the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the
edge of fear in his voice with, Listen, cobber, every time I've ever
been into an orifice shaped like that, it's always meant big trouble.
Reminds me of my first wife. Cover for me/ Nick interrupted him. If
I'm not out in five minutes. I'm coming with you/ said the Chief. I've
got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any. Nick
did not argue with him.
I'll go first/he said and tapped the Chief's shoulder. Do what I do.
Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against
the current.
He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing
out again in a rash of silver bubbles.
Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.
The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to
duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest
with both arms.
Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he
felt the leak of sea water into his suit.
The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total
darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel
piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the
underwater lantern on his belt.
You okay? The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.
Fine. Vin Baker's lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of
him.
Work fast/ instructed Nick. I've got a tear in my suit. Each of them
knew exactly what to do and where to go.
Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the
seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room,
but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the
valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the
massive blocks of the main engines.
Nick was there ahead of him. The engine room was flooded almost to the
deck above and the surface was a thick stinking scum of oil and diesel,
in which floated a mass of loose articles, most of them undefinable, but
in the beam of his lantern Nick recognized a gumboot and a grease pot
floating beside his head. The whole thick stinking soup rose and fell
and agitated with the push of the current through the rent.
The lenses of their lanterns were smeared with the oily filth and threw
grotesque shadows into the cavernous depths, but Nick could just make
out the deck above him, and the dark opening of the vertical ventilation
shaft. He wiped the filth from his visor and saw what he wanted to see
and the cold was spreading up his leg. He asked brusquely, Okay, Chief?
Let's get the hell out of here. There were sickening moments of panic
when Nick thought they had lost the line to the opening. It had sagged
and wrapped around a steam pipe. Nick freed it and then sank down to
the glimmer of light through the gash.
He judged his moment carefully, the return was more dangerous than the
entry, for the raw bright metal had been driven in by the ice, like the
petals of a sunflower - or the fangs in a shark's jaw. He used the suck
