She felt as if she had entered a dense fog. It was a phenomenon, known as the mysterious "brown crud," that had appeared throughout the Caribbean. The water near the surface was an eerie brown mass that fishermen described as looking like sewage. Until now, no one knew exactly what caused the crud or what triggered it. Ocean scientists thought it was associated with a type of algae, but had yet to prove it.
Strangely, the crud did not appear to kill the fish, like its notorious cousin, the red tide. They avoided contact with the worst of the toxic effects, but soon began to starve after losing their feeding grounds and shelter in the process. Summer noticed that the usually brilliant sea anemone, with their arms extended to feed in the current, also seemed hard hit by the weird invader to their realm. Her immediate project was simply to take a few preliminary samples. Recording the dead zone on Navidad Bank with cameras and chemical analysis instruments to detect and measure its composition would come later, in the hope of eventually finding countermeasures to eradicate it.
The first dive of the project was purely one of exploration, to see firsthand the effects of the crud so she and her fellow marine scientists on board the nearby research ship could evaluate the full scale of the problem and create a precise pattern for future study of the cause.
The first brown crud invasion warning had been sounded by a commercial diver working off Jamaica in 2002. The baffling crud had left a path of underwater destruction unseen and mostly unreported from the surface as it drifted out of the Gulf of Mexico and around the Florida Keys. That outbreak was, Summer was beginning to discover, much different than here. The crud on Navidad Bank was far more toxic. She began to find dead starfish, and shellfish such as shrimp and lobster. She also noted that the fish swimming through the strange discolored water seemed lethargic, almost comatose.
She removed several small glass bottles from a pouch strapped to one thigh and began taking water specimen samples. She also collected dead star- and shellfish and dropped them in a netted bag attached to her weight belt. When the jars were sealed and securely resting in the pouch, she checked her air again. She had over twenty minutes of dive time left. She rechecked her compass readings and began swimming in the direction from which she had come, soon reaching clean and clear water again.
Casually observing the bottom that had turned to a small river of sand, she sighted the opening to a small cavern in the coral, one she hadn't noticed before. At first glance it looked like any one of twenty others she'd passed in the last forty-five minutes. But there was something different about this one. The entrance had a square-cornered, carved look about it. Her imagination visualized a pair of coral-encased columns.
A ribbon of sand led inside. Curious, and with an ample supply of air in reserve, she swam over to the entrance of the cavern and peered into the gloom.
A few feet inside the chamber the indigo of the walls flickered under the shimmering light from the sun's rays above. Summer slowly swam along the sandy bottom as the blue turned dark and became brown after several yards. She nervously turned and looked over her shoulder, reassuring herself at seeing brightness surrounding the opening. Without a dive light there was nothing to see and it didn't take great imagination to picture danger in the inky interior. She nimbly turned and stroked toward the entrance.
Suddenly one of her fins brushed against something half buried in the sand. She was about to simply dismiss it as a lump of coral, but the coral-encrusted object had a seemingly man-made symmetrical contour. She dug into the sand until the thing came free. Moving toward the light, Summer held it aloft and lightly swirled it in the water, cleaning away the sand. It looked to be about the size of an old-fashioned lady's hatbox except that it felt quite heavy, even underwater. Two handles protruded from the upper area, while the bottom gave the impression under the encrustation of having a pedestal base. As near as she could tell, the interior looked hollow, another sign that it wasn't created by nature.
Through the mask, Summer's gray eyes mirrored skeptical interest. She decided to carry it back to the habitat, where she could carefully clean and determine what was to be seen under the accumulated coral sea growth.
The extra weight of the mysterious object and the dead sea life she had collected on the bottom had affected her buoyancy, so she compensated by adding air to her BC. Tightly gripping the object under her arm, she languidly swam toward the habitat oblivious of her air bubbles trailing behind her.
The habitat that she and her brother would call home for the next ten days appeared through the shimmering blue water a short distance ahead.
Pisces was often called an "inner space station," but she was an underwater laboratory designed and dedicated to ocean research. She was a sixty-five-ton rectangular chamber rounded off on the ends, thirty-eight feet long by ten feet wide by eight feet high. The habitat sat on legs attached to a heavy weighted base plate that provided a stable platform on the seafloor fifty feet below the surface. The entry air lock served as a storage unit and a place to don and remove diving equipment. The main lock that maintained a differential pressure between the two compartments contained a small lab working area, a galley, a confined dining area, four bunk beds, and a computer and communications console connected to an outside antenna for contact with the world above the surface.
She removed her air tanks and connected them with a bottom tank filling station next to the habitat. Holding her breath, she swam up and into the entry lock, where she carefully set the pouch and net containing her specimen samples in a small container. The mysterious coral-encrusted object she set on a folded towel. Summer was not about to risk the dangers of contamination. Suffering from the tropical heat and the sweat emerging from her insulated pores for a few more minutes were a small price to pay to avoid a potentially deadly illness.
