He glanced at his watch. He had been on duty now only twenty minutes. An hour and forty minutes to go before his plunge. Usually you took it first, in order to be in your best condition, rested and untired. But, because Nils had got out of order owing to his trip upstairs, he had to take his plunge after he had already been on duty for two hours.
That was bad. He would be just a little tired. He wouldn't be quite in the right condition. His responses would be just a shade off. The work would be just that much more dangerous.
And then he thought, What if I don't get back? What if it's my last plunge? What if I don't get that air lion? What if I die down there, Siegfried unprovided for?
Kerr's voice sounded: "I think I see one."
"Need anything?" Nils asked.
"Not so far. But I think there's something moving down there."
"Good luck," Nils said. But his voice was empty. He was thinking of himself. There were so many things that might happen to him down there, and he had only now begun to think of them.
An air lion was a big creature. If one charged you, it could rip you right away from any one or all three of the vital strands that connected you with the surface—cable, air hose, or radio wire. Actually, the loss of the radio wire was nothing. When there was a total deadness in his earphones, the radioman signaled frantically and the diver was hauled up. But loss of either of the other two was fatal. If your air hose was cut, you died right away, not of lack of oxygen but of the liquid methane and ammonium that got into your breathing apparatus. If your cable was torn loose, there was a faint chance. You hung on, if you could, until the old cable could be taken off the drum and a new one put on. Then they sent it down and the other diver snapped it to your suit. But the air hose alone might not be capable of sustaining the heavy suit—and if it gave way before the new cable was attached, you were dead.
"There's one!" Kerr's voice was excited in his earphones. "I can see him now. If he gets a little closer, I can get a shot at him."