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He willked back at her

He turned and walked through the entryway of the shelter into the cold outside, trailed by two Navy men who tended his lines

Giordino began to follohen Lily clutched his arm "Will we be able to hear him?" she asked anxiously

"Yes, I've connected him into a speaker You and Dr Gronquist can stay here where it's ware for Pitt, simply come and tell me, and I'll pass it on"

Pitt walked stiffly to the edge of the ice hole and sat down The air temperature had dropped to zero It was a crystalline Novee, courtesy of a ten-mile-an-hour wind

As he slipped on his fins he looked up at the sheer sides of the mountains that soared above the inlet The tons of snow and ice clinging to the steep palisades seemed as if they could fall at any moment He turned to the upper end of the fjord where he could see glacier ar toward the sea Then he looked down

The water in the dive hole looked jade, ominous and cold

Coht approached and put his hand on Pitts shoulder All he could see was a pair of intense green eyes through the glass of the mask He spoke loudly so Pitt could hear

"One hour, twenty-three ht to know"

Pitt gave hied stare but did not reply He h the narrow hole into the forbidding water

He slowly settled past the encircling white walls He felt as if he were diving doell Once clear, he was dazzled by the glistening kaleidoscope of color from the sun's rays that penetrated the ice The underside of the sheet was jagged and uneven and specked with s stalactites for fresh water carried into the fjord by glaciers

Underwater visibility was allanced down and saw a s the bottom Thousands of small shrimplike crustaceans suspended in the still water swirled past his sight

A huge, three-meter bearded seal eyed hi fro seal shot him a wary look and say

Pitt touched the bottoer in diving with a buoyancy-compensatortype life-jacket under ice and he did not wear one He was slightly heavy, so he adjusted by reht froh a filter and then an accumulator into his mask tasted bland but pure

He gazed upward and oriented hilow of the ice hole and checked his coe He wouldn't be working in water over four meters deep