THE B3 PASSENGERS HAD DECIDED TO REPORT THEIR OBSERVATIONS like sportscasters. Joe Zavala would do the play-by-play, Max Kane would provide the color using William Beebe’s writings.

At two hundred eighty-six feet down, Kane announced, “The torpedoed ocean liner Lusitania is resting at this level.”

At three hundred fifty-three feet, he noted, “This was the deepest any submarine had ever gone when Beebe made his bathysphere dives.”

When the bathysphere reached six hundred feet, Kane slipped the lucky skullcap from his head and held it in his hands.

“We’ve entered what Beebe called the Land of the Lost,” he said in a hushed tone. “This is the realm that belongs to the human beings who have been lost at sea. Going back to the Phoenicians, millions of human beings have descended this far, but all of them have been dead, the drowned victims of war, tempest, or act of God.”

“Cheery thought,” Zavala said. “Is that why you said hello to Davy Jones’s Locker . . . where drowned sailors go?”

Zavala had rigged a switch to turn off the TV camera and microphone. Kane reached out and said, “Joe and I are taking a short break. We’ll be back with more observations in a few minutes.” He pushed the button. “I need a breather,” he said with a smile. “You asked about the Locker . . . It’s the nickname my colleagues gave to the lab.”

“The marine center at Bonefish Key?” Zavala said.

Kane glanced at the camera. “That’s right, Bonefish Key.”

Zavala wondered why anyone would compare a sunny Florida island on the Gulf of Mexico with the grim domain of the drowned. He gave a mental shrug. Scientists were strange birds.

“Beebe sounds morbid, but he had a relatively benign view of the ocean,” Kane said. “He knew the dangers were real, but he thought the hazards of the deep overblown.”

“The millions of drowning victims you mentioned might disagree,” Zavala said. “I respect everything Beebe and Barton did, Doc, but from an engineer’s point of view I’d say they were just plain lucky they didn’t become part of that Land of the Lost. The original bathysphere was an accident waiting to happen.”

Kane greeted the blunt assessment with a chuckle.

“Beebe was a realist as well as a dreamer,” he said. “He compared the bathysphere to a hollow pea swaying on a cobweb a quarter of a mile below the deck of a ship rolling in midocean.”

“Poetic but not inaccurate,” Zavala replied. “That’s exactly why I built safety features into the new diving bell.”

“Glad you did,” Kane said. He switched the microphone back on and turned his attention to the scene visible through the porthole.