"Captain, there's no one here." Katie murmured, mindful of the chance of Lucas overhearing her in the main part of the sub.

"Go deeper, past the euphotic zone," the teen loudly commanded, looking through a window into the dark water. "I saw him go down there, he didn't get eaten, I know it. He couldn't have been eaten."

Nathan and Katie exchanged a look, and she gave the controls over to him. She left the cockpit and stepped quietly behind Lucas, wrapping one arm around his shoulder and spoke in a calm and unobtrusive voice. "We're at one hundred meters already, Lucas. It won't get that dark until we hit two hundred. You know a human can't survive at that level with regular tanks. And I know we were out of mixed gas before the rescue call. I'm sorry."

Pulling away from her, Lucas fought the wild urge to laugh. "He didn't have a tank, mixed gas or regular oxygen."

"But then…" Katie's face crumpled with the realization that the man had a certain death sentence.

"Tony has gills, his lungs would be full of water not, air." Lucas explained with a sigh.

Her eyebrows arched, and she slapped her forehead. "Oh god, I need some sleep, how did I forget that? You have all these weird superhuman crewmembers now." She looked at him sheepishly, "sorry, I've had a lot on my mind."

"Anything more important than saving Tony's life?" Lucas snapped, losing patience.

"No, I… I'm sorry, come on, this is a different situation now, very different." Katie hurried back to the cockpit with Lucas at her heels. "We're going deeper, but he might be able to survive even further down than we can go in this sub. If he's injured, and can't swim to us, we won't be able to get to him."

Nathan gaped at her in shock, "deeper than the sub? That's impossible."

She grinned, "how up to date are you on saturation diving expeditions? If his gills work anything like the liquid oxygen, he'll be fine. They've made it to seven hundred meters. We can go to seven thirty, any deeper we're at collapse depth. I doubt the megalodon could take him much farther, all we have to worry about is if he sank."

"Half a mile," Lucas breathed, "how long will it take him to swim that if we can't find him?"

"Twenty or thirty minutes," Nathan answered, "but Tony has been out there working for hours, he'll be exhausted or may be injured. It's very probable that it'll take twice that."

Lucas leaned over the seats eagerly. "So we'll meet him on the way up. How good are you with the grappling arms, Katie?"

"I pulled down the bottoms of Ben's wetsuit in front of bunch of trainee divers he was showing off for last week. Didn't leave a scratch on him." Her light blue eyes flickered with amusement.

"Cool," Lucas nodded, "now we just need to get to Tony before something eats him."

The light was finally bright enough for Tony to make out the very familiar shape in front of him. "Hey! Fish face! Good to see ya. Um… up? To the surface? Do ya understand that?" Tony patted Darwin's beak with his free hand, and pointed. In semidarkness, and his rapidly disintegrating mental state, Tony could never be sure, but he was almost positive the dolphin rolled an eye at him as they swam upwards.

Minutes later, Tony's head started to loll, only buffeted by the currents and Darwin's movements. Feeling the dead weight in his mouth, the dolphin swam harder, desperate to find someone to help his human friend.

The unconscious man in his jaws may have panicked to see the sudden lights piercing the darkness, but Darwin headed towards them immediately. Coming dangerously close, he heard a yell from inside the metal tube. His sensitive ears picked out the voice of Lucas shouting happily. The strange arms on the front tube reached forward, startling the animal.

Nathan's reassuring smile, and "release" hand signal, told him it was ok. But he knew more than these humans, no matter how hard he had worked to trained them. Grudgingly allowing the arm to take Tony, Darwin stayed in front of the sub, ignoring the new signal to move. He waited until everyone inside was watching him, and slowly swam down, then up a quickly as possible.

Shaking heads were the only response, so Darwin repeated the action, then finished by drifting on his back with drooping fins. He saw the humans inside look at each other in horror. Nathan signaled "go," and the sub quickly rose. His only hope was that the easily confused humans could understand what he saw.

"Does Darwin know what decompression sickness is?" Lucas asked in amazement, watching Tony's limp body being held by the grappling arms. "He couldn't, could he?"

