Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

“Yeah, as they fell off the Titanic,” joked Chase.

“That was Edwardian, not Victorian,” Nina corrected him.

“Bloody historians ruin all my jokes…” He looked at his companions as the crewmen closed the last clips on their suits. “Okay… Are we ready?”

“Absolutely,” Kari said enthusiastically.

“Ready to go into danger again?” said Castille, rather less so. “Well, if I must…”

“Come on, Hugo, you love it,” grinned Chase. “And at least you don’t have to worry about helicopters down there.”

“Ah, but what is a submersible but an underwater helicopter?”

Chase banged a hand on Castille’s helmet. “Yeah, yeah. Now stop moaning and get your Belgian arse in the water!”

With the three divers holding on to its steel bumper cage, the Atragon disappeared into the ocean.

Nina watched it go before hurrying to the control room. Chase’s suit had a video camera mounted on the right shoulder, transmitting to the Atragon along a fiberoptic link, the submersible in turn sending the image to the ship via its umbilical. “Hey, Kari, I can see you,” she said, putting on a headset. The figure on the screen waved its free hand.

“Divers, can you check coms?” asked Trulli from the next monitor station. “Eddie?”

“Loud and clear,” said Chase. His voice was distorted, but no more so than if he’d been talking on a telephone.

“Kari?”

Her response was more garbled, heavily marred by static. “I can hear you, but there’s a lot of interference.”

“Same for me,” Castille’s voice crackled.

“What’s the range of those transmitters?” Philby asked. Chase’s communications systems were hardwired to the submersible, but to avoid the risk of entangling cables, Kari and Castille were using an underwater radio link, making him a human relay station.

“At most, maybe fifteen meters,” Trulli told him. “Depends on the salinity of the water. If it’s real salty, the signal attenuation could be so much that it’ll only travel two or three meters. That close, you’re better off just shouting.”

“You guys?” Nina said into the mike. “Make sure you stay close together, huh?” Kari gave her a thumbs-up.

The descent was slower than the first, but Captain Matthews had moved the Evenor directly over the site of the temple to reduce the transit time on the sea floor. Before long, the structure appeared on the LIDAR display.

“Okay, divers?” said Baillard. “I’m going to set down where I did before, at the edge of the excavation.”

Nina watched the view from Chase’s camera. The Atragon had fewer spotlights than a conventional submersible, so the temple was little more than an oppressive shade against the near black of the sea. A small flurry of sand swirled up under the thrusters as the sub came to rest with a gentle bump.

“Evenor,” Baillard announced, “we are down and safe. Divers? Good luck.”

Chase let go of the tubular bumper and dropped to the seabed. Kari and Castille followed. “Okay, we’re here. Radio check.”

“I hear you,” said Kari.

“Radio check okay,” Castille confirmed. Then, more casually: “I have an itch right in the middle of my back. I think I’ll head back to the ship to scratch it.”

“What, and miss the fun of going through a narrow stone passage where you don’t know what’s at the top?” Chase took a few experimental steps, his flippered feet kicking up more silt. Even with the neutral buoyancy the deep suit provided, its inflexible body meant the best he could manage was an unflattering waddle. Its broad, flat chest also caused a surprising amount of resistance from the water when he tried to move forward. “Sod it, walking’s going to take forever. Let’s try the thrusters.”

He kicked himself off the seabed, tilting into a horizontal position. Castille and Kari followed suit. Once they were with him, Chase reached up with his left hand to take hold of a control stick protruding from the suit’s chest on a flexible stalk.

“Okay, stay close,” he ordered. “If we have any trouble, or anyone has com problems, get straight back to the sub and wait for the others. Let’s go.”

He pushed his thumb down on the sprung wheel set into the end of the stick. The controls for the thrusters built into the suit’s casing were simple: three speed settings to go forward, one for reverse, and releasing the wheel would automatically stop the motors. He started off at the lowest speed, using his feet to adjust his pitch. Once satisfied that he had full control, he increased speed to the second setting. The fiber-optic cable linking him to the submersible spooled out behind him like a line of spider silk.

Castille matched his speed. “This is very easy!” he said, voice distorted even over the short distance. “All those years I wasted using my legs to swim…”

“Just don’t crack your head straight into the wall,” Chase cautioned cheerfully. “Kari, you okay?”

She swept past him, effortlessly rolling in a lazy corkscrew motion. “Who do you think helped design these suits? I have other passions besides archaeology and architecture!”

“I do like a passionate boss,” joked Chase. The temple was approaching quickly, taking on color in their suit lights. “Okay, slow down.”

“Eddie, I can’t see anything except the seabed,” Nina complained over the radio. “How close are you to the temple?”

Chase let go of the controller and brought himself upright, aiming the camera on his shoulder at the building ahead. “About so close. You seeing that?”

“Oh, definitely,” she replied, awed.

The trio touched down less than ten feet from where the sloping wall rose from the piled sediment. Ragged sheets of orichalcum glinted under their spotlights. Fish darted over the temple’s surface, oblivious to the ancient power it represented.

“Which way to the entrance?” Chase asked.

“About six meters to your left,” Baillard said.

The group headed for it, Chase and Kari using powerful flashlights as well as their suit lights. Chase glanced back at the Atragon. Although he could see its spotlights clearly, as well as the unearthly pulse of its scanning lasers, the sub itself was barely visible in the deep gloom.

“There!” said Kari. Her light shone on the opening.

Chase crouched as best he could, directing his own light inside. It wasn’t as far as he’d expected to the vertical shaft; the fish-eye effect of the ROV’s camera had exaggerated the distance. “Okay, I’ll go first. Hugo, hook me up.” Castille connected a tether from a reel on his equipment belt to a clip on the lower back of Chase’s suit. “If there isn’t enough room to get around the bend in the shaft, pull me out.”

Castille yanked on the tether to make sure it was properly connected, then moved to the far side of the entrance so it wouldn’t become tangled in the communications line. “If you ate more fruit and less steak, you wouldn’t be worrying about getting stuck.”

“You know where you can shove your fruit… Okay, here I go.”

Kari and Castille helped him to a horizontal position, guiding him into the opening. Flashlight in his extended right hand, Chase took the controls with his left and started the thrusters on low power. The stone walls crept past. Under normal circumstances a four-foot-wide passage would have been easy to negotiate even underwater, but the unbending bulk of the deep suit made him more cautious.

It wasn’t long before he reached the end of the passage. He rolled onto his back to look up the shaft. It stretched away into blackness. “I’m at the shaft. Shaft! Can you dig it?” Nina groaned. “Going to try to head up.”