A dark object appeared on the screen, approximately twenty-five feet to his right and down.
Austin maneuvered the Hardsuit into a sharp right turn and descended until the searchlights reflected off the gleaming plastic-and-metal surface of the ROV. It was lying on its back like a dead beetle.
Gannon also saw it. “Thanks for finding our ROV,” his voice came over the communicator.
“My pleasure!” replied Austin. “B3 should be within spitting distance.”
He extended the range of his search a hundred feet, then spun around slowly. The sonar picked up another object close by. Accelerating too quickly, he overshot the bathysphere and, turning sharply, had to come around again.
Austin hovered some twenty feet over the B3. The temperature inside the Hardsuit had dropped, yet sweat beaded his forehead. The difficulty of the task in this hostile environment having dawned on him, he knew that a mistake made in haste could be fatal. He took a deep breath, pressed the vertical-control pedal, and began his descent to the bathysphere entombed in mud below.
CHAPTER 10
THE B3 WAS QUICKLY BECOMING A GLOBE-SHAPED FREEZER as its battery-operated heating system fought a losing battle against the deep-ocean chill. Joe Zavala and Max Kane had wrapped blankets around themselves like Navajo Indians and sat back-to-back to conserve heat. Their numb lips proved useless for speech, and their lungs labored to extract an ever-diminishing amount of oxygen from the rapidly thinning air.
Zavala dreaded the moment when the power would fail completely. He didn’t want to die in the dark. The bathysphere had an auxiliary air tank, but he wondered if it would be worth prolonging the misery. At the same time, he stubbornly fought the urge to give up, and he filled his mind with visions of the mountains around Santa Fe. Closing his eyes, he imagined he was resting after a hike in the winter, not trapped in a hollow steel ball at the bottom of the cold sea.
Clunk!
Something had thumped against the bathysphere. Zavala pressed his head against the wall, ignoring the coldness that seeped through the metal skin. He could hear a gritty, scraping sound, then another clunk, followed by several more.
Morse code for k, he realized.
Then, after an agonizing pause, he heard a.
Kurt Austin.
Kane had been sitting with his head down and hunched over his knees. Raising his chin off his chest, he glanced toward Zavala with rheumy, unfocused eyes.
“Wha’sat?” he said, his words drunkenly slurred from the cold and lack of oxygen.
Zavala’s cracked lips widened in a ghost of a smile.
“The cavalry has arrived.”
AUSTIN CROUCHED ON TOP of the bathysphere like a spider, using his manipulator claw to tap out letters. A deepwater suit’s size and shape makes it susceptible to currents, and a bottom eddy threatened to push him off his perch. He hooked the cable to the top of the sphere, clamped a manipulator onto the cable to keep himself from floating off, and maneuvered the suit’s thrusters so that they were facing down into the mud surrounding the sphere.
He depressed a foot pedal and was immediately enveloped in a blinding cloud of stirred-up silt that settled after a moment. He turned the Hardsuit’s searchlights off. The faint glow coming through the B3’s previously buried windows indicated that systems were still operating. Austin blinked the suit’s lights on and off to get Zavala’s attention.
Zavala saw the flashing lights, and his mind lost some of its cold-induced sluggishness.
Kane had seen the lights as well.
“What should we do?” he asked.
Zavala hungered for the opportunity to do something, anything, to get out of this mess, but he knew they would have to be patient.
“We wait,” he said.
AUSTIN UNCLAMPED HIS MANIPULATOR from the cable and began to tap out a new message on the bathysphere’s skin. He got out only a few letters before the current suddenly caught his suit and pushed him several feet away from the sphere. Regaining control, he returned to tap out more letters.
The Hardsuit’s camera had been transmitting his struggles to the surface ship.
“What’s going on down there?” Gannon’s voice called. “Picture went dark, and now it’s back all jumbled.”
“Stand by,” Austin said, then finished tapping out his message.
“Standing by,” the captain replied.
