"We were that close to proving a submersible drilling platform could work. I can't believe you let them grab my rig!"
"Your rig?"
"My rig. I designed the damn thing."
"Yeah, and Benthic Petroleum paid for it. So as long as they're holding the pink slip, I go where they tell me." But the pink slip didn't rule him, and she knew it. She was maybe a little bit right to blame him. He could have stopped the whole thing. Why didn't he? It wasn't the triple pay. It was - duty, maybe. There was a sub down. What was he supposed to do, ignore it? Forget he was a citizen? Forget he grew up in a Marine family?
He couldn't explain that, not to Lindsey. Couldn't explain that sometimes you just don't have a choice.
"I had a lot riding on this. They bought you. More like rented you cheap."
Hippy came back into the control room. Bud had no intention of letting Lindsey rake him over the coals in front of an audience. Not this time. "I'm turning you off now," he said cheerfully.
She still managed to get in a lick before he could reach the switch. "Oh, Virgil, you're such a wiener! You never - "
"Bye bye," said Bud. Still trying to sound cheerful, so Hippy wouldn't see how it bothered him.
But Hippy was off on a brand new discovery. "Virgil?"
So the kid hadn't known Bud's real name. So what? So that was one more way Lindsey had found to undercut him with his crew. "God, I hate that bitch," he muttered. Trying to make it sound like a joke.
Hippy took it at face value. "You probably never should have married her, then."
You think I never thought of that, Hippy? You think it never crossed my mind?
Hippy must've read something in Bud's expression. He turned to the monitors and got back to work.
Talking to Bud had been as useless as ever. He didn't even seem to mind when she called him names. She was so angry and all he did was smile, never losing his cool, always with that damned smile.
And the worst thing was there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it up here on the Explorer. Nothing to do but watch Kirkhill strutting around acting important while the Navy cut his balls off and fed them to him with a spoon - didn't the idiot even know when he was being bullied? Nothing to do but sweat it out till they got Deepcore into place. And then the Explorer would have to cut loose and sail away for a couple of days or else get bounced around like a beanbag in the middle of the hurricane. She wouldn't even know what was going on, she'd just have to sit out in the Caribbean somewhere with nothing to do but wait while Coffey's goons went down to Deepcore and took it to the edge of the Cayman Trench, of all places, where the mission would either succeed, in which case the Navy would probably keep Deepcore and classify all her designs so she could never build another, or else the mission would fail, no doubt getting Deepcore banged up, not to say wrecked, in which case the Navy would throw Deepcore away like a used tissue. Benthic would never pay to repair it. The project's enemies - and with Lindsey as designer, they were legion - would say that Deepcore obviously wasn't tough enough to make it. Nobody else would take it on if Benthic abandoned it as a failure. The project would die, just like that.
The more she thought of that smartass Coffey going down into her rig while she was trapped up here, the angrier she got.
Then she remembered how they were going to get there. One of the Cabs, of course. Only no way would the SEALS be piloting it themselves. She knew how to drive them. Why shouldn't she be the one to take them down? They wanted the project engineer on hand to take care of problems, didn't they? Well, she'd be even more on hand if she was downstairs in Deepcore.
She was lucky. Lots of service crewmen were standing around. Cab Three was the submersible they'd have to use to transfer anything or anyone down to Deepcore. It must already be prepped or they'd be busy. So - what were they waiting for?
A driver. The driver wasn't down there. Good. She wouldn't have to argue with anybody. Yet.
The SEALs were ready to go - Coffey and Schoenick were outside Cab Three, handing the last of the gear bags in to Wilhite and Monk. The submersible slammed violently each time the Explorer rolled in the heavy seas, but that didn't seem to slow down the SEALs. Cab Three was completely prepped; it was only in its steel cradle for loading, and the lifting cable was already attached.
Lindsey walked straight to the SEALS, determined to take charge and bluff it out. "Let's go, gentlemen! We either launch now or we don't launch."
Coffey looked at her in surprise, but she didn't wait around for his questions. She climbed up the side of Cab Three, grabbed the lifting shackle, and circled her raised hand to signal the crane man. "Take her up, Byron!"
