Nigel Thompson - Pheia

Kate watched as Boris gave her the stop signal with a flat hand. She signed OK and went back to the panel and set zero ascent rate. The motors quieted down again and she went back to the portal. Boris was making more signals with his thumb but he had it pointed towards the hab. He signaled: thumb to hab, stop, thumb up.

“OK, right”.

Kate gave him an OK, then repeated the signals as best she could.

She saw Boris give her an OK back.

“OK then.” she said to herself. “How do we move out a bit?”

Kate scanned the menu items next to all the buttons on either side of the panel. She selected ‘Attitude’ and got a much bigger dialog with a lot of settings. After reading through everything twice, she found a lateral distance setting that looked about right for where they were from the wall. She entered a value two feet larger and closed the dialog, then pressed the ‘Execute’ button.

The hab lurched slightly and Kate smiled. “Alright.”

Boris felt the arm shift as the hab tried to move out from the wall. “Good, good,” he thought.

The arm pulled back about an inch and then stopped. A small rock was wedged between the harpoon assembly and a small ledge in the coral at the top of the hole.

He heard the motors stop. Kate had killed the lateral thrust. She would be programming the ascent rate again now. He had a few seconds to wiggle the rock while the arm was slack.

He pushed his hand into the hole and pulled on the small rock. It was loose but there was still not enough space to free it. He wished he had a pry bar. Anything to apply some force.

He shifted position slightly so he could get a better grip sideways on the rock and pulled. As he did so he heard the hab’s motors spin back up and felt the arm shift up as it tried to ascend.

The small piece of coral split in two and the arm moved up to fill the space crushing Boris’s hand in the hole. He screamed involuntarily at the pain and his regulator fell from his mouth.

Kate was back at the portal. She couldn’t see what was happening. Boris’ body was in the way but she saw a big group of bubbles rise above him and saw his regulator fall down at his side.

Boris had his right hand trapped in the rock and his regulator was down on his right side somewhere. The pain in his hand was incredible and it was very hard to focus. He reached around with his left hand for the regulator but couldn’t find it. He tried to shift his body position so the regulator would fall in front of him but another stab of pain rewarded his attempt. He had no breath in his lungs and his CO2 level was telling his brain to breathe in very strongly now. He inhaled instinctively against his closed mouth. His chest heaved and heaved again.

He forced himself to calm down and reached again for the regulator. He felt the hose with his fingers and grabbed at it. He had it now, but it was in the wrong position to get it into his mouth so he let go and quickly re-grabbed it with his hand from underneath the hose. The regulator went back into his mouth but he had no breath to clear it. He pushed the purge button briefly and inhaled at the same time, not waiting for the water to clear from the mouthpiece first.

The pulse of air pushed the water into his airway and he gagged.

He was close to blacking out now and was finding it very hard to control his actions. He desperately tried to cough to clear his throat. He sucked in again and got a small amount of air that made him cough again harder this time. He sucked in and got a lungful of air, rewarded again with more coughing. But he could breathe again now.

Kate had held her breath through the whole exercise without realizing it. She breathed in hard and banged on the portal giving Boris an OK. It was a question not a statement, but Boris couldn’t see her and she felt helpless again.

Boris needed to get Kate to stop the upward thrust but he couldn’t turn enough to give Kate a signal. How could he let her know what he needed? She was probably watching him but she could only see his back. He dropped down as far as he could. The pain in his hand was incredible every time he moved even slightly. He flattened himself against the wall and held up his other hand in a stop signal.

Kate saw the stop sign and rushed to the control panel and cancelled the upward thrust. The hab dropped slightly and stopped.

Boris felt the pressure of the arm on his hand disappear but the motion of the crushed bones in his hand caused another wave of intense pain. He tried to stay still and figure out what to do.

His hand had been forced up into a crack in the coral. The Pheia’s arm was now an inch or two below his hand and if he could force it down, it would be free. He was working up to doing this when the arm moved suddenly towards him. The hab was adjusting its attitude and had pulled out slightly from the wall. The end of the arm came free from the wall and drifted out slightly then stopped.

Kate felt the shift and saw that they were free. Excited, she banged on the portal but Boris was still flat against the wall and not moving. She knew something was wrong because his arm was still in the hole, but she couldn’t figure out what. Perhaps she should suit up and go out there? The hab was now floating free. What if it moved off without them? A rope? She could tie herself to the hab with some rope.

She didn’t think much more but she moved fast. Once down in the moon pool room she found a long length of the line they had intended to use to mark out a grid on the bottom. One end had a snap link and she wrapped a couple of turns of the line around a pipe and snapped the link over the line. She gave it several tugs to make sure it was firm. She snapped the other end to a ring on her harness and dropped through the exit.

When she was below the hab she moved out from under the weight stack and pulled herself up to where the arm that had held them to the wall was attached to the hab. She pulled along the arm, occasionally looking back to make sure the line wasn’t going to snag on anything. The line was almost neutrally buoyant in the water and hung there like a long thin, yellow snake.

The end of the arm was about two feet from the wall and just above Boris’ head. She tapped him on the shoulder and he jumped.

Boris looked up at Kate. What was she doing out here?

Kate could see the pain in his eyes. She looked at where his hand was in the rock. She reached out to free it but his other hand grabbed her wrist.

She gave him an OK as a question.

Boris signed back with OK and then waved his hand. Kate smiled to herself, the crease in her face letting a small amount of water into her mask. He released his grip on her arm and she positioned herself so she could hold the hab’s arm with one hand and Boris’s wrist with the other.

She applied downward pressure slightly on his wrist again and he reacted by grabbing her arm and shaking his head.

Kate looked at the coral. It was cracked in many places. Perhaps she could split it. Her right hand patted her BC until she found the end of the small dive knife. This wasn’t the long, sturdy knife of the old underwater movies. This was the polite, short, almost useless modern tool now considered acceptable by the recreational dive community. It looked to her like it would be great for cutting cheese. She pushed the blunted tip into a crack in the coral about three inches above where Boris’s hand was trapped. The knife blade went in an inch or so and stopped. She moved it from side to side, trying to widen the crack. It moved just enough for the blade to slide in another inch. The short knife gave her very little leverage but it was better than trying to use her fingers. She pushed sideways on the blade as hard as she could hoping fervently that it wouldn’t break.

The knife gave way suddenly and a large chunk of coral broke off in a cloud of dust. A second later a much bigger section of the wall came away from above them. It dropped down in almost slow motion taking Boris with it. His hand was still stuck in the hole.