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"You won't find any uniformed rank down here," Pitt sidestepped. "We're all strictly scientific bureaucrats."
"One thing I'd like you to explain," said Plunkett, "is how you knew we were in trouble and where to find us."
"Al and I were retracing our tracks from an earlier sample collection survey, searching for a gold-detection sensor that had somehow fallen off the Big John, when we came within range of your underwater phone."
"We picked up your distress calls, faint as they were, and homed in to your position," Giordino finished.
"Once we found your submersible," Pitt continued, "Al and I couldn't very well transport you from your vessel to our vehicle or you'd have been crushed into munchkins by the water pressure. Our only hope was to use the Big John's manipulator arms to plug an oxygen line to your exterior emergency connector. Luckily, your adapter and ours mated perfectly."
"Then we used both manipulator arms to lock onto your lift hooks," Giordino came in, using his hands for effect, "and carried your sub back to our equipment chamber, entering through our pressure airlock."
"You saved Old Gert?" inquired Plunkett, quickly becoming cheerful.
"She's sitting in the chamber," said Giordino.
"How soon can we be returned to our support ship?" Salazar demanded rather than asked.
"Not for some time, I'm afraid," said Pitt.
"We've got to let our support crew know we're alive," Stacy protested. "Surely you can contact them?"
Pitt exchanged a taut look with Giordino. "On our way to rescue you, we passed a badly damaged ship that had recently fallen to the bottom."
"No, not the Invincible," Stacy murmured, unbelieving.
"She was badly broken up, as though she suffered from a heavy explosion," replied Giordino. "I doubt there were any survivors."
"Two other ships were nearby when we started our dive," Plunkett pleaded. "She must have been one of them."
"I can't say," Pitt admitted. "Something happened up there. Some kind of immense turbulence. We've had no time to investigate and don't have any hard answers."
"Surely you felt the same shock wave that damaged our submersible."
"This facility sits in a protected valley off the fracture zone, thirty kilometers away from where we found you and the sunken ship. What was left of any shock wave passed over us. All we experienced was a mild rush of current and a sediment storm as the bottom was stirred into what is known on dry land as a blizzard condition."
Stacy gave Pitt an angry look indeed. "Do you intend to keep us prisoners?"
"Not exactly the word I had in mind. But since this is a highly classified project I must ask you to accept our hospitality a bit longer."
"What do you call à bit longer'?" Salazar asked warily.
Pitt gave the small Mexican a sardonic stare. "We're not scheduled to return topside for another sixty days."
There was silence. Plunkett looked from Salazar to Stacy to Pitt. "Bloody hell!" he snapped bitterly.
"You can't hold us here two months."
"My wife," groaned Salazar. "She'll think I'm dead."
"I have a daughter," said Stacy, quickly subdued.
"Bear with me," Pitt said quietly. "I realize I seem like a heartless tyrant, but your presence has put me in a difficult position. When we have a better grip on what happened on the surface, and I talk with my superiors, we might work something out."
Pitt paused as he spotted Keith Harris, the project's seismologist, standing in the doorway nodding for Pitt to talk outside the room.
Pitt excused himself and approached Harris. He immediately saw the look of concern in Harris' eyes.
"Problem?" he asked tersely.
