Lindsey joined him in the control room. Together they looked out the front viewport. Deepcore wasn't bumping into the seafloor now, because the bottom was sloping lower. And lower. They both saw it; Lindsey said it. "We're heading right for the drop-off."
McBride tried to give Bud what he was asking for. He ran to the window and looked down at the crane shack, where Byron was squinting up through the cab window, trying to see what was going on through the driving rain. "Byron, down on number one winch! Down on one! Pay out some umbilical. Now! Now!"
Byron tapped on his headset to signal McBride that he couldn't hear. It wouldn't have mattered if he had. It was already too late.
At that moment, down on the bottom, Deepcore was dragged into a collision with an outcropping of rock. For an instant Deepcore stopped moving and the Explorer didn't. It was more strain than the connection could bear something had to go. It wasn't the umbilical. It wasn't the connection with Deepcore. Lindsey had designed them to be too strong. It was the crane supporting the umbilical that gave way. The heave compensator bottomed out, its stabilizing cables snapping like guitar strings.
Byron saw the broken end of a cable coming at him, just in time to duck as it smashed the window of the cab. Crumbs of safety glass showered over him. He could feel the cab, the whole crane assembly tipping. He clawed for the door, but there was no time to get out.
McBride watched in horror from the bridge as the next heave from the waves tore at the crane. It tilted, bent, twisted, as all forty tons of it toppled into the launch well with a roar of tortured steel that was louder than the storm. Water exploded upward as the crane fell in. It broke away clean - no part of it was still attached, dangling from the ship. Byron had been carried down in the cab; he was on his way to the bottom, beyond all hope of rescue. The pressure would probably kill him before he had time to drown.
How long would it take for the crane to strike bottom? It would get there far too soon for Deepcore to get out of the way. But at least with warning they might be able to prepare for the crash. McBride could warn them on his headset - with the umbilical severed, the direct line was gone. He turned away from the window. "Get them on the UQC!" he ordered. He held the underwater telephone to his ear. "Bud! We've lost the crane!"
Down below, Bud wasn't getting it. "What? Say again."
McBride struggled to make himself heard over the backup system. "The crane! We've lost the crane! It's on its way down to you!"
And that was it. There was nothing more the Explorer could do. Either the crane would hit Deepcore, completely destroying it and killing everybody aboard, or it wouldn't. And if it didn't, there was still nothing the Explorer could do until the storm cleared out. They were on their own down there.
Even though there was no more umbilical, McBride gave orders to stay in place over Deepcore, as far as that was possible. If they strayed too much, the UQC would go out of range, and they wouldn't know what happened. But with one set of thrusters out, the heavy seas were too much. The Explorer was drifting away from the site. The Explorer tried to reestablish UQC contact with Deepcore, but there was no answer from below. Again and again, answered only by silence, until it became obvious that either they were out of range or there was no one down there to answer them.
McBride stopped trying to make contact, then waited a few moments for the truth to dawn on everyone else. In his helplessness he had to lash out, had to do something. And for once the person who was actually responsible for all of this was standing right there. DeMarco. The on-site commander. The military expert. McBride could actually vent his rage on the man who deserved it. And everybody else was right there to hear it, so it would be a public satisfaction.
"We missed our chance to do this safely," McBride said. "Byron's already dead. God knows how many died down there when the crane hit. All because your boys took a ride on Flatbed without checking with the people who actually knew what the hell they were doing."
DeMarco looked at him wordlessly, but McBride saw the look in his eyes. No longer so sure of himself. No longer so maddeningly in command.
McBride had no pity. "You better hope your team completed their assignment, because they sure as hell aren't going to do it now. You fucked up, DeMarco, you failed. And you did it, nobody else, you did it!"
Still DeMarco said nothing.
Probably he thinks he can talk his way out of it, thought McBride. Tell his higher-ups about civilian non-cooperation. Equipment failure. Well, that will not happen. I will make my own report, and it will be read. "I swear to God I'll have your balls in a jar."