Byron was quick. Byron was a good man. Coffey and Schoenick only had time to slide in the last of their heavy equipment cases before the cable tautened and Cab Three rose into the air. A minute later it was swinging directly over the launch well as Lindsey clambered over and dropped down into the upper hatch. She closed it over her head with one hand while she picked up the headset with the other. "This is Cab Three. Clear me for launch, McBride."
"Roger, Cab Three, you're clear to launch."
She could hear somebody - Kirkhill - in the background. "What do you mean, cleared for launch? Who's taking her down?"
And Bendix's voice. "Bates, isn't it?"
"Bates is right here!"
"Then who's in Cab Three?"
Me, thought Lindsey. The only person who has a right to be heading down to Deepcore. Plus four rambos in the back. She glanced back over her shoulder to see that all four of them were in place on the cramped little benches in back, with the top hatch sealed and the rear lockout hatch secure. They were ready for Byron to lower them down into the water.
Instead, Byron held them swinging fifteen feet above the pool. Each roll and pitch of the ship took them too far to one side or the other, and in the ship's chaotic movement pattern, Byron no doubt felt it was impossible to lower them without grave risk of smashing Cab Three into the edge of the pool. Still, it had to be done. What did he think, that if he waited long enough the seas would kindly hold still and allow them to make a textbook descent? Besides, the longer they hung over the pool, the better the chance that Kirkhill or somebody would try to stop them, would give orders to swing them back into the launch bay and get that goddamn woman out of there.
Every spider knew that there was a time to gently descend holding onto a thread, and a time to cut loose and drop. What Byron couldn't do by lowering Cab Three on the end of a string, Lindsey could do by pulling the red shackle-release lever. She reached out and took hold of it, watching out the window for a moment when it looked like Cab Three was directly over the pool.
"Hang on, gentlemen," she said. Act confident and Coffey won't think something's wrong and decide to interfere. But then it wasn't acting- she was confident. She knew how to do this job better than anybody else. Bates? What would Bates have been good for down here? He'd have waited until Byron was sure. He'd have waited until it was perfectly safe. He'd have waited until hell froze over.
She pulled the lever. Cab Three fell fifteen feet into the water. The falling wasn't bad. But the landing rattled them from ass to elbow, giving a good solid toss to the boys in back and all their gear.
"Touchdown," Lindsey said. "The crowd goes wild." She had missed the edge of the pool by about two feet. Very complicated geometry, making a straight drop inside a randomly moving ship. "How're you boys doing back there?"
They were pissed off at the rough landing, but they didn't say anything. Just glared at her. Glare all day, Coffey. We didn't hit the edge, we aren't still hanging on a cable, and I've got my ride down to Deepcore.
Lindsey flooded the trim tanks and Cab Three sank quickly under the water, down between the twin hulls of the Benthic Explorer. "Explorer, this is Cab Three," she said. "We are styling."
"Roger, Cab Three," said McBride.
Bless the man, he wasn't doing a thing to stop her.
Then Kirkhill came on the wire. Gone was the
mild-mannered executive, the make - no - waves can't - we - all -handle - this - in - a - reasonable - manner bullshit. "Lindsey, what the hell are you doing?"
This wasn't a conversation she wanted to have. Nor did it matter anymore. As usual, Kirkhill had got here a day late and a dollar short. She flipped the switch and turned off his voice. Then she turned on her floodlights and maneuvered Cab Three until she could see the umbilical cable a few feet ahead of her front port. That's all she needed - she could follow it down and it would lead her right to Deepcore.
One Night was staying alert in Flatbed by singing at the top of her voice. The song was "Willing," a great old truck-driving song.
"I've been rocked by the rain," she sang, "driven by the snow. I'm drunk and dirty, don't you know. I'm still willin', Out on the road late last night, I've seen my pretty Alice in every headlight. Alice. Dallas Alice."
Bud and Hippy were in the control room, hearing the song on their headsets. Hippy couldn't help himself. He joined in singing, and so did Bud. It was a lonely song, but there was nothing lonely about singing it together.
