turn black. You won’t make it, Dante. You’ll freak out and do something stupid. And then you’ll get yourself killed for sure.”
“You think I want this?” Dante snapped. “You think I want to risk my life and spend four days decompressing? I’d be thrilled to stay topside while everybody else dives. But I’m the guy who can get it done. End of story.”
Henri took Dante to get suited up while Star reported the change of plan to the divers.
“I forbid this!” exclaimed English.
The three interns told him about Dante’s color blindness. “He only sees in black and white,” Adriana explained, “but he can spot shadings underwater that nobody else can. If anybody can find that wreck, it’s him.”
English was still skeptical. “And the boy, he is not frightened?”
“He’s terrified,” Star admitted. “But I’ve never seen him so determined.” She sighed. “I wish I was going down with him.”
“You must be more careful what you wish for, mademoiselle,” the guide told her solemnly.
Dante clung to the lift basket to keep himself from shaking. Just gearing up for this dive was enough to bring on panic. The bulky dry suit constricted him as if he had been mummified, and the Rat Hat reminded him of a medieval torture device. Dangling at the end of the umbilical, he felt like a worm on a hook.
It was not a smooth and even descent. Instead, he was being ratcheted to the depths in a series of ten-foot drops. In between, the basket would stop for ninety maddening seconds. This allowed him to adjust to the pressure, until it was time for the winch to jerk him downward once more. It was frustratingly slow, but that wasn’t the worst part. Waiting for the halted basket to move again was the worst kind of mental strain.
At least he wasn’t bored. Thanks to the Rat Hat’s comm. system, he could listen in on the other divers as they searched. Henri gave him constant updates on his breathing mix, which changed the deeper Dante got. And Star kept him busy by asking, “How’s it going down there?” with every grinding of the winch.