Frozen Solid A Novel

26




HALLIE COULD TELL BY THE INCREASING PRESSURE IN HER EARDRUMS that she was sinking. With miles of freezing black water beneath. If she went too deep, or her descent rate exceeded her equipment’s ability to counteract it, she would just keep going, accelerating all the while.

She valved more gas into her dry suit and started to rise again. The new pinhole grew more quickly than had the first. By now the water was almost to her knee in one leg, over her foot in the other.

Twenty feet. Two minutes.

Losing buoyancy again, she valved still more argon gas into her suit and started finning as well to keep ascending. She could feel her hypothermia worsening—hard shivering now, her teeth beginning to chatter.

Ten feet. She could see the bright circle of the shaft’s top. Water over her knee in one leg, up to mid-calf in the other. The pain threatening to drive coherent thoughts from her mind. The only good thing was that the higher she went, the more buoyant she became.

Finally breaking the surface, she saw Merritt and Guillotte standing by the hole. They would have been monitoring her bubbles, once she was in the shaft.

“I ha-ha-had a dry-suit failure,” she stuttered. “Lower half flooded. Need help ge-ge-getting out.”

Guillotte yelled for more men. With two holding each arm and him pulling on the tops of her tanks, they hauled her out. She flopped onto her belly. Freezing water flowed through the suit, soaking her torso.

“He-he-help me doff. Can’t do myself. Too cold,” she said, through shivers and chattering teeth.

When they finally peeled the drysuit off, she had to get out of the wet dive underwear. Extra sets hung from one wall. She went to them, turned her back to the men, stripped naked, and pulled on dry ones. She donned all the rest of her ECW gear and drank a full thermos of hot chocolate given to her by one of the Draggers.

Once Hallie had just about stopped shivering, Merritt asked, “What happened down there?”

“Very strange,” she said. “Suit failure on both knees. I don’t ever remember—”

Merritt spun on Guillotte. “You let her dive in a suit with defects? She might have died. We could never replace her now!”

Guillotte’s cheeks reddened. “I inspected every piece of her gear. Including the suit. There were no visible defects.”

“But there were defects!” Merritt snapped.

“Aggie, wait,” Hallie said. “I don’t think Rémy missed anything. I inspected the suit, too. I was halfway through the dive before it started leaking.”

Merritt took a deep breath, stepped back. “Okay. Sorry if I flew off the handle. It’s just that with Emily gone, we can’t afford to lose you, Hallie. Can we, Rémy?”

“Of course we cannot.”

“I have to get back to the station. Rémy, you can transport Hallie after you’ve secured her gear.” Merritt turned and started for the door.

“Hey,” Hallie said.

“Yes?”

“I got the extremophile. There’s a biosample in the Envirotainer.”

“Oh,” Merritt said. “Right. Good work.”

And she left.