Louis cursed as he frantically got out of the way of the hoses, which were now being yanked out of the bell at a furious rate. It was as if Richard and Michael were lures that had been taken by a gigantic fish.
“Bell diver, are you all right?” Larry’s voice asked.
“Yeah, I’m all right!” Louis yelled. “But something crazy is going on! The hoses are going out at a hundred miles an hour!”
“We can see that on the monitor,” Larry said urgently. “Can’t you stop it?”
“How?” Louis pleaded through tears. He glanced at the remaining hose. There wasn’t much left. He froze. He had no idea what to expect. The last loops whipped out of the bell and for a brief moment the lines went taut. Then to Louis’s utter horror they were torn from their housings and disappeared down into the trunk and out into the unforgiving sea.
“Oh, my god!” Louis cried as he struggled to turn off the gas supply manifold.
“What’s happening down there?” Larry demanded.
“I don’t know,” Louis cried. Then to add to his terror the vibration and rumbling started again. Frantically he reached out to grab whatever he could as the diving bell shook as though it were a salt shaker in the hand of a giant. He screamed, and as if in answer to a prayer, the shaking lessened to a mere trembling. At the same time he became aware of a sizzling sound and a red glow that penetrated through the view ports.
Letting go of the death grip he’d had on the high-pressure piping, Louis twisted to glance out one of the view ports. What he saw made him freeze anew. Over the nearby ridge, which the divers had so recently scaled, came a surreal cascade of glowing, red hot lava. The leading edge sputtered and popped and smoked as it turned the icy water into steam.
When Louis recovered enough to find his voice, he threw his head back to look up into the camcorder lens.
“Get me out of here!” he shrieked. “I’m in the middle of a goddamn erupting volcano!”
The van’s interior had become quiet. A sense of shock hung over the room. The only noise came from the deck-mounted motors driving the winches that were hauling up the diving bell and the life-support lines. Moments before, utter pandemonium had prevailed as it became apparent they’d lost two divers in some kind of pyroclastic catastrophe. The only consolation was that the third diver was okay, and he was on his way up.
Mark took a long, nervous drag on his Marlboro. Oblivious to the new rules, he’d reached for his cigarettes by reflex at the first rumblings of trouble, and now that the extent of the tragedy had rapidly unfolded, he was chain-smoking out of pure anxiety. Not only had he managed to lose a hundred-million-dollar submersible with two trained operators plus two experienced saturation divers; he’d also lost the president of Benthic Marine. If only he hadn’t encouraged Perry Bergman to make the dive. For that he was solely responsible.
“What the hell are we going to do?” Larry asked in stunned bewilderment. Even he was smoking although he was supposed to have given it up six months before. As the diving supervisor he, too, felt responsible for the disastrous outcome.
Mark sighed heavily. He felt weak. He’d never had a single loss of life on his watch in his entire career, and that included hairy diving operations in some dicey locations like in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. Now he’d lost five people. It was too much to think about.
“The bell is passing through five hundred feet,” the winch operator called out to no one in particular.
“What about the drilling operation?” Larry wondered aloud.
Mark took another long drag on his cigarette and almost burned his fingers. Angrily he stubbed it out, then lit another.
“Get ready to launch the camera sled,” Mark said. “We got to look at what’s going on down there.”
“Mazzola was pretty clear,” Larry quavered. “As we were pulling him up he said the whole top of the seamount as far as he could see was molten lava, bubbling up from behind the ridge. And we’re recording almost continuous tremors. Hell, we’re sitting on a live volcano. Are you sure you want the sled down in that kind of an inferno?”
“I want to see it,” Mark said slowly, “and I want to record it. I’m sure there’s going to be one hell of an inquiry about this whole mess. And I want to look at the area where the canyon or hole was that the Oceanus disappeared into. I’ve got to be sure there’s no chance . . .” Mark did not finish his sentence. He knew in his gut it was hopeless; Donald Fuller had dropped the submersible down into a volcanic vent just prior to its erupting.
“Fair enough,” Larry conceded. “I’ll have the crew get the sled ready to go. But what about the drilling? I hope you’re not thinking of sending down another dive team if and when this volcano quiets down.”
“Hell no!” Mark said with emotion. “I’ve lost interest in drilling into this freaking mountain, especially now that Perry Bergman is no longer with us. It was his foolhearty obsession, not mine. If the camera sled confirms that the vent hole or whatever it was is filled with fresh lava, and we can’t find any trace of the Oceanus, we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“That sounds good to me!” Larry said. He stood up. “I’ll get the sled ready and in the water ASAP.”
“Thanks,” Mark said. He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. He’d never felt worse in his life.
CHAPTER SIX
Suzanne was the first to recover enough from the terror of the precipitous descent to find her voice. Hesitantly she said, “I think we’ve stopped! Thank God!”
For a time that had seemed an eternity to its three terrified occupants, the submersible had fallen like a stone down the mysterious shaft. It was as if they had been sucked down an enormous drain in the bottom of the ocean. During the plummet the Oceanus had been totally unresponsive to the controls no matter which Donald Fuller manipulated.
