Previous: Chapter Twenty-Four: The Marcel Loubens
Using a crane, the crew of the Marcel Loubens lowered Le Garage into the water off the starboard side.
The two divers were ready. Bobbie bit down on the breathing regulator, pitched backwards off the starboard gunwale of the Marcel Loubens, and plunged into the water. Terry followed suit. The two bobbed to the surface, and swam a couple of meters to Le Garage. The two divers placed hands on the floating submersible to steady themselves.
Aboard the boat, Petra untied the spring line from its kevil and tossed the end to Bobbie, who caught the rope before it hit the water. Bobbie clipped the end of the line to a dive belt karabiner, while Terry removed the shackle which still secured Le Garage to the sailboat’s crane hoist. This done, the two divers and the submersible were now on their own.
Petra called out from the deck. “Everything looks good here, just bleed off the BC when you’re ready.” Bobbie gave a thumbs up and opened a valve on the air-filled buoyancy compensator, a bright yellow bag mounted on top of Le Garage, and massaged the bag to help it deflate. Soon the divers, and their strange contraption, disappeared below the surface, in a cloud of bubbles.
“Now what?” asked Merl.
“Now,” said the Captain, “we wait to see if they come back.”
Frick and Frack, the two robot sumbersibles, left Le Garage. Frick led the way as the two dived deep into the underwater cave. The two moved slowly. Moving too quickly would disturb the sediment of the cave floor, and these two robots knew exactly how much time remained until it was time to turn back.
Each drone carried an array of camera eyes, each lit with a superbright lamp. This was not a dark environment, though no light had ever shone here before. As the drones collected data, sonar and lidar mapped the underwater environment around them.
After a few hundred meters of relatively tight passage, no more than a few meters across, the twin drones emerged in blackness. Slowly the drones’ cameras adjusted to the darkness. The passage was wider than the Channel Tunnel and almost as tall. Liquid green stalagmites connected floor to ceiling in an exquisite limestone collonade.
The drones noted this, the contours of every obstacle added to their limited machine consciousness every moment. What a stalagmite meant was beyond their ken: to document it and not crash into it was all the drones cared about, or ever could. And to return home safely.
Once a minute, the two drones paused, hovering side by side in mid water. The two drones exchanged copies of their data. Each voted. Go ahead? Go ahead.