Danger Below!

by John Blaine

  Dick Antell placed three more roller units on the lower rim of the deck, then the three continued into the deck where they had been swimming when Barby warned that sharks had come.

  The deck was a clutter of equipment, much of it thrown out of place by the violent pitching of the rig during the hurricane.

  “Watch it,” Antell warned. “Don’t get your lines caught in the junk.”

  To the submersible, Antell reported, “We’re on the lower deck, about to begin searching.”

  Charley Martin replied, “All readings normal. Proceed as planned.”

  Rick moved off to the left, while Scotty and Antell went to the right, following a search pattern that would bring the three together again on the opposite side of the rig. The control panel was on Rick’s side. Keeping his safety line clear, he began to hunt for it.

  He could see Scotty’s bright lights clearly, and he saw Dick Antell switch on the smaller light he carried in his kit. Even so, Rick suddenly felt terribly alone. The enormous pressure didn’t bother him at all; he couldn’t even feel it. But there was the knowledge that a quarter mile of water was over hishead, that he was by himself in a depth where sunlight had never penetrated. He shook off the feeling. He hadwork to do.

  His lights picked out a steel structure that looked something like a desk. He moved to it, taking it easy, as he had been instructed, in order to conserve his energy. It was the control console. He found the panel with its dials and lever handles, and a bewildering array of toggle switches.

  “I’m at the control console,” he reported. “I can’t make any sense out of it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dick Antell replied. “Well have experts study the pictures later. Get some good ones.”

  “Will do,” Rick responded. He backed off until the entire panel was framed in his viewfinder, a plastic sheet marked in rectangles. He set the distance control for six feet, glanced at the built-in illuminated light meter, and set the camera’s aperture, then steadied the case and took a shot. Then he moved in, reset aperture and distance, and took a series of close-ups of various sections of the panel, being sure they overlapped.

  The voices of his dive mates rang in his ears. Dick Antell asked, “What’d you find?”

  “A heavy machinist’s hammer,” Scotty replied. “It was caught under the edge of this rack.”

  “Odd that they’d leave a hammer adrift in a hurricane.Someone must have dropped it.”

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  “But what was he using it for?” Scotty asked.

  “Maybe tightening down something.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Who knows? Put it back where you found it, in the identical position, and take a picture of it. It could mean something or nothing.”

  Rick finished his photographs of the control panel, then inspected it closely. He could tell nothing from the inspection. He reached back and pulled on his safety line. It was clear. He continued on around the deck, moving inward to clear the top of one of the big buoyancy tanks. The tank had a high-pressure line attached. He followed it, and found the powerful compressor that had pumped air into it. Both the compressor and electric motor that ran it seemed to be in good condition. He went back to the tank and circled it completely, then retraced his steps to keep his line from fouling. The tank seemed undamaged.

  He had half-expected to find it ruptured in some way.

  Dick Antell’s voice sounded again. “Here’s the diesel generator.Looks normal. Scotty, take a picture.”

  An odd-looking fish swam through Rick’s light beams. It wasn’t anything he recognized. Then, as it passed into darkness, he saw a Line of fluorescent dots along its side.

  Rick waved a gloved hand at the fish and it spurted off behind another of the buoyancy tanks. He checked the tank carefully. There were no breaks in it. But if the rig had sunk, it had lost buoyancy. How could it have done that if the tanks were intact? He swam to the top of the tank. There were three air lines fitted to the top. Two ran down the tank to the deck. He traced them. One ran to the compressor, the other to the control console. That made sense. One was for air input, the other to give the rig operator a pressure reading. He would have to keep the tanks equalized to maintain the deck on a level plane.

  The third line ran upward along a girder and disappeared into a fitting in the deck above. That must be the exhaust line. “Just checked another buoyancy tank,” he reported.“Looks normal. No breaks anywhere.”

  “The ones we’ve inspected are normal, too,” Antell replied. “We’re approaching the corner tank.

  Where are you?”

  “Approaching the tank in my corner.”

  “Very well.Continue.”

