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vealed how apt the cliche really is. Ex-Zampolit Captain Lieutenant Krasny has shown him that for some Russians, at least, times have not really changed so very much. |
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Karmann kicks, driving himself deeper. The sound his regulator makes is like the rushing noise of blood pumping out of a great heart. The compressed air in his tanks reeks of sweat and oil. They have been changed from the tanks of the Pravda and are laden with the smells of a long-endurance underwater voyage. Karmann is concerned that the air in the tanks might be contaminated with plutonium. He is certain that much aboard the Pravda is. |
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He glides down until he hovers centimeters from the curving flank of the Device. He sees that the fall to the sea floor has warped a seam on the missile housing. That disquiets him. Kolodin has supplied the divers with a single radiation counter. Arkady Karmann, three weeks and five thousand kilometers deep into this Soyuz conspiracy, has learned to be extremely suspicious. He has not been allowed to speak privately with the medical petty officer, but it seems that too many of the men, particularly those who have worked in the Device bay, are ill. Influenza, Kolodin and Krasny say. |
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Two of the unloading crew are working on the other side of the Device. From the colored patches on their wet suits, Karmann identifies them as Grushenko and Palatin, two very young ratings only recently qualified for underwater work. Palatin, an engaging young Georgian, has been ill and has only recently returned to duty. He is involved in placing the locator anchors that are needed, so Captain Kolodin says, for the time when Soyuz has done its work of intimidating the Americans and must be located and disarmed. Karmann doubts this. Before being assigned as an oceanic biologist to the GKNT, the State Scientific and Research Establishment, he had done a tour as a diving officer. To him, the mechanisms Palatin is deploying at this moment look suspiciously like antipersonnel mines. |
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