SLINGSHOT, page 7
part #1 of The Starchild Saga Series
“EFCom test…one, two…” Margo counted slowly while Klaus adjusted his reception volume by tapping the back of his console.
“Test back… one, two…” Margo heard over the rhythmic rushing caused by Klaus’ breathing. She tapped her console until the computer filters eliminated his breathing noise, leaving only the crystal clear sound of Klaus’ voice inside her head, like an intimate, caressing whisper, courtesy of her bone conduction speakerphone.
“Base test…one, two…” Alex tested into the circuit.
“Clear,” Margo said.
“Clear,” she heard Klaus’ answer.
“Let’s go, Klaus!” Margo’s voice was picked up by her throat mike, where it changed to electrical signals that were digitized in the Electrostatic Field Comm transceiver integrated into her gill pack. The resulting digital packets were exactly the same as those produced by an SSRS transceiver. They left her short antenna as an electrostatic field, and for the most part, were absorbed by the surrounding water. But a small portion of the energy reached the surface where it spread out concentrically from a point directly above her, captured in a millimeter-thick surface layer. At light speed, the packets arrived first at the backup buoy, and a meaningless moment later at buoy 1,528. In both cases, they were processed and retransmitted into the air and back into the water with significantly increased power, enough to reach a diver as deep as one hundred meters or a kilometer distant horizontally. By appropriately keying their consoles, two or more divers could limit their conversations to any combination of participants, in or out of the water, close by or far away. In effect, the marriage of EFCom and SSRS eliminated the isolation that once was part and parcel of diving.
“Vector us in,” Margo said to Alex.
“Three-four-seven,” he answered, indicating that buoy 1,528 lay to the north and slightly west of their present position.
Margo and Klaus each set their consoles, and a faint line appeared down the center of each faceplate. Off to the right side, a glowing red spot indicated their present orientation with respect to the set vector. As Margo turned to her left, the red spot aligned with the faint line, and she kicked off.
“Let’s go, Klaus!”
Margo angled down until she reached ten meters, all the while kicking with a strong measured stroke. Klaus followed closely. Soon they saw the shadow and then the hull of the small schooner, and below it, the suspended tube disappearing in the haze to the left and right at a depth of thirty meters.
“There, Klaus, look!” Margo pointed to the suspension cable.
Three divers clung to the cable, descending while they watched: a male with loud, floppy swim shorts, longish brown hair, and a full short beard; a bikini-clad shapely female with long dark hair forming a halo around her head; and an exceptionally thin male with yellow hair floating around his head that looked like it would settle into a Dutch page-boy cut when dry. Shimmering silvery bubbles cascaded to the surface above them.
“Regular scuba,” Klaus remarked unnecessarily.
Margo and Klaus reached the cable surrounded by the rising bubbles from the scuba divers below them.
“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Margo said, removing her shark stick and extending it to its full length. “Let’s give them a surprise, shall we?”
“Okay,” Klaus answered, removing his own stick as Margo moved several meters away from the cable. Each released a bubble as they began to descend fairly rapidly. The scuba divers below them continued their own leisurely descent, still unaware of the action over their heads.
A meter above the scuba divers, Klaus slowed his descent and placed himself horizontally in the water between them and the in-streaming sunlight. Off to the side and somewhat above him, Margo could see the shadow he cast. As the water above them darkened, the three scuba divers stopped and looked upward. Their reaction to Klaus’ imposing figure silhouetted against the sun-drenched surface was quite comical. The bearded male and the female ducked and began to swim awkwardly away from the cable in opposite directions. The blond pageboy seemed frozen at the cable. After a few moments, the swimmers stopped and looked up again.
Klaus chuckled, audible only to Margo and Alex, of course, and waved to the divers with his left hand while pointing at them with the shark stick in his right. Margo moved in and placed herself above the nearest scuba diver, gesturing with her stick.
Unable to communicate with each other except on the most basic level, the two divers gesticulated frantically and cast about to orient themselves, having moved away from the “safety” of the cable. One of the divers pointed up, and the other nodded in exaggerated affirmation.
