He reached out for the spare tank, barely got it off the wall, and turned on the valve.

Air hissed into the cabin and blew the fog from his brain. He flipped back the panel covering the manual switch for the flotation system and waited for something to happen.

AUSTIN HOVERED ABOVE the bottom of the ocean with the Hardsuit’s lights trained on the top of the B3. The cable went taut as, a half mile above his head, the winch began to turn, but the bathysphere didn’t budge. Dire scenarios marched through Austin’s head: the jury-rigged hook would break immediately and the sphere would remain trapped in the suction created by the mud; Zavala would forget to deploy the flotation system or the system wouldn’t work when he did; worse of all, both men were unconscious.

“Cable’s tight to the winch,” Gannon called down. “Anything happening at your end?”

Austin saw that the cable splice was unraveling.

“Just keep hauling,” he said.

He gritted his teeth as if he could lift the B3 through sheer willpower. The bathysphere remained where it was. The cable unraveled some more.

“Move, damnit!” he yelled.

Plumes of mud billowed around the bathysphere. Then the sphere pulled free, popping from the mud like a cork from a bottle, and righted itself. A thick cloud of silt hid the sphere for an instant before it rose into the glare of the Hardsuit’s searchlights.

Austin’s triumphant yell blasted through the ship’s public-address system.

The B3 was ten feet from the bottom, mud streaming off its sides, then twenty feet, and still there was no sign of air-bag deployment. What was Joe waiting for? Maybe the flotation doors were clogged with mud.

Austin kept pace, rising slowly with the bathysphere, his eyes glued to the hook and cable.

As the last strand of cable splice gave way, doors along the sides of the sphere suddenly blew open and six air bags blossomed and rapidly filled. The bathysphere rocked back and forth, stabilized, then began to ascend.

Austin watched the B3 until it was out of sight.

“They’re on their way,” he notified Gannon.

“You’re next,” the captain said. “How are you?”

“I’ll be a lot better topside.”

Austin steadied the thrusters so that he was in a more or less vertical position, and was ready when the Hardsuit jerked at the end of the cable. As the suit began its long trip, Austin turned off his lights and saw that he was not alone.