Pressure

Below Martin asked Ben for the same distance twice. Owen knew he had heard the first answer perfectly well. On the bell monitor Martin was kneeling beside a painted reference plate on the east side of the tie-in assembly, one glove holding the tape against the steel while Ben worked around the back of the support. Their lamps floated in and out of the camera picture as the current lifted sediment from the seabed. At sixty metres it could be difficult to judge how far apart they were until a light picked out a familiar bolt or the bright edge of somebody's helmet. "Four hundred and eighty from the datum," Ben repeated. "Same as the drawing. Give or take a couple." "Which couple?" Martin asked. There was just enough delay before Ben answered for Owen to know the older man was getting on his nerves. "The two that don't matter." Ben's camera shifted as he reached back for the tape. Martin had him take it again, properly this time, and the figure came back four eighty-one point five. "Thank you. Owen, have you got that?" Martin's voice had the dry, faintly nasal sound it acquired through the helium speech processor. Owen wrote down the figure and told him he had every thrilling millimetre. "The half as well," Martin added. "I don't want to find you've rounded me up when we're back upstairs." They had worked together often enough that Owen could identify either man without consulting the channel display. Ben tended to run his words together when he was occupied, but Martin became painstaking, even pedantic. Owen had seen him stop an entire operation because the figure he'd been given had been described as 'about right'. The next day Martin had brought the man a tape measure with his name written on it. The bell hung steady above the worksite, its pressure matched to the water outside. Warmth from the environmental controls reached the back of Owen's neck, though the open lower hatch put a different sort of cold into the small space, a dampness that lived in the metal. Two places waited for Martin and Ben, and the spare lengths of their umbilicals lay under Owen's care. He checked the indications on his panel while Martin resumed reading measurements for the survey record. When Ben moved round the back of the support, Owen paid out another metre of umbilical before the line became taut. "Gave you a bit more there. Keep it away from the lifting point." Ben acknowledged and the cable shifted clear across the upper corner of the external camera picture. Owen brought Martin's view back to the main monitor. The older diver was brushing a small patch of marine growth from a welded support, reading figures aloud for the recording. It was the last planned bell run of the assignment. They had completed the other inspection points and most of the close-out photographs the day before, leaving this eastern connection and a final sweep of the lower support legs. The vessel had further work elsewhere, the weather was expected to become less helpful, and everybody from the deck crew to the galley staff had begun talking about going home. The men inside saturation would not be going anywhere until decompression was complete, but they had already fallen into the habit of discussing what they would eat when they got ashore. Martin wanted fish and chips. He had said this at breakfast, then twice more, as though repeating it might make the hours pass. Ben had accused him of living in the wrong century. Owen had been hungry enough to agree with both of them. "Tell me there's no more painting," Ben said after another measurement. They were only there to record what needed work, but he had been complaining about coating repairs all week. "There's never painting on this job," Owen told him. "Only twenty-seven ways of proving somebody else ought to have painted it." Ben pointed out a square that could have been cleaned with a toothbrush, and offered to add it to the list. He sounded pleased with himself for finding the smallest possible remedial task. "Good luck getting that approved," Martin said. "They'll issue you a toothbrush specification and six forms." Owen smiled and entered another time mark. Their joking made a serviceable background to the work; he knew exactly where both men were by the slight changes in their voices, by the breath that came with climbing over a brace or shifting a tool. Martin would indulge a complaint for a minute, then ask for the measurement again if he was not satisfied. Alistair Reid, the diving supervisor, came through from control to ask how the south elevation was progressing. Owen reported that they were nearly finished but Martin wanted another look at the jumper connection. That earned a question about whether it had been on the day's programme. "General inspection of the associated fittings," Owen said, checking the work pack. "It's within the agreed area." "Fine, but keep me posted if the scope changes. We've got the bottom time we planned for; I'm not looking for surprises on the last dive." Alistair sounded occupied, with another conversation audible behind him. Owen acknowledged and was about to go back to his log when Martin's lamp turned towards the camera. "You two finished arranging my retirement?" Martin wanted to know. Owen promised him another twenty minutes before they put him in a home. "Make it a decent one," Martin said. Ben laughed as he moved the tape out of the way. Alistair had already returned to whatever discussion was under way in control, so Owen let the matter rest and checked the next inspection point on the work sheet. Martin rose carefully, testing his footing on the small platform. He was fifty-six and had grown distinctly less romantic about contorting himself through steelwork. Once, years earlier, Owen had watched him spend half an hour trying to retrieve a lost fitting while complaining that people with ordinary jobs were allowed to stand up. He still moved well, though he took a moment now to ease a shoulder before stepping across to the tie-in. Ben waited for him. He was a capable diver, quicker than Martin over awkward structures and generally good at seeing how a task ought to be done before everybody had finished discussing it. On one memorable shift he had spent ten minutes arguing that a bracket was in the wrong place before discovering he'd been holding the drawing upside down. Martin had bought him an upside-down calendar for Christmas and shown photographs of it to half the