After swimming in and through brown crud, one drop on her skin could prove fatal. She did not dare remove her Viking dry suit with attached Turbo hood and boots, gloves sealed by locking rings and full face mask, just yet. After unsnapping her weight belt and buoyancy compensator, she turned on two valves that activated a strong sprinkling system, washing down her wet suit and gear with a special decontamination solution to remove any brown crud residue. Certain she was properly sanitized, she turned off the valves and rapped on the door to the main lock.
Although the masculine face that appeared on the other side of the view port belonged to her twin brother, there was little resemblance. Though they were born within minutes of each other, she and her brother Dirk Jr. were about as nonidentical as twins could get. He towered over her at six feet four, and was lean and hard and deeply tanned. Unlike her straight red hair and soft gray eyes, the thick mass of hair on his head was wavy and black, the eyes a mesmeric opaline green that sparkled when the light hit just right.
When she stepped out of the chamber, he removed the yoke and collar seal between the neck of her suit and head mask. By the look in his eyes that were more piercing than usual and the grim expression on his face, she knew she was in big trouble.
Before he could open his mouth, she threw up her hands and said, "I know, I know, I shouldn't have gone off alone without a dive partner."
"You know better," said her brother in exasperation. "If you hadn't sneaked off at the crack of dawn before I was awake, I would have come after and dragged you back to the lab by your ear."
"I apologize," said Summer, feigning remorse, "but I can accomplish more if I don't have to be concerned with another diver."
Dirk helped her undo the heavy, riveted waterproof zippers on her Viking dry suit. First removing the gloves and pulling the inner hood down behind her head, he began peeling the suit from her torso, arms and then legs and feet, until she could step out of it. Her hair fell in a cascade of copper red. Underneath, Summer wore a skintight polypropylene nylon body suit that nicely displayed her curvaceous body.
"Did you enter the crud?" asked Dirk with concern in his tone.
She nodded. "I brought back samples."
> "You certain there was no leakage inside your suit?"
Holding her arms over her head, she did a pirouette. "See for yourself. Not a drop of toxic slime to be seen."
Pitt put a hand on her shoulder. "Words to remember: 'Don't ever dive alone again.' Certainly not without me if I'm in the neighborhood."
"Yes, brother," she said with a condescending smile.
"Let's get your samples in a sealed case. Captain Barnum can take them back to the ship's lab for analysis."
"The captain is coming to the habitat?" she asked in mild surprise.
"He invited himself for lunch," Pitt answered. "He insisted on delivering our food supplies himself. Said it will give him a break from playing ship's commander."
"Tell him he can't come if he doesn't bring a bottle of wine."
"Let us hope he got the message by osmosis," Dirk said with a grin.
A cadaverously built man, Captain Paul T. Barnum might have been taken for a brother to the legendary Jacques Cousteau, except that his head was almost desolate of hair. He wore a shorty wet suit and left it on after entering the main lock. Dirk helped him lift a metal box containing two days of food onto the galley counter where Summer began stowing the various supplies in a little cupboard and refrigerator.
"I brought you a present," Barnum announced, holding up a bottle of Jamaican wine. "Not only that, the ship's cook made you lobster thermidor with creamed spinach for dinner."
"That explains your presence," Pitt said, slapping the captain on the back.
"Spirits on a NUMA project," Summer murmured mockingly. "What would our esteemed leader, Admiral Sandecker, have to say about breaking his golden rule of no booze during working hours?"
"Your father was a bad influence on me," said Barnum. "He never came aboard ship without a case of vintage wine while his buddy Al Giordino always showed up with a humidor filled with the admiral's private stock of cigars."
"It seems everybody but the admiral knows that Al secretly buys the cigars from the same source," said Dirk, smiling.
"What's for a side dish?" asked Barnum.
"Fresh fish chowder and crab salad."
"Who's doing the honors?"
"Me," muttered Dirk. "The only seafood Summer can prepare is a tuna sandwich."
"That's not so," she pouted. "I'm a good cook."
Dirk gazed at her cynically. "Then why does your coffee taste like battery acid?"
Panfried in butter, the lobster and creamed spinach were washed down with the bottle of Jamaican wine, accompanied by tales of Barnum's seafaring adventures. Summer made a nasty face at her brother as she presented them with a lemon meringue pie she had baked in the microwave. Dirk was the first to admit she had performed a gourmet wonder, since baking and microwave ovens were not suited to one another.
Barnum stood to take his leave, when Summer touched his arm. "I have an enigma for you."
Barnum's eyes narrowed. "What kind of enigma?"
She handed him the object she'd found in the cavern.
"What is it?"
"I think it's some kind of pot or urn. We won't know until we clean off the encrustation. I was hoping you'd take it back to the ship and have someone in the lab give it a good scrubbing."
"I'm sure someone will volunteer for the job." He hoisted it in both hands as if weighing it. "Feels too heavy for terra-cotta."
