Nigel Thompson - Pheia

“No idea. Perhaps their receiver is broken? Perhaps they are still writing a response? Perhaps the transmitter gave out after that last transmission?” The technician had answered this question at least four times now.

“It’s been over two hours since we sent the reply. Surely they could have sent some information back by now.”

“Perhaps your request for details has slowed them down?”

“Yes, you’re probably right. Dr. Martin is probably writing a dissertation on the whole episode along with a long series of recommendations for fixing the Pheia’s design and punishing all the engineers that built her. Not to mention a letter to his lawyer recommending a class action suit on behalf of the entire crew.”

He looked at the ELF receiver again. The last entry was his transmission requesting information.

“Can we send that again?” he asked.

“Sure. If you want.”

“Yes, please do. It’s better than just sitting here doing nothing.”

The technician tapped the screen and Williams’ message was transmitted once more.

Kate woke up six hours later. She needed to pee. When her eyes opened she saw the bunk overhead and momentarily thought she had been dreaming. She glanced over at the other bunks and saw them empty. She got off the bunk, saw her dive suit and looked down to the galley floor below. She saw her dive gear lying in a pile by the ladder. Reality set in. She felt damp from the high humidity and stiff from sleeping in one position.

Stripping off her clothes she stepped into the shower. “Not much competition today.”

She turned on the water and pulled her hand back quickly expecting it to be cold. To her surprise it was warm. She let it warm up a bit more and stepped under the stream. It felt wonderful.

After the shower, Kate found some clean clothes and got dressed. Something about being in fresh clothes really improved her attitude. And she was hungry too. She picked up the dive suit. It was damp inside. Everything was always damp but the suit was worse. She wished she’d pulled it inside out and hung it up. “Oh well.” Grabbing it with one hand she went down the ladder to the galley.

The galley was exactly the same as it had been for the whole dive except that there was nobody else here. The counter looked just like someone had made coffee recently. Coffee. Coffee sounded really good.

Kate set about making breakfast. “What time is it?” She had no idea and looked at the wall clock. The time seemed irrelevant. Too many hours under constant lighting in stressful circumstances had her completely lost as to what day it was and if it were day or night on the surface. It didn’t matter. She felt the need for breakfast.

There was an unopened container of milk in the fridge and Kate used it to make a large bowl of cereal which she ate at the table. It felt almost normal to be eating cereal. So much more civilized than a diet of dehydrated meals. “Pancakes.” She thought about pancakes. Pancakes were what she had when she came back from a backpacking trip. “Or a burger. OK — enough about food.”

She finished the cereal, then went to the sink and rinsed out the bowl and spoon. Satisfied that she was leaving the place tidy; “for who?”, she thought; she climbed back into the damp dive suit. She needed to get back into the ops room and check on progress to the surface. She suddenly felt worried. Was she still ascending? Were all the systems still working? “One thing at a time girl.”

Back in the ops room, Kate took off the scuba gear and got out of the dive suit which she pulled inside out and hung over a pipe in the ceiling. It was doubtful it would dry much in the high humidity but at least it would get aired out a bit. She kept hoping that she wasn’t going to need to dive again but it seemed sensible to be prepared. And in any case now that she had the hab tied together again, perhaps she would spend more time in the other cylinder. It was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the floor of the ops room and she still had thirteen or fourteen days left before she would be at the surface. Two weeks. Two weeks of being alone, eating dehydrated dinners. “But there is coffee in the galley and a LOT of cereal.” She smiled. “Just like backpacking when you find a chocolate bar in the bottom of the pack after five days and you thought they were all gone.”

Having arranged the dive suit on the pipe, she wandered over to the control console and checked the depth. 3,600 feet. A quick calculation in her head made that 12 days to the surface. Way better than two weeks. “Right. A whole two days better.”

Kate looked out the portal. The wall was right where it always was creeping slowly past as the Pheia ascended. Back at the console, she checked the displays for any yellow or red indicators. Everything was green except for the indicators for the moon pool room and storage area which both showed all sorts of problems as a result of being flooded.

She suddenly realized she hadn’t checked the ELF radio and tapped the button on the screen.

The ELF showed several transmissions from the surface, which Kate read quickly. “They heard me.” She read William’s note. “Problem in detail?” That was going to take some effort. What was she going to say?

She decided not to over think it. Williams might want details but right now she needed to give them the overall picture.

It took a minute to find out how to send a more detailed message. Kate thought for a second about what to say. How do you tell someone that everyone is dead? “They’ll panic,” she thought.

After considering a couple of ideas she settled on something simple and direct.

“This is Kate Moss. I am OK. All other crew dead. Hab is damaged but OK. Ascending.”

She tried to think of something more to say but just acknowledging the death of the crew made her very emotional. She tapped the Commit button and watched as the transmission was sent. She sent it again for good measure.

Now she could talk to the surface, at least she wasn’t going to be alone for the rest of the trip. But it felt odd. She was the sole survivor. And why was that? Luck? Fate? When she thought about meeting parents, loved ones, relatives of the crew she felt guilty. No, not so much guilty as frightened. What was she going to say to them? They fought bravely? Hardly. They died in an accident? It sounded so lame. She certainly had no intention of telling anyone that their loved one drowned to death in a sardine can at the bottom of the ocean. And she just knew they’d be angry and they’d ask her: “How did you survive?” And what about Chas? He died a hero, trying to save her and Boris. And Boris? Boris died because Kate made a giant chunk of coral break off and take him to the ocean floor. And then they’d ask where the body of their loved one was. How the hell was she going to explain that she had cable-tied a dive weight to them and dumped them over the side?

In the comms shack on the Pheia, Williams had stepped out to get coffee; more for something to do than the need to drink. The technician had gone back to his book. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about the Pheia or it’s crew. He’d just spent too much time on dive missions where there were hours between communications and had learned not to expect crews to respond. They were generally busy, and as far as he could tell held a universal distain for the people who manned the surface support vessels. Sure, they’d all tell you how important you were to the mission when anyone outside was listening, but in reality they saw the surface crew as non-divers and that made them lesser entities. He flipped the page over. Just as he started reading the page, the ELF signaled the arrival of a message. He scanned it quickly. “Oh shit.” then shouted: “Dr. Williams!”