The steel door of the recompression chamber swung shut with a heavy, metal clank that sounded like the closing of a bank vault.
Foreman Corbin Cross, his face smeared with graphite grease, tightened the six heavy dog-clamps around the outer rim of the entrance hatch with a four-foot bronze wrench.
Each clamp drew down onto a greased rubber seal ring with a muffled squelch.
Inside the six-foot steel metal tube, eight divers lay on narrow canvas bunks suspended from the curved ceiling by iron chains.
Sister Teresa sat on a folding stool in the narrow aisle between the cots. She held a brass clipboard and a pocket pulse-glass.
Her white nurse’s coif was tucked neatly beneath an oilskin cap. She had an ear-trumpet pressed against Bram’s chest.
“All dogs dogged tight, Master Giles!” Corbin shouted through the telephone tube.
Giles Croft stood on the timber platform outside the chamber, his hand resting on the master air-admission wheel.
