Medusa

tops.

The rugged research vessel had been built to take the worst kind of weather imaginable, but retrieving the bathysphere and an exhausted Hardsuit diver would have been delicate operations even without dicey conditions.

Gannon had moved the ship back from the bathysphere’s last known position to give the B3 room to surface. The starboard crane was still hauling up the Hardsuit, and Austin would not appreciate being dragged all over the ocean, so the ship could only move a short distance.

If anyone can survive this ordeal, the captain thought, it would be Austin. Hell, the man’s a perpetual-motion machine!

Having dived a half mile to the bottom of the ocean to free the bathysphere, Austin was keeping in constant touch with the ship, reporting his ascent to the bridge at regular intervals, relaying vivid descriptions of the sea life he observed.

Lookouts lined the railings or were gathered on the bow and fantail. A Zodiac inflatable boat sat on the slanting stern ramp under the A-frame. Two divers in neoprene wetsuits were perched on the pontoons waiting for the signal to push the Zodiac into the water.

The diesels rumbled in the engine room, waves slapped against the hull, and the rising wind thrummed through the rigging. But otherwise, an eerie stillness had descended over the ship.

The quiet was broken by a lookout yelling over the bridge intercom.

“She’s up!”

Keeping his eyes glued to the newly formed patch of foam a hundred yards to port, Gannon picked up his microphone and gave the command to launch.

The divers pushed the Zodiac down the stern ramp and clambered in. It leaped over the waves as its powerful outboard motor kicked in, curving around to the side of the ship, slip-sliding over the seas, trailing the retrieval line behind it like a prehensile tail.

The Zodiac slowed to a wallowing stop near six wave-slicked orange mounds that had bobbed to the surface. The cabled hook at the end of the line was lowered into the water, and one of the divers slid off the Zodiac and disappeared beneath the waves.

Every eye on the ship watched the drama play out. When the diver popped to the surface and pumped his fist in the air, a loud cheer went up. The B3 was hooked. Winches pulled the bathysphere and its flotation air bags slowly to the surface.

The recovery crew cut the air bags away, and the crane lifted the dripping bathysphere from the sea and onto the deck of the ship. A power wrench burped, the lug nuts were quickly unscrewed, and the hatch cover clanged to the deck.

The ship’s medic stuck her head through the hatch opening and saw a rumpled pile of blankets surrounded by a loose assortment of equipment.

“Hello,” she said in a tentative voice.

Zavala pulled back the corner of the blanket and blinked his eyes against the light. He smiled.

“Hello yourself,” he said.

AUSTIN WAS STILL ON his way to the surface when Gannon called and said the bathysphere was back on board. Austin asked how Joe and Doc were doing.

“I’ve seen dead eels with more life to them,” the captain said. “But the medic says they’re suffering from the - shuns: dehydrashun, air deprivashun, and exhaustshun.”

Austin let out a groan that the captain could have heard without the need for a fiber-optic connection.

“Captain, you’re a cruel man.”

“They’ll be fine,” Gannon said with a chuckle. “They just need water and rest. I’ve notified the press that the B3 recovery was a success. No details for now, but someone on one of their boats or in a chopper must have figured out we were having problems. I’m going to have to explain what happened eventually. I’ll deal with that later . . . How about you?”

“Anxious to get out of this tin suit, but feeling good otherwise. One request, though: the classical music you’re piping down here is putting me to sleep. Got anything livelier?”

Minutes later, Austin was listening to Mick Jagger belting out “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

He smiled in full agreement with the sentiment of the Rolling Stones song, that if you try some time, you can get what you need . . . especially if you have friends.

THE B3’S PASSENGERS had been rushed into sick bay, laid out on examination tables, stripped of their evil- smelling clothes, treated for bumps and bruises, and given a rubdown to get their circulation going again. Then the medic buried them under piles of blankets and let them sleep.

When Joe Zavala awoke, the first thing he saw was Kurt Austin’s face.

“Guess I’m not in heaven,” Zavala croaked.

Austin held up a round, brown glass bottle with a wooden screw cap.

Tequila!

“Maybe you are,” he said.

Zavala’s lips parted in a cracked smile.

“A sight for sore eyes,” he said. “When did you get back on board?”

“They peeled me out of my suit around a half an hour ago,” Austin said. “Feel like telling me what happened?”

Zavala nodded.

“Let me warm my outside first,” he said, “then I’ll warm my inside.”

It took fifteen minutes under the hottest shower he could stand before warmth finally seeped into Zavala’s bones. Austin handed him a plastic cup of tequila through the shower-stall door, then went to his cabin, showered, and changed.

By the time Austin returned, Zavala had put on some clothes that Austin had left for him and was sitting in a chair sipping tequila. Austin helped him walk to the mess hall and ordered two pastramis on rye.

They devoured their sandwiches, then Zavala closed his eyes and sat back in his chair.

“That may be the best meal I’ve ever had,” he said.

“I’ll refill your cup if you tell me what happened with the bathysphere,” Austin said.

Zavala held his cup out. The tequila helped loosen his tongue, and he described the harrowing plunge to the bottom of the ocean and the problem activating the flotation bags.

“I still can’t figure out how that cable snapped,” Zavala said with a shake of the head.

“It didn’t snap,” Austin said.

Austin opened the case he’d brought with him and extracted a laptop, which he set on the table. He showed Zavala the video the Hardsuit camera had filmed of his encounter with the AUV.

Zavala uttered an appreciative Ole! as Austin dodged the deadly pincers. When the video ended with Austin disabling the AUV, Zavala said, “Nice work, but don’t quit your day job to become a matador.”

“I don’t intend to,” Austin said. “Bullfighting technique aside, how hard would it be to program an AUV to cut the bathysphere’s cable?”

“Not hard at all, Kurt, but it would take some sophistication to build the AUV in the first place. It’s a slick piece of engineering. Very agile. Learns from its mistakes and is quick to adjust. Too bad you had to mess it up.”

“You’re right, Joe. I should have let it kill me, but I was having a bad-hair day.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Zavala said.

“Any idea where it might have come from?” Austin asked.

“There were at least two dozen boats watching the bathysphere dive. That hungry critter could have been launched from any one of them. Why do you think it attacked you after scuttling the B3?”

“Nothing personal. I think I was what the military likes to call collateral damage.” He pointed at the screen. “Someone sicced Fido there on the bathysphere. It went for me because I happened to be in the neighborhood.”