display in the Operations Center-with archaeological precision.”
“Found anything yet?”
Rush shook his head.
“And how much of the Grid have you explored so far?”
“Forty-five percent,” Valentino replied. “By tonight, Madonna willing, fifty percent.”
“That’s fast work,” Logan said. “I had assumed-”
He was interrupted by a loud voice over the radio. “This is Echo Bravo. There’s a problem with my regulator.”
“Check the purge valve,” the man at the radio said.
“I did. Nothing.”
Logan glanced quickly at Rush.
“It’s probably nothing,” the doctor said. “As you can imagine, diving in these conditions is tough on equipment. In any case, the respirators are designed to fail open-even if one malfunctions it will keep delivering air.”
“Echo Bravo to base,” came the voice. “I’m not getting air!”
Immediately, Valentino walked over to the radio and took the handset himself. “This is Valentino. Use your backup second stage.”
“I am! I am! I’m getting nothing. I think the dust cap is blocked!” Even over the radio, the panic in the man’s voice was evident.
“Romeo Foxtrot,” Valentino said into the radio, “do you see Echo Bravo? His regulator’s malfunctioning and his octopus is apparently detached. You need to share air. Do you see him? Over!”
“Romeo Foxtrot here,” came the other amplified voice. “No sign of him. I think he’s purging, heading topside-”
“Oh, Christ,” said Rush. “Forsythe is panicking. Forgetting the rules.” He turned to the nurse. “Get a crash cart and an emergency team here-right now. And bring the water seal.”
“What’s the problem?” Logan asked.
“If he remembers his basic training, nothing. But if he panics, holds his breath as he surfaces…” Rush fell silent a moment. “For every thirty-three feet you descend, the air in your lungs loses half its volume to pressure. They were at thirty-five feet at last report. If he surfaces with all that air in him-”
“It will expand to twice its size,” Logan said.
“And rupture his lungs.” Grim faced, Rush hurried to the medical station, where the nurse was talking rapidly into a phone.
10
They gathered around the dark, yawning circle of the Maw: tense, tight-lipped. At Valentino’s clipped order, additional lights were snapped on overhead, throwing the shivering, quaking surface below into sharp relief. As Logan stared down at it, it seemed to him that the Sudd was a living thing, its brownish surface the skin of some vast beast, and that their perching on it like this was an act of monumental folly…
And then one of the cables leading down into the mire jerked spasmodically, and a strange gargling noise sounded over the radio.
Valentino ran back to the transmitting station. “Echo Bravo? Echo Bravo! ”
“Romeo Foxtrot here,” came the disembodied voice. “Still no sign of him. It’s black as hell down here, can’t see a thing-”
With a clatter, two white-clad medics appeared at the entrance to Yellow, each pushing large carts full of medical equipment.
There was another jerk on the cable as the radio sounded again. “Romeo Foxtrot to base, I see him. I’ve got hold of him. Surfacing now.”
Suddenly, the mottled surface of water and decayed vegetation began to churn and heave. A moment later, a black-gloved hand abruptly broke the surface, grasping a rung of one of the ladders. This was followed by a neoprene hood and mask. Despite the air of crisis, Logan was momentarily arrested by the strangeness of the image: the emerging diver seemed like an insect, struggling to break free from some primordial ooze.
Beside him, Dr. Rush had been waiting, tense and silent, like a coiled spring. Now he dashed forward and- with the help of one of the medical technicians-began to free the man from the Sudd’s grip. The diver had his arm around a second neoprene-clad man, who was struggling weakly. The two were pulled up out of the Maw and onto the floor of the Staging Area. Both were covered head to foot with matter the consistency of oatmeal. The room suddenly reeked of decay and dead fish.
“Hose them down,” Valentino ordered.
But even as a team rushed to blast the muck from the divers, Dr. Rush was shifting the injured man to a waiting stretcher. He plucked the mask and hood from his face, then-with a scalpel-slashed the neoprene suit open from neck to navel. The man moaned and thrashed on the stretcher, bloody foam flecking his lips.
Quickly, Rush placed a stethoscope on the man’s bare chest.
“He panicked,” the other diver said as he came over, wiping his face and hair with a towel. “A rookie mistake. But diving in that shit, you forget-”
Rush raised a hand for silence. He moved the stethoscope around the chest, listening. His movements were jerky, almost violent. Then he straightened. “Extravasation of air,” he said. “Resulting in pneumothorax.”
“Doctor,” said the nurse, “we can take him to Medical, where the-”
“There’s no time!” Rush snapped as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The man on the stretcher twitched, clawing at his throat, gargling inarticulately.
Rush turned toward the medics. “A needle aspiration would be insufficient. Our only option is a thoracoscopy. Give me the chest tube, stat!”
Logan looked on with mingled surprise and apprehension. Up to this point, Ethan Rush had been the epitome of calm assurance. But this-the sudden, almost frantic movements, the impatience and barked orders-was a Rush he had not seen before.
While one of the medics turned to his crash cart, Rush swabbed an area beneath the diver’s left arm with iodine and a topical anesthetic, and then-with another swipe of the scalpel-made a two-inch incision between the ribs. “Hurry up with that chest tube!” he said over his shoulder.
The medic brought it over, unwrapping it from the sterile covering. Rush knelt before the struggling man and carefully threaded it into the incision he had made. He checked the placement, grunted, then rose.
“Chest drain,” he rapped.
Another medic trotted over, pushing a floor stand that held a white-and-blue plastic device that, to Logan, looked like a blood-pressure monitor on steroids. It had several vertical gauges, and two clear plastic tubes led away from its upper housing.
“Suction-control stopcock?” Rush barked.
“On.”
“Fill water seal to two millimeters.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
As the medic added water to the device, Logan saw the reservoir chamber turn blue. Meanwhile, Rush attached one of the plastic tubes to the line inserted into the injured diver’s chest. Logan glanced over at the diver: his struggles were weaker now, his movements erratic.
“Catheter in place,” Rush said. “Initiating suction. Setting pressure at minus twenty cm H 2 O.” He snapped a switch on the device, then began turning a stopcock on the unit’s housing. Instantly, the liquid in the suction control chamber began to bubble. Rush turned the stopcock farther; the bubbling increased. The tube leading from the incision in the diver’s side began to fill with mingled water and blood.
“If we can get the fluid out of the thoracic cavity quickly enough, the lungs might reinflate,” Rush told the medical tech. “There’s no time to operate.”
The large room fell silent except for the hum of the machine and the bubbling of water draining from the
