“All in-board electronics and sensors looking good,” David assured everyone moments before they would all be momentarily ‘drowned’ as the oxygenated perfluorocarbons would be filling their lungs. They had already dropped several hundred feet so any light from Scorpio or above had completely faded; the only light source was that generated by the sub’s downward-looking camera lights, forward-looking camera lights, and overhead, side, and back flood lights. From any distance, no doubt a shark or any other sea life seeing them would take a curious glance toward the sphere of light in the otherwise pitch darkness found at these depths.
Everything around and inside Max was being recorded on discs, including every word spoken—and all of it was being transmitted back to Scorpio IV, where all data was of great importance to tally a running record of the research, exploration, and salvage operations. Since Forbes and his team topside meant to use this as a test platform for exploiting the technology, they wanted every detail down to a sneeze recorded.
Inside Max, the light source was limited to panel lights on the consoles, and while it grew colder and colder within, it also grew darker and darker within the cabin. After less than three minutes, the altimeter told David they were at 1200 feet—in total darkness surrounding the sub. The abysmal darkness took on a life if its own just the other side of the hull and bubble viewing window.
Max moved through the sea like a Great White shark in its sleekness but more accurately in the manner of a squid. As she dove, her passengers continued to be hit by the liquid oxygen spray from above. The sub was now two-thirds full of liquid air, filling up in what appeared certain death for them all as it poured over them and filled the space, rising to their necks within minutes. The last of the air pocket at their heads fast disappeared to hem in every seated diver, braced now for filling their lungs with the liquid form of oxygen. No time for contemplation, but a quiet, calming meditation on nothingness they all knew would help in the transition.
“Microphones and cameras!” came Lou’s last order.
The microphones were of the contact variety, fitted to a neck brace to which the masks attached, the contact point being the throat, precisely at the larynx. The mics could work without the headgear as a result here within the sub where they needed no mask, even with the divers submerged in liquid. With the hardware built into the dive suit, David and the others had but to plug the mic into a port on the inside of the neck collar. It was a computer that interpreted their throat microphones.
Once they were on the other side of what was termed ‘the small death’, they’d quickly come to, then place the mouthpiece for the liquid air bak-pak, as it was commonly called to the on position, along with the helmets needed on the outside, and its camera, and vital-sign monitoring equipment carried by each diver.
Divers no longer required bulky helmets and suits at these depths thanks to the liquid air, which equalized to the pressure which marine life enjoyed. The only difference was that the divers breathed clear oxygenated fluid and not sea water, but the Navy was working on that, moving toward true ‘Aquanaut’ fashion. For now they must use their packs which lasted up to four hours in hundreds of feet of water but no one knew for certain how long they might last or fail to last under the tremendous pressures here, pressures that would require divers to take deeper, longer breaths as they worked. While it was true that under normal conditions, a single lungful of liquid air had been proven to last an hour, this was two and a half miles down. It was all experimental from here.
They had dropped at high speed to 5000 feet below the surface and were still dropping.
With everyone suited up entirely now, head gear on, cameras, lights mounted on each diver, microphones operational, for the brief moment each in turn went under, breathing in the liquid air. For the half second time that they took undergoing the ‘small death’, Max had violently lurched as if hit by some powerful force from outside.
The impact had sent Kelly and Steve Jens almost off their seats. In fact, it snatched all eight people inside the sub to one side or the other. When David came to at the same time as Lou, they knew instantly they’d been knocked off course by something large that had taken a strike at the sub—either a swordfish, a Great White, or something larger still. The pilot and copilot now spoke through their com-links as they simultaneously assessed damages and worked to bring their vessel back on course.
“Why didn’t we see whatever it was that hit us on sector-sonar?” asked David, a metallic quality to his voice attributable to the computer which decoded the garbled sounds of speech over vocal chords in a liquid atmosphere rather than a gas atmosphere.
“It would appear sonar is gone—it went offline along with the feed from Scorpio!”
“What? When?” came a chorus of questions.
“A few minutes before we all took the plunge.”
“Whatcha mean, gone?” David was incredulous.
“It’s shut down is what I mean—not working.” Lou worked at the controls for the sector-sonar but it was no use.
“Damn thing went off before we were struck, Bowman, now shut up; gotta think. Without sonar, we could crash right smack into Titanic—these lights only extend so far in this murk.”
Indeed, save for their running lights, they found themselves in a world of dark.
“Who in the hell wants us all dead?” asked Bowman.
David suspected Kelly might well have continued her efforts at sabotage, acting as a modern-day Declan Irvin. That this tampering might well be a last ditch effort to kill either the mission or thwart the thing that one of them had become. Could it be her plan to end the life of this monster once and for all at the cost of far fewer lives than in 1912?
But David had no desire to go down with it and certainly not to careen into Titanic’s hull at a hundred miles an hour.
He turned and glared at Kelly and saw the truth in her eyes. You are your ancestor, he thought but did not say.
“Who would do such a thing?” repeated Bowman as Lou slowed the craft to a safer speed.
“Whoever or whatever killed Alandale and Ford, I suspect,” replied Kelly while nursing a bruise.
“Anyone’s suit compromised?” asked Lou. “Check for rents, tears. There’s InstaPatch in your overhead if needed. This is no time to fool with the cold and pressure, people.”
Once everyone was acclimatized to literally being aquanauts, swimming in an oxygenated Perflurorocarbon-413 soup, like spacemen in zero gravity, they each manned their stations. The titanium alloy compartment seemed softened by its being under water with them now. The sealed instruments put off a soft blue glow to the interior. While filled with the commotion and activity of everyone seeing to his job, some readying equipment to travel with them on the outside, everyone did so in a surprisingly calm and orderly manner here in their cramped quarters—much as astronauts in a space capsule. Recordings and monitors beeped, console lights pulsated, while above Forbes and his team mapped their progress and simultaneously sent them information on the terrain around them. The sonar malfunction was playing havoc with the sub but their progress was informed by the signals and messages being sent down to them—details of the ocean floor and how far they were from their destination.
At the same time, Vital signs on all the divers continued to be monitored from above. Data both here and above was being logged simultaneously as well. The number of bells and whistles annoyed David up to a degree; the noise meant all was well at the moment.
“We’re at two miles down,” Lou announced just as everyone became aware that the safe cocoon they were in had become a good deal less safe. At two miles the immense pressure exerted by the ocean against the hull literally shrank it. Scorpio at this depth would be made as thin as toilet paper. It was like being squeezed between thumb and forefinger and one’s cocoon was a gel capsule. Everyone began to feel the exertion this put on their bodies as well. The only thing holding the window bubble in place was a precisely cut angle in the metal that balanced the force trying to squeeze the reinforced glass out balanced against pressure trying to push the bubble in. Having filled the sub with liquid air significantly changed the equation, assuring them of safety even if they had literally shrunk due to the enormous pressures on Max.