Still, she knew that, as with so many aspects of scientific exploration, the job of the scientist is to advance knowledge even when the dissemination of that knowledge might lead to something destructive. And so she had no choice but to proceed in discovering and presenting the very best of everything Mark could do.
For all this restless nighttime musing, she didn’t really feel morbid about it. The negative aspects were nothing more than faint vibrations in the air. The positive excitements and pride of discovery were thrilling and rewarding. And she looked forward to every day. Especially tomorrow, when for the first time Mark would be tested adequately and realistically on his deep-water abilities.
The two red marker buoys bobbed in the water one hundred yards off the end of the channel, fifty yards apart. Nearby, a buoy tender sat bulkily in the water. Elizabeth and Admiral Pierce and several other Navy personnel stood on the low, broad deck and watched the two scuba divers slip into their tanks and test their breathing regulators. Mark, in a Navy wet suit without tanks, stood at the railing looking out over the Pacific, his arms folded across his chest.
An ensign trotted down the steps from the bridge and came over to Admiral Pierce. “Sir, bridge reporting CURV is in the area.” He stuck his arm out toward the southwest, palm vertical, fingers straight, indicating a vector toward the invisible CURV—Cable Controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle—which would be approaching the buoys deep under water. “CURV is ready to proceed with recovery on your signal, sir.”
The admiral nodded. “Stand by for my signal.”
They saluted each other, and the ensign stood aside at attention.
“Okay, Doctor, it’s your show.”
“Divers ready?”
The two divers gave thumbs-up. They picked up their underwater movie cameras and moved to the diving ladder. They stuck their regulators into their mouths and adjusted them.
“All right. Let’s go. Dive!”
The first diver splashed in on his back and disappeared under the swells, followed quickly by the second. Two trails of air bubbles followed them away from the ship toward the buoys.
Elizabeth checked her stopwatch. She walked over to Mark. “Ready, Mark?”
He looked at her, then walked over to the diving ladder.
She checked her watch again. “All right, Admiral, the divers should be in position.”
The admiral turned to the ensign. “Proceed with CURV recovery mission.”
The ensign saluted and raced up to the bridge.
“Okay, Mark,” Elizabeth said, “go.”
Mark dove in headfirst, making virtually no splash, and disappeared.
Elizabeth lifted her binoculars and scanned the area under which Mark and the CURV could work. But there was nothing to be seen. They would just have to wait.
The divers, hovering four fathoms above the bottom, first saw the CURV approaching several feet below them. The silvery CURV looked like a giant insect as it moved along just over the ocean floor. Its lights burned a path ahead of it. Two large cameras looked like square eyes on a head filled with insectlike antennae. Its segmented metal arm resembled a huge lobster claw.
One diver immediately swam over and accompanied the CURV, aiming his camera down on it from above.
The other diver spotted Mark sliding through the water from the other direction, and fixed bis lens on him.
Mark probed the bottom, bis head turning from side to side. While air bubbles churned up from the two divers, none came from Mark.
Mark and the CURV found their respective. torpedoes quickly. Separated by fifty yards under their buoys, the two dummy bombs were partly sunk in the mud.
The CURV positioned itself near one torpedo, and slowly extended its claw toward it. There was a dull thunk as the claw banged onto the top of it, withdrew a few feet, came in again, got a tenuous grip on it, began to lift, and then dropped it. Two more times the claw moved into the torpedo before it got a hold firm enough to begin tugging it free from the mud.
Mark, meanwhile, had dropped straight down beside his torpedo, anchored his feet in the mud, locked his arms around the torpedo, yanked it quickly free, and immediately headed for the surface with the bomb in tow.
Mark broke the surface with his torpedo just as the CURV was moving in for its third try at a grip on its sunken prey.
Elizabeth and the admiral watched stunned through their binoculars as Mark surged through the water toward the buoy tender, pushing his torpedo ahead of him like a surfboard.
