He quickly closed the hatch behind him. Zavala had put the con- trols on auto while he pulled the crew through the air lock. The bulky survival suits didn't make the task any easier. It was a miracle that any of the crew was still alive. Amazingly, some had made the trip themselves. The passenger space consisted of two padded benches running the length of the sub, separated by a narrow aisle. The survivors crowded onto the benches or stood in the aisle like commuters on a Tokyo subway.

“Sorry there's no first-class section,” Austin said.

“No complaint,” said the captain. “My men will agree that it is bet- ter than our former living arrangements.”

With the crew settled, Kurt returned to the cockpit. “We had a lit- tle leakage around the seal,” he reported.

Zavala indicated a blinking light on a computer-generated dia- gram of the submersible. “More than a little. The 0-ring blew out like a flat tire a second after we closed the air lock.”

He retracted the telescopic escape tube, disengaged the sub- mersible from the dead ship and backed off, clearly revealing in its floodlights the round hole where the lasers had cut out the escape route. When the sub was clear of the wreck, he activated the ballast pumps. The electric motors clicked into action with a low hum, ex- cept from the front right pump, where there was a sound like a fork going down a garbage disposal. One ballast tank still had water in it, disrupting the sub's equilibrium as the others filled with com- pressed air.

The Sea Lamprey operated like any other submarine; it pumped water into its ballast tanks to dive, pumped in air to ascend. The computer tried to compensate by giving more power to the vertical thrusters. The submersible lurched into a nose-down angle, and the smell of hot metal came through the vents. Zavala pumped water back into the other tanks, and the Lamprey leveled out, more or less.

Austin stared at the instrument panel. A light was blinking on a schematic troubleshooting diagram. He ran a check on the computer that served as the brains of the vehicle. The trouble system indicated that the warning light had been triggered by an actual mechanical problem, the kind of glitch that could show up with new equipment, and was probably easily repairable. But this was not a test run; it was a deep submergence dive to fifty fathoms. Another light started blinking red.

“Both front motors are gone,” Austin said. “Better use the backup pumps.”

“Those were the backup pumps,” Zavala said.

“So much for redundant systems. What's the problem?”

“I could tell you in a minute if I had this thing up on a lift.”

“I don't see any garages nearby, and in any case, I forgot my credit card.”

“As my father used to say, 'All it takes to move a stubborn burro is a stick of dynamite.5 ” Zavala said.