Medusa (NUMA Files 8)

“Max Kane.”

She consulted a clipboard and put a check mark next to Kane’s name.

“Welcome to the Beebe, Dr. Kane. I’ll show you to your cabin and give you a tour of the ship.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ve come a long way and I’m anxious to see the B3.”

“No problem,” Marla said, leading Kane toward the ship’s fantail.

The two-hundred-fifty-foot-long search-and-survey ship was the marine equivalent of a professional weight lifter. With its stern-ramp A-frame crane and wide deck, the fantail was the business end of the ship. It bristled with the winches and derricks that scientists used to launch underwater vehicles and devices that probed the depths. Kane’s eyes went to a large tangerine-colored globe resting in a steel cradle beneath a tall crane. Three portholes that resembled short-range cannons protruded from the sphere’s surface.

“There it is,” Marla said. “I’ll come by in a little while to see how you’re doing.”

Kane thanked the young woman and cautiously approached the globe, treading softly as if he expected the strange object to bolt on the four legs attached to the bottom. He walked around to the other side of the sphere and saw a man in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts standing in front of a circular opening slightly more than a foot in diameter. The man’s head was inside the globe, his right shoulder angled through the hatch as if he were being devoured by a bug-eyed monster. The string of salty curses that echoed from inside the globe sounded as if they were coming from a pirate cave.

Kane set his duffel bag down, and asked, “Tight quarters?”

The man bumped his head as he backed out of the opening, prompting a few more colorful oaths, and brushed away a shock of steel-gray hair from eyes that were the blue of coral under flat water. He had a broad-shouldered frame that was an inch over six feet, and he must have weighed two hundred pounds. He grinned, showing perfect white teeth against features that had been bronzed by years at sea.

“Very tight. I’d need a shoehorn and a can of grease to get me into this antiquated refugee from a marine-salvage dump,” he said.

A dark-complexioned face poked from the hatch, and its owner said, “Give it up, Kurt. They’d have to baste you with WD-40 and pound you in with a sledgehammer.”

The broad-shouldered man made a face at the unpleasant image. He extended his hand in introduction. “I’m Kurt Austin, project director for the Bathysphere 3 expedition.”

The man in the sphere wriggled out feetfirst and introduced himself. “Joe Zavala,” he said. “I’m the engineer for the B3 project.”

“Nice to meet you both. My name is Max Kane.” He jerked his thumb at the sphere. “And I’m scheduled to dive a half mile into the ocean in this antiquated refugee from a marine-salvage dump.”

Austin exchanged a bemused glance with Zavala. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. Kane. Sorry to cast doubt on your sanity.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone accused me of being one beer short of a six-pack. You get used to it when you’re doing pure research.” Kane removed his sunglasses, revealing eyes of Kris Kringle blue. “And please call me Doc.”

Austin gestured toward the orange globe. “Don’t pay any attention to my earlier comment, Doc. I’m nursing a serious case of sour grapes. I’d make the dive in a heartbeat if the bathysphere came in a bigger size. Joe is the best deep-sea guy in the business. He’s made the diving bell as safe as any NUMA submersible.”

Zavala cast an appraising eye on the sphere. “I used technology that wasn’t available back in the thirties, but otherwise it’s the original Beebe-Barton design that set the record by diving 3,028 feet in 1934. The bathysphere was beautiful in its simplicity.”

“The sphere design seems so obvious to us now,” Kane said. “At first, William Beebe thought that a cylinder-shaped bell might work. He was chatting with his friend Teddy Roosevelt years before the actual dive and sketched his idea out on a napkin. Roosevelt disagreed and drew a circle instead, representing his preference for a globe-shaped bell. Later, when Beebe saw the Otis Barton design based on a sphere, he realized that was the only way to deal with the pressure at great depth.”

Zavala had heard the story before. “Beebe saw that the cylinder’s flat ends would cave in,” he picked up the story, “but a sphere would distribute the pressure more evenly around i

ts entire surface.” He squatted next to the globe and ran his hand over the thick skids that the legs rested upon. “I’ve added emergency flotation bags in the runners. There’s more than a little self-preservation involved, Doc. I’ll be making the dive with you.”

Kane rubbed his palms together like a hungry man savoring a juicy steak. “This is a dream come true,” he said. “I pulled every string I could to get on the dive list. William Beebe is responsible for my career in marine microbiology. When I was a kid, I read about the glowing, deep-ocean fish that he found. I wanted to share Beebe’s adventures.”

“My biggest adventure has been trying to stuff myself through that fourteen-inch door,” Austin said. “Try it on for size, Doc.”

Kane, who was about five foot eight, hung his jacket on the bathysphere’s frame, then poured himself headfirst into the sphere, doubled his body with the skill of a contortionist, and poked his head out the circular opening.

“It’s roomier in here than it appears from the outside.”

“The original bathysphere was four feet nine inches in diameter, and had walls one and a half inches thick made of fine-grade, open-hearth steel,” Zavala said. “The divers shared their space with oxygen tanks, filter trays, a searchlight, and telephone wires. We’ve cheated a little. The portholes are polymer instead of fused quartz. The tether is Kevlar rather than steel, and we’ve replaced the copper communications link with photo-optic fiber. We miniaturized the bulkier instruments. I would have preferred a titanium sphere, but the costs were higher.”

Kane easily exited the sphere and stared at it with near reverence. “You’ve done an amazing job, Joe. Beebe and Barton were aware they were risking their lives, but their boyish enthusiasm overcame their fears.”

“That enthusiasm must have rubbed off on you to come all this distance,” Austin said. “I understand you were in the Pacific Ocean.”

“Yeah. Contract work for Uncle Sam. Pretty routine stuff. We’re about to wrap it up, which is fortunate because there was no way I would have missed this opportunity.”