“He did it!” she exclaimed softly.
“Wow!” said Lt. Ainsley.
Admiral Pierce slowly lowered his binoculars and shook his head, grinning in wonder.
Mark easily deposited his torpedo in the net slung over the side of the ship, and turned back to look toward the buoys.
The water around the buoys was boiling, which indicated that the CURV was still at work below.
Mark looked up at Elizabeth, who bent over the railing above him, then looked back at the buoys.
“No, Mark,” she said. “It’s fine. You were perfect. Let the CURV finish its work without you.”
Mark did several somersaults in the water, then idly floated around on his back.
The ensign appeared at Admiral Pierce’s side. “CURV signals indicate substantial progress on recovery, sir. Estimate surfacing in five minutes.”
The admiral ignored him and walked over to Elizabeth. “Very impressive, Doctor. Let’s get him in and put him under pressure while we’re waiting for the films.”
In the Research Control Room, Elizabeth sat before a bank of monitors and controls and handles and gauges. Admiral Pierce stood behind her, Ainsley to the side.
Through the circular port they could see the inside of the Pressure Test Tank. At the bottom of the tank, three drums of different sizes were secured by chains. Paint-stenciled on the side of one was the legend “18,000 FT (8,810 psi)”; on the second, “24,000 FT (10,680 psi)”, and on the third drum, “30,000 FT (13,350 psi).”
From the control room, the tank could be put under various pressures, simulating the depths marked on the drums.
Mark appeared swimming above the drums.
Admiral Pierce nodded. “All right, take him down.” Elizabeth spoke into a microphone. “Mark, we’re putting you under pressure.”
She began to turn diais, keeping an eye on the digital depth gauges, whose numbers ascended furiously. “He’s at fifteen thousand feet, sir.”
“Take him to twenty.”
“Mark,” she said into the mike, noting through the port that he was swimming around comfortably, “we’re taking you down to twenty thousand feet.”
She moved the diais and watched as the depth gauges registered “16,000, 17,000...”
Mark seemed unaffected by the pressure. He undulated evenly, circling the drums.
The numbers on the depth gauges flashed by in front of Elizabeth. Suddenly something happened in the tank. The first drum, marked “18,000 FT,” bent inward and collapsed. The three faces in the control room stared at the gauges, which continued to record the increased pressure.
Finally the numbers stopped.
“Twenty thousand feet,” Elizabeth announced calmly.
They watched through the port as Mark looked down at the crushed drum, then continued swimming around.
“Take him to thirty,” said the admiral.
“Taking you to thirty thousand feet, Mark.”
She spun the diais, and the numbers of the gauges flitted by faster and faster.
“Twenty-five thousand feet,” Elizabeth said, her voice a bit taut.
The second drum bent and collapsed. Mark hovered near it for a moment, watching it curiously.
“Thirty thousand feet and holding.” Elizabeth set the dials, and saw that the depth gauges stayed fixed.
As they watched, the last drum began to bend and flatten like a tin can under a heel. Mark swam around it, observing, while its sides flexed inward until it was entirely collapsed.<
br />
“Holy Moses,” gasped Lt. Ainsley.
“He seems to be as comfortable at thirty thousand as at five,” the admiral said. “All your backup gauges confirm?”
“Yes sir.” She motioned along the controls. “All at thirty. And of course the drums were inspected just before the test.”
“And he needs no decompression.”
“No sir. He’ll come right up, whenever I say.”
“Or he could stay down a while.”
“He could stay down there a month, Admiral, if there was food in there.”
“It appears he could go even deeper, if required.”
“There are hardly any places that are deeper, Admirai. But it seems that depth makes no difference at all to him.”
“All right. Bring him up. I’m convinced. What a find for the Navy.”
“Yes sir,” she said, a bit somberly.
chapter 4
“Of course I haven’t been avoiding you, Doug. I’ve just been so busy with this project.”
