Undersea Prison

by Duncan Falconer

  ‘How you doing, Tusker?’ Stratton asked in a soft, friendly voice.

  ‘Not too good . . . Gann screwed me up,’ Hamlin said, releasing the hammer and chisel. ‘I warned you he was a son of a bitch.’

  ‘If it makes you feel any better he isn’t any more.’

  Hamlin nodded approval and as he took in a breath it was accompanied by a gasp of agony. Several of his ribs were clearly cracked or broken. He took a moment to concentrate on his breathing, keeping it as shallow as possible to reduce the pain. ‘Gettin’ outta here is all I’ve ever wanted to do,’ he said.

  ‘You can still make it,’ Stratton said, fishing for the ‘how’ of Hamlin’s escape plan, wondering how lucid the older man was and if he would share whatever it was he had been coveting. Stratton had no doubt that Hamlin had hatched some kind of plan.

  Hamlin shook his head in disagreement. ‘Gettin’ through that goddamned sump nearly killed me . . . You know how many times I’ve swum through there? Gotta be more’n a thousand.’

  ‘How’d you find this place?’

  ‘They let me alone for hours at a time to repair the mining stores next door. I found it when I was snoopin’ around one day. I flooded it so they’d never find it. Last two years’ve been the most enjoyable I’ve had in any prison. Maybe even beats some years when I wasn’t . . . Building it a little at a time, day by day, gave me something to wake up to.’

  ‘Building what?’ Stratton asked.

  ‘Gettin’ all the right pieces was tough . . . especially the plates. Then gettin’ ’em through that damn sump. That was as much of a challenge as puttin’ it together.’

  ‘You built it in here?’ Stratton asked, looking at the derrick again.

  Christine did not have a clue what either man was going on about but she sat back, listening intently.

  ‘Piece by damned piece.’ A spasm suddenly shot through Hamlin’s body and he went rigid as he fought the pain. A moment later it subsided and he took a breath. He looked over at Christine. ‘Wish I’d gotten to know you better, ferryman.Takes a special kinda guy to find a chick in a disaster at the bottom of the ocean.’

  There was a distant rumble, followed by a surge of water from the sump. The level increased dramatically. Christine looked with concern at Stratton, fearful that they would not make it back to the air supply.

  Stratton got to his feet, frustrated with the old man’s ramblings, and wondered if he could figure out for himself what Hamlin had built. He studied the framework, noting the cable leading from the pulley down into the water with another, thinner cable coming out beside it where it was wrapped several times around a large rock to secure it.

  Christine stepped beside him and kept her voice low, though even a gentle whisper echoed in the cavern. ‘Should we try and get him back to the air bottles?’

  ‘He won’t make it,’ Stratton replied, looking at the water where the cables went into it. It was separated from the sump by a natural wall of rock but there was something that looked different about it. He crouched and brushed the surface with his hand and the water that churned up was white as milk. ‘This water comes directly from outside.’

  ‘We’re just above the sea bed here,’ Hamlin said. ‘The opening down there is big enough to drive a truck through. It’s what started me on the idea.’

  Stratton crouched beside Hamlin again. ‘What is it you built, Tusker?’

  Hamlin looked into his eyes. ‘First one was made two and a half thousand years ago.’

  Stratton looked back at the water, the cable going up to the ceiling, the spacious cave, the entrance apparently big enough to drive a truck through, the metal plates that Hamlin had described. He looked back at Hamlin who was wearing a smirk.

  ‘A bell?’ Stratton asked.

  Hamlin’s smirk broadened before a painful cough wiped it away. ‘Finished it a couple weeks ago,’ he said, recovering. ‘Took me a week to get it outside. I got pretty damn good at holding my breath.’

  Hamlin’s expression turned serious as he held out a hand. Stratton took hold of it. ‘Take it up for me . . . prove to those sons of bitches that I could do it.’

  The water level rose again, creeping up the rock and reducing the surface area of the small plateau they were on.

  ‘Release that cable,’ Hamlin said, indicating the winch. ‘I don’t have the strength any more.’

