34

They were still six or seven days away from the center of the crater when Markoff decided without warning to put the bathyscaphe through deepwater tests. Hendricks and Moresby were to be carried by freighter thirty miles or so ahead of the facility. There they were to dive as deep as they could, until they reached the ocean floor, test the equipment, the air systems, the communications systems, sonar, lighting, et cetera, take a few readings, remain in place for at least an hour, then ascend. Two submarines were to go along and stand by in case assistance was required.

Hendricks showed up at Altman’s door shortly before he was scheduled to leave. He looked nervous.

“I’ve got a problem,” he claimed. “It’s Moresby. He tied one on last night as soon as he heard we’d be going down.”

“Is he all right to go down?”

“Right now he can’t even see,” said Hendricks. “I’ve been trying to walk him out of it, but I’ve got to supervise the transfer of the bathyscaphe. Do you think you . . .”

He trailed off, waited.

“Maybe you should say something to Markoff,” said Altman.

“I don’t want to do that,” said Hendricks. “He already warned Moresby once, and I don’t want to do anything to get him fired. I know it’s a lot to ask, but will you look in on him, see if there’s anything that can be done?”

Altman nodded. “But I’m doing it not for Moresby but for you.”

Hendricks smiled. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

Altman clambered through the tunnels and up decks to Moresby and Hendricks’s cabin. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He hesitated, knocked again. When there was still no answer, he tried the door and, finding it unlocked, entered.

It was a narrow space with two berths, the top belonging to Hendricks, the bottom to Moresby. The room reeked of vomit. Moresby was half in and half out of the bottom bunk, as still as a corpse. Altman shook him.

At first there was no response. After a few more minutes of shaking, he groaned slightly, his eyes barely opening before closing again.

Altman shook him harder, slapped him.

Moresby blinked, coughed. “Give me a minute to steady myself,” he said, and groped a bottle off the floor beneath the bed.

“You don’t need any more,” said Altman. “Come on, get up.”

“Who are you to tell me what I need?” asked Moresby. He tried to stand up and nearly fell. “I’m a Moresby, by God, a descendant of . . .”

He was still babbling out his pedigree while Altman dragged him down the hall and thrust him, fully clothed, into the shower, turning the cold tap all the way open. A moment later, Moresby was shouting. Ten minutes later, he was dressed in dry clothes and subdued. He was pale, was sweating a sour smell, and his hands were still shaking, but he was more or less presentable.

“You’re all right?” Altman asked.

“Just nerves,” said Moresby. “I’ll be all right once I’m down there.”

Altman nodded.

“You won’t tell anybody, will you?” said Moresby, refusing to meet his gaze now.

“Hendricks doesn’t want me to,” he said. “If it was up to me, I would.”

He led Moresby to the submarine bay, where Markoff was planning to pass them in review before leaving. The submarine pilots were already there, the bathyscaphe transferred.

“You stay here,” said Altman.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find Hendricks.”

It might have been different if he’d found Hendricks sooner, or if the other submarine pilots had kept an eye on Moresby. Or if Markoff had come right away, before Moresby had had time to have second thoughts, but it took almost half an hour for him to arrive. As it was, Hendricks and Altman made it back just a few moments before Markoff, and it wasn’t until he’d started speaking that Altman realized Moresby was nowhere to be seen.

Markoff took the review very seriously. He wore a freshly pressed dress uniform and was flanked by two guards on either side. He thanked the pilots and crews and technicians for their efforts, reminded the other two submarine crews that they would stand by on the freighter in case anything went wrong and the bathyscaphe failed to rise. As for the bathyscaphe, if for any reason Hendricks and Moresby—

He stopped. “Where’s Moresby?” he asked.

Hendricks looked around. “He was here just a moment ago, sir,” he said.

In the end, two guards discovered him. He’d managed to find a bottle somewhere and had downed a good bit of it. Drunk, he had fallen from one of the lifts and broken his neck. It’s my fault, Altman thought. I should have watched him more carefully. He looked over and caught Hendricks’s eye, realized that Hendricks was thinking much the same thing, was blaming himself.

Markoff, however, didn’t react at all, and rejected out of hand Hendricks’s request to put the dive off for a day out of respect for the dead. “Just as well,” he said when the body was brought to him. “That way we’ll be sure to get the geophysical readings right. Sound all right to you, Altman?”

He had to repeat it twice before Altman realized he was being addressed. “Fine,” said Altman, trying not to stare at the body, at the way the head hung at an odd, impossible angle.

They took a boat to the freighter in silence, the bathyscaphe being towed behind. Once there, the guards held the bathyscaphe steady as they loaded on.

“I’m still a little shaky,” said Hendricks. “I lived with Moresby, after all. If it’s all the same with you, I’ll let you drive.”

Though a little shaky himself, Altman was happy to have the distraction of working the instruments. He eased them slowly down. Before long they were resting steady on the ocean floor.

“How deep are we?” asked Altman.

“Not nearly as deep as we’ll be in the center of the crater,” said Hendricks. “Two thousand meters, I’d guess.”

“Have you ever been this deep before?”

Hendricks shook his head. “Almost,” he said, “but not quite.”

It was peaceful there, thought Altman, soothing almost, like they had come to the end of the world. He liked listening to the quiet whir of the air recirculators, liked watching the dark, almost empty world outside.