Austin’s efforts had sapped his strength. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, and he was gulping for air like a beached flounder.
“Haul away!” he shouted breathlessly into the suit’s microphone.
ZAVALA HAD LISTENED CAREFULLY to the measured tapping coming through the skin of the B3. He’d caught the first few letters. After a pause, he’d caught the rest.
Float.
Hell, Kurt, if I could float, I would float.
The bathysphere still stuck in the mud, and Zavala vacillated between anger and despair. Maybe this was all a dream brought on by lack of oxygen. Maybe he was imagining all this, playing out a rescue that existed only in his mind.
A buzzer yanked him back to reality.
A red light blinked madly on the control panel. He realized that the light had been going on and off for some time, but his slow-moving mind had not realized it was warning that the air supply was about to end.
He reached out for the spare tank, barely got it off the wall, and turned on the valve.
Air hissed into the cabin and blew the fog from his brain. He flipped back the panel covering the manual switch for the flotation system and waited for something to happen.
AUSTIN HOVERED ABOVE the bottom of the ocean with the Hardsuit’s lights trained on the top of the B3. The cable went taut as, a half mile above his head, the winch began to turn, but the bathysphere didn’t budge. Dire scenarios marched through Austin’s head: the jury-rigged hook would break immediately and the sphere would remain trapped in the suction created by the mud; Zavala would forget to deploy the flotation system or the system wouldn’t work when he did; worse of all, both men were unconscious.
“Cable’s tight to the winch,” Gannon called down. “Anything happening at your end?”
Austin saw that the cable splice was unraveling.
“Just keep hauling,” he said.
He gritted his teeth as if he could lift the B3 through sheer willpower. The bathysphere remained where it was. The cable unraveled some more.
“Move, damnit!” he yelled.
Plumes of mud billowed around the bathysphere. Then the sphere pulled free, popping from the mud like a cork from a bottle, and righted itself. A thick cloud of silt hid the sphere for an instant before it rose into the glare of the Hardsuit’s searchlights.
Austin’s triumphant yell blasted through the ship’s public-address system.
The B3 was ten feet from the bottom, mud streaming off its sides, then twenty feet, and still there was no sign of air-bag deployment. What was Joe waiting for? Maybe the flotation doors were clogged with mud.
Austin kept pace, rising slowly with the bathysphere, his eyes glued to the hook and cable.
As the last strand of cable splice gave way, doors along the sides of the sphere suddenly blew open and six air bags blossomed and rapidly filled. The bathysphere rocked back and forth, stabilized, then began to ascend.
Austin watched the B3 until it was out of sight.
“They’re on their way,” he notified Gannon.
“You’re next,” the captain said. “How are you?”
“I’ll be a lot better topside.”
Austin steadied the thrusters so that he was in a more or less vertical position, and was ready when the Hardsuit jerked at the end of the cable. As the suit began its long trip, Austin turned off his lights and saw that he was not alone.
The blackness was speckled with dozens of constellations. He was surrounded by luminescent sea creatures that hung in place like stars. Occasionally, he saw something moving like the lights of an airplane across the night sky. Then his eye caught movemen
t off to the left. The constellation hanging there at the edge of his peripheral vision seemed to be growing larger. Turning his head, he saw what looked like a trio of glowing amber eyes moving closer.
An alarm went off in Austin’s brain. He’d been focusing on the rescue and forgotten about the sinister shadow loitering nearby when the cables were cut on the B3 and the ROV.
The Hardsuit’s searchlights reflected off the smooth, dark surface of something shaped like a flattened teardrop. It was a submersible of some kind, most likely an automated underwater vehicle, or AUV, because he couldn’t see a tether. The glowing eyes on the leading edge were apparently sensors, but Austin was more interested in the sharp-edged metal mandibles protruding from the front of the vehicle.
The vehicle moved fast, gliding at a depth where the mandibles would intersect the cable pulling him to the surface. Austin stomped on his vertical-thrust pedal. There was a second’s delay before the thrusters overcame the Hardsuit’s inertia, then he shot up several feet, his attacker passing below him, the mandibles snapping at empty water.
