B27C12/13/24 - 15,000 Feet

<Is there no Earth being that can dive down fifteen thousand feet?> Ax asked.

(...)

“Oh. Who. CARES?” Cassie cried. “Squid. We can morph a giant squid! Giant squid dive really deep. And they have arms, so we could maybe get into the Pemalite ship.”

(...)

<All right,> Jake said. <Tobias? Lead the way.>

Easy to say. Almost impossible to do. People think diving is like taking an elevator down. But we were talking about three miles of water. Three miles of currents and crosscurrents. In darkness so total that after the first mile or so even the squid's specially adapted eye could see nothing. Not to mention the fact that there was nothing to see!

There were two clocks ticking in our heads: a little over two hours till the nuclear vault opened and a paralyzed Chee was discovered.

And just two hours till we were trapped in morph.

And one major complication: If we demorphed, we'd be crushed, our bodies squeezed flat till the bones would stick out of us like pins in a pin-cushion, our heads popped like overripe cantaloupes.

Which meant there was a third clock: the point of no return. The point beyond which we'd no longer have time to get back to the surface. Beyond that point we either found the Pemalite ship or . . .

But Tobias was not finding the ship. The ship was huge. Maybe three hundred feet long, according to the Chee. But imagine that you know where a three-hundred-foot-long building is. Then you leave the building and walk three miles through darkness.

Now imagine finding your way back. Blindfolded.

We reached the ocean floor and Tobias led us this way and that. Back and forth, skimming like mushy torpedoes across dead desert wastes, our jets kicking up clouds of sand and tiny rocks and the decayed remains of everything that had ever died in the three miles of water above us.