Medusa

“I didn’t consider myself lucky at the time,” Zavala said as he recalled the burning sting. “What’s the focus of your research?”

“My lab has been looking into ocean biomedicine. We think the ocean will be the most important future source of pharmaceutical compounds.”

“Like the Amazon rain forest?”

“There’s been a lot of interest in the Amazon, but we think the ocean will far surpass anything that’s been found in the jungle.”

“You’re talking jellyfish instead of jaguars?”

“There are more similarities than differences between the land and the sea. Take curare, for instance. The Amazon Indians used it as a paralyzing poison on their arrow tips, but its muscle-relaxant properties make it useful as a medicine.”

“And you see similar potential for jellyfish?”

“That and more. Jellyfish, squid, octopi, snails-seemingly simple creatures with complex systems for feeding and defense.”

“What sort of work were you doing in the Pacific Ocean?” Zavala asked.

“I was working on a project that could affect every man, woman, and child on this planet.”

“Now you’ve really got my attention. Tell me more.”

“Can’t,” Kane said, “top secret. I’ve already said too much. If I told you more, I’d have to kill you.”

He realized the absurdity of his threat, given their dire circumstances, and began to giggle uncontrollably. Zavala choked back his laughter. “Laughing uses up too much oxygen.”

Kane became serious again. “Do you really think Austin is going to come to our rescue?”

“He’s never failed before.”

Kane pretended he was zipping his mouth shut. “Then the nature of our work will have to remain classified in case there is a slim chance that we’ll get out of this damned hollow steel ball.”

Zavala laughed softly. “I guess your romance with Beebe’s world is over.”

Kane managed to eke out a smile. “Your turn, Joe. Tell me how you came to NUMA.”

“Admiral Sandecker hired me right out of college. He needed a good mechanic.”

Zavala was being typically modest. The son of Mexican immigrants, he had graduated from New York Maritime College with a degree in marine engineering. He had a brilliant mechanical mind and expertise in every known kind of propulsion, able to repair, modify, or restore any engine-automobile, ship, aircraft-be it steam, diesel, or electric.

Sandecker had heard reports about the bright young student and recruited him before he received his diploma. He was NUMA’s top submersible designer of manned and unmanned vehicles. And he was a skilled aircraft pilot as well.

“You make it sound like NUMA hired you to change tires in the agency’s motor pool,” Kane said. He glanced around the interior of the bathysphere. “We wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for the modifications you installed in the B3.”

Zavala shrugged. Despite his reassurances, he knew that their rescue was problematic. Using less air would only prolong the inevitable. He glanced at the display panel: slightly more than two hours of air left. Sleepy from the effects of stale atmosphere, he closed his eyes and tried not to think about the air supply ebbing away.

CHAPTER 9

ONCE AGAIN, AUSTIN WATCHED, TIGHT-LIPPED, AS THE dripping tether snaked from the ocean without its payload. He swore a sailor’s oath at the loss of the ROV, and called the captain in the bridge.

“The ROV cable’s been sheared off just like the bathysphere’s,” Austin said. “Looks like someone worked it over with a pair of hedge clippers.”

“This is crazy!” Captain Gannon said. He calmed down, and asked, “Should I send down another ROV?”

“Hold off for now,” Austin said. “I need a couple of minutes to think this through.”

Austin stared at the heaving sapphire surface of the sea. He pushed aside thoughts of the two men locked into a steel ball half a mile below the ship’s hull and focused on the retrieval of the bathysphere as a salvage problem. His nimble mind began to formulate a rescue plan and assemble the equipment he would need to carry it out.

He called the captain back. “I’ve got an idea, but I’ll need your help.”

“Tell me what you want and it’s yours, Kurt.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll meet you in the machine shop.”

The Beebe’s machine shop, below the main deck, was a vital component of the ship’s operation. A research vessel is basically a platform that allows scientists to plumb the depths with instruments or underwater vehicles. Powerful ocean forces constantly battered the vessel. The Beebe’s shop kept the ship operational with a crew of only three, including the chief mechanic, and an array of tools to cut, grind, turn, mold, mill, and press.

Austin had until then kept the shop busy tending to the specialized needs posed by the bathysphere’s launch. As project director, he had developed a close professional relationship with the chief machinist, a burly, troll-like man named Hank, who liked to wrap up a project with the words, “Good enough for government work.”

Hank must have heard about the B3 because he greeted Austin with a somber face. “What can I do to help, Kurt?”

Austin unfolded the diagram of the B3 and spread it out on a table. He pointed to the horseshoe-shaped metal swivel that joined the cable to the top of the sphere.

“I need to snag the bathysphere here.” Austin sketched out a hook attached to the end of a cable and showed it to Hank. “Can you put this setup together in less than an hour?”

“Forty-five minutes, tops,” Hank said. “I’ll splice the cable to a spare hook. But, I’ll be honest, I can’t give you something that is likely to last for the half-mile haul back up to the surface.”

“I’m only interested in the first ten or twenty feet,” Austin said. “Once the B3 is clear of the muck, it can trigger its own flotation system.”

“Getting the hook attached to the swivel is going to be tough at this depth,” Gannon said. “The gap between the swivel and the top of the B3 is only a few inches.” He held his thumb and forefinger up. “Like trying to snag something this size from a helicopter half a mile in the air. It would be almost impossible, in my opinion.”

“I disagree,” Austin said. “It would be absolutely impossible. That’s why I’m not going to do it from the surface.”

“How are you . . . ?”A thoughtful look came to the captain’s face. “Bubbles?”

“Why not? She’s been tested to five thousand feet.”

“But . . .”

“Let’s talk about it in the control van,” Austin said.

The box-shaped, twenty-foot-long atmospheric-diving-suit control van was next to the ship’s garage, where the ship’s underwater vehicles and other deep-ocean hardware were housed. The van had a console that was separate from the controls for the ship’s submersibles, and it had a workshop where Bubbles was stored.

Austin and Gannon stood in front of a puffy-limbed, anthropomorphic metal figure that resembled the Michelin man. The transparent dome capping the figure could have come from a bubblegum dispenser.

Bubbles’s technical name was atmospheric diving suit, or ADS, but it was considered an anthropomorphic submersible. A diver using the ADS could go to great depths without having to worry about the killing water pressure or the need to decompress. The bulky life-support system on the back of the aluminum body, or hull as it was known, could sustain the pilot for six to eight hours, or for more time in an emergency.

Bubbles was an experimental ADS owned by the U.S. Navy. It was a successor to the Hardsuit 2000, which had been developed for submarine rescue. The research vessel was transporting Bubbles as a courtesy, then rendezvousing with a Navy ship near Bermuda after the B3 expedition.

Gannon stood with his hands on his hips, vigorously shaking his head.