Crush Depth

Ilse paused to rub her tired eyes. She stood for a minute and stretched, to get the kinks out of her back. She glanced longingly at her neatly made bunk, the middle one, under Kathy’s — the bottom one in the three-man stateroom was crammed with boxed supplies for the ship’s office, since every cubic inch of spare space inside Challenger’s hull was needed for storage.

Ilse sat down again. She knew she really ought to turn in and get some rest. But late-night hard work disguised her chronic insomnia… and insomnia held back the awful dreams. Ilse tried to look on the bright side.

Only another day and I’m off. It’ll be good to get away from Jeffrey and the ship. I never expected that being here would be so awkward for me now.

At least I get to do something interesting and fun, well behind friendly lines, in a supporting role for a change. I’ve had enough of being packed off with Jeffrey Fuller and the SEALs, to get shot at with bullets and nuclear torpedoes.

Chatham Island. A quaint English country village, lost on a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, in the middle of bloody nowhere. A thousand people, two hundred thousand sheep, and a minor link in the SOSUS system. Who’d ever launch atomic bombs at us?

On Voortrekker’s minisub

Van Gelder held the minisub at fifty meters depth, where the surface wave effects were gentler. By now he was drenched in sweat as well as the saline laced with another man’s blood. Diver Two was finishing on the bottom, packing away equipment and erasing the last traces that Kampfschwimmer had ever been there. The black boxes that hacked the Allied SOSUS were well concealed in the ooze, buried under the feeder line to which they were attached. So far, the false data seemed to be working — Van Gelder saw no immediate sign on the mini’s sonars that the enemy knew they were there.

Van Gelder watched Diver Two on the image from the bottom camera. Van Gelder was glad that Diver Two was unable to speak from below. He didn’t want to hear the fear and grief in the man’s voice, because it would remind him of his own. The loss of a diver always traumatized the whole team. Van Gelder knew this, but to be involved firsthand was a very hard blow. When Diver Two moved close enough to the camera, Van Gelder could see his facial features, obviously distraught. At least with his head in the helmet surrounded by fluid, it wouldn’t show if he was shedding tears. It must be horribly lonely, to be so alone down there — to have no choice but keep working, following fixed procedures step by step, despite whatever emotions tore you apart inside.

Diver Two attached the last of his things to the lift cable. He switched off the floodlight, and the scene darkened with sudden finality.

Now the diver worked by feel. In a few moments the camera switched to active laser line-scan mode. The crisp black-and-white picture showed he’d entered the personnel-transfer pressure capsule, and brought the camera in with him. This way the minisub would maintain full communications as the lift cable brought up the man, with his equipment and the empty second capsule. The pressure capsule would keep Diver Two immersed at six hundred atmospheres, to avoid the horrible uncontrolled decompression effects that had killed his buddy. The capsule, still pressurized, would be loaded into the mini, and then brought back to Voortrekker. Once there, a proper decompression schedule would be used. Dialysis would remove metabolic wastes directly from Diver Two’s blood, since it was impossible to urinate or defecate until he could leave the transfer capsule many long hours from now.

“Ready for lift,” Diver Two typed.

“Lifting now,” Bauer answered. He flicked a switch. Van Gelder fought his controls as the lengthy cable began to reel in. This process started new forces, which buffeted the mini.

“Don’t resist it,” Bauer told Van Gelder. “Let us drift when you can. Don’t overstress the winch. Just watch out for our crush depth.”

Van Gelder concentrated hard. He could tell the storm topside was strengthening, because the surface wave effects were getting worse.

The mini dipped unpredictably. Van Gelder shoved the throttle forward, using full speed ahead on the propeller to keep from being pulled too deep. He was sweating heavily now — this was the most difficult piloting job he’d ever faced. The steel mini had nowhere near Voortrekker’s depth capability. If he wasn’t careful, they’d all pay the same price as Diver One but in the opposite manner: an implosion. The minisub’s hull creaked.

The drag effects of the cable began to die down, as the bulk of the line was wound around the silent hydraulic winch reel. Van Gelder tried to relax. On sonar he heard the sound of a sperm whale feeding.

Unexpectedly, currents and drag once more took charge of the lift cable, with all the equipment and capsules — and Diver Two — dangling at its end. Van Gelder realized what must be happening. A deep-ocean storm front, an undersea current related to the surface tempest, was fast moving in.

From the increased resistance and shearing forces, the winch cable suddenly jammed. The mini was much too deep now for Draeger divers to go out and fix it. The mini began to be pulled down even more.

Van Gelder took drastic steps. Flank speed did no good. Pumping out the safety tank, to get more buoyancy, did no good. Van Gelder watched the depth meter as it ran into the warning zone, and then the danger zone. The mini’s hull creaked again.

Bauer, tight-lipped, said, “Do something.” An implosion would be so noisy it could be heard easily on the next line of the Allied SOSUS grid, which still received real data.

Van Gelder tilted the mini’s nose steeply toward the surface, and used his propeller and all his side thrusters to get the greatest force possible aimed straight up. His own weight fell against the back of his seat. His legs were higher than his head, and blood rushed to his brain. He began to have a red-out.

The mini was pulled down more, by the slow but powerful storm current. The hull creaked even louder. Van Gelder reached for his last resort, the emergency blow handles. Even these might not be enough. Even if they were, the noise would be deafening, and the mini would bob to the surface like a cork, in plain view of enemy lookouts and radar. He began to think the unthinkable — that he would have to dump the cable winch and abandon Diver Two.

At the last second the propeller began to bite against the down-force, and the mini started to drive toward shallower depth. Van Gelder leveled off. But the winch reel still was jammed. The end of the line, with Diver Two in his capsule, was stuck down at a crushing one thousand meters.

“We have to get the cable freed,” Bauer said. The chief and his man prepared to make another diving sortie. Van Gelder forced the minisub as shallow as he dared to go, without broaching in the heavy seas. The two Kampfschwimmer locked out through the sphere. They went to work on the winch towed behind the minisub. On sonar, the sperm whale was much closer now. The clicking noises the whale made sounded angry.

There was a hard jerk against the cable, jarring the minisub badly. Abruptly, the jerking stopped.

“You’ve got to hold us level and still,” Bauer said.

“I know.” If the chief and his assistant couldn’t fix the winch, and they couldn’t improvise a different way to lift Diver Two that last kilometer against the strong deep undertow, Two might yet need to be abandoned to his fate — a slow and horrible death.

“What’s wrong?” Diver Two typed.

“Just a surface storm,” Bauer said. “We’ll have you up in a moment.” He eyed the diver’s vital signs — Van Gelder could see the man was alarmed. “Let me look at you,” Bauer said into the mike.

Diver Two held the camera toward his face. Van Gelder watched him open and close his mouth, breathing fluid instead of air, more rapidly than he should.

The cable jerked again, and the camera was jostled from Diver Two’s hands.

“Something out there,” Diver Two typed. He retrieved the camera and aimed it out the viewport of his capsule, still in laser line-scan mode. Van Gelder saw a huge tentacle wave by, covered with suction pads larger than a man’s head. Then Van Gelder caught a glimpse of a very large fin.

It’s a giant squid, Van Gelder realized, attracted or confused by the commotion. They live here, south of New Zealand, in very deep water. Sperm whales eat them. That fin was the sperm whale’s fin. The squid and the whale were fighting, and both were as long and heavy as the minisub itself. Diver Two was caught in the middle, defenseless.

Bauer signaled to the chief outside to hurry fixing the winch. The mini jerked again. Turbulence thrown by the squid and whale in mortal combat was jarring against the lift cable, and shaking all the gear at its end. Sometimes