The Diving Bundle: Six Diving Universe Novellas (22 page)

I knew it would happen. Maybe I remembered something—or something in my subconscious recalled how faint my mother’s voice had become. But I had known.

I had warned Karl and he said he was prepared.

But I’m cold. I’m sitting in the co-pilot’s chair with my arms wrapped around my torso, feeling terrified.

My father said the device worked.

But what if it fails like the cameras fail?

Riya says a dozen others went in and came out. She showed me evidence.

Showed us evidence.

Karl made this choice.

“I don’t like this at all.” Roderick’s hands are flying across the board, trying to bring up the readings. I glance at the handheld screen. The image is still there, faint and reassuring. Just a blur in all the fuzz.

Karl is moving forward.

But I know better than to tell Roderick everything will be all right. I glance at Mikk through the clear porthole.

He’s holding the lead and waiting, just like he’s supposed to. And good man that he is, he isn’t even peering in the door.

He’s following orders to the letter.

Static, a buzz, and a harmonic. A voice? I can’t tell. Roderick is still working the instrument panel and I’m staring through the window at the door beyond.

All I see is blackness.

Karl is probably seeing lights. Hearing voices in harmony. Listening to the blend.

I hope the device protects him.

My arms tighten. My stomach aches. I feel ill.

I catch myself about to curse Karl for being right about my reactions. But I’m superstitious. I can’t curse him. Not now.

Not while we’re waiting for him to come out of that Room.

12

WE WAIT FOR AN HOUR. Then an hour and a half.

Then two.

At two hours ten minutes, Mikk asks, “Should I reel him in?”

We haven’t had any contact. We don’t have any readings.

Karl is the kind of diver who never wastes a second, the kind who is always on time.

“How much oxygen does he have without the refills?” I ask Roderick.

“Five, maybe six hours, so long as he’s breathing right. He didn’t think he needed the larger storage, since the skip was so close.”

I would have made the same judgment. My suit can handle two weights of oxygen as well. The back-ups are in case the internal supply gets compromised somehow, not as supplements to it.

“You want to wait another hour?” Roderick asks. No more pretense at being in charge. We both know I’m the one qualified to make the right decisions.

And oddly, as cold as I am, I’m calm. The emotions I felt at the beginning of the dive are long gone.

It’s the two younger members of the team who are beginning to panic.

And that’s reason enough to bring Karl in.

“Tug,” I say to Mikk. “See if he responds.”

Mikk tugs and then grunts as if in surprise. The tether attached to Karl has gone slack.

Roderick looks at me, terrified. Mikk says, “What do I do?”

We have to know the severity of this.

“One more gentle tug,” I say. Maybe Karl has let out the line. Maybe he’s closer than we think.

Mikk tugs again. I can see how little effort he uses, how his movement should just echo through the tether.

Instead it comes careening back at him, with something attached.

Something small and U-shaped.

“Oh, no,” Mikk says.

And I hear the same words come out of my mouth as I realize what I’m seeing.

“What is it?” Roderick asks, his voice tight with fear.

“Karl’s belt,” I say. “The tug dislodged Karl’s belt.”

***

Only, it turns out, my assessment isn’t entirely accurate. The tug didn’t dislodge Karl’s belt.

Karl did. He unlatched it. There’s no way to tell how long ago he did so either.

He got disoriented or lost or maybe he was reaching for the tether to pull himself back. Whatever happened, his fingers found the controls holding the belt to his suit and unhooked it.

Mikk shows us the seal with his own cameras, how it’s unhooked in such a way that only the suit-wearer could have done. It didn’t break and it didn’t fall off.

Karl let it go.

“So pretty,” my mother says, her voice a thread. “So very pretty.”

“Pan it for me,” I say, forcing the memory of my mother aside.

Mikk does. The knife is in its holder. So are the back-up breathers.

And the device.

Mikk grabs it as I realize what I’m seeing. “I’m going after him,” Mikk says, attaching the device to his belt.

“
No
,” I say with great force. “You are staying put.”

“But we need to get him. He can’t be that far in. The tether didn’t come back from a great distance.”

“I know,” I say. “But going in disoriented him, and he’s got more experience than you. It’ll disorient you. I’m going in.”

“He said you’re not supposed to dive.” Roderick has put his hand on my arm.

I shake it off.

“I’ve been in there before,” I say. “I know what to expect. Neither of you do. Mikk is strong enough to get me out if he has to. We’ll double-tether me. We’ll hook to my belt and my suit. He’ll be able to pull us free.”

“Karl says if you lose one diver, you shouldn’t send another after him.” Roderick is speaking softly. He thinks he’s not being overheard, but I have the communications panel lit.

“That’s if the other person’s dead or dying,” I say. “For all we know, he’s wreck blind and lost. You want him to float around in there?”

“Can he survive without this device thing?” Mikk asks.

Roderick starts at Mikk’s voice, then frowns at me.

“I did,” I say. “I didn’t have a shield. People do survive the Room without protection. The problem is that most folks don’t even realize their companions are in trouble for hours. Maybe the Room doesn’t kill them. Maybe the Room disorients them. Maybe, if that’s what happens and if someone catches it soon enough, the other person gets out.”

“Two point five hours,” Mikk says, sounding breathless. “That’s quick, isn’t it?”

