“This way,” Leo said, leading her and Hudson into the station. Her hopes were not raised when she saw the inside. Two fire trucks were parked in the large garage, rubber boots and smoke-stained jackets hung on the pegs above them. She half expected to be greeted by a friendly dalmatian.

Leo walked through the garage to the rear of the station. When they entered another room, Caddie saw her father. He was seated in a chair. The oxygen mask was gone, and a man was cutting his dry suit off of him with a pair of large scissors.

“Do you have to cut it off?” she heard her father say.

“Don’t worry, Ben,” the man said. “We’ll hold a bake sale to get you a new one.” His joking manner seemed out of place in what Caddie thought of as a crisis, but her father smiled.

“I brought some folks to see you,” Leo announced, and both men looked up. Caddie saw her father’s eyes go to Hudson, and once more she felt a pang of resentment.

The man cutting her father’s suit off finished his work, peeling away the pieces and dropping them to the floor. Underneath it Ben was wearing a heavy fleece jumpsuit. “That we can take off the normal way,” he told Ben. “But you’re going to have to wear a gown in the chamber. We can’t have anything flammable in there.”

He helped Ben stand, then helped him out of his undergarment. Taking a bag from a cabinet nearby, he opened it and removed what looked like a plain white hospital dressing gown. This he slipped over Ben’s head.

“What happens now?” Hudson asked.

“Now we send him back down,” the man answered. “Leo, will you show Jacques Cousteau here to his room?”

The man came over to Caddie and Hudson while Leo and her father walked, slowly, to a large, cylindrical structure that occupied most of the room. It was painted an orangey-brown and reminded Caddie of a giant sweet potato. There was a door at one end and a large porthole window at the other.

“I’m Adam Jay,” the man said, introducing himself to Caddie and Hudson. “I’m guessing that you’re Caddie.”

Caddie nodded. She was watching her father enter the chamber and wondering what would happen to him. She heard Adam say, “And you are?”

“Hudson Jones,” Hudson answered. “I’m a friend.”

“Great,” said Adam. “Well, here’s what’s going on. Ben has too much nitrogen trying to dissolve out of his blood. It’s causing a lot of pain in his joints, so we need to get it back in and let it come out slowly, the way it would during a normal diving ascent.”

“How do you do that?” Caddie asked.