They sat in his car at the edge of the bluff, watching the sun sink beyond the Pacific.
“So now are you about finished with it, or what?”
She had told him nothing of what she was doing, except that it involved the mysterious man Doug had seen at the hospital, and confirming what she had done with him in the surf to revive him, and why.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be finished, Doug, exactly. I mean, there are still so many things about him we don’t know. But at least we’ve run him through all the major tests at least once, so we’re both taking a couple of days off.”
“And it turns out that he actually has gills?”
“Something like that.”
“What caused you to suddenly be so sure, back there in the beginning, at the hospital?”
She wrinkled her brow and pursed her lips. “I don’t know for certain. I wasn’t really sure so much as desperate. It just kind of hit me, at the time. I suppose if I’d been a practicing medical doctor, like you, dealing with human beings all the time, it never would have occurred to me. But I’ve been working with sea animais, and gills. Even as it was, I don’t remember it as being anything like a rational deduction. It was just a flash. I’m surprised you didn’t see a light bulb over my head.”
“I had an interesting time explaining that whole business to the hospital staff.”
“How’d you do it?”
He shrugged. “Around here, you can go a long way just saying ‘Navy business.’ I don’t suppose that convinced our bright young resident, Dr. Bock. But fortunately he’s neither nosy nor rumor-prone.” He turned to her. “You look tired, Elizabeth.”
“I am, I guess. Sorry it shows.”
“You work too much. A young woman like you ought to be enjoying herself more.”
“I am enjoying myself, Doug—immensely, in fact. What I’m doing is terribly satisfying. And anyway, you work just as much as I do.”
“Ah, you know how it is, at the hospital. Always something. But at least I try to manage some free time, for pleasure and relaxation.”
“From what you’ve told me about your two former wives, they seemed to feel you were entirely too involved in your work.”
“That’s how they felt, I guess.”
“Well, you and I are about the same in that regard, Doug. That’s why neither of us would make good marriage partners just now.”
“I wasn’t proposing.”
She laughed lightly and put a hand on his arm. “No. Not this time you weren’t.” She turned and stared out the windshield. “Sure is a big ocean out there.”
“Yeah. I’d love to be out on it, on a yacht. Trouble with you is, you’d rather be out there under it, breathing canned air and communicating with sharks.”
“Sometime, I promise you, I’m going to get you into scuba gear and you’re going to try it. It’s so awesomely beautiful, especially around the reefs.”
“I got sinus trouble.”
“You don’t have to go deep. The most beautiful living is near the surface, where you have some light from the sun filtering through.”
“Claustrophobia is what I’d have. I couldn’t stand a mask over my face.”
“Except a surgical one, right? I’d get claustrophobia in the operating room every day, under those hot lights, with everybody crowding around and mumbling.”
“It’s a living.”
“You love it.”
“Yes, Elizabeth,” he sighed and tapped the steering wheel, “I guess I do. Just like you love your work. All our love is poured into our work.”
“Not all, silly. We’re not automatons. And not forever. My feeling is, you can’t schedule your loves like operations. They come when they come, go when they go, change when they change. I wouldn’t want you to disappear from my life.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be around here, creaking and wheezing, when I’m seventy-five, waiting to take you to lunch.”
“Speaking of lunch, thank you. It was a treat not having tuna fish from the Navy mess for once.”
“You’re welcome. Maybe we ought to switch to kelp, like your Mark there. Can you imagine that diet every day? Without French fries? Without gin? Without butter-pecan ice cream?”
“No. But he thrives.”
“Yeah. By the way, what’ve you got lined up for him? Seems to me that he ought to be joining the ranks of the gainfully employed pretty soon.”
“Nothing yet. But I’m sure the Navy will find something for him. They can’t stand to have any able bodies around without having them do something, even if it’s pointless.”
“He’d be great at scraping bottom paint. They wouldn’t even need a dry dock.”
“I hope it’ll be something better than that.”
