Medusa nf-8 Read online

  “Yeah. Contract work for Uncle Sam. Pretty routine stuff. We’re about to wrap it up, which is fortunate because there was no way I would have missed this opportunity.”

  The third mate was making her way across the deck toward the bathysphere accompanied by two men and a woman carrying video cameras, lights, and sound equipment.

  “That’s the NUMA film crew,” Austin said to Kane. “They’ll want to interview the intrepid divers on camera.”

  A look of horror came over Max Kane’s face. “I must look like crap. Smell like it too. Can they wait until I hop into the shower and trim the porcupine quills on my chin?”

  “Joe will fill them in while you clean up. I’ll see you in the bridge after you’re done with the interview,” Austin said. “We’ll go over the plans for tomorrow.”

  As he headed for the bridge, Austin reflected on how Beebe’s books had stirred his own imagination when he was a boy growing up in Seattle. He recalled one story in particular. Beebe described standing at the edge of an underwater precipice at the limit of his surface air supply, looking down with yearning into the deep water beyond his reach. The scene crystallized Austin’s own tendency to push to his limits.

  Born and raised in Seattle, Austin had followed his boyhood dreams, studying systems management at the University of Washington. He also attended a prestigious deepwater diving school, specializing in salvage. He worked a few years on North Sea oil rigs and put in a stint with his father’s ocean-salvage company, but his spirit of adventure needed freer rein. He joined a clandestine underwater-surveillance unit of the CIA that he led until it was disbanded at the end of the Cold War. His father hoped he would return to ocean salvage, but Austin moved over to NUMA to head up a unique team that included Zavala and Paul and Gamay Trout. Admiral Sandecker had seen the need to create the Special Assignments Team to investigate out-of-the-ordinary events above and below the world’s oceans.

  After completing the team’s last assignment, the search for a long-lost Phoenician statue known as the Navigator, Austin had heard that the National Geographic Society and the New York Zoological Society were sponsoring a docudrama on Beebe’s historic half-mile bathysphere dive of 1934. Actors would play Beebe and Barton, using a prop bathysphere, with much of the action simulated.

  Austin persuaded the NUMA brass to let Zavala design a state-of-the-art bathysphere. The diving bell would be launched from the agency’s research vessel, William Beebe, in conjunction with the docudrama. Like all government agencies, NUMA had to fight for its share of the federal funding pie, and favorable publicity never hurt.

  Dirk Pitt had taken over from Sandecker as NUMA’s director after Sandecker became the Vice President of the United States, and Pitt was equally interested in creating favorable public awareness of the agency’s work. The bathysphere’s pressure sphere would be recycled after the expedition as the heart of a new deep-sea submersible. The diving bell was nicknamed the B3 because it was the third pressure hull using the Beebe-Barton design.

  Trailed by a cameraman and sound technician, Zavala and a freshly scrubbed Kane climbed to the bridge after being interviewed in front of the bathysphere. Austin introduced Kane to the captain, an experienced NUMA hand named Mike Gannon, who spread a chart out on a table and pointed to Nonsuch Island off the northeast tip of Bermuda.

  “We’ll anchor as close as possible to Beebe’s original position,” the captain said. “We’ll be about eight miles from land with just over a half mile of water under the ship’s keel.”

  “We decided on a shallower location than the original so we could film the sea bottom,” Austin said. “How’s the weather looking?”

  “There’s a gale expected tonight, but it should blow out before morning,” Gannon said.

  Austin turned to Kane. “We’ve been doing all the talking, Doc. What do you hope to get out of this expedition?”

  Kane gave the question a moment’s thought.

  “Miracles,” he said with a mysterious smile.

  “How so?”

  “When Beebe reported hauling phosphorescent fish in his trawl nets, his fellow scientists didn’t believe him. Beebe hoped the bathysphere would vindicate his research. He compared it to a paleontologist who could annihilate time and see his fossils alive. Like Beebe, my hope is to dramatize the miracles that lie beneath the surface of the ocean.”

  “Biomedicine miracles?” Austin asked.

  Kane’s dreamy expression vanished, and he seemed to catch himself.

