The Deep

CHAPTER EIGHT

Breakfast the next day was powdered milk and peanut butter on toast. After passing a serving through the airlock to Dr. Ocasek in the chamber, the interns suited up and headed back to the wreck site.

This time, they were careful to maintain a safe distance. As soon as the water turned murky and they could hear the airlift’s roar, they retreated to a hiding place behind a coral ridge. There they waited, observing nothing but swirling clouds of silt until their air ran low.

Back at PUSH, the four found Dr. Ocasek out of decompression and all packed up for his return to the surface. “I just talked to topside,” he told them. “Jennifer Delal will be coming down in a couple of hours. She’s collecting algae samples from the reef.”

“We got you a going-away present,” said Star. From her mesh bag, she pulled an enormous conch shell nearly two feet long.

“Something to make popcorn in,” Kaz supplied. “Just in case you get hungry topside.”

The scientist was impressed. “Wow, that’s a beauty! I’m going to miss you guys.”

They watched through the viewing port as he exited the wet porch. The shell under his arm was larger than the waterproof bag that held all his belongings from a two-week stay. He tossed one final piece of sandwich to his “pet” moray, and disappeared up the tether line. A boat waited at the PUSH life-support buoy to whisk him off to deal with the wreckage of his workspace and his exploded experiments.

On the station, the time dragged. Sick of peanut butter, they tried to make a freeze-dried beef Stroganoff dinner from the pantry. But Kaz forgot to add water before heating. Gray smoke billowed from the microwave, setting off the topside monitoring sensors.

“Don’t worry,” came the amused voice of the technician over the emergency wall speaker. “The habitat has air scrubbers that’ll take out the smoke automatically. Just don’t cook any more duck à l’orange, okay?”

“It was beef Stroganoff,” Kaz admitted.

“Listen, nobody comes to PUSH for the fine cuisine,” the man assured them. “Just sit tight until Dr. Delal gets there, got it?” He severed the connection.

“What about fish?” asked Dante. “That’s food, right? We’re choking on peanut butter, and right outside our window is the ultimate seafood buffet.”

Star laughed in his face. “Like you could cut open a fish without fainting.”

“I did once,” Adriana informed them. “Actually, it was at a resort, so the staff did all the gutting and cleaning. But I watched.”

They settled in for a long wait on the cramped station. The water outside the viewing ports darkened from blue to black as night fell. There was still no sign of Dr. Delal.

Adriana sprang to her feet. “I’ll call topside.”

Star grabbed her arm. “They’ll just order us to stay put again.”

“Which is exactly what we’re doing,” agreed Kaz. “So what’s the problem?”

“She probably just decided to hold off until morning, and they forgot to tell us,” said Star. “Which means we’ll sit here all night and lose our only chance to check out the wreck site when Cutter isn’t there.”

Dante stared at her. “You mean a night dive? Now? When we’re all alone?”

“You think some scientist could help us if we ran into Clarence out there?” Kaz said.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Dante demanded.

Star paced the narrow aisle, her limp exaggerated by the cramped quarters. “We’ll give it till midnight,” she decided. “Then we dive — Dr. Delal or no Dr. Delal.”

At eleven-fifty-five, with no sign of the scientist, they dressed out and shrugged into the awkward double-tank setups.

The fifteen-minute half-mile ride to the wreck site was becoming familiar, Adriana reflected as she clung to the handles of the DPV. There was the coral head that reminded her of the Eiffel Tower, and the colony of tentacled anemones that resembled a field of powder-blue flowers. A little farther along, her headlamp illuminated the “lobster sponge,” a titanic red sponge that was used as a hiding place by several clawless Caribbean lobsters.

I’m starting to recognize the fish too. The thought seemed crazy. But no — there was the barracuda that was missing the top half of its crescent tail. It was exciting, almost like running into an old friend.

I wonder if he knows us too — “Hey, it’s those losers on the dive scooters. Who taught them how to swim?”

She became all business when they reached the wreck site. She worked tirelessly, stuffing her bag until it was bursting with coral-encrusted artifacts. The passion of her own efforts didn’t surprise her. She loved this stuff. But she was amazed at the enthusiasm the others put into the job. It was backbreaking work, even underwater, where the blocks of limestone weighed much less than on dry land. At such a level of exertion, a diver sucked air at double speed, and soon Star was tapping her on the shoulder. Their backup tanks were down to half full. It was time to return to PUSH.

The trip home was a pleasantly exhausted one. Their DPVs worked a little slower from the weight of bags jam-packed with artifacts.

As she glided through the black water in her cone of light, her mind toyed lazily with the puzzle of the shipwreck. A Spanish vessel, almost certainly. Maybe even one of the fabled treasure galleons — the time period seemed about right. But where was the treasure? Surely Cutter couldn’t have it all. That much silver and gold would sink the Ponce de León. And how did the bone handle fit in?

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. She knew, for example, that English cannons were common on foreign ships. Was it really so weird that a Spaniard had acquired an item that had once belonged to an Englishman with the initials JB?

Something was wrong. Up ahead, she could see Star turning around. That was when Adriana realized that she had noticed none of the usual landmarks on the return trip. She checked her dive watch. They had been on the move for twenty minutes, maybe more. They should have reached the habitat by now.

With a feeling approaching fright, she realized they were lost.