“Well, let me know when he gets a job. We’ll celebrate.”
“I hope so. I really hope we can.”
Elizabeth was watching again the divers’ films of Mark and the CURV recovering their torpedoes, when there was a knock on her office door. She opened it, and Lt. Ainsley stood before her.
“Dr. Merrill, Admiral Pierce would like to see you right away. He has a job for your fish.”
She stiffened. “His name is Mark Harris, and he isn’t a—”
“Would you come with me, please?”
She followed him.
The admiral’s office was a spacious room with a floor-to-ceiling window wall looking out on the ship channel. Pictures and models of various submarines hung on the walls. The admiral sat behind his broad desk examining a sheaf of papers.
Lt. Ainsley knocked and then opened the door and ushered Elizabeth in.
The admiral looked up quickly. “Dr. Merrill. Come in. Have a seat.” He pressed buttons on his desk. Over the door red letters lit up: “THIS MEETING IS... CLOSED... SECRE... RECORDED.”
The lieutenant closed the door behind them. The admiral motioned to the plush, black leather armchair facing his desk. Elizabeth sat down. The lieutenant remained standing at the door.
Elizabeth leaned forward in her seat. “The lieutenant said you—”
“We’ll get right to the point, Doctor.” His voice was firm. “Two weeks ago we lost the Sea Quest at the bottom of the Mariana Trench...”
Elizabeth blanched.
“... I need your man to find it and help us recover it with the bodies of the crew.”
“Did you say the Sea Quest?”
The admiral looked past her at Ainsley. “She wasn’t told?”
“No sir.”
“I assumed you were informed, Doctor. In any event...”
“With Commander Roth?” Unconsciously she rose partway from her chair.
“Yes. You knew him?... Of course. Similar line of work. Perhaps you’d like to sit down, Doctor.” He motioned calmly again to the chair.
She sat down quickly. “I’m fine. Just surprised, naturally.” She paused a moment, took a breath, then said evenly, “You were saying, Admiral, that the Sea Quest went down in the Mariana Tr
ench.”
“Yes.” He studied her, appreciating her toughness and professionalism. “It will be a tremendously important mission, which I believe your man can accomplish. Others might not think so, of course, but then they don’t know what I—what we—know, do they?”
“No sir.”
“In any event, your man has the best chance of success of anyone, or anything, I know. It will be a secret mission with an appropriate cover. By the way,” he tapped a thick file on his desk, “all information concerning your work—which we have named ‘Project: Atlantis’—will remain classified. Better for us and safer for him. You never know who might want to get their paws on him.”
“If I may, sir, what happened to the Sea Quest?”
“Went to lay down a package of seismic probes, and just fell off the scope at thirty-six thousand feet. No S.O.S., no message, no nothing.” He looked at the wall. “Most advanced technology we own—one of a kind and it’s gone.”
“And you lost a good crew, too.”
“Of course. Of course. I hope you know that I care about them as well.”
She nodded slowly. “Surely you’ve tried to locate it.”
“Oh yes...” He rose and walked over to stare out the window. He watched some seamen tie up a small research vessel that had just come in. “... Yes indeed. Sent down a lot of expensíve hardware, but we still haven’t found it. That is, we can safely assume it lies somewhere directly beneath where we last had a fix on it. But we haven’t been able to pick it up on our sensors. It’s crucial that we find it first.”
“First?”
“Before, you know, anvbody else...” His voice trailed off. He turned to look at her.
“But who else could...”
“Doctor, we don’t know precisely what every nation’s underwater capabilities are. We do know that the other side has performed some highly successful and impressive deep-water probes. Surely you can understand how valuable it is for us to keep Sea Quest out of foreign hands. Some of our most sophisticated apparatus was on that vessel. The crew is lost. I don’t mean to be hardhearted about that. But there’s nothing we can do to bring them back alive. It is in the interests of protecting other lives that we must recover Sea Quest.”
Man From Atlantis Page 7