Devil's Gate

Gamay maneuvered Rapunzel out of the ship, while Paul began to watch the monitor on his control panel.

“Take her up,” he said. “We need a bird’s-eye view.” Gamay nodded and had Rapunzel ascend. She rose vertically for a hundred feet, high enough to get a better view but still close enough that her lights and her low-light camera could make out the ship and the seafloor.

The avalanche had changed everything. The Kinjara Maru now rested on her side like a toy that’d been knocked over. The bow was almost buried in sediment, and the ground underneath was flatter and smoother. Gamay guessed that the avalanche had moved the ship a hundred yards or so.

“Any idea where we are?” she asked.

“We were headed to the bow,” he said. “No idea what happened after the landslide hit.” Gamay guided Rapunzel toward the bow of the ship and then out over the field of sediment. After ten minutes of up-and-back passes, neither she nor Paul had seen any sign of themselves.

In some corner of her mind, the oddness of the situation struck Gamay. How strange, she thought, to be consciously looking for yourself with no idea where you might be.

After another pass she asked. “You see anything?” “Nothing.”

The cables that were signaling Rapunzel and receiving her signal had to be sticking out, but a foot or two of cable would be hard to spot on a seafloor now littered with debris.

Still lying on her back, Gamay started Rapunzel on another pass. As she did, the touch of icy water reached her elbow. She lifted the visor for a second. A small pool was forming beside her, maybe two tablespoons’ worth. The drip was coming faster.

She pulled the visor back down. They had to hurry.

“Maybe if you were closer to the seafloor,” Paul said.

It would increase the resolution but narrow the field of view, the difference between looking for a contact lens that had fallen out of your eye from a standing position or crawling around on the floor, scanning the tile inch by inch. She didn’t think they had that much time.

“I’m taking her higher,” she said.

“But we can barely see as it is.” “Blow some of the air,” she said.

Paul did not immediately answer.

“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Even if they didn’t hear us, the Matador knows were in trouble. They’ll have ROVs down here pretty soon.” “It will help us,” she said.

Still, he hesitated.

“Even if they send ROVs, they’re going to need to know where we are,” she said.

“Okay,” he said finally, perhaps responding to the desperation in her voice, perhaps realizing that she was right.

“Get Rapunzel to whatever depth you think is best,” he added. “Tell me when, and I’ll vent the cylinder we’ve been drawing off of. It’s half empty.” Gamay guided Rapunzel back out over the sunken freighter’s bow and let her rise to the very brink of visibility. It gave them the widest field of view.

“Ready,” she said.

Paul turned a lever and locked it. With his other hand he reached over and pressed the emergency vent switch. There was a hiss of air through the lines, the sound of bubbles exploding and then turbulent water churning. It lasted for about fifteen seconds and then slowly waned. The silence that followed was eerie.

“Do you see anything?” he asked.

Gamay was guiding Rapunzel forward, turning her head left and right, looking for what should have been a telltale rush of bubbles catching the light. It should have been easy to see and unmistakable, but neither she nor Paul caught it.

“It has to be there.” “I don’t see anything,” Paul said “Vent another bottle,” she said.

He shook his head. “Two cylinders is a quarter of our air.” “It’s not going to matter,” she said.

“Of course it matters. If we’re buried, it’s going to take a while for them to dig us out. I don’t want to suffocate while they’re still digging.” For the first time she heard real stress in his voice. So far, he’d been business as usual. The strong, silent Paul she knew. Perhaps that was for her. Perhaps he was as afraid as she was. She had to tell him the truth.

“We’re leaking back here,” she said.

Silence first, and then, “Leaking?” She nodded.

“How bad?”

“Not bad yet,” she said. “But we’re not going to last long enough to worry about the air.” He stared at her for a moment and then finally nodded his agreement. “Tell me when.” She pulled the visor back down and brought Rapunzel back to the bow of the freighter. This time, she picked the port side to scan.

“Okay,” she said.

Paul turned the lever on cylinder number 2, locked it, and vented the second air tank. The turbulent sound of escaping air shook the Grouper again, and Gamay strained her eyes looking for any sign of it. She turned, stared, and turned again.

Nothing. Nothing in any direction.

A new fear crept in. What if they weren’t near the bow at all? What if the avalanche had swung the Kinjara Maru around or taken them so far from the ship that they’d be virtually impossible to find? The freighter could even be sitting on top of them at this point.

The view screens in front of her eyes flickered and shook. For a second she feared that they were about to lose the video feed. But then the screens stabilized except for one area near the very top. Something was distorting the camera’s picture.

She hoped it wasn’t a crack in the glass, which would be as fatal to Rapunzel as the leak in the Grouper’s side would soon be to them. But the camera continued to operate, and Gamay realized the distortion wasn’t a crack. It was caused by something else: a bubble that had been caught on the lens.

She played back the video of the flicker and slowed it down. Sure enough, it was a rush of bubbles passing by Rapunzel. She rotated the small ROV to look straight down. There, almost directly below, sat the oblong shape of the Grouper. Not buried, as they’d suspected, but planted facedown in the silt, with metal debris from the Kinjara Maru piled on top.

Paul saw it too. “Have I mentioned how much I love my wife?” he said excitedly.

“I love you too,” she said, already guiding Rapunzel down toward them.

“Does Rapunzel have a cutting torch?” She nodded, and as the small robotic machine reached them Gamay snapped the acetylene torch on and began slicing through one of the metal beams that had landed on top of the Grouper.

The torch burned through the beam in two minutes flat. It broke in half and fell away with a resounding clang. The Grouper, now at full upward buoyancy, shifted as the weight was released.

It felt as if the little sub was trying to float free. But something still held them.

“You see the cables near our tail?” Paul asked. “Were tangled in them.” Gamay saw the cables, maneuvered Rapunzel one more time, and brought the torch to bear. This section of debris was lighter but more cumbersome. As Rapunzel’s torch cut through each length of steel cable, she had to pull them away to keep them from entangling the Grouper again.

As the last section of cable was dragged away, the Grouper twisted and began to rise. Sliding through the rest of the loose debris, it moved upward.

Inside, it sounded like metal garbage cans being knocked about in the middle of the night. But as the last clang died away and strands of cable slid off them with a scraping sound, they were free.

“We’re ascending,” Paul shouted.

Gamay put Rapunzel into auto surface mode and flipped her visor up.

To see water streaming past the view port instead of a pile of sand and silt was beautiful. To feel the vertical acceleration as the little sub rose was intoxicating.