Sam inhaled effortlessly.
The gas he breathed was humid and warm, rather than the dry, cold air divers are used to with compressed air and a SCUBA cylinder and regulator set up. In most dives, this would make for a more comfortable experience, but in the cold, deep confines of Lake Superior, it would save his life — keeping him warmer and less dehydrated — both of which, would reduce his likelihood of decompression sickness.
He checked his gauge for two things.
One, that C02 levels weren’t rising, meaning the new sodalime scrubber was doing its job correctly and two, that the partial pressure of oxygen within the closed-circuit remained within the initial setpoint of 1.3 bar.
Sam ran his eyes across the top reading, where a nondispersive infrared sensor showed that the C02 levels weren’t elevating.
Below that, his glance stopped to examine the reading from the oxygen analyzer. It showed the partial pressure of oxygen as 1.3 bar.
Three minutes later, he said to Tom, “I’m all good to go.”
“All right. Let’s stick together. I don’t know what to make of the Senator, but he wasn’t lying when he said Lake Superior is a uniquely deadly place to dive.”
And stepped off into the frigid waters of Lake Superior.
Chapter Four
Few things are more shocking to the human body than plunging into ice cold water. As the near freezing water enveloped Sam, his body reacted the way millennia of evolution had intended — his arteries tightened, blood pressure and heart rate increased, and his lungs gasped for the cold, dry, Trimix. The heated undergarment warmed the large blood vessels to his kidneys in his lower back, where it was soon shunted to his vital organs.
Within minutes, his body had overcome the original shock of the initial dramatic temperature change and it started to regulate the warmth. He checked his gauges, confirming on his heads-up display that his CO2 levels weren’t climbing and that the partial pressure of oxygen within the fully closed-circuit remained within the predefined parameter of 1.3 bar.
Sam glanced at his buddy. “How you doing Tom?”
“Good,” came Tom’s cheerful reply. “I don’t know what the Senator was talking about. The lake’s a balmy 4 degrees above freezing.”
“That’s good, Tom. You and I must be diving different lakes.” Sam grinned. “How are your numbers?”
“They’re all good.”
“All right, let’s start our descent.”
Sam deflated his buoyancy wing until he was negatively buoyant and started his descent. They descended quickly, more like sky divers, watching the icy-clear waters flow past them as they raced to the lake’s bed. As he descended, Sam swallowed, equalizing the pressure in his ears and sinuses and occasionally inserted a small amount of gas into his dry suit to prevent its compressed air from squeezing him tight.
At a hundred feet, he switched on his dive flashlight and watched Tom do the same.
“You still good, Tom?”
“Great. You know Sam, I remember when you used to take me diving in the Bahamas. Now all we seem to do is find more and more inhospitable places to explore.”
Sam smiled, unsure whether Tom was making reference to the fact that he was normally the one to complain about the cold. “Sorry. We go where the work is.”
“I know, I’m just regretting not using my opportunity to take a vacation with the rest of the crew, while the Maria Helena was having its engines overhauled.”
“Vacation?” Sam asked. “I thought this was your vacation. When was the last time I let you come along on a treasure hunt?”
“You mean, without people trying to kill us?” Tom replied. “I don’t know, it’s been a while.”
“See, aren’t you glad you came?” Sam said. “Besides, what else were you going to do while Genevieve’s away?”
“I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.”
“Where is Genevieve anyway?”
“She stayed in Russia to visit a friend of hers. She’ll be back in a week.”
Sam slowed his descent. They were approaching 170 feet. “The wreckage of the J. F. Johnson should be visible somewhere around here.”
Tom turned and shined his flashlight to their east, revealing a large wreckage. “You mean that one?”
“Yeah, that’d be it.”
Sam stared at the shipwreck.
Beneath the powerful beam of his Day-maker flashlight the J. F. Johnson looked as though it had sunk a year ago, not almost ninety. The paint on the hull, the fittings, everything was perfectly preserved. There was some buildup on the steel rope structures aboard, but otherwise only silt disguised the intact ship. The bow pointed up the slope of the ravine and the water passed the ship from bow to stern in an ever-present current, keeping her relatively clean in her frozen tomb. The surroundings were freezing, brutally inhospitable. No seaweed clung to the barren underwater seascape, and the whole area seemed completely devoid of life-forms of any kind.
Sam could already feel hypothermia teasing at his extremities, despite all their preparations. He motioned to Tom and tapped his watch, then made ten fingers to symbolize the agreed ten minutes on the wreck, and the okay signal. Tom checked his own watch and confirmed the timing.
The current was taking him along at a walking pace toward the wreck, so he had to time his approach carefully, as he aimed for the main entrance to the raised pilothouse. According to Senator Perry, only one hatch remained accessible, while the rest of the ship was now sealed permanently with rust.
Sam kicked his fins in the lead and Tom followed as they crested the starboard lifelines, which sat atop the listing ship. They headed for the back of the main dining room amidships. An eddy held them in place against the aft wall and then shoved them into the back of the base of a bridge that raised upward from the deck at a sharp angle. It was a strange feeling being hustled inside the dead ship by the invisible hand of the sea.
He gripped the edge of the door to the wheelhouse. He pulled on the door, using his legs to push off the side of the structure, but nothing shifted. The hatch was locked from within or had been permanently fixed with rust and decomposition.
“I thought the Senator said only the door to the bridge was still accessible?” Sam asked.
“Maybe there’s a second hatch, portside?” Tom suggested.
“That’s probably right.”
The hatch was fixed in a semi-open position, leaving a gap of about three inches, leading downward into the main fishbowl-shaped wheelhouse.
Sam cracked a weighted luminescent glowstick and waited until its chemicals mixed and glowed green. He then dropped it through the gap, leading to a broad windshield that formed the semi-circle of a large goldfish bowl. The wheelhouse glowed with the eerie green luminescence, revealing four ghostly sailors who’d kept watch on the stricken bridge for nearly nine decades. The four dead men wore thick woolen coats and typical sailing attire from the 1920s.
Sam slowly exhaled as he ran his flashlight across their faces. They looked waxy, definitely recognizable as once young men, but at the same no longer quite human. More of a morphed shape that had bulged over time into a frozen vision that haunted the deep.
Tom was first to break the tension. “It’s strange to think that if any of these men had survived the original sinking they’d be older than my grandfather and would have already died of natural causes.”
Sam’s tension eased. “Yeah. It’s hard to imagine they’ve been down here all this time. They still look…”