Free Ultra Deep by William H. Lovejoy

below the passenger deck. Water, trim, ballast, and waste tanks took up the most space, followed by four sets of battery banks. Twin electric motors provided the propulsion. In an aft compartment were the liquid oxygen tanks and the electronics. Forward, on the other side of a bulkhead, was the control cabin and the forward hatch, located on top of the hull in a small sail. The main cabin could seat thirty-two people, and each set of two seats had its own porthole, the better to view the trip through southern California seas. Since she was designed for transportation purposes at relatively shallow depths of less than 2,000 feet, the Voyager had been given a much thinner hull than other submersibles, as well as a sleeker shape in order to increase her speed.
    The interior had not yet been finished to the specifications expected by the ticket-paying public. Electrical and hydraulic conduits were exposed along the sides and ceiling. The floor was steel. The seats were covered in canvas. Everything was finished in gray-speckled paint. The utilitarian decor did not bother the work crews who were transported daily to Ocean Deep, however. They had other things on their minds.
    The Voyager’s first trip this morning was reserved for the chief supervisors of the project, who would make their weekly combined inspection. The submersible left Commerce Basin at 5 A.M., an ungodly hour, but one selected by the group for its lack of interference in the rest of their day. The hour did not bother Kim Otsuka, for she was an early riser, a believer in dawn.
    The first leg of the trip, out of San Diego Bay, was accomplished on the surface and was generally rough. Once into open sea, however, the Voyager dove to a hundred feet, and most impressions of motion disappeared. The submersible could make almost thirty knots subsurface, and the trip took about an hour.
    Outside her porthole, Otsuka saw the domes rise to meet her, then slip overhead as the submersible dove below them. The base of the first dome was sixty feet above the seabed, allowing ample room for the submersible to wend its way to the interlock on the floor of the dome.
    A pair of steel legs drifted past. She felt herself pushed forward in her seat as the propellers went into reverse, slowing the forward momentum. Pumps moaned as water ballast was forced from tanks below the deck. The Voyager rose slowly toward the underside of the dome.
    Clank!
    The forward hatch mated with the lock.
    Hiss of air as water was forced from the lock.
    People rose from their chairs, gathering notebooks, briefcases, palm-sized computers. They began to file forward toward the control compartment and the ladder that would take them up to work.
    Kim Otsuka had never thought, either, that she would commute to work by submarine.
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    0847 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 8' NORTH, 92° 32' WEST
    Brande and Okey Dokey sat in the two controllers seats located side by side in the manned submersible DepthFinder II . Her sister submersible, DepthFinder , was operated from the Orion in the Pacific.
    In the single seat behind them, at a right angle to the way they faced, Brandie Anderson took care of the communications and systems monitoring chores. This was her fifth dive in DepthFinder . This was the way student interns became lifelong oceanographers.
    The three of them were in relatively cramped quarters. The main pressure hull had an interior diameter of eight feet. It was one big ball made of titanium alloy, the only way to design a life-supporting environment that would withstand the pressures at 20,000 feet of depth.
    Directly overhead was the ten-inch-thick circular hatchway. In front of them were three five-inch-diameter portholes, one forward, and one each angled to port and starboard. Those were the only direct visual accesses to the outside world. Below the portholes were three video screens.
    Encasing the three crew members, and further depriving them of space, were dozens of flat panels in square, hexagonal, and