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"I wish it was more."
There was a pause from Pisces. Then, "Do we have an option?"
"No," Barnum sighed heavily. "I guess not." He looked up at the big digital clock above the pilothouse's automated ship's console. His greatest fear was that if Sea Sprite was driven far off its position by the storm, he might not get back in time to save Dirk and Summer. He feared he was faced with a no-win situation. If he lost Dirk Pitt's children to the sea, there was no telling the wrath that would explode from NUMA's special projects director. "Take every precaution to extend your air supply."
"Not to worry, Captain. Summer and I will be snug as bugs in a rug in our little shack down in coral gulch."
Barnum felt uneasy. The odds were also long that Pisces could survive intact if the reef was pounded by hundred-foot waves generated by a Category 5 hurricane. He stared through the bridge windows to the east. Already the sky was filling with threatening clouds and the seas had risen to five feet.
With much regret and a deepening sense of foreboding, he gave orders for Sea Sprite to pull up the anchor and lay a course away from the predicted path of the storm.
When Summer reentered the main lock, Dirk gave her a rundown on the nasty weather coming their way over the horizon. He ran through instructions for conserving food and air. "We should also batten down any loose objects in case high seas knock us around down here."
"How soon before the worst of the storm reaches us?" asked Summer.
"According to the captain, sometime before morning."
"Then you have time for a final dive with me before we're cooped up in here until the weather clears."
Dirk looked at his sister. A lesser man, captivated by her beauty, would have fallen under her spell, but as her twin brother he was immune to her Machiavellian wiles. "What's on your mind?" he asked casually.
"I want to take a closer look inside the cavern where I found the urn."
"Can you find it again in the dark?"
"Like a fox to its lai
r," she said, cocksure. "Besides, you always enjoy seeing different species of fish on a night dive that you can't see during the day."
Dirk was hooked. "Then let's make it quick. We have a lot of work to do before the storm hits."
Summer put her arm through his. "You won't regret it!"
"Why do you say that?"
She stared up at her brother from those soft gray eyes. "Because the more I think about it, I believe there is a greater mystery than the urn waiting to be found inside the cave."
6
With Summer in the lead, they dropped out of the entry lock, checked each other's equipment and then moved into the sea that was as black as deep space. Together, they switched on their dive lights and startled the nearby night fish who had emerged after dark to feed in their coral domain. Above, there was no moon to sweep the surface with shimmering silver. The stars were cloaked by ominous clouds, the precursors of the vicious storm soon to come.
Dirk stroked his fins behind his sister, following her into the dark void. He knew she enjoyed the underwater world by her graceful, languid movements. Her bubbles rose in clusters of balloons indicating the comfortable breathing of an expert diver. She looked back at him through her mask and smiled. Then she pointed to her right and kicked off over the coral illuminated by her dive light in a maze of muted colors.
There was nothing sinister about the silent sea beneath the surface at night. Curious fish were attracted by the dive lights and came out of their coral hiding places to study the unfamiliar and awkward swimming creatures intruding in their midst who were carrying sealed housings that beamed like the sun. A huge parrot fish swam at Dirk's side, staring at him like a curious cat. Six four-foot barracudas materialized out of the gloom, their lower jaws protruding beyond their noses and displaying rows of needle-sharp teeth. They ignored the divers and glided past without the slightest sign of interest.
Summer finned through the coral canyons as if she was following a road map. A little blowfish, startled by the glare of the light, puffed its body into a round ball with spikes protruding from its sides like a cactus, making it impossible or extremely unlikely a big predator would be dumb enough to attempt to swallow such a throat-ripping morsel.
Their lights threw eerie, flickering shadows against the distorted coral whose surface varied from jagged sharpness to round and globular. To Dirk, the complex hues and shapes took on the look of a continuous abstract painting. He glanced at his depth gauge. It read forty-five feet. He glanced ahead as Summer suddenly dropped down into a narrow coral canyon with steep sides. He descended in her wake, noticing a number of openings in the coral leading to shallow caves and wondering which one had attracted her the day before.
Finally, she hesitated before a vertical opening with squared corners sandwiched between a pair of unnatural-looking columns. Turning briefly to see that her brother was still following, Summer swam unhesitatingly into the cavern beyond. This time, with a dive light in hand and the security of her brother beside her, Summer penetrated deeper into the cavern, past the place in the bottom sand where she had discovered the urn.
The cave was not crooked or irregular. The walls, ceiling and floor were almost perfectly flat, stretching into the darkness like a corridor without twists and turns. Deeper and deeper it led them on.
Becoming lost in a cave system is the number one cause of cave-diving fatalities. Mistakes prove deadly. Here, fortunately, there was no problem of orientation. This was not a dangerous cave dive, nor was there a fear of becoming lost in a complex system of adjoining caves. The chamber had no side openings or separate shafts that could cause them to lose their way. To regain the entrance, they had only to reverse their course. They were thankful there was no fine silt on the bottom that when disturbed could cloud vision for an hour before it settled again. The floor of the coral shaft was covered with coarse sand too heavy to swirl in the water if disturbed by their fins.
Abruptly, the shaft ended in what teased Summer's imagination. Though infested with marine growth, it seemed as if the shaft rose with a flight of steps. A school of angelfish twirled in a corkscrew above her head, then darted past as she began to ascend. Her skin and the nape of her neck suddenly tingled with expectation. Her earlier feeling that there was more to the cavern than met the eye came back with a rush.
The coral thinned this far under the reef. With no light to encourage marine growth the encrustation on the walls of the shaft was less than an inch thick and consisted more of slimy growth than hard coral. Dirk took his gloved hand and brushed away the greasy coating and felt his heart quicken as he recognized grooves in granite rock that he theorized were put there by ancient hands when the sea was lower.