  “What do you mean, biomeds?” Kane’s voice had an unexpected edge to it. He glanced at the video camera.

  “I Googled Bonefish Key. Your website mentioned a morphine substitute your lab developed from snail venom. I simply wondered if you had come across anything similar in the Pacific Ocean.”

  Kane broke into a smile. “I was speaking as an ocean microbiologist . . . metaphorically.”

  Austin nodded. “Let’s talk miracles and metaphors over dinner, Doc.”

  Kane opened his mouth in a yawn.

  “I’m about to hit the wall,” he said. “Sorry to be a bother, Captain, but I wonder if I could have a sandwich sent to my cabin. I’d better get some sleep so I can be fresh for tomorrow’s dive.”

  Austin said he would see Kane in the morning. He watched Kane thoughtfully as he left the bridge, wondering at his edgy response to a routine question. Then he turned back to confer with the captain.

  THE NEXT MORNING, the NUMA ship followed the course Beebe’s expedition had taken, heading out to sea through Castle Roads, passing between high, jagged cliffs and old forts, past Gurnet Rock and into the open sea.

  The gale had petered out, leaving a long, heaving swell in its wake. Plowing through low mounding water, the ship traveled for another hour before dropping anchor.

  The diving bell had been put through dozens of tank tests, but Zavala wanted an unmanned launch before the main dive. A crane lifted the sealed bathysphere over the water and allowed it to sink to the fifty-foot mark. After fifteen minutes, the B3 was winched back onto the deck, and Zavala inspected the interior.

  “Drier than an eye at a miser’s funeral,” Zavala said.

  “Ready to take the plunge, Doc?” Austin asked.

  “I’ve been ready for nearly forty years,” Kane said.

  Zavala tossed two inflatable cushions and a couple of blankets through the door. “Beebe and Barton sat on cold hard steel,” he announced. “I’ve decided a minimum of comfort will be necessary.”

  In turn, Kane produced two skullcaps from a bag and handed one to Zavala. “Barton refused to dive unless he wore his lucky hat.”

  Zavala pulled the cap down on his head. Then he crawled through the bathysphere’s hatch, taking care not to snag his fleece-lined jacket and pants on the steel bolts that surrounded it. He curled up next to a control panel. Kane got in next and sat on the window side. Zavala turned the air supply on and called out to Austin, “Close the door, Kurt, it’s drafty in here.”

  “See you for margaritas in a few hours,” Austin gave the order to seal the bathysphere.

  A crane lifted the four-hundred-pound hatch cover into place. The launch crew used a torque wrench to screw ten large nuts over the bolts. Kane shook hands with Austin through a four-inch circular opening in the center of the door that allowed instruments to be passed in and out without having to move the cumbersome cover. Then the crew screwed a nut into the hole to seal it.

  Austin picked up a microphone connected to the bathysphere’s communications system and warned the divers they were about to become airborne. The winch growled and the crane hoisted the B3 off the deck as if the fifty-four-hundred-pound steel globe and its human cargo were made of feathers, swung it over the side, and kept it suspended twenty feet above the heaving ocean surface.

  Austin called the bathysphere on the radio and got Zavala’s go-ahead to launch.

  Through the B3’s windows, the divers caught a glimpse of the upturned faces of the launch and film crews and slices
of ship and sky before the portholes were awash in green bubbles and froth. The B3 splashed into the crystal clear waters and slipped beneath the surface in the valley between two rolling swells.

  The crane lowered the diving bell until it was just under the surface.

  Zavala’s metallic-sounding voice came over a speaker mounted on a deck stand. “Thanks for the soft landing,” he said.

  “This crane crew could dunk this doughnut in a cup of coffee,” Austin said.

  “Don’t mention coffee and other liquids,” Zavala said. “The bano is located on the outside of the bathysphere.”

  “Sorry. We’ll book you a first-class cabin next time.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but my main concern is making sure our feet stay dry. Next stop . . .”

  The winch let out fifty feet of cable, and the bathysphere stopped for the final safety inspection. Zavala and Kane checked the bathysphere for moisture, paying close attention to the watertight seals around the door.

