Jack Du Brul - Deep Fire Rising

He could only hope that some of the answers lay a thousand feet below where he tossed on his bunk.

An hour later, bound by frustration, Mercer gave up on trying to sleep. He donned the coveralls Alan Jervis had provided earlier, used the head as the sub pilot had requested and made his way to the Surveyor ’s fantail.

Bob sat in a cradle under the A-frame derrick. The submersible was painted bright yellow and its hull was studded with auxiliary oxygen tanks, small thruster nacelles and a pair of heavy-duty manipulator arms ending in wicked-looking pincers. Her bow was a single piece of curved Lexan six inches thick. Through the tough acrylic dome, Mercer could see the cramped cockpit. Alan would sit behind and a little above the two observer seats. The interior walls were covered with dials and banks of switches and several flat-screen computer monitors. The little sub was the pinnacle of high-tech deep-sea technology.

Nearby, C.W. worked on an even more unusual piece of equipment, the ADS. The suit was also painted yellow, and the twenty rotator joints made it look segmented, like the body of a corpulent caterpillar. The helmet had a wide faceplate for good visibility, and at the end of the arms were nimble three-finger grapplers.

“What do you think?” C.W. asked with obvious pride.

“Damn amazing. What does it weigh?”

“Over five hundred pounds empty, but the way the suit’s balanced and the fluid in the joints work, it’s almost weightless below thirty-five feet. It’s the next best thing to scuba diving, provided you’re not claustrophobic.”

“How do you work it?”

“Nothing to it.” C.W. snapped open the back of the suit. “I was about to do a systems check. You can do it with me. Hop in.”

It was like stepping into a pair of steel pants. Mercer used a bar attached to the ADS’s lifting cradle to heave himself through the opening. He lowered his feet down into the legs and thrust his arms into the appropriate openings. His head came up inside the domed helmet. When he was settled, he could feel large rocker switches under his feet and several control buttons and toggles next to his hands. The suit smelled of electronics and disinfectant with just a trace of the previous user’s sweat.

“Do you feel the foot pads?” Even with the access hatch open, C.W.’s voice was muffled and distant.

“Yes.”

“They control the thrusters. Put pressure on the back right and the suit moves backward. Try it now.”

Mercer pressed down on his heel and a pair of thrusters attached to his shoulders began to whine.

“Press forward and you go forward.”

He tried it and the small propellers stopped in an instant and began turning the opposite direction.

“Your left foot controls rotation,” C.W. explained. “Back spins you right and forward spins you left.”

Mercer applied pressure and other thrusters mounted on the exoskeleton spooled up to a high-pitched buzz. He then tried out the arms. He’d had thousands of hours operating heavy mining equipment that used joysticks similar to those inside the suit’s arms. It took him just a few minutes to get the feel of the ADS’s controls.

“Shit, man, you’re a natural,” C.W. exclaimed when Mercer reversed himself out of the aluminum suit.

“The controls are pretty logical.” Mercer was impressed. “And you said at thirty-five feet you don’t even feel the mass?”

“It’s amazingly flexible.” C.W. patted the suit’s metal hide. “Muscle power alone moves the arms and you can bend through forty-five degrees. NASA astronauts who’ve tried one of these say it’s better than their space suits, and the pressures we work in are a hell of a lot stronger than the vacuum they experience. If you have the time while you’re aboard, I’ll let you try one on a test dive.”

Mercer smiled. “I’d love to take you up on that, but I don’t think it’ll happen. I expect to be out of here as soon as possible.”

C.W.’s normally easygoing expression faded. “What’s really going on?” he asked. “Are you allowed to say? Was Spirit right about a government foul-up?”

“No, there isn’t any kind of cover-up, though I doubt my word will convince your wife.”

The former surfer chuckled. “It took me all of five minutes to learn that if she says the sky is green, I’m better off not debating her.”

“You must be a slow learner,” Mercer teased, comfortable with C.W.’s mellow demeanor. “I figured that out in five seconds.”

“She is something, huh? I met her at a beach party. I had just convinced this other girl to go back to my place when Spirit walked up behind me. She said that I was a sexist pig and that I had no interest in the other girl beyond her silicone boobs. I turned around to call her a dyke or something, and man, I just stopped cold. I think she felt it too. The only other thing I remember about that night was later, we were in bed and she said something like ‘Better than silicone, aren’t they?’ ”

Mercer smiled at the story, at some level envious that Charlie had been able to transform lust into love. He’d felt that momentary jolt of desire many times, but for one reason or another nothing developed much past a casual affair. Harry White had once told him that getting married is equal parts the person and the timing. One without the other just won’t work. Of course taking marital advice from an eighty-year-old bachelor wasn’t the best idea in the world, but Mercer couldn’t deny the truth in his words.

Many women had come into and out of his life. He didn’t think the problem was with them, so it had to be the timing. Or with himself.

His atypical train of thought was interrupted by the approach of Alan, the sub pilot, and Jim McKenzie, the topside coordinator. Alan tossed a sweatshirt to Mercer. “It gets cold at a thousand feet and we can’t afford the battery power for a heater.”

As Mercer slipped into the garment, the three men went over their predive checklists and made last-minute adjustments with a team of hovering technicians. He noticed Spirit standing on the helipad above the deck. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was staring at him and not her husband. Then their eyes met. Spirit shot him a contemptuous look and retreated into the superstructure. The intensity of her anger was out of proportion with the delay he was causing her research. It felt almost personal.

“We’re all set,” McKenzie announced. “Let’s get you into the can and buttoned up.”

Mercer climbed the ladder leaning against Bob ’s curved hull and carefully lowered himself through the hatch, mindful of the thick grease smeared around the coaming to help maintain a tight seal. He stepped first on the pilot’s seat, then contorted himself all the way in so he slid into one of the cramped observers’ positions. In front of him was an array of dials and switches Alan had assured him he needn’t worry about. From his seat, the pilot could control everything except the manipulator arms. A moment later, Alan eased into the sub. He donned a headset and began another predive checklist with McKenzie, who’d already moved into the control van with a handful of others. To Mercer it was like listening to the arcane language of a pilot talking to the control tower, just a series of numbers and indecipherable acronyms.

“Okay,” he announced. “Everything checks out. We’re good to go. We’ll launch first and then they’ll send down C.W. in the NewtSuit.”

“How long’s the descent?”

“Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. It’s only a thousand feet. And just so you know, the pressure’s something in the neighborhood of five hundred pounds per square inch.”

“Remind me not to buy property in that neighborhood.”