  Rick did so. He reached the corner of the deck, checked the tank, then turned. There were buoyancy tanks at each corner and in the center of each side. He met Scotty and Antell at the tank in the middle of the side. They had now completed a circuit of the deck, with zero results.

  “Thirty minutes,” Charley Martin said.

  “Thirty minutes,” Antell repeated. “We’ve drawn a blank, Charley and Roger. Suggest we retrace and return to Sea Horse. If the tanks are damaged, it must be below the deck.”

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  “Very well.Divers return to Sea Horse.”

  To avoid tangling lines, it was necessary to retrace their paths around the rig deck. The spring reels took up the slack as they moved, and it was only necessary to follow the safety lines back.

  Rick worried as he went. He was certain the rig had been dumped deliberately, but how? It could only have been done by losing buoyancy. The big tanks looked normal, and he couldn’t imagine an accident that would have ruptured all of them at once. Had one or two been damaged, the rig would have turned over. But it hadn’t. That meant air had been lost uniformly.

  He met his mates at the tank in the center of the side through which they had entered the lower deck.

  “Something’s wrong,” he stated. “How did the tanks lose air?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Antell answered. “Did you notice that an exhaust line runs to the upper deck?”

  “Yes. I think we’d better check for a valve on top.”

  “So doI . Let’s go.”

  They moved out of the lower deck, stopping to collect the rollers over which their lines had run on the way, then rounded the upper edge and saw the Sea Horse, illuminated by its own floodlights.

  The three clustered around the upper deck directly over the buoyancy tank. Scotty called their attention to a hole in the deck’s edge. “Could this be the exhaust port?”

  “It could be,” Antell agreed. “But where’s the control valve?”

  Rick found it, under a hinged section of metal directly above the hole Scotty had noticed. Antell inserted his steel bar in a finger hole and pried the section up. The valve was inside, the bronze handle in the proper position. The valve was closed.

  “No air got out through this,” Scotty observed. “Shall we check the others?”

  “Not now. If one valve is closed, they’ll all be. The rig came down straight. It couldn’t have, if the tanks had been unequal.”

  Rick objected. “When we saw the rig, it was tilted to one side.”

  “Yes,” Antell agreed. “But not badly. Come on. Let’s get back inside.”

  Dick snapped off the roller gadgets and stowed them in his kit, then led the way back to the open hatch of the Sea Horse.

  “Stay buttoned up,” Antell ordered. “Well be going out again.” They climbed into the submersible.

  Dr. Hermann closed the hatch as the divers took their seats. He reported, “Divers’ compartment sealed.”

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  “Very well,” Charley responded. “We are lifting.”

  The submersible motors whined as the little ship lifted from the rig deck, then changed in tone as Charley backed the craft into open water. The next part of the plan was to put the Sea Horse on the bottom so that the divers could inspect the underside o
f the rig and the lower part of the buoyancy tanks.

  Dr. Hermann asked, “Anyone cold?”

  Rick suddenly realized that the chill had penetrated his suit. He hadn’t even noticed when they were out in the water. “I’m beginning to be,” he responded.

  “I wondered if you’d noticed,” the physician said. “All of you have lost about 10 degrees of skin temperature. You’ve regained a degree just by coming inside.Any loss of function?”

  Rick flexed his fingers. They were a little numb, and he could feel a chill in his feet. “Fingers a bit stiff,”

  he reported. Scotty and Antell echoed him.

  “All right.Hands out,” the physician ordered. As the divers extended hands, he unsnapped the O-rings that held their gloves over ridges on their suit wrists and pulled the gloves off. At his instructions, they dried the sleeves of their suits so water wouldn’t drip, then enfolded their chilled hands in an electric heating pad. It felt hot to Rick, and he said so.

  “That’s because your hands are colder than you thought,” the physician said. “The pad is merely warm.

  Keep your hands in it until it’s time to go out again.” He consulted his instruments. “You’re regaining heat rapidly.”

  Charley Martin spoke. “We’re down the rig.

