Free River Odyssey by Philip Roy Page A

does, doesn’t it? Do you think it’s a body?”
    I looked harder. “It probably isn’t. Things have a way of looking like something else underwater, especially when they’ve been there for a long time. Chances are, if you touched it, it would be nothing but a big clump of weeds stuck together.”
    “Do you think we should try to get closer just in case it’s a body? Because, if it is a body, then we have to report it.”
    “Hmmm.”
    I didn’t really want to move closer because there were so many tentacles dangling free, and while most were surely just weeds, some of them could be old rope, or even metal cables. I didn’t want to get the propeller wrapped up in a cable.
    “Just a little closer. Then we can see what it is.”
    “Okay. Just a little closer.”
    But it wasn’t easy to move just a little closer. The current across the surface of the wreck was creating a turbulence that I didn’t realize until we were almost touching it. Before I knew what was happening the sub started to tilt sideways.
    “What’s happening?”
    “Umm … just a bit of turbulence, but we’d better get out of here.”
    And then I heard the motor whine. “Shoot!” I raced to the panel and shut the power off.
    “What? What happened?”
    I ignored Marie’s question. I was too preoccupied. I stared down through the observation window and watched to see if we would drift free. We didn’t. Slowly the sub turned and faced away from the current, like a kite on a string.
    “What is it, Alfred? What happened?”
    “Ummm … there’s a cable jammed in the propeller.”
    “Oh! No!”
    “No, it’s okay. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. It’s no big deal.”
    “Oh. That’s good. I was frightened there for a moment.”
    I didn’t want to lie to Marie—this had never happened before—but I couldn’t let her panic. I needed to sit calmly and think it through and make smart choices. To do that, I needed her to be calm. The truth was: we were stuck.

Chapter 12

    MY MIND RACED through the possibilities and I had to keep slowing it down. It was so important to think clearly. When a cable was wrapped around the propeller, the thing to do was go out and unwrap it by hand. If we were on the surface, that’s exactly what I would have done. But we were a hundred feet down. Since that was my maximum depth for diving it was not impossible for me to go out, unwrap the cable, swim to the surface, catch my breath and swim back down. But, of course, I couldn’t get out without flooding the sub. When we built the sub, we tested it for exactly that—flooding. We sank it twice on purpose, and I practised opening and sealing the hatch underwater, and sealing myself inside when the sub was filled with water, which was certainly one of the scariest feelings in the world. The hatch now had an automatic sealing mechanism. The sub would flood, but the hatch would shut by itself and the sump pumps would remove the water, but not as fast as it would rush in. We had tested for that too. Ziegfried had insisted upon testing everything. I understood his obsession for testing better all the time.
    The sump pumps could not keep up with water flooding through an open portal. The hatch would have to open and shut immediately. If it didn’t for any reason, the sub would fill completely in just seconds. And though I would probably survive by swimming to the surface, Hollie and Marie wouldn’t.
    “What are you thinking, Alfred?”
    “What? Oh. I’m just thinking it through. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
    “That’s good. I was so worried. What will you do?”
    “Well, there are a number of ways to fix the problem. I just have to decide which method I want to try first.”
    “But what if it doesn’t work?”
    I stared at Marie and tried to look as calm as possible, even bored. “It’s no big deal. It’ll just hold us up for a little while. I just don’t want to damage my propeller. Give me a few minutes to figure out the best way to unhook