The vehicle made a wide banking turn, rose to keep pace, and circled back for another attack.
Gannon was watching the encounter on the ship’s monitor.
“What the hell was that?” the captain yelled.
“Something that wants me for dinner!” Austin yelled back. “Haul faster!”
The nimble AUV was quick to adjust its strategy and speed. Coming in for its second attack, it slowed to a walk, stalking its target with the wariness of a predator whose prey showed unexpected behavior.
Austin waited until the thing was just yards away and then tapped his foot pedal. The Hardsuit rose a few feet, but not fast enough to escape the attacker. He raised his arms defensively, holding them out straight and close together. He crashed into the AUV’s extended manipulators glancingly, but not before his claw stabbed the AUV in its middle eye.
Austin’s head slammed against the inside of the Plexiglas helmet. The impact knocked him sideways, and he swung at the end of his cable like soap on a rope. Pain shot up his left arm from the wrist.
The AUV went for another pass, but it was moving slowly, and it jerked erratically from side to side like a hound sniffing out prey. Rather than coming straight for Austin, it feinted a frontal attack, then angled upward toward the cable. Because Austin was still dazed from the last attack, he was slow to give the vertical thrusters juice. The AUV’s pincers caught his raised right arm at the elbow and closed around it.
With his left manipulator, he grabbed onto a thruster mandible and powered himself down, then up, operating like a yo-yo. The thrusters were designed for horizontal rather than vertical movement, and the weight of the vehicle worked against it, bending the mandible so that it was useless. Then the blade snapped at the base. The AUV thrashed wildly, peeled off, and disappeared into the darkness.
“Kurt, are you okay?” the captain’s voice rang in Austin’s earphones. “For God’s sake, answer me!”
“Finestkind, Cap,” Austin managed to croak. “Haul me up.”
“Hauling away,” the captain said with relief in his voice. “What kind of music do you want for the ride to the top?”
“I’ll leave that up to you,” Austin said. He was too tired to think.
A moment later, the strains of a Strauss waltz came through his earphones, and he began his long trip to the surface to “Tales from the Vienna Wood.”
As Austin was hauled toward the ship, he was vaguely aware that he still clutched the AUV’s blade in his metal claw as if it were a hunting trophy.
CHAPTER 11
THOUSANDS OF MILES FROM THE WILLIAM BEEBE, LOIS Mitchell was trying to quell a riot in the mess hall, where Gordon Phelps had herded the staff at gunpoint. Someone had noticed that Dr. Logan was missing, and when Lois said that the marine biologist had been shot dead the news had prompted a chorus of anger and fear.
Lois tried to shout down the cacophony. When that didn’t work, she lined up several mugs on the counter and filled them from a coffeepot. The simple ritual had a calming effect. After the uproar had quieted down and she could be heard, Lois flashed a sweet smile.
“Sorry this isn’t a Starbucks Grande, but it will have to do for now.”
Her attempt at humor triggered an outburst from a young female lab tech whose pale face and tearful eyes indicated that she was on the verge of hysteria. Lacing into Lois in a voice choked with sobs, the tech demanded: “How can you be so calm knowing Dr. Logan was murdered?”
Stubbornly refusing the urge to break into tears herself, Lois said, “Dr. Logan is lying in the passageway outside the control room with a bullet in his heart. He tried to fight back and was killed by the man who locked us in here. If you want to avoid the same fate, I suggest you take several deep breaths and calm down.”
With a trembling hand, Lois pushed a mug across the counter. The young lab tech hesitated, then reached out for it and took a noisy slurp. Lois then gathered everyone around a large table and described her encounter with Phelps and the murder of Logan. A biologist who had been Logan’s closest friend rose from his chair and picked up a kitchen knife from the counter. He summed up his rage in a single word.
“Bastard!”
Lois remained in her seat and regarded the biologist with a calm gaze.
