He loosened the sand above him and kicked off the hard pack below. It was almost impossible to move his arms. He let the sandflow do most of the work, tried to remember all the older divers who laughed at noobs for using fins in the first place. It wasn’t kicking, it was thinking that moved a man. That’s what they said. He’d never believed them. He tried to now. He tried to breathe. So damn hard to breathe. Like a tourniquet across his chest, like his ribs were knitted together, like the whole world was sitting on top of him.
Up. He made the mistake of looking down, could feel the pull of gravity, the sucking of those purples and blues, that hard earth far below, fading now, becoming invisible, just a handful of buildings until there was only one, and then he kept his visor pointed up, looking for the blinking transponders, watching the gauge drop back to under three hundred meters. Two fifty. Hell yeah, a breath. He sucked on the tanks, was damn glad for Palmer’s lungs for once, wasn’t jealous in the slightest, and as he rose up and up he felt that distance between him and his friend grow, that crushing depth, and some part of him knew, some dark sliver, that there was no going back. He had discovered Danvar. Him. It would be for some other asshole to risk his neck exploring it, pulling up all those artifacts. Hell, he hadn’t even grabbed that brewer. Hadn’t been any time. Breathing deeply now, sucking the tank down from yellow to red, he got under a hundred meters and no longer cared how much air was in the tank. He could get there. He could make it. The transponders above were blindingly bright. The orange and yellow glow of the shaft walls could be seen. Hap kicked straight for the white beacons and the soft bottom of the shaft, his legs sore, his ribs bruised from the effort, a joy in his throat—
Hap!
He heard the faint murmur in his jawbones. Palmer. Probably got his head in the sand, his visor on, holding his breath and yelling after him. Hap didn’t answer, didn’t raise the voice that happens in a man’s throat when he whispers in his mouth, when he thinks aloud. He kept those thoughts to himself.
Hap, you fucker, get back here! Hap–!
Hap didn’t hear the rest. His head broke through the bottom of that well. He lifted himself up clumsily, dragging his legs out of sand softened by the vibrations of his suit, until he was sputtering and balled up in the open air once more.
He spit out his regulator. The tanks were empty. Hap moved the visor up to his forehead and took a few deep breaths in the pitch black. He fought the temptation to whoop for joy, to whoop for surviving. The others would be waiting up on that metal hatch and might hear him. Act cool. Act like you’ve done this before. A fucking hero, that’s what he was. A legend. He’d never pay for a drink in any dive bar for the rest of his life. He flashed forward to himself in old age, in his forties, weathered and gray, sitting in the Honey Hole with two girls on his lap, telling people about the day he discovered Danvar. Palmer would have some heroic role to play. He’d see to that. He’d have the bartender buy him another round so he could toast Palmer’s name. And the girls …
With his dive light on and his suit off, he fumbled for one of the dangling ropes, knotted it securely under his arms, gave it three sharp tugs. Oh, the girls. He thought of the girls as the slack went out of the rope. Almost too late, he remembered the beacons, which weren’t cheap, and reached for his. The rope caught and started lifting him. Hap yelled for them to wait and scrambled after Palmer’s beacon, which was worth a good twenty coin. He got his fingers on it as the rope began to haul him up, clutched the small device in his palm. While they hauled him through the shaft, he kept his one flipper on the wall to keep him from bouncing around and tucked the two transponders into the belly pocket on his suit. Fuck. He’d made it.
????
The disc of light above grew larger and brighter as Hap was pulled skyward. He could see the sun shining down from directly overhead, so it must already be noon. Damn. Had they been down there that long? Someone above him barked orders to the men handling the rope. He could hear men grunting as they took up the line hand over hand, lifting him in swaying jerks. When he got to the lip, Hap helped, grabbing the hot edge of the metal platform, feeling the burn through his gloves as he pulled himself up on weary arms, kicking with his feet.
Two of the pirates grabbed him by his dive suit and tanks and hauled him out.
“Where’s your friend?” someone asked, peering over the lip.
“Didn’t make it,” Hap said. He tried to take deep breaths. The old man who had checked over Palmer’s gear searched Hap’s face for a beat, and then waved his arms toward the high dune where the generator could be heard and a plume of sand filled the sky. But Brock pushed the old man’s arms down and glared up in the same direction, waving some command off. Soon everyone was looking at Hap. The dive master studied the deep shaft as if hoping Palmer would appear.
“How far’d you get?” Moguhn asked, his dark eyes flashing. “What’d you see?”