  Stratton took hold of the hammer, glanced at Christine who was struggling to make some sense of what was taking place, and took a heavy swing at the bracket holding the cable to the drum. It snapped off and the end of the cable shot up through the pulley and down into the milky water where it disappeared. ‘That other one too?’ Stratton asked, indicating the thinner cable tied around the rock.

  ‘No.’ Hamlin said, waving his hand. ‘You’ll need that . . . You said you knew diving.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Inside the top . . . a tap . . . your air. Rest you’ll have to figure out,’ Hamlin said, growing weaker.

  The water trickled over the rock wall and into the milky pool. It slowly covered Hamlin’s feet, rising towards his backside. ‘Help me up, will yer?’ Hamlin asked.

  Stratton put his hands under Hamlin’s armpits and pulled the older man to his feet. Hamlin winced but fought the pain, indicating that he wanted to stand on his own. Stratton let him go and Hamlin shuffled to the edge of the milky pool.

  ‘That leads to the bell,’ Hamlin said, indicating the thin cable. ‘Good luck, ferryman . . . Race you to the top.’ Hamlin dived into the milky water and disappeared below the surface.

  Christine stared after him. Stratton tore his gaze from the place where Hamlin had dived into the water and looked at her.

  ‘You want to take another dive into what could turn out to be nowhere?’ Stratton asked.

  ‘You really believe that crazy old man’s built a diving bell? One that’ll actually work?’

  ‘I wouldn’t stake my life on it under normal conditions. ’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘One thing I do know. We follow him out there, we’re never coming back.’

  Christine swallowed gently as she looked around the ever-shrinking cave and back into his eyes. ‘I’ve been following you into oblivion most of the time I’ve known you. Why stop now?’

  Stratton nodded, lowered himself into the water, grabbed the cable and pulled himself below the surface.

  Christine watched him go. Without wasting another second to consider the wisdom of it she jumped into the milky water, grabbed hold of the cable, took a deep breath and pulled herself beneath the milky surface.

  Hamlin emerged from the vast cloud of milky water that covered the sea bed like an impenetrable mist. He took a final stroke towards the surface, eyes wide and looking up. Bubbles escaped from his mouth as he ascended, travelling alongside him like pilot fish. He maintained his composure as best as he could until the spasms of asphyxiation took hold of him and he shuddered as he drowned. His body went limp and the bubbles alongside him grew larger.

  Hamlin’s body gradually expanded, his clothes tightening around his flesh before they ripped open. His skin stretched and gave way as it tore in places. His eyes popped from their sockets and fluid escaped from his ears seconds before his skull cracked open. More bubbles escaped from his flesh and blood, his bones splitting as the rapidly expanding gases freed themselves from the marrow. A trail of human detritus floated from the wrecked torso, lengths of intestinal tubing swelling like a string of balloons.The heavier parts of Hamlin’s body sank back down while thousands of smaller bits of him, buoyed up by gases, headed towards the sunlight. Moments later a million of his bubbles broke the sunlit surface and mingled with the air.

  In the distance the prison’s security vessel was moored alongside one of the escape barges. Suddenly, a hundred metres away, the surface erupted as if a huge whale was trying to reach the skies. It was the second escape barge, on its side. It had ascended at speed from its undersea mooring. It came out of the water s
everal metres before its weight dragged it back down. When it next came up it flopped over onto its underside and levelled out, the water cascading off the flat roof and down the sides.

  Chapter 17

  Stratton pulled himself along the thin cable, unable to make out anything by its shape or shade. The cable continued down for several metres where he hit the jagged sea bed with the side of his body, still unable to see anything through the white ‘milk’. He pulled himself along the bottom, quickly reliving the nightmare of his recent near-drowning.

  As his lungs started to complain of the lack of oxygen his head struck something metal. It was a piece of angle iron secured to one side of a large drum of some sort. The cable coiled around the drum, effectively coming to its end, and Stratton released it to feel his way beyond it. There were several more cables criss-crossing iron struts but the gaps between them were too small to crawl through. He was running out of air and suppressing uncontrollable thoughts of returning to the cave.

