Gann nodded to Palanski who stepped inside the vessel, remaining by the door.
‘We’re gonna go in one at a time, just like before, and you’ll be secured to your seat,’ Gann continued. ‘Lead off,’ he said to Stratton, who stepped towards the vessel’s entrance. The man beside him began to follow and was grabbed harshly by Gann around the throat and held before his leading foot had touched the ground. ‘One at a time, I said.’
The man choked, unable to grab Gann’s hands because his own were secured to his waist-belt. Gann gazed into the man’s reddening eyes before pushing him back into line.
Stratton was led by Palanski to the end of a back-to-back double row of metal seats fixed to the floor along the centre of the cabin.
‘Sit down,’ Palanski said. Stratton obeyed.The woven steel seat was cold. His hand chains were removed from his waist-belt and placed over a hook poking up through the metal seat. Palanski pushed the hook down into a slot in the seat until it clicked into place.‘That’s a release mechanism,’ he said. ‘We can release you if there’s a problem. But don’t worry, there won’t be.’
Palanski talked without any threat or cruelty in his tone, the good cop to Gann’s monster. Stratton watched him walk back to the door to receive the next prisoner. It was the same dark surly-looking individual that Stratton had sat beside since joining the group and he watched as the securing procedure was repeated. When Palanski walked away the prisoner gave the hook a firm tug. It was immovable. He glanced at Stratton and they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Stratton was surprised to see no real malice in his eyes, nor any sign of the cold macho aggression that the others naturally exuded.They were intelligent and without the torment that an incarcerated convict of his level usually possessed. Stratton wondered what his crime was. It was obviously a serious one to have got him a trip to Styx.
Stratton went back to studying the vessel, as much of it as he could see from his seat without stretching around too much. It was interesting to identify various components from the blueprints and those added since. The docking hatch was the same, almost directly above him with its interesting dual lock-and-hinge system designed to open either inwards or outwards. The interior of a regular submarine remained pretty much at surface pressure no matter how deep it descended, which meant the forces against the outer skin were always greater than those inside. The Styx ferries, however, were designed so that the internal pressure increased as it descended, constantly equalising with the outside pressure. For the return phase the pressure remained at the prison depth to allow slow decompression even as the ferry ascended. The ferry was therefore built to prevent it blowing open as opposed to the conventional imploding. Decompression could be carried out inside the ferry or, once on the surface, the vessel could be connected to a habitat chamber and the passengers transferred into it to decompress in more comfort.
The prison was kept at the same pressure as its depth which was an average of a hundred and fifty feet.There were a number of reasons for this, both security and structurally related. If the forces inside the structure equalled those outside (or were just fractionally lower, to be more accurate) there would be less chance of structural failure and fewer leaks. As for the security aspect, an escaping prisoner would have to decompress for hours or risk dying of the bends.
Stratton studied the door to the emergency escape room, hoping he might get a chance to look inside at some stage. From this point on he would have to constantly evaluate possible ways to escape from the prison despite the fact that it was not essential to the plan. His orders were to attempt it only once he had disposed of the tablet and ensured that there was no risk to himself or to others. He reflected on how stupid the ‘no risk’ part of those orders was. He was in the extreme-risk business.An escape would only give closure to the counterfeit aspect of the plan which was the ‘independent evaluation’ of the escape potential of the prison. It would be nice if Stratton could manage it all but no one was expecting him to get even close to that. But as long as he destroyed the tablet first he could make an escape attempt if he so desired.
Stratton decided that he would have a go for the adventure of it. His other option, the one most popular with the mission’s planners, was that once he had successfully destroyed the tablet he was to give himself up. By doing so he would technically have failed as far as the evaluation was concerned but his real mission would have been achieved. The truth was that Stratton himself did not really expect to succeed in escaping. To do so certainly appeared impossible after he’d studied the plans and experienced the system thus far. But he still fancied the opportunity if it should arise even though he was less inclined these days to take the kind of risks he used to have scant regard for. He’d come close to dying too many times and the incidents were more than just vague memories. The emotions he had experienced during the worst of them were deeply etched into his psyche. It was as if he were two people: one eager to volunteer for any operation, the other warning of the consequences. He could have done with a little less of both.
A heavy clang yanked Stratton out of his thoughts and at the same time he felt the pressure change in his ears. He looked at the entrance to see Gann spinning the central wheel on the closed watertight doors. The action pushed out a dozen clips around the seal, squeezing it shut.
‘You’re soon gonna feel the pressure build in your ears,’ Gann said. ‘Sorry you can’t use your hands to help relieve it if it hurts. If you get any pain wiggle your jaw or try to yawn. If that don’t work then just sit it out. Your eardrums’ll burst but that’s not a problem. There’s nothin’ in Styx worth hearing other than me and I’ll always make sure you know what I’m sayin’ . . . Some pearls o’ wisdom for you before we set off. From here on in you’re gonna be under pressure, and I don’t mean just from me. You’re gonna be under sea pressure. That means the only way you can get outta the prison is by decompressing, which takes hours. Give you an idea how it works. If you somehow got outta the prison and floated up you’d be big as a Buick by the time you reached the surface. Course, long before you got there you’d explode into a thousand pieces. So if you did escape no one would know about it. A little piece of advice to add to that: if you piss me off too much or you’re caught stealin’ from the mine - you’ll get to learn about that - or you’re just a pain-in-the-ass troublemaker I’ll see to it that you do escape. This ain’t like no other prison on Earth. There’s nowhere to hide, no way to escape, no one to run to if you ain’t happy. No visitors, no lawyers, no press.’ He glanced at Palanski who thought he saw something in Gann’s look. ‘We do our own cleanin’, our own cookin’, our own laundry. We even do some of our own equipment servicin’ if we find out any of you are geniuses. And then we’ve got the mine for you to play in. What’s up, Ramos?’
Everyone glanced at Ramos who was looking agitated. ‘I don’t like small spaces,’ he said, his lips quivering.
‘Ain’t you spent most of your rat life in a cell?’ Gann asked.
‘Not at the bottom of the fuckin’ sea,’ Ramos mumbled.
‘Don’t worry yourself about it,’ Gann said, amused. ‘You’ll soon be in an even smaller, deeper space.’ Gann took a handset off the wall and put it to his mouth. ‘Control, this is ferry four, come in.’