Although initially the plunge had been straight down, the boat had eventually begun to spiral and even carom off the walls. One of the first such collisions destroyed the outside halogen lights. Another stripped off the starboard manipulator with a grinding crunch.
Perry had been the only one to scream during the ordeal. But even he fell silent once the helplessness of their situation had sunk in. He could only watch helplessly as the digital depth recorder whirred into the thousands. The numbers had flashed by so quickly, they’d become a blur. And when twenty thousand feet approached, all he’d been able to think about was the chilling statistic he’d heard earlier: the crush depth!
“In fact, I don’t think we’re moving at all,” Suzanne added. She was whispering. “What could have happened? Could we be on the bottom? I didn’t feel an impact.”
No one moved a muscle, as if doing so might disturb the sudden but welcome tranquillity. They were breathing shallowly in short gasps, and beads of perspiration dotted their foreheads. All three were still holding on to their seats for fear the plunge would recommence.
“It feels like we stopped, but look at the depth gauge,” Donald managed. His voice was raspy from dryness.
All eyes returned to the readout that only moments earlier had inexorably held their gaze. It was moving again, slowly at first but then rapidly gathering speed. The difference was that it was moving in the opposite direction.
“But I don’t feel any movement,” Suzanne said. She exhaled deeply and tried to relax her muscles. The others did likewise.
“Nor do I,” Donald admitted. “But look at the gauge! It’s going crazy.”
The readout device had returned to its previous furious whirring.
Suzanne leaned forward slowly as if she thought the submersible was precariously balanced and her movement might tip it over an edge. She peered out the view port, but all she could see was her own image. With the outside lights sheared off from collisions with the rock, the window was as opaque as a mirror, reflecting the interior light.
“What’s happening now?” Perry croaked.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Suzanne answered. She took a deep
breath. She was beginning to recover.
“The depth gauge says we’re rising,” Donald said. He glanced at the other instruments, including the sonar monitors. Their erratic signals suggested there was a lot of interference in the water, particularly affecting the short-range sonar. The side-scan was a bit better, with less electronic noise, but it was difficult to interpret. The hazy image hinted that the sub was sitting stationary on a vast, perfectly flat plain. Donald’s eyes went back to the depth gauge. He was mystified; in contrast to what the sonar was suggesting, it was still rising, and faster than it had been moments before. Quickly he reopened the ballast tanks, but there was no effect. Then he put the dive planes down and added more power to the propulsion system. There was no response to the controls. But they continued to rise nonetheless.
“We’re accelerating,” Suzanne warned. “Rising like this we’ll be on the surface in just a couple of minutes!”
“I can’t wait,” Perry said with obvious relief.
“I hope we’re not coming up under the Benthic Explorer,” Suzanne said. “That would be a major problem.”
Everyone’s eyes were riveted to the depth gauge. It passed through one thousand feet and showed no sign of slowing. Five hundred feet shot by. As it passed one hundred feet Donald said urgently: “Hold on! We’re going to broach badly.”
“What does ‘broach’ mean?” Perry yelled. He heard the desperation in Donald’s voice, and it sent a new chill through him.
“It means we’re going to leap out of the water!” Suzanne shouted. Then she repeated Donald’s warning. “Hold on!”
As the frantic whirring of the depth gauge reached a crescendo, Perry, Donald, and Suzanne once again grabbed their seats and held tight. Holding their breath they braced themselves for the impact. The depth gauge reached zero and stopped.
Immediately following that final click of the gauge, a loud sucking noise emanated from somewhere outside the craft. After that, comparative silence reigned within the sub. Now the only sound was a combination of the ventilation fan and an augmented but still muffled electronic whir of the propulsion system.
Almost a minute passed without the slightest sensation of movement.
Finally Perry breathed out. “Well,” he said. “What happened?”
“We can’t be airborne for this long,” Suzanne admitted.
Everyone relaxed their death grips and looked out their respective view ports. It was still as dark as pitch.
“What the hell?” Donald questioned. He looked back at his instruments. The sonar monitors were now filled with meaningless electronic noise. He turned them off. He also dialed down the power to the propulsion system, and its whirring stopped. He looked at Suzanne.
“Don’t ask me,” Suzanne said when their eyes met.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on.”
“How come it’s dark outside if we’re on the surface?” Perry asked.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Donald said. He looked back at his instruments. Reaching forward, he put power back to the propulsion system. The whirring noise reappeared but there was no motion. The craft stood absolutely still.
“Somebody tell me what’s going on,” Perry demanded. The euphoria he’d felt a few moments earlier had dissipated. They obviously were not on the surface.
“We don’t know what is happening,” Suzanne admitted.
“There’s no resistance to the propeller,” Donald reported. He turned the propulsion system off. The whirring died away for a second time. Now the only sound was the ventilation fan. “I think we are in air.”
“How can we be in air?” Suzanne said. “It’s totally dark and there is no wave action.”
“But it’s the only explanation for the sonar not working and the lack of resistance to the propeller,” Donald said. “And look. The outside temperature has risen to seventy degrees. We’ve got to be in air.”
“If this is the next life, I’m not ready for it,” Perry said.