  Stratton stretched out his hands in every direction to work out the shape of the construction and discovered that the struts formed a rough circle. He moved over the drum and through this circle to find himself inside a container, which he followed up into a narrow dead end. He was rapidly heading into oxygen deficit and Hamlin’s words telling him to look for a tap echoed in his head. He found a small pipe that led to what was clearly a large metal gas bottle but without a valve at the connection. He quickly followed it in the other direction to find what could be described as a tap and tried to turn it but it wouldn’t budge.

  Something grabbed Stratton’s leg and Christine climbed up beside him. Her hands felt up his arms and to his hands and together they fought to turn the valve. Their lungs were bursting, both of them with only seconds left before they would involuntarily gulp in water. The tap suddenly moved and they could hear the hiss of escaping gas.

  Stratton spun the tap open as quickly as he could and pushed his face into the highest part of the bell, pressing his lips to the metal ceiling in search of the gas. A pocket of air quickly grew and he gulped in a breath, at the same time pulling Christine up alongside him. She took in a lungful of air while choking violently. Now their faces were pressed together in the ever-increasing air pocket.

  The water level gradually dropped and the bell, which had initially been leaning at an angle, moved upright as it became buoyant. Stratton felt around in the darkness in order to find out more about Hamlin’s rudimentary construction and its operating system. ‘You OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Christine said finally after clearing her throat. ‘I didn’t think we were going to make it that time.’

  ‘You get used to that.’

  ‘Do you have a sense of humour apart from at times like this?’

  ‘I’m best when I’m scared shitless.’

  The bell started to ascend but it did not travel far before coming to a creaky halt as the cable below went taut.

  Stratton felt around the bell’s interior from top to bottom. ‘I’ve got to believe Hamlin put some kind of light in here. He had good attention to detail.’

  Christine helped him search. ‘I’ve found a wire . . . it splits and there are clips on the ends.’

  ‘Now look for a battery.’ Stratton felt around the base of the bell where Hamlin would have put anything heavy to help keep the vessel from inverting. ‘I have it,’ he said.

  She grabbed his arm, found his hand and put the clips in it. He attached one to a terminal and as soon as he touched the other a small halogen light flickered on at the top of the bell. The tiny space was flooded with light.

  Stratton secured the clip and looked at Christine who was staring at him. He smiled. ‘Welcome aboard the Nautilus.’ He pointed to an inscription scrawled on the bulkhead.

  They proceeded to examine the bell and its contents. The outer shell was little more than metal plates fixed to struts of angle iron, some welded, other parts bolted together with rubber in between that acted as a seal. Struts also formed a bench that Stratton sat on to get a clearer perspective on his surroundings. Christine sat opposite him.

  The cross-struts gave the framework its strength and all in all Stratton was impressed. ‘You have to hand it to the old man,’ he said.

  Two large gas bottles were lashed either side of the small chamber. ‘These are our breather mixes - argon and oxygen,’ Stratton explained, feeling the cylinders’ cold metal skins.There was a smaller bottle lashed beside one of them with a valve on the end which he turned on briefly to check that it had gas. ‘This is pure oxygen. We’ll need that to increase the oxygen percentage as we ascend.’

  A metal container was secured under one of the brackets and Stratton untied it to see what it was. It contained liquid and he removed a cap on the side, smelled it and put it to his lips. ‘Water,’ he said, offering Christine some. ‘Just a sip.’

  She took it from him and relished a mouthful of the refreshing liquid. ‘I don’t know how much sea water I’ve drunk,’ she said, taking another small sip.

  Stratton removed a plastic bundle from one of the struts and tore it open. ‘Blankets,’ he said, handing them to her. She took them eagerly and immediately wrapped one around herself.

  A white plastic board was fixed to the bulkhead. It had two columns of figures written on it in indelible ink. ‘This looks like an ascent table,’ he said. ‘Just five stop numbers and a time beside each . . . Give me your watch.’

  Christine screwed the cap back onto the water container and checked the timepiece on her wrist. ‘It’s broken,’ she said, examining the broken glass.