“You’re absolutely correct,” Lois said. “In fact, the man who shot Dr. Logan is worse than a bastard, he’s a murderer, but his moral character is not at issue here. You might get him with that knife, although I doubt it, but what then? Phelps obviously is not the only one involved. We are dealing with ruthless people who have the resources to gain entry into a heavily guarded facility three hundred feet below the ocean’s surface. I don’t know how they learned about the Locker, who they are, or how many are involved, but we are completely at their mercy.”
The knife clattered on the counter, and the biologist sat down.
“You’re right, Lois,” he said in defeat. “I just wish I knew what they wanted.”
“I’m sure they’ll let us know,” she replied. “In the meantime, let’s have something to eat. It’s important we keep our strength up. MiGod!” she said with her rollicking laugh. “I sound like an actor in one of those disaster movies telling everyone to remain calm after the ocean liner turns upside down or the plane crashes in the jungle.”
The comment produced nervous smiles. A couple of people headed for the kitchen and, in short order, returned with a tray stacked with ham, turkey, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Fear must have sharpened the scientists’ hunger because they devoured the sandwiches like victims of a famine.
They were cleaning up when the mess hall reverberated with loud humming. Everyone stopped working and listened. After a few moments, the humming stopped, and the floor jolted as if jarred by an earthquake. There was a second jolt, and the room shuddered and swayed.
Those still standing fought to keep their balance, and there was an outcry of alarm, but the room went silent when the door burst open and two armed men stepped into the mess hall to clear the way for Phelps. The two strangers were wearing black diver’s suits still wet with seawater and carried short-barreled machine pistols.
Phelps grinned and said, “Looks like we arrived too late for lunch.”
“What’s happening to the lab?” Lois asked, holding on to the edge of a counter to keep from falling.
“Don’t you remember what I said about going for a little ride? The lab’s being moved to a new neighborhood.”
Lois thought she must be going mad. “That’s impossible.” “Not really, Dr. Mitchell. All we had to do was hitch the lab to a tow truck, so to speak.”
“What happened to our support ship?”
“It’s out of action,” Phelps said. He issued an order to the gunmen: “Take these folks to their quarters.”
The gunmen stepped aside to allow the scientists to pass.
“Thank you for allowing my staff to leave,” Lois said. She went to follo
w her colleagues through the door, but Phelps reached out and held her arm. He shut the door, pulled up a chair, and asked Lois to sit down. Then he sat in another chair and leaned on the backrest.
“I’ve been looking at your bio, Dr. Mitchell. Pretty impressive background. Bachelor’s degree in marine biology from the University of Florida, master’s from Virginia Institute of Marine Science, topped off with a Ph.D. in marine biotechnology and biomedicine from Scripps.”
“Is this a job interview?” Lois said in an icy voice.
“I guess you could call it that,” Phelps said. “You’ve been doing some work that my bosses are interested in.”
“Who are your bosses?”
“They’re kinda shy. Just think of them as the folks that sign my paycheck.”
“Did they pay you to kill Dr. Logan?”
He frowned. “That wasn’t in the plans, Dr. Mitchell. That was an accident, pure and simple.”
“An accident like hijacking the lab, I suppose.”
“Guess you could say that. Look, Dr. Mitchell, you may not like me, probably hate my guts, and I don’t blame you, but it’s best for you and your staff if we try to get along because we’re going to be working together.”
“What do you mean?”
“My bosses didn’t tell me exactly what you’re doing here in the lab, but I heard it’s got something to do with jellyfish.”
Lois saw no reason to hold back. “That’s right. We’re using a chemical found in a rare species of jellyfish to develop a vaccine for an influenza-type virus that has a lot of people worried.”
“My bosses said that you’re about ready to wrap things up here.”
So much for secrecy, Lois thought.
“That’s correct,” she said. “We’re within days of synthesizing the chemical used as the basis of the vaccine. You still haven’t answered my question about working together.”
Medusa nf-8 Page 10