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There were no words left in Hoker. He looked terribly old and lost. He went back to work on the video console, his movements slow and mechanical. Pitt suddenly felt too exhausted to carry on. It was a waste, the entire project a pitiful waste. They had accomplished nothing but the deaths of ten good men.
He did not hear the faint voice in the earphones at first. Finally it began to penetrate his despondency.
Whoever was trying to reach him sounded weak and far away. "Pitt here. What is it?" The reply was garbled and unclear.
"You'll have to speak up, I can't make you out. Try increasing your volume."
"Is that any better?" a voice boomed through the receivers.
"Yes, I can hear you now." Pitt's own voice echoed back. "Who is this?"
"Collins." The next few words were distorted: "been attempting to make phone contact since I came to.
Don't know what happened. Suddenly all hell broke loose. Only now managed to splice my communications link."
The name Collins was not familiar to Pitt. In his few short days aboard the Ocean Venturer, he had been too busy to memorize and associate a hundred names with their respective faces. "What's your problem?" Pitt asked impatiently, his mind returning to other matters.
There was a long pause. "I guess you might say I'm trapped," the reply came back heavy in sarcasm.
"And if it isn't inconvenient I would appreciate an assist in getting the hell out of here."
Pitt tapped Hoker on the shoulder. "Who is Collins and what's his capacity?"
"Don't you know?"
"If I did, I wouldn't be asking," Pitt growled. "He claims he's trapped and needs help."
Hoker looked at him incredulously. "Collins is one of the JIM suit operators! He was down during the explosion."
"Christ," Pitt muttered. "He must think I'm the prize idiot of the decade." He fairly yelled into the microphone. "Collins, give me your condition and precise location."
"The suit is intact. A few dents and scratches, nothing more. The life-support system indicates another twenty hours, providing I don't practice aerobic dancing." Pitt grinned quietly to himself at Collins'
humorous spirits, felt regret that he didn't know the man. "Where am I? Damned if I know exactly. The suit is up to its crotch in mud, and there's trash hanging all over it. I can barely articulate the arms."
Pitt's gaze traveled to Hoker, who was staring back with a curious blank expression. "Any possibility he can jettison the lifting line, release his weights and make a free ascent like his partner?" Hoker asked.
Pitt shook his head. "He's half buried in silt and entangled in the wreckage."
"You did say he was in silt?" Pitt nodded.
"Then he must have fallen through onto the second-class deck."
The possibility had also struck Pitt, but he was afraid to predict, to even express a hope. "I'll ask him,"
he said quietly. "Collins?"
"I haven't gone anywhere."
"Can you determine if you dropped into the target area?"
"Beats me," answered Collins. "I blacked out right after the big bang. Things were pretty well stirred up.
Visibility is only now beginning to clear a little."
"Look around. Describe what you see."
Pitt waited impatiently for a reply, knuckles rapping unconsciously against a computer. His eyes roamed to the Huron, which was perched over the Sappho I, watched the crane on the afterdeck swing over the side. Suddenly his ear receivers crackled and he stiffened.
