Deap Sea Diving Suit |
"Why are these things always called Jim?" said the reporter who had intercepted Bradley at St. John's Airport. He was surprised there was only one, considering the excitement his mission seemed to be generating. One, of course, was often more than enough; but at least there was no Bluepeace demonstration to contend with.
"After the first diver who wore an armored suit, when they salvaged the Lusitania's gold back in the thirties. Of course, they've been enormously improved since then. . . ."
"How?"
"Well, they're self-propelled, and I could live in Jim for fifty hours, two kilometers down - though it wouldn't be much fun. Even with servo-assisted limbs, four hours is maximum efficient working time."
"You wouldn't get me into one of those things," said the reporter, as the fifteen hundred kilos of titanium and plastic that had accompanied Bradley from Houston was being carefully hoisted into a Chevron helicopter. "Just looking at it gives me claustrophobia. Especially when you remember - "
Bradley knew what was coming, and escaped by waving goodbye and walking toward the chopper.
The question had been put to him, in one form or another, by at least a dozen interviewers hoping to get some reaction. They had all been disappointed, and had been forced to concoct such imaginative headlines as THE IRON MAN IN THE TITANIUM SUIT.
"Aren't you afraid of ghosts?" he had been asked - even by other divers. They were the only people he had answered seriously. "Why should I be?" he had always replied. "Ted Collier was my best friend; God alone knows how many drinks we shared." ("And girls," he might have added.) "Ted would have been delighted; no other way I could have afforded Jim back in those days - got him for a quarter of what he'd cost to build."
lusitania propeller |
"State of the art, too - never had a mechanical failure. Sheer bad luck Ted was trapped before they could get him out from that collapsed rig. And you know . . . Jim kept him alive three hours longer than the guarantee. Someday I may need those three hours myself."
But not, he hoped, on this job - if his secret ingredient worked. It was much too late to pull out now; he could only trust that his encyclopedia, which seemed to have let him down badly in one important detail, had been accurate in other matters.
As always, Jason was impressed by the sheer size of the Hibernia platform, even though only a fraction of it was visible above sea level. The million-ton concrete island looked like a fortress, its jagged outline giving a field of fire in all directions.
And indeed it was designed to ward off an implacable, though nonhuman, enemy - the great bergs that came drifting down from their Arctic nursery. The engineers claimed that the structure could withstand the maximum possible impact. Not everyone believed them.
There was a slight delay as the helicopter approached the landing platform on the roof of the multistoried topside building; it was already occupied by an RAF chopper, which had to be rolled aside before they could touch down. Bradley took one glance at its insignia, and groaned silently. How did they know so quickly? he wondered.
The president of World Wildlife was waiting for him as soon as he stepped out onto the windswept platform, and the big rotors came slowly to rest. |
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