Nigel Thompson - Pheia

As he cracked the valve open, bubbles emerged from an opening in the ceiling of the compartment. He opened the valve fully and watched as the gas started to form a bubble at the top of the room. It was expanding quite fast but it was obvious that at the rate the gas was entering the room it would be a while before they could get out of the scuba gear.

Kate and Boris attached one or two dive weights to each of the dead crew and pushed them over to the ladder. Each body slowly drifted down out of sight but Kate knew this was only the first step. Once they had them all in the moon pool room, they would need to push them out of the hab exit to float the few hundred feet down to the sea bed; the place they had come down here to explore. She couldn’t help crying as she worked. The tears stung her eyes and she had to stop more than once to flood her mask and clear it. The seawater washed her tears away just as it took the bodies of her friends.

By the time all of the bodies had been sent down to the lower level, the room had a pocket of gas about two feet deep at the top. Boris gave Kate a thumbs-up sign and the two of them pulled up the ladder into the gas pocket.

“I need to look at gas generator system.” Boris said. “Can you go down and take care of the bodies?” he asked her.

Before she could answer, Chas’ head appeared on the opposite side of the room. He pulled his mask down around his neck. “Hey, Boris, I don’t think there is going to be enough gas to fill the room.”

“Yes, I expected that.” Boris replied. “I will see if the gas generator system is still working. There should be plenty of helium and hydrogen in the tanks. We just need it to make more oxygen.”

Boris put his mask back on and dropped back into the water. Kate followed, dreading the thought of dealing with the bodies again.

Kate stopped at the bottom of the ladder and saw that Boris was looking at the gas control panel. It seemed very unlikely that the systems would have survived the flooding but as Boris had pointed out, the actual control systems were above them in the reactor room and the control panels down here were all gel filled. They had been on the dive for about 20 minutes now and she was starting to feel a little chilly. The feel of the cold made her want to get the dive over with and she lowered herself down the ladder into the moon pool room. A few rungs from the bottom she stopped. The floor below her was covered in bodies. She pushed off the ladder with a good shove and floated down to the floor beside them.

Part of her wanted to say something for each one, and part of her just wanted them gone.

She bent over and grabbed the pant leg of the nearest body. It lifted easily from the pile and she directed it over the moon pool exit. Goodbye, she thought as it slowed dropped out of sight.

Kate looked at the pile of corpses and selected the next closest one. She grabbed it by the arm and pulled it over the exit. She was trying not to look at the faces but as she grabbed the next one, the face of Kayla Miller floated before her and Kate let out a sob that made here face crease and let water into her mask. Tears filled her eyes as she pulled the body over the exit and released it. She didn’t bother to clear her mask. She didn’t need to see any better than the blurry view she had now as she slowly pulled the rest of the dead crew over the exit and released them into the darkness below.

When they were all gone she lifted her head and cleared her mask. The moon pool room was empty. She stood there alone listening to the sounds of her bubbles as she breathed. It was peaceful. The same peace she had discovered on her first sea dives in the Caribbean with her family so many years before. Despite the chill she was feeling, she tried to focus her mind on remembering happy dives in sunny warm waters; her father looking for things to show her in this new world.

Chas’ feet appeared on the ladder and brought her back to reality. She looked at him and he made swimming motions with his fingers and pointed to the tunnel hatch. Kate nodded and moved towards the tunnel.

Back in the galley again, Kate dropped her scuba gear on the deck and started to unzip her suit.

“Help me out of this will you Chas? Where is Boris? Is he OK?”

“He indicated to me to come back. I think he’s working on the gas system controls. When I left, the room was about six feet deep in water still.”

“Do you think it’s going to work? Can we get the ops room working again?”

“From what I saw when I was in there, all the controls are working. Boris must have been right about the electronics. It looks as though it really is waterproof.”

Kate helped Chas out of his gear and found a can of soup. “Are you hungry?” She asked Chas. “I’ll heat this up. I’m starving. It’s been ages since we last ate.”

“Sure. But not mushroom. Mushroom soup is evil.” He smiled at her. This was the first time Kate had seen him look close to normal. “I’m glad the bodies are gone,” he added.

“Yes. Me too. I couldn’t stop crying but now that we are back here it seems oddly surreal. Like it was a dream.”

They sat together and ate the soup in silence. As Kate was getting to the bottom of the bowl she heard bubbles, and then saw Boris emerge from the storage room. He pulled off his mask and tossed it on the deck.

“Need help?” Chas asked and offered a hand.

Boris pulled up on Chas’ hand and stepped onto the deck. “Gas system is working,” he said and pulled of his scuba set. “I estimate about five hours to clear water from ops room but we can operate equipment before it is empty.”

Chas helped him out of his suit. “Can we get back to the surface?”

“Yes, this is possible. We must blow the pyros that hold the legs to the hab, then use the drive system to ascend.”

“Do we know the drives are OK,” Kate asked. “Did you test them?”

“No. They are not tested yet. One thing at a time. First we must check control systems are working. Then I can try drive motors before we detonate arm pyros.”

Kate waved the empty can of soup at Boris. “Want some soup?” she asked.

“Yes. Soup would be good.”

The following day, Chas, Boris and Kate suited up once more and made the short dive from the galley through the storage room and moon pool up into operations. When they arrived, there were only a few inches of water covering the floor. They pulled off the scuba gear and in unspoken agreement they walked over to the portal. The wall was right there where it had been for several days. The arms holding the hab to the wall were clearly visible.

Boris checked the indicators on the gas control system panel. “Gas system is good. Reactor is providing normal power.”

“What about the drive systems?” Chas asked.

“I will check out control systems now.”

The hab’s control system consisted of an array of electric motors with caged fans. The motors mostly pointed down but were each steerable to allow thrust to be directed enough to move the hab around laterally while maintaining a fixed depth. The ops computer directed the fans as a group to maintain position based on an array of sensors. Pressure sensors provided fine depth control and sonar arrays provided a measure of distance from the wall. Optical systems complemented the sonar to provide stereoscopic visual images of the wall which were processed by the computer to provide distance and additional positional data. Maintaining a position underwater was tricky. No GPS signals made their way below the surface and there was a distinct lack of sign posts. The wall itself was largely featureless and for the bulk of the trip, the bottom was so far below them as to be of no use in determining their position. The surface barge had an audio transponder slung under it and the hab could ping it to find the distance from the surface with reasonable accuracy but even this was subject to the effects of the thermocline layer which they were now far below.