The Danger ( PDFDrive.com )

the striking Californian asked in alarm.
“The Australian crawl,” Star replied sarcastically. “What does it look like
I’m doing? I’m trying to walk, and it isn’t happening.”
And then a soft voice spoke her name.
For the first time, she looked up. “Dad,” she barely whispered.
So much had happened in the past weeks, but their exotic location had given
it a dreamlike fairy-tale quality. Now, to see her father — someone from home,
from her real life — brought it all crashing down on her.
It was heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time.
Mr. Ling scooped his daughter off the floor and lifted her gently back to her
bed. There he held her and let her cry.
Zipped safely away in the duffel bag, the whalebone handle rested on a pile
of wadded-up T-shirts. What Star had been in too much of a hurry to notice was
that the collision with the door frame had chipped a piece of coral from the hilt.
The stone set in its center now glowed a deep fiery green.
The crane was so large that, when its winch was in operation, the roar was
like an airport runway during takeoff. Poseidon Oceanographic Institute had
nothing like it. This titanic piece of equipment, along with Antilles IV, the
enormous ship that supported it, was on loan from Antilles Oil Company. It was
normally used to salvage lost drill parts and underwater piping. But today the
quarry was Deep Scout, the research submersible that had been disabled and
abandoned by the late Captain Vanover and the four interns.
Three hundred feet below, oil company divers fastened grappling hooks and
lift bags to the crippled sub’s hull. And then the powerful cables began to haul
Deep Scout from its watery prison. The lift bags inflated as the vehicle rose and
the air inside expanded.
Minutes later, Deep Scout broke the surface, its clear bubble gleaming in the
sun. Dripping, it was winched onto the expansive work bed of the Antilles IV,
where dozens of crew members awaited it.
Far astern, a second, smaller crane was in operation. It was raising the diving
bell, which housed the salvage divers. It also acted as a decompression chamber,
saving the deep-sea workers the need to make decompression stops in the water.
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