"And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah, driven every kind of rig that's ever been made."
Yeah, that was their theme song now, wasn't it? This was sure no rig you'd ever see going down 1-40 through Oklahoma. "Driven the back road so I wouldn't get weighed. And if you give me weed, whites and wine, and you show me a sign, I'll be willin' to be movin'."
One Night was feeling so good - and so tired - she couldn't keep from laughing, and Bud was smiling too. This was the good life. Bud and his people, doing their jobs, the rest of the world cut off by an ocean and a hurricane. Drifting over the ocean bottom like a lazy manta ray.
"I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet, I've had my head stove in but I'm still on my feet, and I'm still - "
A voice cut in on the headset. "Deepcore, Deepcore. This is Cab Three on final approach."
"Yeah, roger, Cab Three," said Hippy. How many times had they heard that voice during training? "That you, Lins?"
"None other," she said.
"Oh no," said Bud. "No, you gotta be kidding me."
Hippy was grinning his face off. Didn't the kid have any compassion? It was all right for him to think the fireworks would be fun. But it wouldn't be fun for Bud. He was supposed to keep things running smoothly and safely down here, while a bunch of SEALS carried out a mission that Deepcore wasn't designed for. Now they were sending Lindsey down, Lindsey who'd try to take charge of things, Lindsey who wouldn't have anything but criticism and second-guessing for every decision Bud made. So much for feeling good.
Lindsey handled Cab Three perfectly, following the umbilical down, yet never getting close enough to risk contact with it. Near the surface, the umbilical had flexed with the movements of the Explorer as it rolled and pitched in the heavy seas. Farther down, the movements traveled down the umbilical in languid waves. The surface of the ocean sends few messages into the deep.
As they neared Deepcore, Lindsey couldn't resist passing through the A-frame that supported the umbilical and making a sweep around the rig. She told herself that she had to inspect it for damage - but of course there was no damage. Why should there be? It was as beautiful as ever, a structure graceful in its raw utility, no wasted space, no line or beam or tube or tank that did not have a function vital to Deepcore's work. This rig was born in her mind, and now it was real at the bottom of the sea. She never wearied of seeing it; she wanted, without knowing it, to make sure Coffey and the other SEALS saw it, too. She never quite let this idea rise into consciousness, but whenever she looked at Deepcore she saw the shadow of her father's model bridge on it. Look at this, Father not just a model in the attic, to gaze at and wish for what might have been. This is real. I made this. This is mine.
Yet, because she was Lindsey, that single pass around the rig was all the self-admiration she indulged in; immediately she brought Cab Three into place to couple with the compression chamber. She heard the clunk as the flange of Cab Three's lockout hatch settled over the pressure collar on the back of Deepcore. When the instruments confirmed that the mating was set, she went back and opened the hatch.
None of the SEALS made a move to help her. Lindsey was used to men thinking that because she looked so frail, she needed their strong arms all the time. Maybe these SEALS had a keener eye for what a woman was made of. Or maybe Coffey guessed that she had just hijacked the cab, and he was hoping to make her pay for it in sweat. Didn't matter. Love me or hate me, I'm here and that's all I care about.
She dropped through the hatch into the compression chamber. The SEALS came down after her, handing down equipment. They weren't particularly quiet, but they weren't particularly noisy, either. Just as much noise as went along with doing the most efficient job possible.
The compression chamber was a cylindrical room, designed to be as boring and uncomfortable as possible - steel benches, a folding card table, breathing masks, medical supplies. A tiny fish-eye porthole at one end, so they could catch a glimpse of what was going on in Deepcore itself. Or rather, so that the Deepcore crew could keep an eye on them.
She recognized Catfish peering in at them. "Howdy, boys," he said. Then he realized she was there. "Hey, Lindsey! I'll be damned! You shouldn't be down here, sweet thing, y'all might run your stockings."
