Julian Vance kept his thumb pressed hard against the spring-loaded black bakelite toggle switch of the Helle 3214 Helium Unscrambler.
Beside him, Lin Mei braced both palms against the vibrating aluminum faceplate of the rack-mounted frequency analyzer.
“Look at the cathode-ray oscilloscope trace, Julian!” Lin Mei shouted above the hum of the vacuum tubes. “Look at the fundamental frequency!”
Across the green phosphor grid, a flat, unyielding sine wave pulsed in bright emerald light.
“One hundred and ten hertz!” Lin Mei called out, her eyes wide behind her smudged glasses. “The waveform didn’t jump to eleven hundred hertz at all! It’s still sitting at room-air baritone!”
Mac Cole froze with his flesh-and-blood right hand two inches from the inner hatch dogging lever, his brow furrowing in roughneck disbelief.
“Hold on,” Mac growled, squinting at the glowing green dial of the Helle box. “You’re holding down the Raw Bypass toggle, kid. The frequency divider is completely disconnected from the circuit.”
“And Diving Bell Number Two is pressurized to one hundred and eighty-five pounds per square inch of heliox,” Doctor Victor Corvo stated, his clinical voice dropping to a razor-sharp edge.
