‘This tide is moving.’ He plugged Jason’s voice cable back in. ‘You ready back there?’
‘We’re ready.’
‘In one minute Jackson’s going to stop the props. We’ll drift with the tide and be relatively stopped. We’ll have two minutes to clear the sub before Jackson will have to start the props again and get out of the track or hit the rig. I’m going to join you at the door. Hand me the grapnel launcher. You take the ladders and snag line. We’ll all go straight to the surface. You happy with that, Jason?’
‘Yes.’
‘Jackson?’
‘Yes.’
‘The signal to surface on completion of the task?’
‘Two thunder bombs.’
Stratton checked the navigation system again. ‘Okay. Put your tail to the platform and kill the speed.’
Jackson manoeuvred the vessel while Stratton pulled on his fins, disconnected the communications cable, removed his breathing apparatus and replaced it with the breather attached to the bottle strapped to his side. He eased out of the cockpit, a far less complicated exercise than climbing in, and moved along the casing to the cabin opening. The four scientists crammed inside the dark chamber looked at him. He indicated for them to exchange their breathing systems. They felt for the portable breathing teats.
Smithy had spent every second since leaving the helicopter in a state of abject fear. The jump had been bad enough but since the scramble into the sub all he’d been able to think about in the cramped dark cabin was Stratton’s comment about the climb up the platform.
When he received the signal to change from breathing off the submarine to his own air bottle he made one of the classic mistakes when it came to the procedure. He removed the sub’s breathing mouthpiece from his lips, let go of it and felt around for his own portable breathing set. When he did not find it immediately he tried to find the mini-sub mouthpiece again. He failed. Panic quickly set in.
He became hysterical in his efforts to find either mouthpiece. He didn’t think to find the bottle attached to his body and follow the tube from the end of it to the other end and the mouthpiece. He would soon have to take another breath, which would be all water, and he would die in that dark, cold and claustrophobic container.
When Stratton saw the stream of bubbles from the released mouthpiece and Smithy grabbing frantically at anything he knew immediately what was happening. The danger was not just to Smithy himself. His actions placed the lives of the others at risk. A drowning person had the strength of ten in their final acts of desperation and was more than capable of taking others with them. A grabbing hand would rip at anything - such as other people’s breathing tubes.
Stratton did the only thing he could. He reached inside the cabin, grabbed hold of the frenzied diver by his harness and, planting his feet against the outside casing, ripped the man out of the sub and released him into the ocean. Smithy continued to kick and panic, the water’s fluorescence lighting up around his beating limbs. He went into the blackness. Stratton had no idea whether he had gone up or down. But a second afterwards it no longer mattered. Not then, at least. It was done and they had their own lives to look after.
The incident had cost precious time that Jackson needed to avoid running into the rig. Stratton grabbed the grapnel launcher and beckoned the others to hurry. They were swift in their response and all three of them were soon out of the sub. As the propellers burst back into life the team headed towards the surface and the sub moved away into the gloom, the sound of its electric motor disappearing with it.
Stratton broke through to the surface first, the others a few seconds behind him. All of them stayed breathing from their air bottles, which would last another half-dozen minutes. The enormous rig stood several hundred yards away, lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. A giant factory on legs, high above the storm waves. The sight of one of these towering structures never ceased to impress Stratton.
The others too looked in awe at the monstrous construction.They were unprepared for the sight of it so high above them in the water, in the dark. For a brief moment they forgot everything as they took in the suspended city. It looked almost alien to Jason, as if they were floating in a vast emptiness between planets and the