After three and a half hours, the Sherwood beeped again. It was nearly as dark now as it had been down on the wreck. They ascended to ten feet, where they both switched regulators to finally breathe off of the small bottle of pure oxygen under their right arms. Tusker wiggled his limbs, trying to detect any telltale aches or pains that might be an early sign of decompression sickness. Aside from the throb in his shoulder where he’d been cut, and a stiff neck, he felt OK. They’d been careful. He was still cold and his lips felt cracked and dry. Neither of them had drunk any water for hours and who knew when they would have a chance to again. He wondered what they would see when they came to the surface. Would the shoreline be visible? Lights from a town along the coast or a boat?

At last, the Sherwood beeped a different tone. Tusker shined his torch on its display: “All Clear.” God, I hope so. He held his mask close to Sam’s and nodded. She returned the nod and they kicked the remaining ten feet to the surface.

Adrift

Somewhere off the east coast of Sri Lanka. That night.

There is no place more lonely and despairing than the open ocean. Tusker and Sam surfaced into a moonless night. The sea was black, the sky was black, the horizon was black. They might as well have been in outer space. Their chances of rescue were about as good out here.

“We need to shed these tanks and weights,” Tusker said. His voice was hoarse and it seemed strange to be speaking after so many hours of anxious, nonverbal communication underwater. His jaw hurt from biting down on the rubber mouthpiece for so long. Both of them were barely staying afloat, weighed down by their four tanks plus weight belts. He was already unclipping his two smaller cylinders from his harness. Sam did the same.

The more difficult task would be to remove the double tanks on their backs while keeping their buoyancy wings for flotation. The tanks were held together by aluminum bands, then secured to their harnesses with long threaded rods and wing nuts. It was finicky work even on the floor of a well-lit workshop, but bobbing on the ocean, at night, with frozen fingers, would be tricky. But the heavy tanks, empty of their helium mix, were simply dead weight. It had to be done.