over my head.
Twelve
As I went under I jack-knifed to dive deeper, keeping a lookout for Katherine. I saw her, but to my horrified astonishment she was going up again -- right to the surface. I twisted in the water and went after her, wondering what the hell she thought she was doing, and grabbed her just before she broke into the air.
Then I saw what was wrong. The mask had been ripped from her head, probably by impact with the water, and the airline was inextricably tangled and wound among the bottles on her back in such a position that it was impossible for her to even touch it. She was fast running out of air, but she kept her head, and let it dribble evenly and slowly from her mouth just as she had done when I surprised her in Fallon's swimming pool back in Mexico City. She didn't even panic when I grabbed her, but let me pull her under water to the side of the cenote.
We broke into air and she gasped. I spat out my mouthpiece and disentangled her airline, and she paused before putting the mask on. 'Thanks!' she said. 'But isn't it dangerous here?'
We were right at the side of the cenote nearest the hill and protected from plunging fire by the sheer wall of the cenote. but if anyone got past Fallon we'd be sitting ducks. I said, 'Swim under water for the shot line, then wait for me. Don't worry about the shooting -- water is hard stuff -- it stops a bullet dead within six inches. You'll be all right if you're a couple of feet under; as safe as behind armour plate.'
She ducked under the water and vanished. I couldn't see her because of the dancing reflections and the ripple on the water caused by the driving wind, but the boys on the hillside evidently could because of the spurts of water that suddenly flicked in a line. I hoped I was right about that bit of folklore about bullets hitting water, and I breathed with relief as there was a surge of water at the raft as she went beneath it and was safe.
It was time for me to go. I went down and swam for the raft, going down about four feet. I'll be damned if I didn't see a bullet dropping vertically through the water, its tip flattened by the impact. The folklore was right, after all.
I found her clinging to the shot line beneath the raft, and pointed downwards with my thumb. Obediently she dived, keeping one hand in contact with the rope, and I followed her. We went down to the sixty-five-foot level where a marker on the rope indicated that we were as deep as the cave, and we swam for it and surfaced inside with a deep sense of relief. Katherine bobbed up beside me and I helped her climb on to the ledge, then I switched on the light.
'We made it,' I said.
She took off her mask wearily. 'For how long?' she asked, and looked at me accusingly. 'You left Fallon to die; you abandoned him.'
'It was his own decision,' I said shortly. 'Switch off your valve; you're wasting air.'
She reached for it mechanically, and I turned my attention to the cave. It was fairly big and I judged the volume to be in excess of three thousand cubic feet -- we'd had to pump a hell of a lot of air into it from the surface to expel the water. At that depth the air was compressed to three atmospheres, therefore it contained three times as much oxygen as an equal volume at the surface, which was a help. But with every breath we were exhaling carbon dioxide and as the level of CO2 built up so we would get into trouble.
I rested for a while and watched the light reflect yellowly from the pile of gold plate at the further end of the ledge. The problem was simple; the solution less so. The longer we stayed down, the longer we would have to decompress on the way up -- but the bottles in the back-packs didn't hold enough air for lengthy decompression. At last I bent down and swished my mask in the water before putting it on.
Katherine sat up. 'Where are you going?'
'I won't be long,' I said. 'Just to the bottom of the cenote to find a way of stretching our stay here. You'll be all right -- just relax and take things easy.'
'Can I help?'
I debated that one, then said, 'No, You'll just use up air.
There's enough in the cave to keep us going, and I might need what you have in that bottle.'
She looked up at the light and shivered. 'I hope that doesn't go out. It's strange that it still works.'
The batteries topside are still full of juice,' I said. 'That's not so strange. Keep cheerful -- I wont be long.'
I donned my mask, slipped into the water and swam out of the cave, and then made for the bottom. I found one of our working lights and debated whether or not to switch it on because it could be seen from the surface. In the end I risked it -- there wasn't anything Gatt could do to get at me short of inventing a depth charge to blow me up, and I didn't think he could do that at short notice.
I was looking for the air cylinders Rudetsky and I had pushed off the raft and I found them spread out to hell and gone. Finding the manifold that had followed the cylinders was a bit more tricky but I discovered it under the coils of air hose that spread like a huge snake, and I smiled with satisfaction as I saw the spanner still tied to it by a loop of rope. Without that spanner I'd have been totally sunk.
Heaving the 'cylinders into one place was a labour fit for Hercules but I managed it at last and set about coupling up the manifold. Divers have very much the same problem of weightlessness as astronauts, and every time I tried to tighten a nut my body rotated around the cylinder in the other direction. I was down there nearly an hour but finally I got the cylinders attached to the manifold with all cocks open, and the hose on to the manifold outlet with the end valve closed. Now all the air in the cylinders was available on demand at the end of the hose.
I swam up to the cave, pulling the hose behind me, and popped up beside the ledge holding it triumphantly aloft. Katherine was sitting at the further end of the ledge, and when I said. 'Grab this!' she didn't do a damn thing but merely turned and looked at me.
I hoisted myself out of the water, holding the end of the hose with difficulty, and then hauled in a good length of it and anchored it by sitting on it. 'What's the matter with you?' I demanded.
She made no answer for some time, then said cheerlessly, 'I've been thinking about Fallon.'
'Oh!'
'Is that all you can say?' she asked with passion in her voice, but the sudden violence left her as soon as it