  Finding no leaks, Zavala made a quick run-through of the B3’s air-supply, circulation, and communications systems. The indicator lights showed that all the bathysphere’s electronic nerves and lungs were working fine. He called up to the support ship.

  “Tight as a tick, Kurt. All systems go. Ready, Doc?”

  “Lower away!” Kane said.

  The sea’s foamy arms embraced the bathysphere like a long-lost denizen, and with only a mound of bubbles to mark its descent the hollow sphere and its two passengers began the half-mile trip to King Neptune’s realm.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE B3’S PASSENGERS WERE SEALED OFF IN A STEEL PRISON that would have defied Harry Houdini, but their images freely roamed the globe. A pair of miniature cameras mounted on the interior wall transmitted pictures of the bathysphere cabin up a fiber-optic cable to the Beebe’s mast antenna, where the signals were bounced off a roving communications satellite and instantaneously beamed to laboratories and classrooms around the world.

  Thousands of miles from Bermuda, a red-and-white communications buoy bobbing in a remote section of the Pacific Ocean relayed the pictures to a dimly lit room three hundred feet below the surface. A row of glowing television screens set into the wall of the semicircular chamber displayed green-hued pictures showing schools of fish darting past the cameras like windblown confetti.

  A dozen or so men and women were gathered around the only screen that did not display the sea bottom. All had their eyes glued to a blue-and-black depiction of the globe and the letters NUMA. While they watched, the logo vanished to be replaced by a shot of the B3’s cramped interior and its two passengers.

  “Ya-hoo!” Lois Mitchell yelled, pumping her arm in the air. “Doc’s on his way. And he’s wearing his lucky hat.”

  The others joined in her applause, then the room went silent as Max Kane began to talk, his words and mouth slightly out of synchronization. He leaned toward the camera, his eyes and cheeks bulging from lens distortion.

  “Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Max Kane, director of the Bonefish Key Marine Center, broadcasting from a replica of the Beebe-Barton bathysphere.”

  “Leave it to Doc to get in a plug for the lab,” said a gray-haired man seated to Lois’s right.

  Kane continued. “We are in Bermudan waters, where we’re about to re-create the historical half-mile Beebe-Barton bathysphere dive made in 1934. This is the third bathysphere, so we’ve shortened its name to B3. The bathysphere’s pilot is Joe Zavala, a submersible pilot and marine engineer with the National Underwater and Marine Agency. Joe is responsible for designing the bathysphere replica.”

  Zavala had rigged voice-activated controls that allowed the divers to switch camera views. His face replaced Kane’s on the screen, and he began to describe the B3’s technical innovations. Lois was only half listening, more interested in the NUMA engineer’s dark good looks than his shoptalk.

  “I envy Doc,” she said without removing her gaze from Zavala’s face.

  “Me too,” said the gray-haired man, a marine biologist named Frank Logan. “What a great scientific opportunity!”

  Lois smiled slightly as if enjoying a private joke. Her desire to spend time in the close confines of the bathysphere with the handsome Zavala had nothing to do with science. Well, maybe biology.

  The camera went back to Kane.

  “Great job, Joe,” Kane said. “At this time, I’d like to say a hello and offer personal thanks to everyone who has helped make this project possible. National Geographic, the New York Zoological Society, the government of Bermuda . . . and NUMA, of course.” He put his face closer to the camera, a move that made him look like a grinning grouper. “I’d also like to give my best to all the denizens at Davy Jones’s Locker.”

  The room echoed with loud whoops and applause.

  Logan was a soft-spoken Midwesterner and was normally reserved, but he slapped his thigh in his excitement. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Nice of Doc to recognize us denizens still slaving away down here in the Locker. Too bad we can’t return the favor.”

  Lois said, “Technically, it’s possible but not advisable. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, this undersea lab doesn’t even exist! We’re probably just a line item in a congressional budget cleverly disguised as an order of five-hundred-dollar toilet seats for the Navy.”

