Free Shipwrecked with Mr. Wrong by Nikki Logan Page A

it, but it was far enough that the light quality changed as it descended, becoming a strange, ethereal blue. He knew without looking his skin would be a sickly, translucent colour for the same reason.
    The local fish had specialised for this unique light. Their colours were vibrant and complementary as they darted around the unexpected human arrival. Dark shapes on the ocean floor came into focus. Rob was excited, but forced himself to slow his breathing and his pace and remembered, guiltily, to ping the remote monitor. He swam on. If Honor called him back now he knew he’d have a hard time making good on his promise to return.
    The wreck spread over some distance. Massive parts of it had completely broken apart, caking the sea floor with corroded residue. Nothing rusted down here; in the absence of air, it all just … dissolved. The densest parts survived the longest and Rob had no trouble making out the pointed bow of the
SMS
Emden.
It was battleship grey no longer, caked now with golden corals, brain-shaped clusters and microscopic marine life. Sponge fingers waved in the gentle floor current and blue-lipped clams bonded to the old steel, filtering goodness from the water all around him.
    It was just like the photographs and nothing like them.
    He remembered to ping again.
    He rounded the
Emden’s
bow and saw two enormous Mickey Mouse ears sticking out of the sand in the distance. His heart kicked out and the number of bubbles leaving his mask doubled. He swam towards the visible part of the
Emden’s
giant propeller, crusted over with barnacles and limpets. The other half had become sea floor.
    Ping.
    Fish continued to dart this way and that, braver now he’d shown them no harm. One or two became his undersea chaperones, following him with interest as he drifted around. He slowed to a stop and held his breath. Not the smartest thing to do while diving but he risked it for a chance to take in the otherworldly silence of the ocean floor.
    Not silence, though. Any more than Honor’s island was silent. The water carried magnified noises to his exposed ears. The last of the bubbles floated off with his expelled breathand with them their distinctive and relentless
bub-a-lub.
The dense silence surrounding him was broken by the strange creaks, pops and squeaks of undersea creatures.
    He saw a looming shape in the distance. Too small to be a shark, too big to be a fish. A ray, maybe? As it neared, its shape resolved into one of Honor’s green turtles. It glided effortlessly through the water, its bulk and weight meaningless in the low gravity environment. On shore, it would be a different story. He immediately thought of Honor and how excited she would be to see one in its natural underwater environment.
    Honor …
    Ping.
    The hour passed all too quickly. Rob swam over the entire wreck, memorising the detail, examining everything and touching nothing. His mind buzzed with unanswerable questions about what he’d seen. Did he have the patience to wait until he was back on the Australian mainland? His body was energised and hyper-sensitive; his heart hadn’t felt this light in months. Since his last new dive. At last, he noticed his air was below half, which meant his time was up. He turned his face to the surface and ascended, taking care to equalise every ten metres to get back to Honor safely.
    He broke surface, blinked in the glare ofthe above-sea world and spat out his regulator. She wasn’t peering over the edge waiting for him. He was crazy to have harboured the expectation, even subconsciously, but he knew a tiny moment of disappointment.
    Pulling his full weight into the boat was near impossible after the relaxation of complete buoyancy. He shed his weight belt and tank, hauling them ahead of him into the boat, but still he felt as if he weighed hundreds of kilograms. Like one of Honor’s turtles out of water. He peeled off his fins and chucked them ahead of him onto
The Player’s
deck, then pushed his whole body