DeMarco stood there. Taking it. It felt to McBride like a confession of guilt. It was enough for now.
McBride turned to his own crew. "We'll come back and try to find them when the storm blows out. Right now let's get out of the rain."
Chapter 10
Cut Off
Deepcore had already bumped - hard - into a sea-bottom crag. The miracle was that there seemed to be no serious damage - nothing that showed up on the instruments, anyway. Now, though, something much worse was on its way.
"All right, everybody! Everybody rig for impact!" Bud shouted into the P.A. "Close all the exterior hatches!" He slammed his hand into the alarm button. Everybody knew the drill. They'd done it a hundred times in training.
The worst thing Bud had feared till now was that the Explorer would drag Deepcore out into the Cayman Trench. He'd been hoping the umbilical might rupture - he figured they could live through having the heavy cable impact with Deepcore. It had never occurred to him that the umbilical might have been stronger than the crane's mooring to the deck of the Explorer. Now he had forty tons of steel headed straight down. Deepcore wasn't designed to withstand impact from above. If the crane hit them it would crumple the rig like an aluminum can.
"Let's move it!" he barked. "Let's go go go go go!"
Lindsey was already in the sonar shack. She put the signals over the speakers so everybody could hear them. Ping, ping, ping. Like in a World War II submarine movie. Listening for the enemy. It was like a counterpoint to the alarm siren. Whoop whoop. Ping ping ping. The music of fear.
Coffey knew immediately that this was his fault. But he had to take Flatbed, didn't he? Had to get the warhead. He had orders Phase Two.
But taking Flatbed had delayed the disconnection from the Explorer, and now the result of that was the possible destruction of Deepcore. Very smart, Lieutenant. Got the warhead, lost the rig, the mission's over, you're dead, you failed. Should have realized the priorities here. Should have realized it was more important to secure Deepcore and then go after the warhead. Why didn't I realize that? I always take the safety of my men into account first. I always make sure I don't jeopardize success by being in too much of a hurry.
Worst of all is that here I am wasting time thinking about what a bad job I did when there are things to do right now. Assess the situation, do what is necessary now.
Where is my team best utilized? I can make that decision. Fast, no time wasted. He spoke to Monk and Wilhite. "You two help secure the rig." And then to Schoenick. "Let's go."
They moved. Monk and Wilhite toward the control room, securing hatches behind them. Coffey and Schoenick toward the warhead. Had to be there with the warhead. If the warhead made it through a collision, it still wouldn't do any good if Coffey wasn't with it.
Bud knew what was happening all over Deepcore. All the hatches getting sealed, separating all compartments from each other. His crew dispersed. If the crane hit them, some would certainly die. A few might live, if one of the trimodules wasn't hit, if some of the tanks survived. Even if they had enough submersibles to get everybody out, there wasn't time.
Then he remembered Flatbed, which was out. He grabbed his headset, yelled into it. "One Night, One Night, can you hear me? Get the hell out of there! The crane's coming down!" He tried to see out the window, cursed himself for delaying, even for an instant.
Outside, One Night struggled for control, writhed and twisted Flat
bed, struggling to find a course through the erratically falling umbilical. It had already struck a glancing blow against Flatbed's port pontoon, which bounced her brutally inside the cabin; if some of the umbilical hung up on Flatbed, it would smash her right down to the bottom, and there'd be no escape for her then.
Catfish came into the control room, slammed the hatch shut, sealed it. He'd been passing people in the corridors, none of them sure what was happening, all of them scared shitless. Finler had asked him what the hell was going on. Catfish hadn't known, not then. But now he could see the whole story. The umbilical coming down fast. That was bad enough but Bud looking so flat-out scared and the siren whooping away told him that there must be something big and ugly attached to the other end of it.
