Medusa

winced, and his eyes blinked wide open.

“Ow!” he said. A good sign.

Zavala lightened the pressure but kept the compress in place.

“Sorry, Doc, Florence Nightingale couldn’t make it, so you’re stuck with me,” Zavala said. “Try moving your toes and fingers.”

Kane flexed his hand and foot joints, then bent his legs at the knees, grimacing in pain. “Nothing seems broken.”

Zavala helped Kane sit up and handed him the canteen. He waited until Kane had slugged down a couple of gulps, then said, “What do you remember, Doc?”

Kane pursed his lips in thought. “I was looking out the window, broadcasting my observations.” He glanced at his headset.

“Don’t bother,” Zavala said. “The headsets don’t work.”

Kane’s face turned the color of oatmeal. “We’re not connected to the surface?”

“Temporarily . . . Keep talking.”

Kane took a deep breath. “We saw some kind of weird big fish or whale. Next, I remember heading for the moon. Then blotto. What about you?”

Zavala jerked a thumb upward. “Same scenario. I went airborne and slammed against the roof. I put my hand out to soften the blow, but all I got for the effort was a sore arm. Good thing I’ve got a hard head.”

“From the sounds of it, the cable probably slipped on the winch drum.”

Zavala said nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Kane said. “Why haven’t they winched us up by now?” He noticed that the bathysphere was perfectly still, and he seemed to catch his breath. “We’re not moving, Joe. What’s happened to us?”

Zavala wanted to avoid panic, but there was no sugarcoating their situation. “We seem to be sitting on the bottom, Doc.”

Kane looked at the instrument panel and saw that the systems were operating on batteries. “If we were still attached, we’d have power. Oh, hell! The cable must have snapped.”

“That’s almost impossible. And there could be other reasons for the breakdown. We’re talking about maintaining contact over a cable through more than a half mile of ocean. Remember Beebe comparing the bathysphere to a pea on a cobweb? No man-made system is flawless, but this isn’t the Titanic. Even if we were no longer connected to the surface, we’ve got other options.”

Kane brightened. “Duh, of course! Your flotation system.”

Zavala managed a smile. “What do you say we pop up to the Beebe lounge and mix a pitcher of margaritas?”

“What are we waiting for?” Kane was as ebullient as a condemned man given an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Zavala unclipped a nylon bag from the wall and asked Kane to clean up the cabin. Busywork would lift Kane’s spirits as well.

“The compressed-air tanks are in the center of the platform, and they feed into flotation bags that are stuffed into the skids,” Zavala explained. “When the GO switch is activated, doors open in the sides of skids, compressed air fills the bags instantly, and they lift us to the surface, where the ship can snag us.”

Kane rubbed his palms together in anticipation. “Margaritaville, here we come.”

Zavala slid over to the instrument panel. “Funny, isn’t it? We go through all sorts of trouble to get to the bottom of the sea, and, when we finally make it, we want to go home.”

“We can discuss the philosophical implications on the deck of the Beebe,” Kane said. “I’d be happy just to be able to stretch out my legs.”

Zavala turned his attention to a plastic box attached to the wall next to the instrument panel. He unsnapped the box’s cover to reveal a red button emblazoned with an arrow pointing up.

“This is a two-step process,” he explained. “This button arms the system, and that identical button on the control panel activates it. When I say go, you hit the switch, and I’ll do the same with mine. Then hold on. There’s a ten-second delay.”

Kane put his finger to the button Zavala had indicated. “Ready.”

“Go,” Zavala said.

Zavala had tested the escape system in a water tank and prepared himself for a muted bang and a whoosh, but nothing happened at the end of ten seconds. He told Kane to try again. Again, nothing happened. Zavala checked a troubleshooting display that would have indicated a system malfunction but saw nothing amiss.

“Why won’t it work?” Kane asked.

“Something must have gotten banged around when we hit bottom. Don’t worry, I programmed in a backup system.”

Zavala tapped a keypad to reroute the signal and told Kane to try again. Again, there was a failure to inflate. They would have to go with the manual switch. Zavala opened another plastic-covered panel and looped his fingers through a handle attached to a cable. Pulling the cable, he explained, would produce a small electrical current that would trigger the flotation mechanism.

He clenched his teeth and yanked. Nothing happened. He tried several more times, but it was no use. The manual trigger failed to activate.

Kane watched these fruitless attempts with growing apprehension. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Zavala’s hand dropped from the manual switch. He stared into space, letting his mind’s eye travel through the workings of the flotation system. His gaze wandered to the window.

He flicked the searchlight on and was puzzled when he didn’t see a glimmer. He moved closer to the window. Sliding a flashlight from its wall rack, he pointed the light out the window, cupping his eyes to prevent reflection. The light failed to penetrate the darkness.

He passed the flashlight to Kane. “Take a look.”

Kane peered through the porthole. “Hell, there’s black mud against the windows.”

“We came down hard. There’s nothing wrong with the system. The mud is blocking the flotation doors.”

Kane was silent for a time. When he did speak, it was almost in a whisper. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

Zavala reached out and gripped one of Kane’s wrists tightly. “Calm down, Doc,” he said evenly.

Their eyes locked for a second, and Kane said, “Sorry, Joe, your call.”

Zavala loosened his grip. “I don’t mean to sound casual. We’re in a tough spot, yes, but it’s far from hopeless. The folks on the Beebe must know something has happened, and they’ve got our position.”

“What good will that do if the cable is broken? They still have to haul us up somehow.”

“I’m sure Kurt will figure it out.”

Kane snorted. “Austin’s an impressive guy, but he’s not a miracle man.”

Zavala thought about the countless times Austin’s courage and resourcefulness had snatched them back from the edge of disaster.

“I’ve worked with Kurt for years, and he’s as close to a miracle worker as I’ve ever seen. If anyone can get us out of here, he can. We’ve got more than three hours of air and enough power to give us light and heat. Our biggest problems will be boredom and el bano.” He picked up a plastic bag. “This should take care of our sanitary needs. Since we’ve been thrown together by the fates, maybe we should know more about each other. Tell me about your work,” Zavala said.

Kane’s face lit up, and he seemed to forget his claustrophobic surroundings. “My specialty is the phylum Cnidaria, which includes the class commonly known as jellyfish. Many people don’t find jellyfish terribly exciting.”

“I think jellyfish are very exciting,” Zavala said. “I was zapped once by a Portuguese man-of-war. The encounter was extremely painful.”

“The man-of-war is not considered a ‘true’ jellyfish but rather a colony of different organisms living in symbiosis. The tentacles are equipped with thousands of nematocysts-the venom apparatus-and grow as long as sixty-five feet. Size isn’t everything, though. You’re lucky you didn’t encounter the little sea wasp. That critter’s string could have landed you in the morgue.”