It hadn’t been an entirely bad day. After lunch, Upali had identified a promising patch of sea bed with his probing. Digging down a couple of feet had turned up some rusty objects of indeterminate age that they had hauled topside and placed in the bottom of a plastic bucket full of sea water. It might just be a jumble of decades-old fishing tackle, but to expose it directly to air would risk rapid oxidation and disintegration, and Upali wanted to get it back to the lab to examine more closely.

Raj had a shed across the busy road from the harbor. It was five o’clock now, and inside it was dark and smelled of rotten fish. Raj flicked on a naked fluorescent tube light that swayed from the tin ceiling and the sudden light scattered a few large insects. Tusker’s skin, despite being bathed in sweat, went instantly cold. He hated the cockroaches, centipedes, and large spiders that lived in the tropics, and even after five months of daily sightings, his phobia hadn’t diminished. So much for exposure therapy. Raj grinned, his teeth bright red from the betel nut he constantly chewed. He said something to Upali in Sinhala, who laughed loudly in response.

“Raj wonders how a big guy like you can be so afraid of small critters,” Upali said. Tusker gave an exaggerated shiver in Raj’s direction. Raj didn’t speak much English and Tusker’s Sinhala was limited to about ten words. They both laughed.

For the next half hour, the three of them worked to clean and stow gear. Wetsuits were hung to dry, though they never would in the humidity. Tusker turned his neoprene booties inside out and hung them on nails in the wall, away from the scorpions and centipedes that sought their damp crevices at night.

“Machang, you should come across to Batti and we’ll dive the Hermes,” Upali finally broke the silence of their chores. “You can’t leave Sri Lanka without diving its best wreck. Otherwise you’ll think all our diving is like the harbor here!”

“Yeah, I might just take you up on that,” Tusker replied. “I’ll have to see if my boss will give me a day or two off.” He winked.

“I’ll think about it,” Upali smiled back. “But only if you haul the tanks.”

Raj filled the air compressor with diesel and pulled the starter cord. It roared to life. Tusker fitted the manifold to two of the day’s empty air cylinders and made sure the intake hose was rigged up over the top of the shed’s swinging door. It had to be far enough away from the compressor’s exhaust to not push exhaust fumes and carbon monoxide into the tanks. Not that the air outside the shed was much better, with the passing Leyland buses belching black exhaust that settled in a haze over the road.