Bear Bait (9781101611548) (40 page)

Her breathing sounded mechanical and forced now.
Calm down
, she told herself. In—hiss. Out—bubble, bubble, bubble.
You signed up for this.

She looked down. Below, Dan stared at her and coughed again. The display on her computer was flashing, the technological equivalent of a stern teacher shaking a warning finger. She’d been down with Dan, up after the turtle, down with Dan again, and then up after the shark. Yo-yoing. A definite no-no. Letting air out of her buoyancy vest, she slowly sank again, holding out her arms in an underwater shrug, then pointing to her camera, hoping he’d read that as being an overly enthusiastic photographer. If her fingers trembled, maybe he’d attribute it to the water’s chill. He had definitely been right about the wet suit. Her computer registered seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, which was surprisingly cold when suspended in liquid for thirty minutes.

With another burst of bubbles, Dan turned away, circling over the algae-mottled seabed, searching for more marine life. She followed, gliding a yard above the rough black lava, delighting in the marvels of a red-and-white cushion star and a psychedelic display of orange cup coral.

Suddenly the rock floor beneath her fell away, and she found herself suspended above a deep chasm. Dan was below her, his form made hazy by a shoal of tiny blue fish
between them. His bubbles streamed up between the darting shapes. One air globule hit her mask squarely in front of her right eye, and clung there like a droplet of mercury until she turned her head and it rolled away, continuing its journey to the surface.

She was suspended in blue-green space. It felt marvelous and frightening and astounding, all at the same time. Her air gauge showed almost a thousand PSI left. She was breathing well, not too fast. She was gliding through the liquid womb of Mother Earth with fish and reptiles and—what
was
the proper classification for sea cucumbers, anyway? Echinoderms? Her wildlife biology studies had focused on mammals, so she needed to brush up on the cold-blooded classifications.

She came face-to-face with an exquisite purple lace fan. On land, she would have said it was part of the fern family. Down here, coral? She wasn’t sure. According to her books, corals came in many shapes, sizes, and colors. So did sponges. To make identification even more confusing, other creatures mimicked plants. Bryozoans? She didn’t yet know which name applied to which creature. Or even if it was one creature she was staring at. Some marine organisms were actually groups of animals.
Mind-blowing
.

They’d been down for nearly forty minutes now. Hadn’t Dan told the boat pilot they would circle? They hadn’t. Unless her underwater navigation skills were seriously flawed, they hadn’t traveled very far at all. Shouldn’t they be swimming more, counting more? Beneath her, Dan listed slightly to starboard. His computer dangled on its wrist cord in the slight current. He floated facedown, barely moving. Sam joined him to see what was so mesmerizing. Unable to detect much of interest within his range of vision, she tapped him on the shoulder. When he didn’t react, she tugged at his arm.

His body rolled toward her like a mannequin. Behind the face mask, his eyes were dull, his eyelids at half-mast. She flashed the “okay?” question at him.

Dan floated listlessly, unresponsive.