“Do you need to come into the skip?” I ask him as I grab my suit. I strip, not caring that Roderick is watching. I hate wearing the suit over my clothes. “You sound like you’re short of air.”

“I have plenty,” Mikk says.

“You can recover while I’m getting suited,” I say.

“His heart rate is elevated, but still in the safe zone,” Roderick says. “But if you want to bring him in, then let’s do it now.”

Abort. Leave Karl. That’s what Roderick is saying, in code now that he realizes Mikk—and maybe Karl himself—is listening.

“Stay there,” I say. “I’m coming to you.”

I have to slow down. I need to dress properly, make sure my suit functions. My own heart rate is elevated, and I’m trying not to listen to the low hum that’s been haunting the back of my brain since that damn door opened.

My suit is thinner than Karl’s. Body-tight with fewer redundant controls. I used to think he was too cautious. Now I wish I had all the equipment he did.

I check systems, then put on my head gear. I don’t bother with extra cameras, although I don’t tell Roderick that. I slide on my gloves, grab five tethers, and sling them along my belt hook like rolled up whips.

I open the airlock and look directly at Roderick. “Now you’re in charge,” I say as I let the door close.

The two minutes it takes for my suit to adjust seem like five hours. I work on slowing my own breathing, making sure I’m as calm as I can be.

Then I press open the exterior door.

My suit immediately gives me the temperature and notes the lack of atmosphere. It warns me about some small floating debris.

I place my hand on the lead and slide toward Mikk. I can see his face through his headgear.

He looks terrified.

Now I wish we hadn’t brought one of the strong divers. I would give anything for someone with a lot of experience.

But I don’t have that.

I have the children.

And I have to make the most of them.

13

MIKK ATTACHES TETHERS to my belt, my suit and one of my boots. I must look like some kind of puppet. I warn him not to tug for at least an hour, unless I tug first. I take the device, turn it off, then turn it on, and make sure the lights run along the bottom and sides like they’re supposed to.

They do.

I attach it to my belt.

Then I float toward that damn door.

The opening looks smaller than I remember and somewhat ordinary. In my career, I’d gone through countless doors that led to an inky blackness, a blackness that would eventually resolve itself under the lights of my suit.

But right now, I have those lights off. I want to see the interior as I remember it. I want to see the light show.

Only I don’t. There are no lights. The persistent hum that I’d been hearing since we arrived has grown.

It sounds like the bass line to a cantata. I freeze near the door and listen. First the bass, then the tenors, followed by altos, mezzo sopranos, and sopranos. Voices blending and harmonizing.

Only they aren’t. What I had identified years ago as the voices of the lost is actually some kind of machine noise. I can hear frequency and pitch, and my mind assembled those sounds—or to be more accurate, those vibrations—into music, which as a child was something I could understand.

Now I understand what I’m hearing and for the first time since I go into the Room, I’m nervous.

“Your heart rate is elevated,” Roderick says from the control room.

“Copy that,” I say, and flick on my suit lights. They illuminate everything around me. There’s a floor, a ceiling, the window that we’d already observed, and walls.

A completely empty room.

Except for Karl, floating free in the middle of it. His face is tilted toward the floor, his legs bent, his feet raised slightly. Occasionally he bumps against something and changes trajectory.

He’s either unconscious or—

I don’t let myself complete that thought. I use a nearby wall to propel myself toward him. I grab him by the waist and pull him toward me. His bulky suit is hard to hold; I undo the tether on my boot and attach it to his right wrist.

That’s not normal procedure—you could pull off the arm of the suit if you’re not careful—but I don’t plan to let go of him. Instead, I tug my remaining tethers, and hope Mikk is strong enough to pull us both out.

It takes a moment, and then we’re moving backwards. I shift slightly so that I can see if we’re about to hit anything.

The empty room stuns me. I expected not just the lights, but shades of the people lost. Or their remains. Or maybe just a few items that they had brought in with them, things that had fallen off their suits and remained, floating in the zero gravity for all time.

The previous divers wearing the device said they couldn’t recover Commander Trekov—that he wouldn’t leave. Were they lying? Or had they seen something I hadn’t?

The open door looms. I kick away from the wall and float a little too high. I have to let go of Karl with one hand to push away from the ceiling.

Then we slide through the door and into the destroyed habitat. Mikk still clings to the tethers.

I shove Karl at him, then reach behind me and grab that damn door.

It takes all of my strength to close it. There’s some kind of resistance—something that makes the movement so difficult that I can’t do it on my own.

I’m not going to ask Mikk for help, though, and I’m not going to leave the door open. I grunt and shove, then turn on the gravity in boots for leverage. I sink to the metal floor, brace my feet, and push that door.

It takes forever to close. I’m sweating as I do, and my suit is making little beeping noises, warning me about the extreme exertion. Roderick is cautioning me, and Mikk is telling me to wait so that he can help.

I don’t wait.

The door closes and I lean on it, wondering how I can close it permanently, so no one ever goes in there again.

I can’t come up with anything—at least, not something I can do fast—so I make sure it’s latched, and then I turn off the gravity in my boots. As I float upwards, I grab the lead.

I wrap my other hand around Karl and pull him with me. Mikk is protesting, repeating over and over again that he can bring Karl in.

Of course, Mikk can bring him in, but he won’t. I’m the one who brought Karl here. I’m the one who put him in charge. I’m the one who didn’t protest when he wanted to go into that Room alone.