“Look,” he said, his voice hoarse and crackling. “This is a rough sea. If you’re staying out, get all the way out and shut the hatch or we’ll ship water and sink.”
The waves were pounding stronger than ever and the wind blew stinging spume off the whitecaps into my eyes. The ship’s lights were out and it was dusk. All the running and rigging lights should have been on, and the searchlights jabbing over the water, looking for us.
Nothing. Sea Messenger looked dead.
“I’m going to bring us closer to the ship,” Dave shouted. “And I’m closing the hatch, damn it!”
“All right,” I said. Reluctantly, I dropped down and dogged the top hatch. But I stayed in the tube, squeezing my back against the metal wall, still cold from the deep.
“I’m really all right,” Dave insisted, his voice hollow in the sphere. “I swear, I don’t know what happened.”
“You tried to kill us.”
“That can’t be right! I swear.”
I let it go. Dave moved over into my seat and tried to disengage the autopilot. There was something wrong, and at first it wouldn’t let him. He pulled up the touch pad and keyed in an override. The autopilot disengaged with a small chime.
Then Dave maneuvered with my stick.
The sub cut through the chop to avoid being overturned. We lurched like a bucket in a slow-motion paint shaker, with nauseating jerks and some rough slams. Standing in the tube in a rough sea could leave bruises for days. I climbed down into the sphere.
The sub bobbed up on a roller and we caught another glimpse of Sea Messenger. People ran along the upper deck toward the forecastle. The lights were still out. Another bob, and I saw a flash of brilliant yellow-orange near the stern, then five more, rapid.
“Did you see that?” I asked, as if once again Dave and I were partners trying to outguess the rest of the world.
“Muzzle flash,” he said. His face went gray. “What in hell?”
“How do we get on the ship if they won’t grab us?”
“We abandon the DSV, swim to the ship, and use the stern ramp. More than likely a wave will wash us up.”
“Or brain us,” I said.
Dave did not disagree. “There’s a diving platform on the port side—if they have it down in these seas, which isn’t likely. We need to be out of the water fast.”
That was important. Immersion in the icy waters for ten or fifteen minutes, even in our silvery thermal suits, could be deadly.
“It’s important we let them know what happened,” Dave said.
“That you went nuts down there?” My teeth chattered.
The pilot seemed to accede to this scenario. “Your brain is not in charge,” Dave said. He looked like a frightened little boy confessing something dire. “They can just ring you up and it’s all over.”
Dave Press’s mind was heading south, then north; he didn’t even know how to read the compass needle.
Abruptly, Sea Messenger lit up like a squid boat on parade: beacons, running lights. Broken ribbons of silver and red and green glinted off the waves. A searchlight beam swung out from the bridge through the moist air, and another switched on near the stern. They swept the water, then converged on Mary’s Triumph. Dave shielded his eyes.
“Somebody finally woke up,” he said. He wiped his face with his hands and stared at the palms, shaking his head forlornly. “That’s it for me. You coming?”
Dave pushed himself out of his seat and gave me a look as if he were going for coffee, did I want some, too?
“You can’t swim from here,” I said. Was that what he intended to do—abandon the sub and strike out for the mother ship? We were too far away, even for a strong swimmer, in this sea.
He grabbed an overhead bar and hauled himself upside down to the hatch, then, with expert grace striking in a plump guy, swung himself around and knelt on the third couch.
“So long,” he said. “Take my advice, for what it’s worth. Stay away from the telephone.”
Before I could react, he shinnied up the tube. I swore and went after him, but he was quick as a seal, out the hatch before I could grab an ankle.
That left me halfway in the tube, stuck at a precarious angle. My leg bent, and the sub lurched. For a moment, my upthrust knee jammed in the pipe and I couldn’t move. I struggled to drop back, and when that didn’t work, to crawl higher.
I had been tamped down like a cork in a bottle.
A wave washed in through the upper hatch and swamped me. Sputtering, I pressed on my thigh with both hands and shoved the knee down hard, painfully, past a welded steel join, then squirmed to grab a rung.
I poked up through the hatch. Twilight was leaving the western sky, a lovely orange fading into blue and then black. Stars filled the zenith, visible even through the spray from swooshing and bumping whitecaps.
Dave was nowhere to be seen. Another wave almost blinded me and spun the sub around. I palmed water from my eyes and blinked at the nightmare. The Sea Messenger had come about and was backing her screws two hundred yards to starboard, whipping the sea into dancing foam.
A flare shot up from the ship’s deck and arced over Mary’s Triumph. They knew where I was.
“Get Dave!” I shouted, and swung my arms over my head. “Man overboard!”
Another wave loomed, a greenie so high I could see the last of the daylight through it. It smashed over the sub’s tiny housing and slammed me against the metal lip. The hatch banged shut on my head and fingers. A bomb blast of pain brought on blind rage, and I slammed the hatch back once, caught it on the rebound, flung it back for a second bounce, and once more, with all my might.
Anger spent, fingers and head throbbing, I dropped and sealed the hatch. I wasn’t going to take any chances with the open sea. I trembled so hard I thought I’d vibrate around the inside of the sphere. For a moment I saw Dave in the water outside the sub, thrashing and drowning, but it was only a fat little twister of bubbles.
It was finished—I was going to die.