Lindsey genuinely liked Catfish, and she was willing to believe he was glad to see her. "Couldn't stay away, Cat. You running mixture for us?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Couldn't get any better." The breathing mix had to be adjusted constantly throughout pressurization. Less and less nitrogen, since it stopped being an inert gas and turned into a poison under pressure. In shallow dives people still used trimix, in which the nitrogen was replaced by helium, so that everybody talked like a duck the whole time underwater. You got used to it after a while, or at least you stopped laughing at each other, but it was still disturbing to forget what your own voice sounded like. It was better now with tetramix, which used argon to replace most of the helium. As for oxygen, it was down to two percent of the mixture. At that depth, the topside norm of twenty-one percent oxygen would be fatal. You'd die of convulsions.
At this depth it was going to take eight hours to get pressurized, all the time getting used to a new breathing mix. It used to take twenty-four hours before they started using argon. Even so, eight hours was a hell of a long time to sit and do nothing. But it was a lot faster than decompression, because once your body's completely saturated, it takes a long time for the gases to seep back out of your cells, into your blood, and then out through your lungs and your kidneys and your sweat. Lindsey heard a story once about a couple of guys cooped up together for three days of decompression. One of them went plain crazy - or the other guy drove him nuts. Anyway, the one guy killed the other. And the support crew had to stand outside the chamber and watch and there wasn't a damn thing they could do, because if they opened the chamber too soon then both guys would die. She'd been through decompression often enough to believe it.
The SEALS had settled themselves on their benches. Benches that existed because Lindsey had drawn them in on her original plans. She felt like the host, welcoming guests into her new house. "OK, fellows, make yourselves comfortable. The bad news is we got eight hours in this can, blowing down. The worse news is it's going to take us three weeks to decompress later." It didn't occur to her that she might sound patronizing.
Coffey looked at her coldly. "We've all been fully briefed, Mrs. Brigman."
So much for being friendly. "Just don't call me that, OK? I hate that."
Usually people backed off when she used that tone of voice. Coffey just stared back at her and said, "OK, what would you like us to call you? 'Sir'?"
One of the SEALS laughed under his breath. It was Coffey's way of letting his men know exactly how seriously to take her. Which is to say, not seriously at all. In Coffey's eyes, she was exactly as important to their mission as, say, Kirkhill, and t
wice as likely to try to interfere. Coffey was right. Her whole purpose in coming down was to interfere with the mission - to try to protect Deepcore by resisting anything the SEALS proposed that she thought might be too risky. It wouldn't do to let her think, even for an instant, that the SEALS were willing to concede her any authority. Not even the authority of a genial host. Deepcore might be "her" rig, but as long as the SEALs were using it to accomplish their assignment with the Montana, they intended to regard it as their rig, and the people on it as either tools or problems. Tools they could use. Problems they would solve.
Catfish finished setting the mixture and adjusting the pressure. Their stay in the pressure chamber would be the equivalent of a slow, eight-hour descent, steadily building up pressure as their bodies adjusted. The pressure chamber allowed them to come directly down, skipping the eight hours of traveling time; but nothing could speed up the actual process of pressurization. When Catfish's voice cut in over the loudspeaker, it shut down the awkward conversation. "There we go! Y'all start equalizing - now. "
They heard the hiss of inrushing gas, and immediately they all held their noses and started yawning, making faces, moaning, opening their ears so they didn't get a relative vacuum inside and burst their eardrums.
Whatever message Coffey intended to send, Lindsey didn't get it. She still felt responsible for anybody coming onto Deepcore, even if she didn't particularly like them. "Let's watch each other closely for signs of HPNS - high pressure - "
"High-pressure nervous syndrome," said Monk, reciting verbatim from the passages they had all memorized in training with the Submarine Development Group years before. Coffey had already made them recite the relevant passages several times before Lindsey joined them. SEALS didn't wait for civilians to teach them things at the last minute. "Muscle tremors," Monk continued. "Usually in the hands first. Nausea, increased excitability . . ."
The other SEALS joined in. "Disorientation, delusions."
And Coffey finished it up by singing, "And a partridge in a pear tree." We know this stuff, lady. Don't imagine for a moment that you can teach us anything.
The Abyss Page 10