Trojan Odyssey

lessons by the finest instructors, as was her brother Dirk. She became a creature of the sea, studying its inhabitants, its caprices and spirits. She came to understand it after swimming in its waters serene and blue. She also experienced its monumental power during a typhoon in the Pacific. But like a wife with a husband of twenty years who suddenly sees a man with a hateful and sadistic streak, she was witnessing firsthand just how cruel and malicious the sea could be.

Sitting in the front of Pisces, brother and sister stared up through the big transparent bubble at the boiling turmoil above. As the hurricane's outer rim slashed across Navidad Bank, the fury seemed remote and distant, but as its strength increased it soon became apparent that their cozy little habitat was in dire danger and ill-prepared to protect them.

The crests of the waves easily passed over them at their forty-foot depth, but soon the waves grew to towering dimensions, and when the troughs dropped down to the seabed, Dirk and Summer found the habitat completely exposed to the surface rain before the next sea swept over them.

Time after time Pisces was battered and buffeted by the unending march of the huge waves. The inner-space station was built to take the pressure of the deep and her steel shell had no problem in repelling the besieging waters. But the terrible force exerted on her outer surface soon began to move her across the bottom. The four support legs were not connected to a base. They sat individually embedded only a few inches in the coral. Only Pisces's sixty-five-ton mass kept the chamber from being lifted and hurled across the reef like an empty bottle.

Then the same pair of enormous waves that had buried Sea Sprite only twenty miles distant struck Navidad Bank, relentlessly crushing the coral and shattering its delicate infrastructure into millions of fragments. The first one pitched Pisces over on her side and sent her tumbling round and round like a barrel rolling across a rocky desert. Despite the occupants' attempts to hang on to anything solid, they were tossed about as if they were rag dolls in a blender.

The habitat was pitched and tossed for nearly two hundred yards before it came to rest, perched precariously on the edge of a narrow coral crevasse. Then the second monstrous wave struck and threw the habitat over the edge.

Pisces dropped one hundred and twenty feet to the floor of the crevasse, bumping and grinding against the coral walls during its fall, striking the bottom in a great explosion of sand particles. Pisces landed flat on its right side and lay wedged between the walls of the crevasse. Inside, everything that wasn't tied down had been thrown in a dozen different directions. Dishes, food supplies, dive equipment, bedding, personal clothing was strewn in mad confusion.

Ignoring the pain from a dozen bruises and a sprained ankle, Dirk immediately crawled to the side of his sister, who lay in a ball between the upended bunk beds. He looked into her wide gray eyes and for the first time since they were old enough to walk he saw sheer fright. He gently took her head in his hands and smiled tightly.

'How was that for a wild ride?'

She looked up into his face, saw the game smile and slowly breathed deeply as her fear subsided. 'During the chaos I kept thinking that we were born together and we would die together.'

'My sister the pessimist. We've got another seventy years to tease each other.' Then he asked with concern, 'Are you injured?'

She shook her head. 'I wedged myself under the bunks and wasn't bounced around as badly as you.' Then she looked outside the viewing bubble at the cauldron above. 'The habitat?'

'Still sound and leakproof. No wave, no matter how gigantic, could break up Pisces. She's got a four-inch steel skin.'

'The storm?'

'Still raging, but we'll be safe down here. The waves are passing over the canyon without causing turbulence.'

Her gaze swept the jumbled clutter. 'God, what a mess.'

Pleased that Summer had survived the ordeal without injury, Dirk made an inspection of the life-support systems while his sister began tackling the debris. There was no hope of putting everything back where it belonged, not with the habitat lying on its side. She simply stacked everything into neat piles and laid blankets over sharp protrusions from instruments, valves, gauges and systems mountings. Without a floor, they had to climb over it all to move around. She felt strange to be existing in an environment where everything was turned on a ninety-degree angle.

She felt more secure knowing they had survived up until now. The storm could no longer threaten them in their coral canyon with its steep walls. Down deep, there was no howling wind to hear, no beating wind when the trough of a wave exposed the chamber to the atmosphere. Her fear and suspense of what might happen next began to fade. They were safe until Sea Sprite braved the hurricane and returned. And there was the warmth and comfort of her brother, who had the courage and strength of their legendary father.

But the expression of confidence she had come to expect was not in his face when he came and sat on the wall beside her, favoring the bruises on his body that were turning black and blue.

'You look glum,' she said. 'What is it?'

'The fall into the crevasse tore off the lines connecting the air bottles to our life-support system. According to the air pressure gauges, the four tanks that were undamaged will supply us with only fourteen hours of air before they run dry.'

'What about the dive tanks we left in the entry lock?'

'Only one was left inside for a valve repair. It contains only enough to last the two of us for forty-five minutes at best.'

'We could use it to go outside and bring back the others,' Summer said hopefully. 'Then wait a day or two until the storm deteriorates before abandoning the habitat, and use our inflatable raft to drift on the surface until rescued.'

He shook his head solemnly. 'The bad news is we're trapped. The hatch on the entry lock is jammed against the coral. Nothing short of dynamite could force it open far enough for us to slip outside.'

Summer sighed very deeply and then said, 'It looks like our fate is in Captain Barnum's hands.'

'I'm sure we're still on his mind. He won't forget us.'

'He should be informed of our situation.'

Dirk straightened and put his hands on her shoulders. 'The radio was smashed when we plunged into the crevasse.'

'We could still release our homing device so they know we're alive,' she said hopefully.

His voice came in a soft, controlled tone. 'It was mounted on the side of the habitat that fell against the bottom. It must have been crushed. Even if it survived, there is no way to release it.'

'When they come looking for us,' she said tensely, 'they won't have an easy time finding us down here in the crevasse.'

'You can bet Barnum will send every boat and diver on board Sea Sprite to scour the reef.'

'You're talking as if we had enough air for days instead of hours.'

'Not to worry, sis,' Dirk said confidently. 'For the moment, we're safe and secure from the storm. The minute the sea flattens, the crew aboard Sea Sprite will come for us like a drunk after a case of Scotch that fell off a liquor truck.' Then he added, 'After all, we're their number one priority.'

12

AT that moment the Pisces and her two crew members were the last thing on Barnum's mind. Anxiously, he fidgeted in his chair as his gaze ceaselessly turned from the radar monitor to the windshield and back again. The titan-sized waves had dropped from gigantic to merely huge. Like clockwork they marched in formation against Sea Sprite, pitching her up and down in a continuous