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a weak beam upon the mud packed surface to one side of the stone. A shiver trailed up his spine.
    He turned the underwater torch at an angle so the light wouldn’t reflect off the glass of her mask and grasped her arm to give the body a tug to pull it free. She turned her head to look at him. He jerked his hand back, a startled cry erupting from beneath his regulator. She couldn’t be alive. She blinked her eyes, as though coming awake from a nap, and shielded her vision as he shined the light directly into her facemask.
    He grabbed her pressure gauge. How could she have any gas left? There was precious little. If she ran short of air, they could buddy breathe until they reached the deco station. He had to get her back to the vertical line so they could make their ascent.
    He turned the face of the gauge in her direction and motioned with his light to get her attention focused, then pointed in the direction of the ship.
    She signaled her understanding with a bare hand, bone white, her movements sluggish. Jerking her glove free from her weight belt, he shoved it at her. She put it on, and then signaled thumbs up.
    How long had she been at seventy meters? Had she had a seizure? The possibility of brain damage ran through his mind. He wrote a question on his wrist slate and turned it in her direction.
    She focused the weak beam of her dive light at her watch and went still. She signaled thirty minutes. Shite. She’d been unconscious for part of that time. She should be dead.
    He grasped her arm and tugged her in the direction of the guideline. They stopped for a moment atop the drop-off at one hundred and twenty-five feet. He watched her for any signs of embolism or seizure. She pulled a grease pencil from the wristband slate on her arm and wrote a word then turned it for him to view.
    Henry?
    He pointed back the way he had come.
    She nodded, pressing a hand to her chest in a signal of relief.
    He stayed close by her side until they reached the vertical down line secured beneath Grannos’s stern. Following the rope up to the forty-six meter mark, they leveled off and grasped the structure of the PVC deco station he had lowered over the side before leaving the ship. Emergency tanks hung from the platform by rings in case just such a situation arose. He watched as she switched regulators to the emergency tank. He helped her remove the tanks and harness she wore and secure the other.
    Raising the computer that hung against his chest, he calibrated his decompression times. He watched as she did the same. Her face looked grayish white behind her mask as she turned the face of her computer toward him so he could read it. Bugger. She’d be decompressing while the storm blew in. And it would be dark before she surfaced. Fuck.
    She rubbed clear the wrist slate and wrote her decompression schedule on its surface. She turned it toward him. He nodded his understanding. She obviously knew what she was doing. What had happened?
    His deco stop wound down. He had to leave her. If he did so, and she experienced any number of the problems possible, he would not be there to help her. Anger lodged in the back of his throat. She had been bloody foolish to stay so long. More than bloody foolish. Sodding suicidal. He found the possibility of losing her, after finding her alive, unacceptable.
    He was still vacillating about a course of action when she signaled him to go. His movement’s jerky with frustration, he checked the heavy, welded O ring to which she had hooked herself and exchanged his freshly charged torch for hers. She put her thumb and forefinger together making a signal for okay. He returned the signal. Worry nagged him as he swam upward.
    *****
    Tears burnt Regan’s eyes as the diver propelled himself up the down line. It had taken all her control not to give into the panic rippling through her. It stole her breath and made her heartbeat thrum in her throat. She had to stay calm. She’d managed this long. She could do it.
    The