“Now!” Margo said. Both she and Klaus dropped a meter. Carefully avoiding the firing button, each forcefully jabbed the scuba diver below, aiming for the buttocks area.
Reacting to the painful poke, each scuba diver stopped and rolled over, facing the looming menace above. Margo’s female diver reached out, attempting to grab the end of the shark stick.
“Careful!” Klaus warned. “You don’t want to lose it!”
“On the other hand,” Margo answered, “a little demonstration couldn’t hurt.”
“Talk to me!” Alex’s voice surprised both of them. “What’s happening?”
Margo briefly described their situation while dodging the attempts of the diver below her to grasp her stick. They both drifted upward.
“Watch your depth!” Klaus warned, poking at his own diver, who was trying to imitate Margo’s opponent.
“Do you have spare charges?” Alex asked.
“One,” Margo answered.
“Two,” Klaus added.
“Why not?” Alex said with a chuckle in his voice. “Those things are pretty impressive, you know.”
“Do it, Klaus,” Margo ordered, pulling her stick away from her diver’s grasp.
A moment later, a bright flash followed immediately by a loud, sharp crack filled the water surrounding the five divers. The end of Klaus’ stick seemed to leap out toward the diver below him, as a stream of carbon dioxide bubbles burst against the scuba diver’s chest, throwing him back and down more than a meter. Klaus fumbled with his stick handle, and in a moment, a tumbling small metal cylinder flashed into the depths. The terrified scuba diver discovered that he was still alive and unhurt just as Klaus slipped a new cartridge into the stick handle.
“Wheee…!” Margo shouted, waving the end of her stick toward her diver, who abruptly ceased all aggressive behavior. Klaus’ diver appeared equally contrite. Klaus turned toward the third diver still on the cable, who lifted his hands toward Klaus, palms outward.
“Okay,” Margo said, “let’s drive them down.” She waved her stick at her diver, gesturing downward with her left hand. Klaus followed suit, and then pointed his stick at the third diver. Soon all five divers had passed the tube and were hovering twenty meters below it near the fifty-meter mark. Klaus herded the scuba divers directly below Margo and handed his stick to her, glancing at his console as he did.
“Watch your profile,” he cautioned as he rose in the water column directly above them. He stopped his ascent forty meters above Margo and her three captives and hung there, watching the scenario play itself out.
The scuba divers nervously checked their own consoles and then pointed to their tank gauges and dive timers with exaggerated gestures. The female made a move to ascend, but stopped immediately when Margo waved one of her sticks toward her.
It took less than fifteen minutes. Margo filled the time by describing the divers’ reactions to Klaus and Alex. Finally, the bearded male pointed to his mouthpiece, eyes wide with fright. Margo waved a stick in that diver’s direction. The diver responded by slashing a hand across his throat several times, a universally understood gesture meaning “I am out of air!” By this time, the diver was clearly in a panic.
“Here they come,” Margo said, as she tucked the second stick under her arm and pointed to the surface fifty meters above them. “How’s your profile, Klaus?” she asked.
“Fine. I can surface with them.”
The three scuba divers shot past Margo, surrounded by a rising cloud of bubbles. They were well past normal decompression limits, and they knew it. Nevertheless, they obviously had chosen the risk of decompression sickness over that of drowning.
“Beginning my ascent,” Margo said, holding her console in front of her. “It’s going to take a while.”
SURFACED BUOY 1528
K
laus inflated his bag as he reached the surface and turned to the thrashing divers between him and the schooner.
“Alex, activate the loudspeaker!”
“You scuba divers,” he said, his voice booming across the water from the floatplane. “Inflate your BCs and stop thrashing around!”
Moments later, the three terrified divers ceased their struggling as their air-filled buoyancy compensators took over the task of keeping them floating on the surface. Klaus approached them.
“Speaker off,” Alex said in his head.
Klaus looked down to monitor Margo’s progress. “How we doing, Margo?”
She waved from twenty meters. “I’m on profile. In eight minutes I’ll switch to pure oh-two at ten meters. Watch those guys, Klaus. They’re going to be in serious trouble any time now.”
