Pitt's eyes wandered away and he caught sight of Chief Engineer Metz walking slowly into the control room. He looked like a man who was ready to drop. His face was drawn and haggard, clothes soaked from cap to boots, and he reeked of diesel oil.

"Guess what?" He smiled a tired smile. "The old girl is gonna make it. The Venturer ain't what it used to be, but by Jesus, it'll take us home."

It was the best news Pitt had heard since the explosion. "You've stopped the flooding?"

Metz nodded. "We're eight inches down from an hour ago. As soon as you can release a few divers, I can have the worst of the leaks sealed from the outside."

"The Huron," Pitt said anxiously. "Can you disengage the Huron's pumps?"

"I think so," replied Metz. "Between our own equipment and that of the Phoenix, we should be able to cope."

Pitt wasted no more time. Skipping normal radio protocol, he roared into the microphone on his headset.

"Klinger!"

The reply took a few seconds, and when it came, the voice was slurred. "Hi there, this is Captain Nemo of the submarine Nautilus speaking. Over."

"You're who?"

"The guy in Twenty Zillion Leagues Under the Sea. You know. Great flick. Saw it when I was a kid in Seattle. Best part was the fight with the giant squid." Pitt had to shake off a sense of unreality, and then he realized what was wrong. "Klinger!" he shouted, turning every head in the control room. "Your carbon dioxide level is too high! Do you understand? Check your air-scrubbing unit. Repeat. Check your air-scrubbing unit."

"Hey, how about that?" Klinger replied cheerily. "The indicator says we're breathing ten percent CO2-"

"Dammit, Klinger, listen to me! You've got to get down to point-oh-five percent. You're suffering from anoxia."

"Scrubber is on. How does that grab you?"

Pitt sighed with relief. "Hold on a little longer and activate your locator pinger. The Huron is coming to lift you on board."

"Whatever you say," Klinger replied, his tone like mush.

"How is the leakage?"

"Two, maybe three hours before the batteries are flooded."

"Increase your oxygen. Got that? Increase your oxygen. We'll see you for dinner."

He turned to speak to Gunn, but the little man had already anticipated him. He was halfway through the doorway.

"I'll direct the Sappho rs retrieval from the Huron personally," he said, and then was gone.

Pitt looked through the open windows and saw a small boom lifting the JIM suit out of the water as a launch from the Phoenix stood by. The dome was unloosened and swung open. Three crewmen from the Phoenix reached it and lifted out a limp figure and laid him on the deck. Then one of them looked up at Pitt and gave a thumbs-up sign.

"He's alive!" came the cry.

Two men in the sub and one JIM suit operator safe, and the ship still afloat, Pitt summed. If only their luck held.

Dunning and his crew had found the saturation chamber almost two hundred yards from where it had been anchored. The hatch into the outer entry compartment had jammed in the closed position, and it took four of them grunting in unison with four-foot steel bars to muscle it open. Then they all stared at Dunning through their face masks, none expecting or wanting to be the first to enter.

Dunning swam up inside until his head burst into the pressurized air. He climbed to a small shelf and removed his breathing tank, hesitated and then crawled into the main chamber. The electrical cable to the Ocean Venturer had parted and at first he saw only blackness. He switched on his dive light and played its beam around the small enclosure.

Every man inside the chamber was dead; they were piled on top of one another like a cord of wood. Their skin had turned a deep purplish blue and the blood from a hundred open wounds had merged into one huge pool on the floor. Already it was coagulating from the cold. Dunning could see by the thin trickles from the ears and mouths that they had all died instantaneously from the frightening concussion before their bodies were battered nearly to pulp as the chamber was hurled in violent gyrations over the riverbed by the force of the explosion.

Dunning sat there coughing up the vomit that rose in his throat. He began to tremble from sickness and the smell of death. Five long minutes passed before he was able to call the Ocean Venturer and speak coherently.

Pitt took the message, closed his eyes and leaned heavily against a display panel. He felt no anger, only a vast sorrow. Hoker looked at him and read the sad drama in the lines of that strong expressive face.

"The divers?"

"That was Dunning," Pitt said, his eyes staring into nothingness. "The men in the chamber…... there were no survivors. All died from concussion. Two are missing. If they were outside and exposed to the blast, there is no hope. He says they will bring up the bodies."

There were no words left in Hoker. He looked terribly old and lost. He went back to work on the video console, his movements slow and mechanical. Pitt suddenly felt too exhausted to carry on. It was a waste, the entire project a pitiful waste. They had accomplished nothing but the deaths of ten good men.

He did not hear the faint voice in the earphones at first. Finally it began to penetrate his despondency. Whoever was trying to reach him sounded weak and far away. "Pitt here. What is it?" The reply was garbled and unclear.

"You'll have to speak up, I can't make you out. Try increasing your volume."

"Is that any better?" a voice boomed through the receivers.

"Yes, I can hear you now." Pitt's own voice echoed back. "Who is this?"

"Collins." The next few words were distorted: "been attempting to make phone contact since I came to. Don't know what happened. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Only now managed to splice my communications link."

The name Collins was not familiar to Pitt. In his few short days aboard the Ocean Venturer, he had been too busy to memorize and associate a hundred names with their respective faces. "What's your problem?" Pitt asked impatiently, his mind returning to other matters.

There was a long pause. "I guess you might say I'm trapped," the reply came back heavy in sarcasm. "And if it isn't inconvenient I would appreciate an assist in getting the hell out of here."

Pitt tapped Hoker on the shoulder. "Who is Collins and what's his capacity?"

"Don't you know?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking," Pitt growled. "He claims he's trapped and needs help."

Hoker looked at him incredulously. "Collins is one of the JIM suit operators! He was down during the explosion."

"Christ," Pitt muttered. "He must think I'm the prize idiot of the decade." He fairly yelled into the microphone. "Collins, give me your condition and precise location."

"The suit is intact. A few dents and scratches, nothing more. The life-support system indicates another twenty hours, providing I don't practice aerobic dancing." Pitt grinned quietly to himself at Collins' humorous spirits, felt regret that he didn't know the man. "Where am I? Damned if I know exactly. The suit is up to its crotch in mud, and there's trash hanging all over it. I can barely articulate the arms."

Pitt's gaze traveled to Hoker, who was staring back with a curious blank expression. "Any possibility he can jettison the lifting line, release his weights and make a free ascent like his partner?" Hoker asked.