Zavala pulled himself back up to a sitting position. “Getting bounced around down here, Kurt. Sea picking up again?” he inquired.

“It’s like a mirror. Wind’s died down and the swells have flattened out.”

“Joe,” Kane shouted, “there it is again . . . the monster fish!” He jabbed his index finger at the window.

A shadow passed near the edge of the searchlight beam and turned toward the bathysphere.

As Zavala pressed his face against a porthole, every hair on his scalp stood up and saluted. He was looking into three glowing eyes, one of them over the other two.

He had little time to analyze his impressions. The sphere jerked again.

“We’re seeing cable oscillations near the surface,” Kurt’s voice came over the speaker. “What’s going on?”

There was another jerking movement.

“There’s something out there,” Zavala said.

“What are you talking about?” Austin asked.

Zavala wasn’t sure himself, so he simply said, “Haul us up.”

“Hang tight,” Austin said. “We’re starting the winch.”

The bathysphere seemed to stabilize. The numbers on the fathometer blinked, showing that the sphere was moving up toward the surface. Kane broke into a relieved grin, but the expression on his face froze as the bathysphere jerked once more. A second later, the men in the B3 were levitating as if plunging on a runaway elevator.

The bathysphere had gone into free fall.

Unknown

NUMA 8 - Medusa

CHAPTER 7

AUSTIN LEANED AGAINST THE SHIP’S RAILING AND SAW THE B3’s tether cable oscillating like a plucked violin string. He spoke into the headset microphone that connected him with the bathysphere. “What’s going on, Joe? The cable is going crazy.”

Austin heard garbled voices, the words inaudible against a background of metallic clanging. Then the cable abruptly stopped its wild gyrations, and the line went dead.

Austin strained his ears. Nothing. Not even a whisper of static. He removed the headset and examined the connections. Everything was in place. He unclipped his belt radio and called the captain in the ship’s bridge.

“I’ve lost voice communication with the B3. Is the video transmission coming through?”

“Not since it was cut off,” the captain reported.

“Have you checked the redundant systems?” Austin asked.

Unlike the original bathysphere, which was connected to the surface with a single telephone line, the B3’s hauling cable incorporated several different communications routes in case one went out in the hostile deep-sea environment.

“Ditto, Kurt, nothing. All systems are out.”

A frown crossed Austin’s tanned face. It made no sense. If one system failed, another system should have taken over. Zavala had bragged that the instrumentation he’d designed for the B3 equaled that of a jetliner.

Austin instructed the crane operator to reel the cable in. As it slithered out of the water and around the drum, the operator’s voice came over Austin’s headset.