“Alex…what’s Floater Two’s ETA?” Klaus asked as he approached the scuba divers.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“What about Skimmer Two?”
“About a half-hour, Klaus.”
On the surface, the female diver threw off her face mask. “Oh God, it hurts!” She looked around in a panic. “Help me!” she screamed, spotting Klaus several yards away.
“Alex, switch Floater Two into the circuit. We got a problem here.”
“Roger that—Floater Two, you are now online with Klaus and Margo.”
“Klaus…it’s Tex. What’s your situation?”
Klaus briefly explained the nature of the problem to Carlos Sanchez, his lead pilot at the Eastern Complex, whom everybody called Tex. They decided to drop two divers and the Zodiac near Klaus, and then land Floater Two and get a third diver and each of the KPs from the two planes aboard the vessel.
“I’m coming in, Klaus. Wave at me!”
As Klaus waved, the sleek two-engine amphibian aircraft passed low overhead, and the inflatable Zodiac splashed nearby. On its second pass, two divers hit the water; one went for the Zodiac, the other toward Klaus.
“It’s Stu, Klaus. Jonesy over there is a new arrival.” They were EFCom equipped. “We were just suiting up for an inspection dive when Dispatch called. I figured Jonesy might as well get his feet wet.”
“I’ll get the KP from Floater One.” From his accent, Fred Jones clearly had his roots in the northeast, possibly Philadelphia.
∞
Sanchez brought Floater Two to a smooth stop near Green Avenger just as Jones arrived with the Zodiac, propelled by a tiny electric motor. Gofort, the third diver, clambered out of the plane and loosened the KP attached to the right float. As Jones came alongside, he rolled it into the boat and followed himself.
“Okay, Jonesy,” Gofort said, with distinctly Scottish overtones, “Let’s gie th’ air unit from th’ other float.” Since all the participants, in or out of the water, were interconnected with their EFCom units, everyone remained aware of each part of the operation.
Moments later, the Zodiac arrived alongside Green Avenger. Jones shouted instructions to the crewmembers about two meters above him, and a line snaked down, followed by a rope ladder they attached to a cleat at the gunwale. Gofort grabbed the top rung of the flexible ladder and hoisted himself to the schooner deck. Jones attached the end of the line to the first KP package and signaled to Gofort. Gofort handed the end of the line to two crewmembers and told them to walk it to the other side of the schooner. As they complied, the fifty-kilogram KP reached the gunwale, and Gofort guided it over and onto the deck. He then tossed the end back down to Jones, and they hoisted the second KP to the deck. Then Gofort tossed the line back to Jones again, and while Jones attached the air unit, Gofort laid out the KP chambers side by side on the deck. They looked like shriveled-up long green balloons. The guys repeated the performance to bring up the air unit, and moments later, Jones clambered over the safety line.
With professional proficiency, the two divers quickly attached hoses and hooked up the fuel cell generator to run the compressor.
∞
In the meantime, Klaus and Stewart herded the three panicked divers to the Zodiac alongside the schooner. Klaus pitched himself up and over the inflated tube that made up the side of the Zodiac. Then he crossed his hands over the side and grabbed the female diver by her outstretched hands. Without letting go of her hands, he uncrossed his hands and pulled her into the Zodiac with one deft maneuver that flipped her on her back and tanks as she came out of the water. She couldn’t be more than eighteen or twenty, he thought as he stripped her tanks and fins, hooked her BC to the line from the schooner, and signaled Gofort to haul her up.
While she was in mid-air, Stewart called out, “What’s your name?”
“Tiffany, Tiffany Montague,” she said with a pain-filled grimace while she attempted to grab the rope ladder.
“Don’t do that, Tiffany,” Stewart said. “Let us do the work.”
As the guys assisted her over the safety line, the bearded diver yelled out, “I’m hit, I’m bent. Help me, please!”
Klaus repeated his flipping performance on the bearded diver who said he was Carmine Endsley, but people called him Carey. He appeared to be in his early twenties.
