“It isn’t superstition, Doctor Muir,” Vanessa said, and just from that Sean knew she was trying not to be a nuisance but truly was upset. After their first meeting, he had asked the solid, sun-leathered woman to call him “Sean,” and she always had. But calling him by his title and surname was like her filing an official complaint. “Last-minute changes mean other last-minute changes, and those make for mistakes. We should’ve put off this dive until you were recovered from… did you break your fingers?”
“No, just dislocated them. Should be fine in a day or two.”
“Well, then, what I’m saying is even more true—we’ve had to wait days before because of rough seas, Sean… Doctor Muir. Why risk everything now? That’s your wife down there! How can you tempt fate with her under the water?”
Sean listened intently and respectfully, and she was right about last-minute changes often leading to mistakes, but the words “tempt fate” told him everything he needed to know about her objection. “Fate is what it is, Van, and by definition, we can’t change it. But you know that Kat and I are equally trained to pilot the sub, and we had equal hands in designing it. Really, it barely counts as a change at all. The weather gives us the chance to do things on schedule—we have to take advantage of that.”
Vanessa didn’t look thrilled with what he said, but she nodded and even gave him an “Aye, sir.” Formal, indeed, but he hoped that its vestigial tone of worry would vanish once plans returned to normal and his wife and he got back into the correct rotation. He didn’t like to “pull rank” or tell hard-working people such as these to fall in line or start swimming home. They were professionals upon whom he relied, and he treated them that way. But they had to respect his decisions, too, and he had decided operating D-Plus without the use of three of his favorite fingers was not going to get this expedition where it needed to go, not on schedule.
“Thank you, Vanessa, that’s all.” He said to Slipjack and Toro, “You guys stay here for a second, okay? I need to check on Kat. On the descent, I mean.”
He rushed over to the video feed and radio comm, swept up the transceiver and pushed the black button with his left hand’s thumb. “How are you doing down there, my dear?”
Katherine’s grin on the video was infectious. “I believe you mean ‘How are you doing down there, Professor Muir?’”
“Of course.”
She laughed. “All is well. We’re at almost 2,500 feet. Everything is humming along just right. The next 7,500 should be a breeze. How’re your poor fingers?”
Sean couldn’t help hoping the others on deck didn’t hear. “Um, they’re great. So, seen any new friends down there?” That was a weird and stupid question, he realized, but he was anxious.
“Well, we’re deep in the dysphotic zone, almost to aphotic, so if anything wants to be seen, it has to make the first move and get in front of my lights. All I have is darkness… as you’d well know if you’d been paying attention. What have you been doing up there while I’m down here? Looking for clues?”
Clues? What the shit? He let out a strained exhalation that sounded more like he was choking on something than laughing. “What are you… clues to what?” he said, looking around like a paranoid wino at the crew on deck, a crew of which every single member spontaneously and assiduously looked anywhere else than at him. At charts, maybe, or out to sea, or just moving their eyes off of him and onto something, anything, else. His heart pounded in his ears.
“No, silly, I mean clues about what be around the thermal vents. About your theory. You know, the whole reason we’re doing this thing?”
The crew members laughed, but not very loudly. More of a smiling and shaking-their-heads kind of reaction. Katherine Muir was a firecracker, as the old sea dogs would say. There were other labels that might fit her, too, but Sean wasn’t about to get into it when they were supposed to be running diagnostics and such on the submersible. Besides, she was right. They were here to gather evidence that would either keep his theories afloat or sink them for good. It was a big leap to make on not much evidence, but if they could confirm it or even just find an indication he was on the right track, it would shake up all of oceanography, marine biology, land-based biology, maybe xenobiology, possibly even evolutionary-development biology. There was a lot at stake, and he couldn’t let worries about rumors and loose talk aboard ship distract him from a career-making discovery.
He took in and let out a long breath, getting his mind back in the game. He depressed the button and said to his wife, “Right, the theory, duh. Sorry. So what do you say to giving us some readings and telling us how our little sinker is doing?”
“Ha! Nice. All right, Sea Legs, as we continue the descent, we are now one hundred percent in the aphotic zone. It’s completely pitch-black outside. Running lighting-system test in three… two…”
Sean remained at the monitor until his wife had thoroughly gone down the checklist, told her “Good job, Kat,” and returned to where the two crewmen were to still be waiting for him.
Except they weren’t.
“Goddamnit— Toro! Slipjack! Get back here now, if you please.”
Slipjack was just around the corner, looking at the video feed where Sean himself had been standing just a moment earlier. Sean caught him in the first glance he took to look for his fugitives, then barked at him to find Toro and for both of them to get back to their earlier place of “conversation.” Less than a minute later, the two crewmen stood before him again, Toro looking a bit sulky and Slipjack just nervous.
“Gentlemen, the decision to have my wife take the second test instead of myself was ours, mine and hers, once we knew what had happened to my hand. I couldn’t do it for now, and she knew it needed to be done, knew the job well enough to take the reins and do it herself. Okay? I understand mariners’ beliefs and superstitions; I’ve spent half my life on boats. So, as far as Kat going in place of me, you know I would never let…” He trailed off as everybody’s attention was drawn to the sound at the winch spool. “What the hell is that?”
A tremendous slow ripping sound erupted from the winch, and all hands close enough could see that it was caused by a stripped length of iron-shrouded tether cable on the giant spool, a length that had apparently taken more abuse than it could bear. Their armored support unwoven, the fiber-optic cables were the only part of the tether holding one end to the next, and when that section moved to the top of the wheel in about fifteen seconds, those thin plastic lines would snap at the first pull of the submersible’s weight.
Sean rushed to the controls and tried to figure out which levers and buttons would stop the spool from letting out the damaged length of cable. But it was hopeless. The half of his life he had spent on boats was as an oceanographer, not the operation of this equipment. “Where the hell are my winch men?” he shouted, hoping one of the other crew members would locate—
“Aw, goddamnit,” Sean moaned when he remembered that his winch crew consisted of Vanessa, Toro, and Slipjack, the last two of whom he had just told not to move from their useless positions behind the winch assembly. Vanessa busted her ass to get at the cable and the winch that was slowly feeding it out, although she plainly had no idea what to do except shut it down. Which she did.
The stripped length stopped two feet from where it would have had to bear the full weight of D-Plus. Vanessa let out a huge breath of relief, and so did Sean.
“Toro, Slipjack,” he was able to say in a normal tone now that the loud winch was stopped, “let’s get to work. And if any of the three of you says ‘I told you so’ to me… well, I know where we keep the harpoons.”