“You mean we’re out of the water entirely?” Suzanne still had trouble believing it.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Donald admitted. “But it’s the only way I can explain everything, including the fact that the underwater phone doesn’t work.” Donald next tried the radio and had no luck with that either.
“If we’re sitting on dry land,” Suzanne said, “how come we haven’t tipped over? I mean, this hull is a cylinder. If we were on dry land, we’d surely roll over on our side.”
“You’re right!” Donald admitted. “That I can’t explain.”
Suzanne opened an emergency locker between the two pilot seats and pulled out a flashlight. Turning it on, she directed it out her view port. Pressed up against it on the outside was cream-colored, coarse-grained muck.
“At least we know why we didn’t tip over,” Suzanne said. “We’re sitting in a layer of globigerina ooze.”
“Explain!” Perry said. He’d leaned forward to see for himself.
“Globigerina ooze is the most common sediment on the ocean floor,” Suzanne said. “It’s composed mainly of the carcasses of a type of plankton called foraminifera.”
“How can we be sitting in ocean sediment and be in air?” Perry asked.
“That’s the question,” Donald agreed. “We can’t, at least not in any way that I know of.”
“It’s also impossible for globigerina ooze to be this close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” Suzanne said. “That sediment is found in the middle of the abyssal plains. Nothing makes sense.”
“This is absurd!” Donald snapped. “And I don’t like it at all. Wherever we are, we’re stuck!”
“Could we be completely buried in the ooze?” Perry asked hesitantly. If he was right, he did not want to hear the answer.
“No! Not a chance,” Donald said. “If that were the case there would be more resistance to the propeller, not less.”
For a few minutes no one spoke.
“Is there any chance we could be inside the seamount?” Perry asked, finally breaking the silence.
Donald and Suzanne turned to face him.
“How could we be inside a mountain?” Donald asked angrily.
“Hey, I’m only making a suggestion,” Perry said. “Mark told me this morning he had some radar data that suggested the mountain might contain gas, not molten lava.”
“He never mentioned that to me,” Suzanne said.
“He didn’t mention it to anyone,” Perry said. “He wasn’t sure of the data since it was coming from a shallow study of the hard layer we were trying to drill through. It was an extrapolation, and he only mentioned it to me in passing.”
“What kind of gas?” Suzanne asked while her mind tried to imagine how a submerged volcano could become void of water. Geophysically speaking it seemed impossible, although she knew that on land some volcanoes did collapse in on themselves to form calderas.
“He had no idea,” Perry said. “I guess he thought the most promising candidate was steam held in by the extra-hard layer that was giving us so much trouble.”
“Well, it can’t be steam,” Donald said. “Not at a temperature of almost seventy degrees.”
“What about natural gas?” Perry suggested.
“I can’t imagine,” Suzanne said. “This close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, it’s a geologically young area. There can’t be anything like petroleum or natural gas around here.”
“Then maybe it is air,” Perry said.
“How could it get here?” Suzanne asked.
“You tell me,” Perry said. “You’re the geophysical oceanographer. Not me.”
“If it is air, there is not a natural explanation that I know of,” Suzanne said. “It’s as simple as that.”
The three people stared at each other for a beat.
“I guess we’ll have to crack the hatch and see,” Suzanne said.
“Open the hatch?” Donald questioned. “What if the gas is not breathable or it’s even toxic?”
“Seems to m
e we have little choice,” Suzanne said. “We have no communications. We’re a fish out of water. We’ve got ten days of life support but what happens after that?”
“Let’s not ask that question,” Perry said nervously. “I say we crack the hatch.”
“All right!” Donald said with resignation. “As captain I’ll do it.” He stood up from his pilot’s seat and took a giant step over the central console. Perry leaned out of the way so that Donald could pass.
Donald climbed up inside the sail. He paused while Suzanne and Perry positioned themselves just underneath him.
“Why don’t you just undog it but not open it,” Suzanne offered. “Then see if you smell anything.”
“Good idea,” Donald said. He took Suzanne’s suggestion, grabbing the central wheel and turning it. The sealing bolts retracted into the hatch’s body.
“Well?” Suzanne called up after a few moments. “Smell anything?”
“Just some dampness,” Donald said. “I guess I’ll go for it.”
Donald cracked the hatch for a brief moment and sniffed.
“What do you think?” Suzanne asked.
“Seems okay,” Donald said with relief. He opened the hatch about an inch and smelled the damp air that flowed in. When he was satisfied it was as safe as he could determine, he pushed the hatch all the way up and poked his head out the top. The air had the salty dampness of a beach at low tide.
Donald slowly rotated his head through 360 degrees, straining his eyes in the darkness. He saw absolutely nothing but intuitively he knew that it was a big space. He was staring into a silent, alien blackness as frightening as it was vast.
Poking his head back inside the submersible, he asked for the flashlight.
Suzanne got it for him, and as she handed it up she asked what he’d seen.
“A whole lot of nothing,” he replied.
Reemerging from the hatch, Donald shined the flashlight in the distance. The mud stretched away in all directions as far as the light could penetrate. A few isolated mirrorlike puddles of water reflected back at him.