boat. At the clamp Martin asked Ben to find the identification number. Ben said it was under growth and offered to clear it, but Martin wanted a better light first. "I don't want you scraping something off because it looks untidy. Get the camera round the shoulder." Ben adjusted his helmet and waited for the image to settle. Owen could see the broad ring of the clamp in profile, with paint flaking from its outer shoulder and rust-coloured staining round an exposed bolt. On older subsea fittings, surface corrosion looked dreadful in a tight close-up. He had seen men mistake a streak of rust on coating for an imminent structural failure and had learned to distrust the first alarming picture. Martin took longer than usual over the view. "What do you make of that below the hub?" Ben angled the light towards the base of the support, and the image briefly filled with white before resolving into grey steel and soft sediment. A narrow strip of seabed had been swept cleaner than the material around it. Beyond it, something dark lay half concealed by pipework. "Current, I'd say," Ben offered. "It's stronger through here." "Maybe. Give me the lower edge," Martin said. Ben lowered himself, dislodging a cloud of fine particles that drifted across the camera. Owen reminded him to ease back so they would have something useful to show the ROV when it came across. Ben apologised, already moving his lamp again, and Martin waited for the disturbed water to clear. Martin remained quiet while the cloud thinned. His camera was steadier, and Owen put it on the larger monitor. Beneath the connection, the paint appeared rough and pale streaks ran down towards the support shoe. It could be damage, sediment or nothing more than an unfortunate angle, but Martin was looking at it with the concentration he ordinarily reserved for a bad measurement. "Alistair, can you get the ROV operator to look at the east jumper? Lower side of the hub. There may be something worth recording." The reply took a moment. Owen pictured Alistair turning to one of the other consoles. The control room had been busy at the start of the shift, with people coming in to watch the final inspection, though by now everyone would be back at their own workstations. Asked what they had found, Martin described a local patch of scour and possible coating damage. He was careful about the description: he did not say that the joint was leaking. "Don't clean it or start anything intrusive," Alistair told him. "I'll get the ROV to look from clear water. Both of you give it room." Martin acknowledged while Owen recorded the position and the time. Nothing further was needed from the divers until they had a usable camera picture. Ben straightened beside the assembly. "Doesn't look any worse than last time," he said, and Owen saw Martin turn his helmet towards him. When Martin asked what he meant, Ben explained that on the old job the area had been so covered in marine growth it was difficult to see much of anything. "You were here eighteen months ago, weren't you?" Martin asked. "Yeah. I've been here more than once." Ben sounded mildly put out by the question. Martin seemed ready to ask another, but instead told Owen to mark the time, then moved away from the connection to make space for the approaching ROV. Ben followed after Owen reminded him that his umbilical had come too near the support's edge. Owen turned briefly from the monitor to the viewport. The sea beyond it was an uneven green-black field, disturbed now and then by the edge of a diver's light. He preferred the camera pictures for detail, but the viewport had a way of keeping the scale honest. Beyond the little pocket of illumination was an enormous amount of water, perfectly indifferent to four men, a vessel overhead and the reason they had been sent down. Owen suggested they might finish their thrilling last dive with nothing more than a patch of missing paint and some disturbed sand. Martin told him he could start complaining after he'd had his tea. "He's worse after tea," Ben put in, and Martin laughed, the sound catching badly in the speech processor. He asked Owen to bring up the old survey sheet while there was still time. Owen had it open on the secondary display by the time the men had moved into clear water. The connection's identification matched the work pack. Owen found the previous inspection note attached to it: No significant visual anomaly observed. Coating condition acceptable. No further action recommended. Beneath it were three photographs, each dated eighteen months earlier. In the first there was more growth around the lower edge; the second looked squarely at the clamp but missed the area Martin had asked to see; the third was blurred by suspended matter. He enlarged it and saw very little that helped. "Older pictures aren't wonderful," Owen said. Martin agreed without much interest in the complaint. When Owen asked who had signed the report, however, Martin told him to leave that for now. "I want to know what we're looking at before I worry about anybody's signature." Owen left the report on the spare display. Martin sounded unusually guarded. Nobody liked opening an old job's paperwork because of a patch of damaged paint. It could turn a day's closure photographs into a week of argument over who had inspected what. The ROV's lights approached from beyond the support frame, first as a faint glow and then as a clear white wash across the metal. Owen recognised the operator's tendency to stop too close and back away a little; he had watched the same man work for three nights. A camera shot from farther out put the connection in context, without the bubbles and distortion created by a diver moving alongside it. "Hold it there," Martin told the ROV operator as the new image arrived. The lights had picked out the lower side of the clamp from a cleaner angle, and Owen saw something pale drift upwards from a particular point beneath it. He assumed a curl of disturbed sediment had caught the light. Then it happened again, starting in the same place and rising against the otherwise still water. Martin asked the operator to maintain position. Ben was watching from several metres away, his helmet lamp turned down so it would not flare in the picture. Owen waited for the pale movement to stop, but another thin stream followed the first. "That's interesting," Martin said. Owen took his hand off the log. The pale stream rose again.