Dirk pointed to the base of the object. "There's an open space free of growth where you can see that it's formed out of metal."
"Strange, there doesn't appear to be any rust."
"Don't hold me to it, but my guess is it's bronze."
"The configuration is too graceful for native manufacture," added Summer. "Though it's badly encrusted, it appears to have figures molded around the middle."
Barnum peered at the urn. "You have more imagination than I do. Maybe an archaeologist can solve the riddle after we return to port, if they don't go into hysterics because you removed it from the site."
"You won't have to wait that long," said Dirk. "Why not transmit photos of it to Hiram Yaeger in NUMA's computer headquarters in Washington? He should be able to come up with a date and where it was produced. Chances are it fell off a passing ship or came from a shipwreck."
"The Vandalia lies nearby," offered Summer.
"There's your probable source," said Barnum.
"But how did it get inside a cavern a hundred yards away?" Summer asked no one in particular.
Her brother smiled foxlike and murmured, "Magic, lovely lady, voodoo island magic."
Darkness had settled over the sea when Barnum finally bid good night.
As he slipped through the entry lock door, Pitt asked, "How does the weather look?"
"Pretty calm for the next couple of days," replied Barnum. "But a hurricane is building up off the Azores. The ship's meteorologist will keep a sharp eye on it. If it looks like it's heading this way, I'll evacuate the two of you and we'll make full speed out of its path."
"Let's hope it misses us," said Summer.
Barnum placed the urn in a net bag and took the pouch of water samples Summer had collected before he dropped out of the entry lock into the night-blackened water. Dirk switched on the outside lights, revealing schools of vivid green parrot fish swimming in circles, seemingly indifferent to the humans living in their midst.
Without bothering to don air tanks, Barnum took a deep breath, beamed a dive light ahead of him and stroked to the surface in a free ascent fifty feet away, exhaling as he rose. His little aluminum rigid-hull inflatable boat bobbed on its anchor that he'd dropped earlier a safe distance from the habitat. He swam over, climbed in and pulled up the anchor. Then he turned the ignition and started the two one-hundred-and-fifty-horsepower Mercury outboard motors and skimmed across the water toward his ship, whose superstructure was brightly illuminated with an array of floodlights embellished with red and green navigation lamps.
Most oceangoing vessels were usually painted white with red, black or blue trim. A few cargo ships sported an orange color scheme. Not the Sea Sprite. As with all the other ships in the National Underwater and Marine Agency fleet, she was painted a bright turquoise from stem to stern. It was the hue the agency's feisty director, Admiral James Sandecker, had chosen to set his ships apart from the other vessels that roamed the seas. There were few mariners who didn't recognize a NUMA vessel when they passed one at sea or in port.
Sea Sprite was large, as her type of vessel went. She measured 308 feet in length with a 65-foot beam. State of the art in every detail, she had started life as an icebreaker tug and spent her first ten years stationed in and around the north polar seas, battling frigid storms while towing damaged ships out of ice floes and around icebergs. She could bulldoze her way through six-foot-thick ice and tow an aircraft carrier through rough seas and do it with motion stability.
Still in her prime when purchased by Sandecker for NUMA, he ordered her refitted into an ultra-multipurpose ocean research and dive support vessel. Nothing was spared in the major refurbishment. Her electronics were designed by NUMA engineers as were her automated computerized systems and communications. She also possessed high-quality laboratories, adequate work space and low vibration. Her computer networks could monitor, collect and pass processed data to the NUMA laboratories in Washington for immediate investigation that turned the results into vital ocean knowledge.
Sea Sprite was powered by the most advanced engines modern technology could create. Her two big magnetohydrodynamic engines could move her through the water at nearly forty knots. And, if she could tow an aircraft carrier through turbulent seas before, she could now pull two without breathing hard. No research ship in any country in the world could match her rugged sophistication.
Barnum was proud of his ship. She was one of only thirty research ships in the NUMA fleet but easily the most unique. Admiral Sandecker had placed him in charge of her refit and Barnum was more than happy to oblige, especially when the admiral told him cost was no problem. No corner was
cut and Barnum never doubted that this command was the pinnacle of his marine career.
Deployed a full nine months a year overseas, her scientists were rotated with every new project. The other three months were spent in voyaging to and from study sites, dock maintenance and upgrading equipment and instruments with newer technical advances.
As he approached, he gazed at the eight-story superstructure, the great crane on the stern that had lowered Pisces to the bottom and was used to lift and retrieve robotic vehicles and manned submersibles from the water. He studied the huge helicopter platform mounted over the bow and the array of communications and satellite equipment growing like trees around a large dome containing a full range of radar systems.
Barnum turned his attention to steering alongside the hull. As he shut down the engines, a small crane swung out from above and lowered a cable with a hook. He attached the hook to a lift strap and relaxed as the little boat was lifted aboard.