Idly breaking off pieces of hardtack and feeding the crumbs to Grand on his shoulder, Emile studiously watched the crew in their starched white uniforms finish the preparations with the bow crane of the stationary vessel. Swarms of sailors and officers were triple-checking the connection of a thick hook and massive chain to the hoop on top of a squat, flat-bottom, metal ball, its outside ferruled with bands of steelloy and bulk iron. Roughly five meters across, the bathysphere had a single entrance point, the two oval-shaped doors set on either side of the ball’s dense hull facing only millimeters apart. Set along the equator were four tiny portholes whose slabs of Armorlite glass were heavily veined with reinforcing wire filaments. It seemed overly much, but Emile always preferred excess in favor of survival. The awful pressure of the lower depths was not the only known killer down there.