Most all the crew were lining the moon pool when he finally emerged from the ocean, and he was greeted with a standing ovation and wild cries and whoops. Max looked especially pleased with himself, and even the doc smiled over her professional concern for his well-being.

He was helped out of the water, and workers shucked his gear in record time.

“How are you feeling?” Julia Huxley asked, shouldering her way to his side. “Any symptoms?”

“I’m cold,” he stammered through chattering teeth. “I’m hungry, and I need a bathroom in the worst possible way.” He turned to Hanley, who was hovering right behind Julia. “I never doubted you.”

“Why would you?” Max said, all nonchalance. “I’ve never let you down before.”

“Thanks.”

“You can owe me.”

“Enough with the male bonding,” Hux cut in. “Juan, you’re going into decomp with Mike so I can monitor you both for signs of decompression sickness.”

“He and Eddie are okay?”

“Eddie has a possible concussion, and Mike’s fine. This is only a precaution.”

“Did he keep the sample of that framework or was this all for nothing?”

“I don’t know,” Hux replied, while, behind her, Max produced the sample with a conjurer’s flourish.

“Ta-da. Mark already took a quick look and says he has no idea what it is.”

Juan took the foot-long rod as he was hustled to the decompression chamber at the back wall of the sub bay. It had a rough texture, but unlike anything he’d held before. If he had to give a single-word description of its texture, he’d say “alien.”

He handed it back to Max. “Get me some answers.”

“Mark and Eric will be up all night on this one, that I guarantee. Now get into your sarcophagus with Mike, and I’ll have the kitchen send down some food. Should be interesting to see Maurice give white-glove service through an air lock.”

Juan stepped through the heavy door to the first section of the two-part steel chamber and had a seat on the thinly padded bench. The air pressure would be brought up to about half of what he and Mike had experienced on the bottom, and then he could enter the second chamber, where Trono now waited. The facilities were primitive and stark, looking like something out of a 1960s Navy training film, but, for safety’s sake, Juan didn’t mind putting himself through the tedium.

He cleared his ears as the pressure in the chamber rose, ran through what had happened over the past hours, and chalked it up as the luckiest escape of his life.

Chapter Eighteen