∞
Simultaneously up on deck, Gofort quickly briefed the ailing Tiffany, outfitted her with a throat mike and a bone headset, and clipped a miniature SSRS unit to her bikini halter. The KP SSRS units were set to a special code that only the KP operator could receive, to keep the recompression chatter off the whole circuit. As Jones tucked Tiffany into a KP, explaining to her that it was like snuggling into a sleeping bag with a window, Carey arrived on deck clutching his left elbow and wincing with pain as he stepped forward and limped toward the other KP.
While Jones quickly briefed Carey and outfitted him with another SSRS unit, Gofort started the air unit and began pressing Tiffany down to fifteen meters. Through the window, he could see her pinch her nose to clear her ears, her eyes still filled with fear. A minute later, Carey was looking through the clear window of the second KP, his eyes as fearful as Tiffany’s, as Gofort pressed him to fifteen meters.
“Ye troaps okay?” Gofort asked after both arrived at fifteen meters.
“I’m fine,” Carey answered. “The pain’s gone.”
“Mine too,” Tiffany added. “How long will this take?”
“Several hoors,” Gofort said. “‘S’better than dyin’.”
∞
In the Zodiac, Klaus had his hands full with the third diver, who appeared to be asymptomatic. Klaus had pulled him into the Zodiac and helped him with his gear. Almost immediately, the diver launched into a tirade.
“You nearly killed us. This is piracy. Who the hell do you think you are?” He demanded to be put back on his vessel.
Klaus reported the gist of the one-sided conversation to Alex.
“Does he have any decompression sickness symptoms?” Alex asked.
“Not that I can see, Alex. At least not yet. When’s Skimmer Two arriving?”
“Wait one,” Alex said. “Skimmer Two, you copy?”
“Skimmer Two, aye.” The voice carried an unmistakable Jamaican lilt. “I be there ‘bout twenty minutes. I got another KP with me.”
Klaus looked at his charge. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lars Watson,” the diver answered, and then he suddenly doubled over in pain. “Oh shit,” he moaned, “my left arm is on fire, and my right leg is numb, you bastards.”
Klaus reported the problem to Alex.
“Margo,” Alex said, “are you surfaced yet?”
“On my way to the surface right now,” Margo answered and then broke the surface next to the Zodiac.
“Klaus, get this jerk on my floater. Then join Margo, and both of you stand by on the schooner,” Alex said on the circuit. “Stu, you join Tex in Floater Two. Tex, head on back to Jarvis. And Stu,” Alex added, “get the recompression system ready.”
Everybody acknowledged and set about carrying out his orders.
“Gofer, you join me in Floater One.” He paused. “Skimmer Two, what’s your heading?”
Skimmer Two told him, and Alex said he would fly a reciprocal heading and meet him in ten minutes.
AIRBORNE TO JARVIS ISLAND
I
n five minutes, Alex was airborne with Gofort and Watson just ten meters above the wave tops to minimize Watson’s symptoms. He set maximum throttle, heading toward Skimmer Two.
Eight minutes later, Alex triggered his SSRS. “I’ve got you visual, Skimmer Two. Set her down. I’ll come in beside you.”
“Skimmer Two, aye.”
As the surface-effect ship settled into the water, Alex landed his amphib and came up alongside Skimmer Two. By this time, Watson was beyond talk, doubled over with pain, and terrified that he would die.
Jefferson Carver, Skimmer Two skipper, wiped beaded perspiration from his nearly blue-black hairless pate and round face with a large kerchief, and handed Gofort a line to secure the two vessels together.
“Haya Gents. How the laddie be doin’?” he asked, his black face split by a wide grin that belied his top-notch rating as a skimmer pilot.
“Th’ laddy,” Gofort said with dripping Scottish sarcasm, “was sabotagin’ th’ tube when we caught heem.”
“Is dat so, now? We’ll bloody well have to do sumpin’ ‘bout dat,” Carver said, as he single-handedly reached out and hauled Watson to the skimmer deck.
Gofort joined him, and between the two of them, they stretched Watson out and stuffed him unceremoniously into the KP after rigging him with an SSRS unit. As the KP pressure increased, Watson’s face through the window began to relax, and by the time he reached fifteen meters, he was pouring out additional vindictive at his “tormentors,” as he called them.
