She looked around at her console and saw… Duct tape?
No.It might lose its stick with the encroaching water. But what about…bungies? She had several. Kneeling down in therising water, she flipped the second of her two chairs over, uncovering a tool box beneath.
Fishing around in it, she found exactly what she needed.
Three bungies would do the trick. She attached the extra pair of tanks to the conning tower’s hatch, via the locking ring. A sense of satisfaction filled her once they were both secure.
And… Now what?
With nothing left to do but wait, Tabitha sat in her captain’s seat and listened to the hiss of Spencer’s plasma cutter from outside. It was emitting an acceptable level of decibels, even in her enclosed space, assuring that she wouldn’t go deaf with the noise.
Four quick conversations with Spencer,later, he’d almost finished up with the outer hull. It had taken a full hour—with one surface break for him—but he’d clearly been focused, and had been careful to breach the skin only; not making any mistakes that would compromise the inner shell.
Tabitha reconnected.
“How much longer on the outer skin?”
“Five or ten minutes,” he told her, confidently.
Over the course of his cutting time so far, the water level inside had risen to Tabitha’s upper thighs. It seemed like the flooding was becoming more rapid, and she let Spencer know.
“I estimate two hours before I’m completely underwater in here, Spencer. But once I’m down to a foot of breathing space, that should be adequate for pressure equalization. Which means that after I give you that signal, you’ll have maybe fifty-five to sixty minutes to cut away with impunity before I have to close up my suit and use my tanks. That will give us an additional fortyminutes until I’m running on empty. That’s just over an hour and a half to get me the frick out of here.”
He had to understand that since it had taken almost an hour and a quarter for the initial stage on the sub’s outer wrapper, cutting through the requisite amount of titanium in the remaining time she’d allotted wasn’t going to be easy.
“No problem, sweetheart. Don’t panic.”
“Okay,” she said, before the power cut off by itself, leaving her in a darkness that she knew wasn’t going away this time.
Clearly that was the end of her batteries.
So yes. She was.
Panicking.
Just a little.
CHAPTER 7
Spencer wasted no time.He finished cutting through and peeling away the outer skin of Tabitha’s craft, quickly.
His next step was going to be difficult. For both of them.
He needed to tell her that in a few minutes he’d be headed to the surface, and this time he’d be taking full advantage of his window of opportunity; i.e. the approximately one hour it was going to take for the sub to slowly equalize to external pressure,andthe forty minutes it would take him to off-gas the nitrogen in his system on the Atlaua.
But without their comms being operational…
He went over and knocked on the porthole.
Her face filled his vision, and he was happy to see that her attitude seemed, if not upbeat, at least not despondent.
What he didn’t like, was seeing the water inside nearly up to her neck at this juncture.
She made a kissy face at him, and he grinned. Tabitha had that effect on him. One purse of her lips and he put his worries on a back burner.
Spencer took an additional moment to splay his gloved hand on the acrylic, and she mimicked his gesture, placing her palm against his from the opposite side.
Spencer could swear he felt a connection arc between them, even though that was impossible.