Bud was barely aware of Catfish. He just kept checking the video monitors, gauges. Still no bad damage. The rig rang and shuddered as loops of umbilical struck it, but he could see some of the umbilical cable now when he looked out the viewport. Part of it, at least, wasn't banging onto the roof of Deepcore anymore; it was coiling and curling over itself, forming a pile on the seafloor a few yards away from the viewport. Like a heap of pasta on a plate. Was that a good sign, that so much of the umbilical was coming down beside Deepcore instead of on top? After all, before the crane broke away, the Explorer had been off at an angle, stretching the umbilical, dragging them along. So the crane might be coming down just a little off center. A little. Enough?
"I've got it!" said Lindsey. "I've got it, it's heading straight for us!"
You don't know that, Lindsey. Maybe it's off. Just a little bit. Please, God. Just a few meters.
A stretch of the umbilical hit Deepcore again. It rang like the inside of a bell. So maybe Deepcore was ground zero after all.
Lindsey came over to join Bud in looking out the view-port. Catfish just stood there, holding onto the steel bracing. Hippy grabbed a plastic bag, stuffed Beany into it, and zipped it shut.
And they stood there, waiting, watching. Bud leaned into the viewport, so he could look up, see it coming. Fat lot of good it's going to do me, knowing three-tenths of a second before it hits that it's going to hit. But I've got to know.
So did Lindsey. She left the sonar, leaned into the viewport beside him. Both of them looking up. Say a little prayer, Lins, that's what I'm doing.
And if we die, we die together, and you're still my wife on this day at this hour, so I guess I win. It's about the only way I could.
The pinging of the sonar got faster and faster and -
The jumbled, broken crane landed not twenty yards off, with a crunching noise so loud they could hear it easily inside the control room. Mud roiled up from the seafloor in a sluggish cloud. They were alive.
They laughed. Lindsey's laugh was a little bit hysterical. Bud's was more like a gasp than a laugh. It occurred to him that he'd never been gladder to see anything than to see the crane land outside the viewport window.
The crane was poised right at the brink of the chasm. Part of it had landed vertically, and some of the rock underneath it, right at the cliff edge, was too weak for the strain. It crumbled. The vertical hunk of steel began to tilt. It groaned under the strain as it tipped slowly, gracefully over the edge.
It slid down, down, the slope ever steeper, nothing there to stop its fall. Behind it, the umbilical began to uncoil and follow it down into the chasm like a snake slithering away from Deepcore.
Then Lindsey remembered that this particular snake could never get away from Deepcore, because it was attached, first at the A-frame, and then at every point where the falling umbilical had tangled in the structure of the rig. "Oh shit," she said.
The crane was over the edge now, tumbling down the slope, tangled together like puppies playing. It reached a ridge and hung for a moment, but the forward momentum rolled it over, carried it over the lip to an even steeper slope. There was no stopping it now.
From the viewport Bud could see the umbilical unwinding itself, racing ever faster over the edge. Forty tons of steel, falling fast, and all of it attached by an unbreakable line to the top of Deepcore. There was no anchor, no mooring. Deepcore was already on a gentle slope, resting on skids up against an outcropping of rock. If the rock held the skids, then the A-frame might break - that was the best hope. What Bud feared was that Deepcore would roll or slide, get dragged to the edge, and then get sucked down into the canyon. Once they got down there, they'd never live to get back out. No one would ever find them. Like his brother, Junior. Lost forever. "Oh no no no no no no no no no," he said.
"Oh my God," said Lindsey. "Bud?"
As if she expected him to do something. Like what? For once Lindsey actually looks to me to do something, actually treats me like there's something she needs me for, and there's not one thing I can do.
The umbilical snapped taut as a sail in the wind. Deepcore lurched, twisted as the umbilical tugged at it. Alarms went off all over the rig. But Deepcore didn't roll or break. The structure was too sturdy for that, too low-centered. Instead it began to slide. Right toward the edge.
When the Explorer had dragged them, it hadn't been so bad - the umbilical was actually lifting them slightly then. Now, though, the umbilical was pulling them downward, so that they felt every irregularity of the seafloor. But what did they care about getting jolted and bounced? They were at the edge of the downward slope. And then they were over.
