Volume 2: The Undersea City Chapter 68: Diving
Pioneer, starboard deck.
The sky over Zhonghai seemed to always maintain its gloomy color. The thick lead-gray clouds blocked a large amount of light and heat from the stars. With the arrival of dusk, the sea surface temperature dropped rapidly, and a small amount of thin floating ice began to appear around.
"It's cloudy, the sea surface temperature is minus three degrees, the water temperature five meters underwater is 4.5 degrees, the northerly wind is level three to four, gusting to level five to six, and the visibility in the water is about eight meters... To be honest, this kind of weather condition is not very suitable for diving." A crew member assigned to assist them frowned and said, "The wind is not strong, but the light is too dim. The lower you go, the lower the visibility will be. Let alone a hundred meters, I estimate that it will be pitch dark at a depth of fifty meters."
"I want to ask, when was the last time you saw Qingtian?" Ke Lan stuffed his feet into the boots of the diving suit with some effort. The material of the military-grade diving suit is very solid, and the weight is naturally very exaggerated. This pair of boots alone weighs more than 30 kilograms.
"Uh... that seemed to be four months ago... No, it should be five months."
"So how many months do you plan to keep us waiting on the ship?"
"No... that's not what I meant. I'm just wondering why you don't use a diving chamber. Although this equipment has a high degree of defense, it still can't compare to a three-inch thick composite steel shell... Also, is this person also going to go into the water? Are you... are you going to wear this?"
Compared to Ke Lan's heavy diving suit that looked like a power armor, Liao Zilang only wore a diving suit made of reinforced composite fiber. This diving suit was so thin that it even showed his muscle lines. Not only that, his ankles, wrists and neck had no protection and were directly exposed to the outside - compared to the fully armed Ke Lan, he was no different from swimming naked.
"What's wrong? Is there a problem?" Liao Zilang looked at him puzzled.
"...Of course! Don't you know that the seawater on Alpha is highly toxic? Not only will the seawater corrode the skin and muscles, but once it enters the blood it will also invade human tissues, causing organ failure. We usually have to wear full sets of protective clothing when we work on the deck, just to avoid being stained by the seawater..."
In his eyes, Liao Zilang's outfit was like treating Zhonghai as an artificial lake inside the Ark, and treating the seawater, which was comparable to chemical weapons and had high doses of radiation, as the daily drinking water in the human base that had been filtered and purified many times...Wearing such a thing and going into the water, what was the difference between that and suicide? !
"That's you. I'm different from you." Liao Zilang said.
"What's the difference! Even a biochemically modified human can't--" The crew member choked in the middle of his words because Liao Zilang simply climbed over the guardrail and jumped into the sea!
"Quick! Pull him out!" He was stunned at first, and then he wanted to press the alarm device not far away, "Save him within two minutes, maybe his life can be saved!"
"Wait a minute, don't be impatient, buddy." Layton suppressed his laughter and stopped the crew member with his mechanical arm. "Can't you take a look first?"
"..." After hearing what Layton said, the crew member realized that Liao Zilang was wearing a thin diving suit and had swam around a piece of ice floe. He did not look like he was poisoned at all.
"He...he...how is it possible?" He rubbed his eyes hard, his face full of astonishment.
"I've already told you that he's a gifted man." Ke Lan couldn't help but laugh, "Okay, time to put me down. Wearing this, I can't jump down like him."
The full set of deep-sea diving suits plus supporting equipment weighs more than two hundred kilograms. This thing is not a full-body driven skeleton like power armor. Its underwater maneuverability is completely dependent on twenty-eight sets of paddle-bladed thrusters installed all over the body, but these things are useless on land.
Ke Lan even found it very difficult to complete the simple action of raising his arms, let alone running and jumping.
Two steel cables were fixed on the shoulders of the diving suit. As the pulley turned, Ke Lan and his equipment were lifted into the air. This device was originally used to launch and recover diving cabins, but with a slight modification, it can also be used for heavy armored diving suits.
The cantilever that fixed the pulley rotated horizontally ninety degrees and "lifted" Ke Lan to the outside of the ship's side. He looked down and saw that the sea water was deep and dark, like an endless abyss with no end in sight.
"Prepare to descend!" Leighton made a gesture to Ke Lan. After receiving the confirmation signal, the pulley began to rotate in the opposite direction, and the retracted steel cable was released again, until Ke Lan was completely submerged in the sea.
"The airtightness check is completed, the thruster check is completed, and the oxygen supply pipeline is unobstructed." Ke Lan followed the inspection steps on the diving suit manual one by one, and Liao Zilang swam to his side and helped him unfasten the shoulder buckle.
"The heart rate is 78 beats per minute, the blood pressure is 74 to 110 mmHg, the body temperature is 36.9 degrees Celsius, and there is no discomfort in the body." Ke Lan glanced at the vital sign monitoring device installed on the inside of the helmet and said.
"Your heart rate is a little fast. Are you nervous?" The hound's voice came from the headset. They can still communicate at this distance now. When Ke Lan dives to a certain depth, the sea water containing a large amount of radiation and heavy metal ions will become an insurmountable barrier, completely isolating him from the world above the water.
In order to maintain communication, wired communication methods such as cables must be used. However, in the complex underwater environment , it is not only difficult to ensure the normal operation of the cables, but they can also easily become a burden to divers.
"A little bit." Ke Lan replied. He took a few deep breaths and tried to calm himself down as much as possible.
" Although this test dive is only a hundred meters, an injectable pressurizing agent is installed in the diving suit for safety reasons...but I hope you won't use it." said the Hound.
Injectable pressurizing agent is standard equipment for this type of deep diving suit and is generally used when the diving depth exceeds 400 meters. At that depth, the gas pressurization inside the deep diving suit alone can no longer guarantee the diver's life safety. This injectable pressurizing agent must be used to regulate the body pressure and can be used together with muscle enhancers when necessary.
But humans are not deep-sea creatures after all, and they do not have that kind of strong flesh. Excessive internal pressure can easily lead to organ damage and internal bleeding. Even with various protective measures, the use time of injectable pressurizers cannot exceed one hour.
Of course, high-level biochemically modified humans can ignore this problem to a certain extent. Guys like Layton can at least last four or five hours.
"The low-light camera and infrared camera are functioning normally, the micro-sonar has been activated, everything is ready, start diving."
