“Let’s talk about it in the control van,” Austin said.

The box-shaped, twenty-foot-long atmospheric-diving-suit control van was next to the ship’s garage, where the ship’s underwater vehicles and other deep-ocean hardware were housed. The van had a console that was separate from the controls for the ship’s submersibles, and it had a workshop where Bubbles was stored.

Austin and Gannon stood in front of a puffy-limbed, anthropomorphic metal figure that resembled the Michelin man. The transparent dome capping the figure could have come from a bubblegum dispenser.

Bubbles’s technical name was atmospheric diving suit, or ADS, but it was considered an anthropomorphic submersible. A diver using the ADS could go to great depths without having to worry about the killing water pressure or the need to decompress. The bulky life-support system on the back of the aluminum body, or hull as it was known, could sustain the pilot for six to eight hours, or for more time in an emergency.

Bubbles was an experimental ADS owned by the U.S. Navy. It was a successor to the Hardsuit 2000, which had been developed for submarine rescue. The research vessel was transporting Bubbles as a courtesy, then rendezvousing with a Navy ship near Bermuda after the B3 expedition.

Gannon stood with his hands on his hips, vigorously shaking his head.

“I can’t let you do this, Kurt,” said the captain. “Bubbles is a prototype. She hasn’t been field-tested yet. Last I heard, she’s got a for-sure depth limit of only twenty-five hundred feet.”

“Joe would tell you that any engineer worth his salt builds in a huge safety factor,” Austin said. “The Hardsuit 2000 made it to three thousand feet in test dives.”

“Those were test dives, not operational dives. That’s a fact.”

Austin pinioned the captain with his coral-blue eyes. “It’s also a fact that Joe and Kane will freeze to death or die from lack of air if we don’t do something about it.”

“Damnit, Kurt, I know that! I just don’t want someone else dying senselessly.”

Austin realized he had come down too hard and backed off.

“Neither do I,” he said. “So here’s my offer: you get Bubbles gussied up for a dive, I’ll get an opinion on dive limits from the Navy and abide by whatever they tell me.”

Gannon had learned a long time ago that Austin was a primal force, as unstoppable as the east wind.

“What the hell,” the captain said with a lopsided grin. “I’ll get Bubbles ready to go.”

Austin gave him a thumbs-up, and hurried to the bridge. A satellite phone connected him with the Navy’s Deep Submergence Unit in California. He listened with mounting impatience to a recorded directory and spoke with several people before he landed on a junior officer in the unit’s Diving Systems Support Detachment. Austin quickly laid out his predicament.

The officer let out a low whistle.