'Oh Vladimir—Vladimir,' Camilla suddenly reached up in the darkness and put her arms round his neck. 'Can't you do something—please, please—get us out of this.'
'Ah my so beautiful,' his deep vibrant voice held a soft 199
caressing note. 'If it were my life only—it would not be much to give but—but—what can I do?'
'We're going to die,' said Sally again in that toneless whisper and the McKay felt her tremble as she leaned against him. He was still searching his mind desperately for one ray of hope when Vladimir exclaimed:
'The dynamite! All that we have let us drill into the rocks. The explosion beneath our bottoms may drive us sky high!'
'Absurd,' grunted the McKay. 'The electric wires snapped with the cable, so we can't work the drill or explode the charges, and anyhow I doubt if there's enough H.E. in Chatham to blow this ball up through five-thousand feet of water. Besides, even if one could perform such a miracle we'd only sink again immediately.'
'Gniidige Hertzogin, Fraulein Sally. Herrshaft,' the German addressed them with his usual formality. 'I make my apologies now to all. I haf trusted in the cable being able to withstand any strain and haf been proved in error. That was a miscalculation for which I too shall pay with my life since there is no help for us. One tank of oxygen will last forty-five minutes for eight people—an hour perhaps if we use it sparingly. There are twelve tanks but we have been down four hours and have used five and a half tanks already. The remaining six and a half tanks will keep alive the eight persons here six and a half hours only.'
'As a warship has come to our assistance—they may try to hook us up with their end of the cable,' muttered the McKay yet even as he spoke he realised the absurdity of the suggestion. If sufficient cable still remained attached to the drums for the broken end to reach the bottom the ship was still drifting and, since they had no means of communication, the chances were a thousand to one against the people above lowering the cable over the exact spot where the bathysphere had come to rest. Besides it would be the supreme irony of all if such an attempt succeeded. They were sealed and riveted into the sphere and had a great hook been dangling before the windows at that moment they would have been completely powerless to reach and attach it.
The Doctor shook his head. 'All the ships in the world might be above but they could not help us in any way. We can do nothing—nothing but wait until death comes.'
'You are wrong, Doctor,' said Count Axel quietly. 'A little manipulation of your instruments and we should barely live out another minute. Surely that would be more merciful to us all.'
The horrid silence came again as each debated with themselves if they should choose slow or instant death but it was broken by Camilla almost immediately.
'No, no,' she cried, shuddering in Vladimir's embrace. 'No! I can't bear to die!'
'I had already thought of the Herr Count's suggestion,' announced the Doctor heavily.
'Sally m'dear,' questioned the McKay, 'it's a rotten business I know—but what about it? *
'We're going to die,' repeated Sally with rising hysteria. 'We're going to die! We're going to die!
He pressed her hand and let his head sway from side to side a little with the intensity of his frustration.
'Please,' he murmured, 'now or later?'
She did not reply and the sudden impression reached him that she was going off her head with shock and fear already. Camilla's terrified outbursts were more normal than this dreadful repetition of the one hopeless phrase. He shook her roughly.
'Sally d'you hear me—did you hear what I said?'
'What is it?' she asked vaguely and then, as though waking from a dream: 'Oh God! What are we going to do?'
'Listen m'dear,' he said gently, 'we're trapped here. The cable's snapped—get that? And there's no way out. We haven't a hope in Hades so it's a choice if we hang on for about six hours—then suffocate, or if we take it now— standing up as it were—since the Doctor can black us out in about a minute.'
'I don't care,' her voice was dull—apathetic. 'We're going to die—that's what it is. We're going to die and we just can't do anything to stop it.'
A groan came up from the darkness in their rear. At first they thought it to be Nicky, but it was Bozo coming round. Axel and Vladimir fumbled about until they could haul him into a sitting position. The Doctor flashed his torch to help them, but when they had propped him up his head sagged forward and he apparently passed out again.
Then Nicky, who had come to as his body was lifted 201
from on top of the gunman's sniffed, choked on a sob and muttered, 'Undo the door—can't you. Let's take a sporting chance that the air bubble from this thing carries us to the surface.'
They could not see the Doctor's eloquent shrug but he spoke a moment later. 'The door has been riveted down from the outside, we could not open it even if our lives depended on it and we were in the air above. Here, even if we had the power to do so, which we have not, the in rush of water would compress the air to a bubble no larger than a football and crush us flat.'
Camilla was crying quietly on Vladimir's broad chest. 'I dont want to die,' she sobbed, 'I don't want to—something may happen—it must.'
Nothing could happen. Count Axel on her other side, the Doctor, Vladimir, the McKay all knew that.
'Who's snatched my rod?' A gruff voice came from by the doorway. It was Bozo whose wits were slowly returning to him. 'Put on the light damn you—the boss'll grill you all for this when we get back on deck.'
'I'm afraid there's been an accident,' Count Axel told him quietly. 'Your friends were careless in reversing the crane after they had let us come down with a rush.'
'Is—that—so? Playin' a joke on me eh—I'll learn them plenty when we hit the surface.'
'I only wish you might have the opportunity, but unfortunately the cables broken and we're on the bottom here— stuck.'
'The hell we are!' Bozo lurched drunkenly to his feet, hit his head on the roof of the sphere and swore profanely-then bellowed: 'Where's that lousy Doctor. Come on—get busy. You've got to get us up.'
'I—I wish with all my heart I could,' Doctor Tisch stammered, 'but the Herr Count is quite correct. The cable has broken and we are at rest on the sea bottom—I can do nothing and no help can reach us here.'
'Hi! quit bluffin' Doctor.' Bozo's voice had suddenly gone scared. 'That's not straight—is it?'
'I speak quite truthfully,' the Doctor assured him. 'We face death. There is no alternative. At most we shall all be dead in seven hours.'
'An' you've let me in fer this—have you? All right! I'll 202
mince you first a piece if I've got to die like a rat in a trap.
The gunman threw his heavy body in the direction from which the Doctor's voice had come. Camilla and Sally clutched nervously at the McKay. This fighting in the pitchy blackness distracted their thoughts for a moment yet added to the macabre horror of their situation.
The Doctor grunted as Bozo landed on him, but he still held his torch and switched it on. Vladimir gripped the big gunman by the scruff of the neck and with his tremendous strength hauled him off as if he were only a puppy. Then flung him to the floor.
'Rat is what you are,' declared the Prince contemptuously. 'Open your face again and I will beat you to a pulping.'
Bozo squirmed into a sitting position and sat there hunched, staring with wide eyes into the terrifying darkness. He would have taken on the Prince for a tussle in free air but the appalling finality of the calamity was just beginning to penetrate his dull brain. They were to die then— all of them—like rats in a trap and there was nothing they could do about it—nothing at all. A sort of terrified coma gripped him as, for the first time in his animal existence, he began to visualise certain death in the agony of suffocation.