THE NEXT MORNING, the NUMA ship followed the course Beebe’s expedition had taken, heading out to sea through Castle Roads, passing between high, jagged cliffs and old forts, past Gurnet Rock and into the open sea.

The gale had petered out, leaving a long, heaving swell in its wake. Plowing through low mounding water, the ship traveled for another hour before dropping anchor.

The diving bell had been put through dozens of tank tests, but Zavala wanted an unmanned launch before the main dive. A crane lifted the sealed bathysphere over the water and allowed it to sink to the fifty-foot mark. After fifteen minutes, the B3 was winched back onto the deck, and Zavala inspected the interior.

“Drier than an eye at a miser’s funeral,” Zavala said.

“Ready to take the plunge, Doc?” Austin asked.

“I’ve been ready for nearly forty years,” Kane said.

Zavala tossed two inflatable cushions and a couple of blankets through the door. “Beebe and Barton sat on cold hard steel,” he announced. “I’ve decided a minimum of comfort will be necessary.”

In turn, Kane produced two skullcaps from a bag and handed one to Zavala. “Barton refused to dive unless he wore his lucky hat.”

Zavala pulled the cap down on his head. Then he crawled through the bathysphere’s hatch, taking care not to snag his fleece-lined jacket and pants on the steel bolts that surrounded it. He curled up next to a control panel. Kane got in next and sat on the window side. Zavala turned the air supply on and called out to Austin, “Close the door, Kurt, it’s drafty in here.”

“See you for margaritas in a few hours,” Austin gave the order to seal the bathysphere.

A crane lifted the four-hundred-pound hatch cover into place. The launch crew used a torque wrench to screw ten large nuts over the bolts. Kane shook hands with Austin through a four-inch circular opening in the center of the door that allowed instruments to be passed in and out without having to move the cumbersome cover. Then the crew screwed a nut into the hole to seal it.

Austin picked up a microphone connected to the bathysphere’s communications system and warned the divers they were about to become airborne. The winch growled and the crane hoisted the B3 off the deck as if the fifty-four-hundred-pound steel globe and its human cargo were made of feathers, swung it over the side, and kept it suspended twenty feet above the heaving ocean surface.

Austin called the bathysphere on the radio and got Zavala’s go-ahead to launch.

Through the B3’s windows, the divers caught a glimpse of the upturned faces of the launch and film crews and slices of ship and sky before the portholes were awash in green bubbles and froth. The B3 splashed into the crystal clear waters and slipped beneath the surface in the valley between two rolling swells.