Уильям Мейкл - Operation - Siberia

He rushed over to the video feed and radio comm, swept up the transceiver and pushed the black button with his left hand’s thumb. “How are you doing down there, my dear?”

Katherine’s grin on the video was infectious. “I believe you mean ‘How are you doing down there, Professor Muir? ’”

“Of course.”

She laughed. “All is well. We’re at almost 2,500 feet. Everything is humming along just right. The next 7,500 should be a breeze. How’re your poor fingers?”

Sean couldn’t help hoping the others on deck didn’t hear. “Um, they’re great. So, seen any new friends down there?” That was a weird and stupid question, he realized, but he was anxious.

“Well, we’re deep in the dysphotic zone, almost to aphotic, so if anything wants to be seen, it has to make the first move and get in front of my lights. All I have is darkness… as you’d well know if you’d been paying attention. What have you been doing up there while I’m down here? Looking for clues?”

Clues? What the shit? He let out a strained exhalation that sounded more like he was choking on something than laughing. “What are you… clues to what? ” he said, looking around like a paranoid wino at the crew on deck, a crew of which every single member spontaneously and assiduously looked anywhere else than at him. At charts, maybe, or out to sea, or just moving their eyes off of him and onto something, anything, else. His heart pounded in his ears.

“No, silly, I mean clues about what be around the thermal vents. About your theory . You know, the whole reason we’re doing this thing?”

The crew members laughed, but not very loudly. More of a smiling and shaking-their-heads kind of reaction. Katherine Muir was a firecracker, as the old sea dogs would say. There were other labels that might fit her, too, but Sean wasn’t about to get into it when they were supposed to be running diagnostics and such on the submersible. Besides, she was right. They were here to gather evidence that would either keep his theories afloat or sink them for good. It was a big leap to make on not much evidence, but if they could confirm it or even just find an indication he was on the right track, it would shake up all of oceanography, marine biology, land-based biology, maybe xenobiology, possibly even evolutionary-development biology. There was a lot at stake, and he couldn’t let worries about rumors and loose talk aboard ship distract him from a career-making discovery.

He took in and let out a long breath, getting his mind back in the game. He depressed the button and said to his wife, “Right, the theory, duh . Sorry. So what do you say to giving us some readings and telling us how our little sinker is doing?”

“Ha! Nice. All right, Sea Legs , as we continue the descent, we are now one hundred percent in the aphotic zone. It’s completely pitch-black outside. Running lighting-system test in three… two…”

Sean remained at the monitor until his wife had thoroughly gone down the checklist, told her “Good job, Kat,” and returned to where the two crewmen were to still be waiting for him.

Except they weren’t.

“Goddamnit— Toro! Slipjack! Get back here now , if you please.”

Slipjack was just around the corner, looking at the video feed where Sean himself had been standing just a moment earlier. Sean caught him in the first glance he took to look for his fugitives, then barked at him to find Toro and for both of them to get back to their earlier place of “conversation.” Less than a minute later, the two crewmen stood before him again, Toro looking a bit sulky and Slipjack just nervous.

“Gentlemen, the decision to have my wife take the second test instead of myself was ours , mine and hers, once we knew what had happened to my hand. I couldn’t do it for now, and she knew it needed to be done, knew the job well enough to take the reins and do it herself. Okay? I understand mariners’ beliefs and superstitions; I’ve spent half my life on boats. So, as far as Kat going in place of me, you know I would never let…” He trailed off as everybody’s attention was drawn to the sound at the winch spool. “What the hell is that? ”

A tremendous slow ripping sound erupted from the winch, and all hands close enough could see that it was caused by a stripped length of iron-shrouded tether cable on the giant spool, a length that had apparently taken more abuse than it could bear. Their armored support unwoven, the fiber-optic cables were the only part of the tether holding one end to the next, and when that section moved to the top of the wheel in about fifteen seconds, those thin plastic lines would snap at the first pull of the submersible’s weight.

Sean rushed to the controls and tried to figure out which levers and buttons would stop the spool from letting out the damaged length of cable. But it was hopeless. The half of his life he had spent on boats was as an oceanographer, not the operation of this equipment. “Where the hell are my winch men?” he shouted, hoping one of the other crew members would locate—

“Aw, goddamnit ,” Sean moaned when he remembered that his winch crew consisted of Vanessa, Toro, and Slipjack, the last two of whom he had just told not to move from their useless positions behind the winch assembly. Vanessa busted her ass to get at the cable and the winch that was slowly feeding it out, although she plainly had no idea what to do except shut it down. Which she did.

The stripped length stopped two feet from where it would have had to bear the full weight of D-Plus . Vanessa let out a huge breath of relief, and so did Sean.

“Toro, Slipjack,” he was able to say in a normal tone now that the loud winch was stopped, “let’s get to work. And if any of the three of you says ‘I told you so’ to me… well, I know where we keep the harpoons.”

The two men hurried to the spool and immediately saw the issue. As long as they didn’t let any more cable out, it was possible that the line wouldn’t break. It still could, and easily, but it was also possible that it would not, and they had to be grateful for that.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that they couldn’t reverse the winch to haul Kat back up, because in its present position, that would put too much strain on the weak area and snap it like a piece of uncooked spaghetti. They were lucky that Vanessa got the winch stopped in time at all, but the next thing to do—if there was anything to be done—was going to prove much more daunting a task.

There was emergency scuba gear on board D-Plus , but Kat was more than 2,800 feet down. That meant over one thousand pounds of pressure per square inch pressed on the sub. Kat had a wetsuit inside the submersible, but her hatch had all that pressure keeping it closed—and besides, she’d freeze to death even as every atom of air in her body was compressed to the point of complete organ failure. She wasn’t getting out, and even if she could, she would die within 30 seconds.

No one could dive down in scuba gear to rescue her, either, and for the same reasons. Another sub could perhaps couple with D-Plus , but they didn’t have another sub and they were too far out to request one before Kat ran out of oxygen or that cable snapped.

However, there was little risk of crushing: the submersible was rated for the entire 20,000 feet down. And there was a chance the whole works could be attached to a new cable and “carried” back to the surface by another submersible device.

Sea Legs carried an old but trustworthy Johnson Sea Link knockoff that could, in an emergency, possibly go that deep. The JSL was essentially human-shaped, with a clear-mask helmet for the human occupant’s head, and then controlled external arms and hooks that could perhaps slip a sturdier cable (one without any communication lines or fiber optics) onto D-Plus , and haul her up.