Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

Zavala helped Kane sit up and handed him the canteen. He waited until Kane had slugged down a couple of gulps, then said, “What do you remember, Doc?”

Kane pursed his lips in thought. “I was looking out the window, broadcasting my observations.” He glanced at his headset.

“Don’t bother,” Zavala said. “The headsets don’t work.”

Kane’s face turned the color of oatmeal. “We’re not connected to the surface?”

“Temporarily . . . Keep talking.”

Kane took a deep breath. “We saw some kind of weird big fish or whale. Next, I remember heading for the moon. Then blotto. What about you?”

Zavala jerked a thumb upward. “Same scenario. I went airborne and slammed against the roof. I put my hand out to soften the blow, but all I got for the effort was a sore arm. Good thing I’ve got a hard head.”

“From the sounds of it, the cable probably slipped on the winch drum.”

Zavala said nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Kane said. “Why haven’t they winched us up by now?” He noticed that the bathysphere was perfectly still, and he seemed to catch his breath. “We’re not moving, Joe. What’s happened to us?”

Zavala wanted to avoid panic, but there was no sugarcoating their situation. “We seem to be sitting on the bottom, Doc.”

Kane looked at the instrument panel and saw that the systems were operating on batteries. “If we were still attached, we’d have power. Oh, hell! The cable must have snapped.”

“That’s almost impossible. And there could be other reasons for the breakdown. We’re talking about maintaining contact over a cable through more than a half mile of ocean. Remember Beebe comparing the bathysphere to a pea on a cobweb? No man-made system is flawless, but this isn’t the Titanic. Even if we were no longer connected to the surface, we’ve got other options.”

Kane brightened. “Duh, of course! Your flotation system.”

Zavala managed a smile. “What do you say we pop up to the Beebe lounge and mix a pitcher of margaritas?”

“What are we waiting for?” Kane was as ebullient as a condemned man given an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Zavala unclipped a nylon bag from the wall and asked Kane to clean up the cabin. Busywork would lift Kane’s spirits as well.

“The compressed-air tanks are in the center of the platform, and they feed into flotation bags that are stuffed into the skids,” Zavala explained. “When the GO switch is activated, doors open in the sides of skids, compressed air fills the bags instantly, and they lift us to the surface, where the ship can snag us.”

Kane rubbed his palms together in anticipation. “Margaritaville, here we come.”

Zavala slid over to the instrument panel. “Funny, isn’t it? We go through all sorts of trouble to get to the bottom of the sea, and, when we finally make it, we want to go home.”

“We can discuss the philosophical implications on the deck of the Beebe,” Kane said. “I’d be happy just to be able to stretch out my legs.”

Zavala turned his attention to a plastic box attached to the wall next to the instrument panel. He unsnapped the box’s cover to reveal a red button emblazoned with an arrow pointing up.

“This is a two-step process,” he explained. “This button arms the system, and that identical button on the control panel activates it. When I say go, you hit the switch, and I’ll do the same with mine. Then hold on. There’s a ten-second delay.”

Kane put his finger to the button Zavala had indicated. “Ready.”

“Go,” Zavala said.

Zavala had tested the escape system in a water tank and prepared himself for a muted bang and a whoosh, but nothing happened at the end of ten seconds. He told Kane to try again. Again, nothing happened. Zavala checked a troubleshooting display that would have indicated a system malfunction but saw nothing amiss.

“Why won’t it work?” Kane asked.

“Something must have gotten banged around when we hit bottom. Don’t worry, I programmed in a backup system.”

Zavala tapped a keypad to reroute the signal and told Kane to try again. Again, there was a failure to inflate. They would have to go with the manual switch. Zavala opened another plastic-covered panel and looped his fingers through a handle attached to a cable. Pulling the cable, he explained, would produce a small electrical current that would trigger the flotation mechanism.

He clenched his teeth and yanked. Nothing happened. He tried several more times, but it was no use. The manual trigger failed to activate.