  ‘Hamlin wasn’t wearing one. Check that box.’

  She leaned down and opened a metal box tied to one of the braces between her feet. ‘Pliers, screwdriver . . . and a watch,’ she said, holding it out to him.

  Stratton inspected it. It was a waterproof digital model and appeared to be working.‘You’re not claustrophobic, I hope.’

  ‘I’ve got too much else scaring the crap out of me . . . What’s next?’

  ‘We figure out how to head up.’

  He looked down at the milky water surrounding their feet. ‘This milk doesn’t help any . . . I’m going to turn the gas off for a moment while we figure this out.’ He reached up for the tap and closed it. The hissing ceased.

  ‘Why’s the water white?’

  ‘A Gulf of Mexico phenomenon,’ Stratton said, squatting down and reaching into the water to feel around the drum. ‘Some kind of mineral washed down from the coast . . . The key to going up is obviously this cable drum . . . There’s something clamped to the cable stopping it from unrolling . . . Hand me those pliers.’

  Christine gave him the tool and he reached down to find the clamp and figure out how to release it. He felt a clip of some kind which he took a grip on before pausing. ‘I can’t feel how this clamp works.’ He decided to pull on the clip, which felt as if it was moving out of a hole in the block secured around the cable. The clip came away and the block opened and fell off the cable. The drum immediately started to turn.

  ‘We’re going up,’ Stratton said, looking perplexed.

  ‘That’s good, right?’ Christine asked, wondering why he appeared to be so concerned.

  The drum turned easily, paying out the cable as they rose. Stratton checked the ascent table.‘There’s no depth here.’

  ‘How do we know when to stop?’

  ‘There has to be a depth gauge.’

  Christine quickly inspected the contents of the box. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There must be something,’ Stratton said, checking around the nooks and crannies of the small space with increased desperation. ‘It’s one of the essential factors in decompression.’

  ‘What else could you use if you didn’t have a depth gauge?’ she asked, unsure exactly what she was looking for.

  ‘I don’t know.There must be something. Hamlin had to know the decompression stop depths.’

  The white water around their feet disappeared and was
replaced by clear water. The drum was suddenly visible as they rose out of the milk, rotating quickly as it paid out the cable.

  ‘We’ve got to stop it!’ Stratton said, lowering himself to apply pressure to the drum with his foot in an effort to put the brakes on. It had no effect and he stood on it with both feet. Christine jumped down alongside him and together they tried to stop the drum from turning. But the cable continued to pay out.

  ‘This is not good,’ Stratton said, looking around. ‘We’re missing something. The answer is staring us in the face.’ No sooner had the words left his mouth when there was a heavy clunk and the drum stopped turning, bringing the bell’s ascent to a halt.

  They climbed off the drum and Stratton crouched to inspect it.‘You sweet and brilliant man,Tusker Hamlin . . . It’s another clamp. And there are others attached to the cable around the drum. We don’t need a depth gauge. The cable’s pre-set for every stop.’

  Christine slumped back down onto her cross-brace and pulled her blanket back round her. She offered one to Stratton who took it and did the same.

  He consulted the table, checked the watch and hit a button on the side of it. ‘Four and a half hours. Then we move up to the next stop.’

  She exhaled noisily. ‘Is it going to be this easy?’

  ‘I doubt the decompression will be perfect. There’s always risks even with the most sophisticated set-ups. It’ll be a resounding success if we’re barely alive by the time we see daylight . . . We’re going to have to watch each other for any symptoms. There’ll also be a carbon dioxide build-up. We’ll have to flush the air every so often.’

  ‘What are the signs?’

  ‘Discoloration - the lips, for instance. Light-headed-ness. Talking crap.’

  ‘I think I’ve suffered from it before,’ Christine said, trying to match his humour. But there were too many fears for her to keep it up for long. ‘Is there enough air for the two of us? Hamlin planned this trip for one.’

  Stratton shrugged.‘My maths doesn’t extend to cubic litres and oxygen consumption at partial pressures. Sorry.’