  Muddy bottom.To keep from stirring it up, Roger is going to take a grip on a girder with the manipulator and hold us in position. How long before you can go out again?”

  “Give us five minutes,” Dr. Hermann requested.

  “Will do.”

  The five minutes were enough to bring their skin temperatures up 6 degrees and to warm their hands.

  The physician snapped their glove seals over the suit ridges again, then opened the hatch.

  “Divers departing,” he reported.

  “Very well.We are holding steady.”

  Rick looked up as he swam from under the submersible. A big steel arm terminating in a claw like a dinosaur’s jaws had a tight grip on a horizontal girder. It was holding the sub about ten feet above the ocean floor. As the divers got oriented, Rick saw that the big buoyancy tanks ended in feet like big plates. Bolted to the circular plates were big lead blocks.

  Below them, the floor of the sea sloped toward the deepest part of Tansey’s Trench. Rick wondered why the drill rig wasn’t at more of an angle. “The rig’s pretty even in spite of the slope,” he commented.

  “What’s keeping it level?”

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  “Let’s go see,” Antell replied. He angled downward, and Rick moved abreast of Dick and Scotty, shooting his bright beams ahead. On the sea floor was a starfish, easily two feet from arm tip to arm tip.

  It wasn’t the ordinary five-pointed variety, either. Rick counted a dozen arms. In the brilliant light the starfish gleamed like new copper.

  “Take a picture,” Antell said. “Okay.” Rick adjusted his camera. “One of youget down there, so we’ll have something to gauge its size.”

  Scotty did so, and Rick took a picture.

  “Turn 90 degrees,” Antell said. “We’ll examine the lowest legs of the rig.”

  The three swam abreast to where the lowest of the leg plates rested. There was a mound under it, one that rose about 20 feet above the sea floor. Antell swam to the mound and used his probe to scrape debris away. Under the accumulation of sea life was the red of rusted steel.

  “Well, I’ll be doggoned,” Antell muttered. “It landed on an old shipwreck.”

  Scotty let out a yell and pointed.

  Instantly Charley Martin spoke. “What is it?”

  Rick stared, unbelieving. Antell replied for all of them. “We disturbed a lobster under the old wreck the rig is on.”

  “What’s so exciting about a lobster?” Charley demanded.

  “The beast is at least four feet long, not counting forelegs and claws!”

  Charley whistled. “That’s a lot of lobster stew.”

  “Can we collect it?” Rick asked eagerly. “What a trophy!”

  “We have a job to do,” Antell replied sternly. “Let’s get at it.” Then he relented a little. “When we’ve finished with the rig we’ll see about the lobster.” Working together the three divers moved from tank to tank, checking each for its full length, which meant swimming upward nearly a hundred feet. The tanks were intact. There were dents and scratches, but no breaks that they could find.

  “Results negative,” Antell reported at last. “No sign of damage, and certainly none of sabotage.”

  “There has to be something,” Rick insisted. “The air got out of the tanks. We’ve missed something, somewhere.”

  Roger Pryor’s voice spoke. “He’s right. Divers return, and let’s go topside again. Have you examined every inch of the tanks?”

  “Yes. Results negative from top to bottom,” Antell stated flatly. “We are returning to Sea Horse.”

  They got back into the sub and Dr. Hermann closed the hatch. The claw released its grip and the motors whined as they moved upward to the top of the drill rig once more. Rick was grateful for the chance to get a little warmth into his cold body. He began to appreciate that cold, not pressure, is the working Page 74

  diver’s greatest enemy.

  The Sea Horse settled on the deck again, while the three consulted.

  “There has to be another valve somewhere,” Rick said. “I didn’t see one, but there’s just got to be.

  How else could the air get out?”

  “We didn’t see the valves on the upper deck until we looked for them,” Scotty pointed out.

  “How about an identical setup on the lower deck?”Rick asked.

  “That would mean the tanks weren’t emptied,” Antell said. “There’s about six feet of tank between the two decks, and opening valves at the lower-deck level would have left plenty of air in the upper section.”

