“Hang tight,” Austin said. “We’re starting the winch.”
The bathysphere seemed to stabilize. The numbers on the fathometer blinked, showing that the sphere was moving up toward the surface. Kane broke into a relieved grin, but the expression on his face froze as the bathysphere jerked once more. A second later, the men in the B3 were levitating as if plunging on a runaway elevator.
The bathysphere had gone into free fall.
CHAPTER 7
AUSTIN LEANED AGAINST THE SHIP’S RAILING AND SAW THE B3’s tether cable oscillating like a plucked violin string. He spoke into the headset microphone that connected him with the bathysphere. “What’s going on, Joe? The cable is going crazy.”
Austin heard garbled voices, the words inaudible against a background of metallic clanging. Then the cable abruptly stopped its wild gyrations, and the line went dead.
Austin strained his ears. Nothing. Not even a whisper of static. He removed the headset and examined the connections. Everything was in place. He unclipped his belt radio and called the captain in the ship’s bridge.
“I’ve lost voice communication with the B3. Is the video transmission coming through?”
“Not since it was cut off,” the captain reported.
“Have you checked the redundant systems?” Austin asked.
Unlike the original bathysphere, which was connected to the surface with a single telephone line, the B3’s hauling cable incorporated several different communications routes in case one went out in the hostile deep-sea environment.
“Ditto, Kurt, nothing. All systems are out.”
A frown crossed Austin’s tanned face. It made no sense. If one system failed, another system should have taken over. Zavala had bragged that the instrumentation he’d designed for the B3 equaled that of a jetliner.
Austin instructed the crane operator to reel the cable in. As it slithered out of the water and around the drum, the operator’s voice came over Austin’s headset.
“Hey, Kurt, something’s wrong. There’s no weight resistance at the other end. The cable’s coming up too fast and easy. It’s like cranking a spinning reel after you’ve lost your fish.”
Austin asked the crane man to speed up the retrieval of the bathysphere, and the cable slinked from the sea at an even faster rate. The launch crew was pressed against the railing, silently watching the streaming cable. The NUMA film crew, sensing the tension in the air, had stopped filming.
“Almost at the surface,” the crane operator warned. “Heads up!”
The operator slowed the winch, but still the cable snapped like a bullwhip when it came out of the water, the bathysphere no longer attached. He swung the dangling cable over the ship and put the winch in reverse, letting several yards of the cable coil on the deck. Austin went over to the coil and picked up the end of the cable.
A cameraman standing nearby saw Austin holding the free end of the cable. “Damned thing snapped!” he said.
Austin knew that the cable could hold ten times the weight of the B3. He examined it closely. The strands were as even edged as the bristles of a paintbrush. He turned to the NUMA oceanographer who had chosen the dive site.
“Is there any feature down there, a coral ridge or overhang, that could have snagged the cable?” he asked.
“The bottom is as flat as an ironing board,” the oceanographer said, almost insulted at the question. “There’s a carpet of marine growth, but that’s it. Nothing but mud. That’s why we selected this spot. We did intensive bottom profiling before we made our recommendation.”
Watching from the bridge, Captain Gannon had seen Austin examining the cable. He hustled down to the deck, and he swore lustily when Austin showed him the sheared-off end. “What the hell happened?”
Austin shook his head. “I wish I knew.”
“The press boats have been calling in,” the captain said. “They want to know what happened to the video transmission.”
Austin scanned the cordon of encircling boats being kept away from the area by a Coast Guard patrol. “Tell them that there was a problem with the fiber-optic cable. We need time to figure this thing out.”
The captain called the bridge, relayed Austin’s suggestion, and snapped the radio back onto his belt.
“It’s going to be all right, isn’t it, Kurt?” Gannon asked with worry in his eyes. “The B3’s flotation bags will bring them to the surface, right?”
Austin squinted against the glare coming off the surface of the water. “The bathysphere is a long way down; let’s give it a while. But we should ready an ROV in case we need to take a look.”
Despite his apparent serenity, Austin knew that each passing minute diminished the possibility of a flotation-bag ascent. The bathysphere could rely on battery power for light, but its air would eventually peter out. He waited a few more minutes, then called the captain and recommended that they launch the ROV.