One

Even as he tried to grab hold of something to stop him being clattered around the unforgiving innards of the bell, Jane was thinking of reasons. Electrical storms. Terrorist attacks. Dirty bombs. Chemical agents.

Stopper cracked his head hard against the CO2 scrubber and fell back against the top hatch, his foot folding under him as if it were without bone. Jane heard something crack dully, like the sound of splitting sapling branches. Stopper made no protest; blood pulsed steadily from a wound behind his left ear. Jane ducked down and propped him against the rack of heliox cylinders, strapped a belt around his chest and trapped it behind the heater. The diving bell jerked back on itself and Jane crashed into the control panel, tearing what felt like a foot-long strip of skin from his back.

But then there was a jolt that seemed unnatural, a punch that had not been dealt by the wind's fist. Water cleared a viewing space in one of the portholes; Jane swung over to it and peered out. He could see the other bell swinging around on its hoist wire and little else through a blizzard of spume. They were level with the decks but waves were crashing over the sides. He hadn't seen that in ten years of working around rigs. He'd much rather not be seeing that while being inside a pressurised diving bell. Again, that feeling of something controlling the bell came back; he heard the cable grind as it was shifted against the direction in which the wind wanted to take it. He felt a tightening, a drawing-in; he realised it must be the motion-compensation system, which meant that someone was supervising their return. He saw the other bell impact against a landing stage, almost crumpling it as if it were fashioned from aluminium foil.

Their own diving bell was stilled for a moment; it was under control. He heard the usual thumps and dings that meant the stage was being disconnected, and another thunk as the bell was mated to the entrance lock of the Ceto, the Diving Support Vessel. He tried to see through the porthole who was rescuing them – at least two men must have survived to be able to coax the bell into its docking position – but he could not make out anything beyond the ceaseless spray and the strange persistent fibrous rain.

He ran a palm over his forehead, pushing his sweaty hair back from his face, and looked through the hatch at the trunking space and the tunnel to safety that it offered. 'How are we for pressure in there?' he asked, but nobody was replying. The readings on the diving-bell gauge were normal but everything else was frazzled; it might simply have frozen. He had to hope that the pressure inside the DSV was equal to that in the bell. Jane thought of his son. He whispered, 'Stanley.'

He spun the hatch wheel and felt his body tense as the door hissed open. Seawater rained on him from the seal as he ducked under the frame and into the Ceto. Blood was smeared across the outside of one of its tiny windows. There was nothing to be seen through that. He ducked back into the bell, grasped Stopper under the arms and dragged him through to their living quarters. He tried hoisting him onto one of the bunks, but all his strength had left him; his muscles felt flabby, saturated by fear. The wound on the back of Stopper's head had stopped bleeding. His breathing and pulse were weak but regular. That was something. Jane wondered how long they would have to wait for help to arrive. Nothing was landing on the helipad while the sea was being whipped up like this. Decompression time for the team would be something in the region of thirty-six hours.

He made sure that Stopper was comfortable, then made his way to the end of the chamber where a window allowed him a view of the second chamber. He could not yet see Rae or Carver, but he could hear the clamour of their diving bell as the winchmen struggled to align it with the entrance lock. Shadows flashed across the porthole and then he could see the other bell as it was hauled into view alongside theirs. As the hatches drew level the tartan headband that Rae always wore became visible.

Rae was crying. Hismouth was open; light glittered in the bars of saliva between his lips. Maybe Carver had died. But that wasn't so; Rae's buddy was standing behind him. He was trying to calm Rae down.

What is it? Jane mouthed, but he wasn't sure Rae could see him. The cramped living quarters had never seemed so stifling to Jane.

A letter from Stanley lay on his bunk. Before they had descended that morning – the sky a beautiful unbroken span of coral pink; the sea flat cobalt, not a scuff of white upon it – he had read it half a dozen times. He wrote well for a five-year old. It was in a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, and the spelling relied on phonetics in the main, but it was neat, with little slope. Stream of consciousness, almost. A blurt of detail, as if he couldn't get it out of himself quick enough.