Sliding down the slope, following a path already cleared of obstacles by the crane. Deepcore was meant to stand level on the ocean bottom; it wasn't meant to flex over the edge of a cliff. That was a strain that Lindsey couldn't have planned for, not if she meant to make it affordable to build. She could hear, could feel things giving way, seams splitting, joints torquing out of alignment; it was as if she had nerves running from every part of Deepcore, straight to her brain, so she felt it like the agony of her own body being torn apart.
Light flashed, seared; there were shorts in the wiring, a fire in the control room. "Battery room exploding!" Bud shouted - at least some of the gauges were still reporting.
Lindsey followed Bud out of the control room. On the way, she pointed Catfish toward the fire. "Take care of that!" She could feel Hippy's hand on her back, following her as she ducked through the hatch. Catfish had the fire extinguisher hissing away before she was out of earshot.
They raced out into the corridor. Finler was coming up from the drill room. "Bud!" A cry like a little boy, calling for help.
Bud stopped, looked down where Finler was standing. "Yeah!" he shouted.
"Bud, the drill room's flooding!"
Then what the hell are you doing here talking to me? "Get back down there!" Bud shouted. "I'll be right with you! Move it!"
Finler was gone. Another jolt from the skids hitting some obstacle, bouncing. Lindsey wasn't holding on at the moment - she got slammed against a wall. She immediately turned around, back to the wall, out of breath for a moment.
Bud saw Hippy was there. Another tag-along. "Hippy, get to the sub bay. Lock it up!"
There was no reason for Lindsey to stay with Bud - they both knew what to do, they could accomplish twice as much if they split up. So why was she sticking so close to him? Why didn't she want to let him out of her sight? Did she think she could save him if something went wrong? Or did she expect him to save her? Bullshit. "I'll deal with this!" she shouted. Bud heard her, and agreed by not arguing. He ducked into a doorway. Lindsey turned away, raced on down the corridor, heading for the ladder to the machine rooms.
In the compressor room, Monk was working in a spray of seawater, turning valves to stop the flow from ruptured pipes. Then a sheet of sparks licked out of the battery room. Seawater had hit the batteries; they were arcing violently. He knew what would happen - the sheets of electricity would ignite the hydrogen from the batteries. But there was no time to react, to get away. The battery room exploded, blowing the hatch off its hinges. The slab of metal rocketed straight for Monk, hit him, knocked him down, pinned him on the deck.
In the ladderway down to the machine room, Lindsey caught the edge of the same explosion - searing light, then fire. The heat was immediate and intense, but it was breathing that worried her. Fire used up oxygen so fast and put so much smoke into the air that she was already coughing as she grabbed a Drager pack hanging on the wall. She got the mask on first, so she could stay alive long enough to swing the whole pack onto her shoulders. Only then did she get a seawater hose and start spraying it on the flames. That's one thing they had plenty of - seawater.
Hippy lurched down the corridor, almost stumbled past the door into the sub bay. He ducked through the hatch. Because of the slope of the rig, water was flooding from the moonpool down into the lower part of the rig. Across the pool, Hippy could see one of the SEALS - Wilhite - fighting a fire. It was insane. Didn't he realize that the moonpool had to be sealed off? It was a gaping hole in the center of Deepcore, and now that the rig wasn't level, it was the surest route for water to get into everything. It had to be sealed off - fire was the last problem here.
But then, not everybody was acting sensible. Hippy knew that. Hell, here he was with his hand gripping a baggy with a rat inside.
"Get out of there!" Hippy screamed.
Wilhite heard him. He knew. "Hippy, close the watertight door!"
Hippy hit the switch. It was still working - the door shut, sealing that entrance. He started running toward Wilhite.
Deepcore took a sharp bounce. Cab Three picked that moment to break loose from its cradle and slide straight toward Wilhite. With Cab Three coming, there wasn't any room left on the deck for Wilhite to stand. He took a dive into the moonpool.
Cab Three slammed into the end wall, then spun with the movement of Deepcore and began skidding straight toward Hippy. Hippy splashed through the water, scrambling to get out of the way. He plunged through a hatch. Safe.
The Abyss Page 20