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Boone nodded. “Still want George to check you out.”
“That’s not necessary, sir.”
Arching an eyebrow, Boone gave him a stern look. It wasn’t one he wore often, which made it all the more impactful when he hit you with it. “Get checked.”
“Roger that.” Jesse clapped Jud on the back. “Your umbilical’s gonna want to yank you around, so just watch it.”
Jud gave him an okay gesture, and Tara attached his regulator to his helmet. And then he was on the diving stage and going down.
Tara had to stay focused on Jud’s dive profile, but she couldn’t help being curious as George led Jesse away. Staying down too long and ascending too aggressively could cause a diver all sorts of problems, not all of which manifested right away. The most common was the joint pain caused by nitrogen bubbles hitting your blood and tissues, known as “the bends” or decompression sickness. But injury from expanding air was also possible to the ears, sinuses, and lungs. And far more serious were arterial gas embolisms and nitrogen narcosis, which could impair brain function, giving an affected diver headaches and visual disturbances, impairing judgment, and even causing paralysis.
Jesse’s fine, Tara told herself. And she made herself believe it so she could do her job.
“Jud’s down at sixty-one feet,” she called, calculating his max dive time on the tables. It hadn’t even been an hour since he’d completed his last dive, which limited how long he could stay down this time.
19 minutes before reqd deco
Damn that was tight. Jud’s replies came in quick succession:
Roger
Poor visibility
Survey underway
The rain turned to more of a drizzle, and Tara breathed a sigh of relief. They were almost done. Jesse and Jud had really kicked ass today.
When George and Jesse returned, Jesse was holding a mask to his face with one hand and carrying the portable oxygen cylinder from the resuscitator kit in his other.
George reported to Boone, but everyone gathered around. “Anderson’s good. Recommending thirty minutes of oxygen as a precaution.”
Boone clapped Jesse on the shoulder. “Decompression chamber if you need it, okay?”
Jesse nodded, but he didn’t look too happy about any of it. Tara winked at him and gave him a little smile. In her experience, SPECWAR people made terrible patients, so she suspected it was probably hard for him to accept the help.
He rolled his eyes at her, but his expression beneath the mask shifted, eased.
As the rain backed off, the wind picked up—and so did the waves. Tara checked the dive time and sent an update to Jud:
Ten minutes to reqd deco
Rain decreased but wind gusts to 25 knots
She frowned when he didn’t respond right away, but finally his message came through: Roger
Then four minutes later:
Survey complete
Returning to stage
“He’s done,” Tara said.
Mike sprang into action, preparing to reel up the diving stage. Boone returned to mission control to monitor the reports Jud’s computer would be uploading.
Beam me up, Scotty
Tara grinned at the team joke they’d had programmed into all the dive computers. She motioned to Mike to bring Jud up.