  “It figures,” Rick said quickly. “With a little air left, the rig would ride fairly level, but would still tilt under the drive of the hurricane wind. I’ll bet that’s it!”

  The three exited quickly and swam to where they had found the valve chamber on the upper deck Antell took a tool from his kit, fitted it over the valve handle, and turned. Air poured out in great bubbles from the port on the deck’s side. He shut the valve off again.

  “That’s it,” he said triumphantly. “Come on. Lines in the blocks and we’ll go down.” He fitted the rollers in place again and they went over the side to the deck below.

  On the outboard side of the buoyancy tank, set into the lower deck, they found another hinged plate.

  Antell pried it open, and for a long moment they all stared.

  The valve handle was aligned with the tube leading out to the hole in the deck’s edge. The valve was open.

  Rick photographed it, then they moved around the deck, checking each of the tanks. All had open valves. All valves were manually operated. All had been opened by hand. This was positive, undeniable proof of sabotage.

  To show beyond doubt that the photographs were notall of the same valve, because they were identical, Antell used a pointed tool to scratch numbers in the deck next to the valve chambers. Rick shot each one, and Scotty took cover shots, just in case those taken by Rick did not turn out.

  “It’s in the bag,” Antell reported.“Or, in the cameras, to be precise.Divers returning to Sea Horse.”

  Once inside the divers’ compartment, Dr. Hermann started to unzip Antell’s hood. The big pilot stopped him. “Just a minute, Doc. Hey, Charley, do you really like lobster stew?”

  “Love it,” Charley replied promptly.“How about you, Rog ?”

  “I’ve been known to eat it,” the Project Director admitted. “In fact, I usuallyovereat it. Go on, Charley.

  Let’s collect that oversize appetizer. Can you do it without getting chewed up, Dick? He must have claws like bear traps.”

  “We’ll work it out,” Antell replied. “Take us down, Charley. Only this time, you’d better bottom about 15 feet out. We can’t bring the beast i
nto the compartment. He’ll have to ride up in the claw.”

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  Antell rummaged in a box of equipment and brought out two stainless-steel cables, formed into loops about ten inches in diameter. One end of the cable went into a toothed bar called a rack. The other terminated in a screw gear called a pinion. The gear was operated by a lever.

  “We get these over each claw,” Antell told the boys, “then tighten them with the levers. But don’t tighten too much or you’ll break the claws.”

  “I can imagine the beast holding out his claws just to be helpful,” Scotty commented.

  “No doubt,” Antell replied. “But we won’t risk it.just in case he’s uncooperative.” He brought small billets of wood from the equipment box. They were two inches square in cross section, and about ten inches long. “We use these when there’s something to be picked up by the arm which needs protection from the steel. They’re balsa. We’ll give the lobster one in each claw to chew on.”

  Quickly he outlined the plan of operation, then grinned at them.“Loads of luck, chums.”

  The lobster was backed into the hole he had made under the old wreck. Rick studied the claws. They looked like toothed catcher’s mitts. A mistake could mean a broken hand, or worse.

  “I’ve heard that the larger the lobster, the tougher the meat,” he commented.

  Scotty chuckled. “If that were true, cattlemen would raise only calves for veal, not the biggest steers.”

  Antell had brought a tool for his own use. It was two steel pipes fitted together, one inside the other, so that the length could be adjusted. A heavy screw with a lever handle would lock the two pipes at the proper length. At the outer end of each pipe a bar had been welded to form a T. The device was used as a brace in salvage work, and Antell intended to use it as a brace now.

  Rick moved left, and Scotty moved right. Antell stayed in the middle, practically nose to nose with the lobster, his brace ready. When the boys were in position, Antell asked, “Ready?”

  “Ready,” Rick returned.

  “Same here,” Scotty agreed.

  “Okay. Set. Go.”

  Rick and Scotty simultaneously held out their billets of balsa. The lobster spread his claws to defend himself against both menaces at once. The boys fitted the balsa between the wide-open claws, which instantly clamped down.