Nathan was still stunned, "I'm not sure Kiddo. We'll have to wait until we get back to the colony. Tony could have hit his head or just passed out from exhaustion." He bit his lip, not wanting to add another possibility. Both men just sat in their own thoughts, listening to Katie call in the rescue.

Four hours, twenty six minutes, Lucas repeated to himself. Four hours, twenty six minutes since they pulled Tony from the murky depths. Four hours, three minutes since they got the man into the colony's decompression chamber. Seventeen minutes since Kristin had been in the room to once again reassure Lucas that his friend would be ok.

"If he had been breathing oxygen, it would be much much worse sweetheart." She told him. "There seem to be very few bubbles in his blood."

"Why isn't he waking up?" Lucas responded, not caring that he sounded childish.

Kristin rested her hands on his shoulders, "he just needs my favorite treatment, some bed rest." He forced a smile for her benefit, and continued to watch his motionless friend. Kristin left him be, seeing that he wouldn't allow himself to be moved for anything.

Four hours, forty nine minutes… four hours, fif… Lucas stopped in mid-thought. Tony's face twitched, and he turned his head. Lucas leaped from his seated position on the floor, and slammed the intercom button with the palm of his hand. He ignored the minor surge of pain from the still healing abrasion. "Tony? Tony! Can you hear me?"

"Yeah, why ya yellin' at me? I didn't do it."

Lucas dissolved into relieved laughter, and raced to the radio in the room. "Hey, uh, medbay people? Can you send Dr. Westphalen to the decompression chamber? He's awake."

He didn't wait for a reply, or to even see if anyone heard him and was back to the thick metal and plexiglas chamber in seconds. Tony had his face in his hands, groaning. "Why does my head feel like I've been doing shots all night? I don't remember seein' a bar here."

"You don't know what happened?" Lucas blinked in surprise. "You're a hero, man. You saved Martin's life."

"Oh… oh yeah, the shark thing."

Lucas snorted, "yeah, the shark thing that dragged you half a mile under water and nearly killed you."

"How d'you find me?"

"Darwin, he towed you up to us, and then told us you were sick. If it hadn't been for his acting skills, we wouldn't have known what was wrong until it was too late."

Tony winced as he tried to figure out what Lucas was talking about. "Actin'?"

"Well," Lucas grinned, "you made such a fuss about me bring the vocorder, I should have known you just wanted to have some private adventure with Darwin. But don't worry, he did a little mime work to let us know what you were up too."

Tony managed, after some concentration, to glare. "You said I was a hero, and I coulda died, why are ya makin' fun of me?"

"I can't let you have all the fun." Lucas smirked.

"All the fun he says…" Tony muttered, "you're worse than our priest when he found out I was hung over in church. He made me…"

His story, no doubt a harrowing tale of survival, was cut off when Kristin entered the room. "Anthony, how are you feeling?"

Tony's eye's widened, and he struggled to sit upright. "Why? Am I in trouble?"

"Trouble? Why ever would you be?" Kristin shook her head, "you did something very brave, foolish, but brave."

"You… um, ma'am, no one calls me by Anthony 'less I did somethin' bad."

Kristin cleared her throat, and Lucas thought he heard a laugh escape her lips. "No, I just want to know how you're feeling, young man."

"I feel like I got beat down in a bar fight." Tony started to inspect his limbs. "And I lost my glowly hand. Aw… I liked glowly hand."

Kristin looked alarmed, "I think we need to take you out right now and examine you thoroughly."

"Nah, I could get some sleep in here. I didn't hit my head or nothin'." He sighed, staring at his hand again. "It was jus' fun to glow."

"Tony, what are you talking about?" Lucas asked, looking as alarmed as Kristin.

He shrugged, "after I fell off the sharky, my hand went all glowly. It was kinda cool."

"Glowy? I mean, it was glowing?" Kristin asked thoughtfully, "where did you stab the shark?"

"One'a the big eyes, I didn't wanna get chomped, so I stayed above the mouth."

Kristin took a deep breath and nodded, "they eye tore away didn't it?" Tony nodded, wondering if his pounding head was making this more confusing. Lucas seemed to be just as lost, and it reassured him some. Instead of enlightening them, Kristin shook her head, "oh dear, that makes this quite a bit worse."