  A smile came to Logan’s face. “Yes, I know, but it’s still too bad we can’t offer Doc our congratulations. I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more, after all he’s done.” He sensed from the blank expression on Lois’s face that he had made a verbal gaffe, and said, “You deserve a great deal of credit, Lois. After all, your work bringing the medusa project to its near conclusion allowed Max to get away for the bathysphere dive.”

  “Thanks, Frank. We all gave up our normal lives to be here.”

  A soft gong echoed throughout the room, and a green light blinked over a television monitor that showed what looked like a diamond diadem against dark velvet.

  “Speaking of administrative duties,” Logan said with a wry grin, “your company is about to arrive.”

  Lois wrinkled her nose. “Damn. I wanted to watch the rest of Doc’s dive.”

  “Bring your guest back here to watch the show,” Logan suggested.

  “Oh, no! I’m getting rid of him as quickly as I can,” Lois said, rising from her chair.

  Lois Mitchell was nearly six feet tall, and in her late forties she had packed a few more pounds on her frame than she would have preferred. The voluptuous figure under the baggy sweat suit didn’t live up to contemporary ideals of beauty, but artists of a bygone day would have drooled over her curves and creamy skin, and the way her thick raven hair fell to her shoulders.

  She bustled from the room and descended a spiral staircase to a brightly lit passageway. The tubelike corridor connected to a small chamber occupied by two men who stood at an instrument panel facing a heavy-duty double door.

  One man said, “Hi, Lois. Touchdown is in forty-five seconds.” He pointed to a television screen set into the instrument panel.

  The cluster of sparkling lights displayed on the control-room monitor had materialized into a submersible vehicle slowly descending through the murk. It resembled a large utility helicopter that had been stripped of its main rotor and was powered by variable-thrust turbines on the fuselage. Two figures were silhouetted in the bubble cockpit.

  The room reverberated with the hum of motors. A diagram of the lab on the control panel began to blink, indicating that the airlock doors were open. After a few moments, the display stopped blinking, signifying that the doors had closed. The floor vibrated with the thrash of powerful pumps. When the water had been expelled from the airlock, the pumps went silent, and a green light flashed over the doors. At the push of a button on the control panel, the doors opened, and a briny smell rushed out. The submersible rested in a circular domed chamber. Curtains of seawater rolled off the fuselage and swirled down gurgling drains.

  A hatch slid open in the s
ide of the submersible, and the pilot got out. The men at the control panel went to help unload cartons of supplies from a cargo space behind the cockpit.

  Lois strode over and greeted the man emerging from the passenger’s side. He was a couple of inches taller than she was and wore blue jeans, sneakers, and a windbreaker and baseball cap both emblazoned with the logo of the company that provided security for the lab.

  She extended her hand. “Welcome to Davy Jones’s Locker. I’m Dr. Lois Mitchell, assistant director of the lab while Dr. Kane is away.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” the man said in a deep-voiced Southern drawl. “My name is Phelps.”

  Lois had expected to see a quasi-military type like the tough-looking guards she had glimpsed on trips to the surface ship, where lab staff could take a break from the seafloor, but Phelps looked as if he had been assembled from spare parts. His arms were too long for his body, his hands too big for his arms, his head too big for his shoulders. With his sad-looking dark eyes and large mouth accented by drooping mustache, he had a hound-dog quality about him. He wore his dark brown hair in unfashionably long sideburns.

  “Did you have a pleasant shuttle ride, Mr. Phelps?”

  “Couldn’t have been better, ma’am. The best part was seeing the lights on the ocean bottom. Kept thinking this must be Atlantis.”

  Lois cringed inwardly at the overblown comparison to the lost city.

  “Glad to hear that,” she said. “Come to my office and we’ll chat about how we can help you.”

  She led the way from the airlock along another tubular passageway, then up a spiral staircase to a low-lit, circular room. Fish nosed against the room’s transparent domed ceiling, creating the illusion that the sea was pressing in.

  Phelps swiveled his head in wonder. “Talk about a water view! This is unbelievable, ma’am.”

  “People find it hypnotic at first, but you get used to it. This is actually Dr. Kane’s office. I’m using it while he’s away. Have a seat. And please stop calling me ma’am. It makes me feel a hundred years old. I prefer Dr. Mitchell.”