AN ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
BY
JAMES CAMERON
August 2, 1988
Director's Revision
THE ABYSS
OMITTED 1
OMITTED 2
TITLE: THE ABYSS -- ON BLACK, DISSOLVING TO COBALT BLUE
EXT. OCEAN/UNDERWATER -- DAY 3
Blue, deep and featureless, the twilight of five hundred feet down.
PROPELLER SOUND. Materializing out of the blue limbo is the enormous but
sleek form of an Ohio-class SSBN ballistic missile submarine.
INT. U.S.S. MONTANA -- DAY 4
In the attack center, darkened to womb-red, the crew's faces shine with sweat
in the glow of their instruments. The SKIPPER and his EXEC crowd around
BARNES, the sonarman.
CAPTAIN
Sixty knots? No way, Barnes... the reds don't
have anything that fast.
BARNES
Checked it twice, skipper. It's a real unique
signature. No cavitation, no reactor noise...
doesn't even sound like screws.
He puts the signal onto a speaker and everyone in the attack room listens to
the intruder's acoustic signature, a strange THRUMMING. The captain studies
the electronic position board, a graphic representation of the contours of
the steep-walled canyon, a symbol for the Montana, and converging with it, an
amorphous trace, representing the bogey.
CAPTAIN
What the hell is it?
EXEC
I'll tell you what it's not, it's not one of
ours.
BARNES
Sir! Contact changing heading to two-one-four,
diving. Speed eighty knots! Eighty knots!
EXEC
Eighty knots...
BARNES
Still diving, depth nine hundred feet. Port
clearance to cliff wall, one hundred fifty feet.
FRANK
(simultaneously)
Still diving, depth nine hundred feet. Port
clearance to cliff wall, one hundred fifty feet.
Tension builds in the attack room as the Montana surges to intercept the
intruder. The exec tensely watches the vector-graphic readout for the side-
scan sonar array. The sub is running uncomfortably close to the cliff walls.
EXEC
(low, to Captain)
It's getting tight in here.
CAPTAIN
We can still give him a haircut. Helm, come
right to oh six niner, down five degrees.
HELMSMAN
Coming right to oh six niner, sir. Down five
degrees.
NAVIGATOR
Port side clearance one hundred twenty feet
narrowing to seventy-five. Sir, we have a
proximity warning light.
EXEC
That's too damn close! We've gotta back off.
BARNES
Range to contact, two hundred. Contact junked to
bearing two six oh and accelerated to... one
hundred thirty knots, sir!
EXEC
(really freaked now)
Nothing goes one thirty!
Suddenly the control room lights dim almost to blackness.
EXT. U.S.S. MONTANA 5
We see only the effect, not the source, as a large diffuse light passes
rapidly under the sub's hull. Moments later a shockwave, like an underwater
sonic boom, impacts the sub, slamming it sideways.
INT. U.S.S. MONTANA 6
The bride crew are knocked off their feet, as the ship is buffeted.
EXEC
Turbulence! We're in its wake!
SIRENS. Everyone shouting at once. The power flickers low.
CAPTAIN
Helm, all stop! Full right rudder!
HELMSMAN
All stop. Full right rudder. Hydraulic failure.
Planes are not responding, sir!
Power returns in time for the sonarman to get a glimpse at the side-scan
display... AS THE SHEER CLIFF WALL LOOM BEFORE THEM.
HELMSMAN
Hydraulics restored, sir.
EXT. U.S.S. MONTANA 7
The cliff wall materializes out of the blue limbo off the port bow with
nightmarish slow-motion. The sub slams into it with horrific force, scraping
along and bouncing off. One tail stabilizer is sheared off and the big screw
prangs the wall with an earsplitting K-K-KWANG!
INT. PORT TO TORPEDO ROOM 8
With the outer tube-doors torn off, seawater slams in, busting the inner
hatches. Two-foot thick columns of water, like fire-hoses of the gods,
blast into the room. Everything vanishes instantly in white spray.
INT. CONTROL RM/ATTACK CENTER 9
Everyone is hurled off his feet. The planesman flights to recover control of
the yoke.
CAPTAIN
Collision alarm! Collision alarm! Lighten
her up, Charlie!
NAVIGATOR
The torpedo room is flooded, sir!
CAPTAIN
Blow all tanks! Blow everything!
HELMSMAN
Passing twelve hundred feet...
EXEC
Blowing main tanks!
HELMSMAN
Twelve hundred fifty feet...
EXT. MONTANA 10
The great sub is being hauled down by the mass of its flooded bow section,
its flanks rushing past us like a freight train headed for Hell.
INT. MONTANA CONTROL ROOM 11
The command crew fights futility for control, everyone shouting and terrified.
EXEC
Main forward tanks ruptured!
HELMSMAN
Passing thirteen hundred feet...
EXEC
Too deep to pump auxiliaries!
CAPTAIN
All back full! All back full!
HELMSMAN
Answering all back full. Passing thirteen hundred
fifty feet... fourteen hundred... fourteen
fifty...
The Captain locks eyes with the Exec amid the din...
CAPTAIN
We're losing her. Launch the buoy!
The Exec opens the door to a small box and punches a button. A red light
comes on. The Captains takes a deep breath.
EXT. MONTANA 12
A tiny transmitter is ejected from the sub's hell and begins its long ascent
to the surface. A second later the sub slams down like a piledriver onto a
ledge, tearing open its pressure hull.
INT. MONTANA 13
VARIOUS QUICK CUTS, just flashes and impressions, as...
Seawater blasts down the corridors --
Explodes across the control room, hurling men like dolls --
Floods the cavernous missile bay in seconds --
Bursts through hatches into the reactor room --
Blasts men OUT OF FRAME in a micro-second.
EXT. OCEAN/UNDERWATER 14
In the cobalt twilight we see the Montana slide down the sea cliff, its hull
SCREECHING like the death agonies of some marine dinosaur. Descending in an
avalanche of silt, it finally disappears into the blackness below... a
blackness which continues almost straight down, 20,000 feet to the bottom of
the Cayman Trough. The abyss.
EXT. OCEAN SURFACE -- DAY 15
Above, in the world, the Caribbean rolling gray under a stormy sky. The
Montana's emergency buoy pops to the surface, transmitting.
CUT TO:
EXT. OCEAN/20 MILES AWAY -- DAY 16
LONG LENS SHOT: three massive Navy Sea King helicopters thundering straight
at us, FILLING FRAME.
REVERSE, as they barrel OVER CAMERA toward a lone civilian ship... an ugly
but very sophisticated deep-sea drilling support ship, the BENTHIC EXPLORER.
It is a twin-hulled monstrosity with a central opening in its deck, around
which crouch enormous cranes, winches and other arcane equipment.
The first Sea King settles onto the helipad, disgorging a contingent of Naval
officers, technicians, and a squad of armed seamen. A pantomime in the
rotorwash, we see the Benthic Petroleum "company man" KIRKHILL greeting
COMMODORE DEMARCO, the on-scene commander.
INT. BENTHIC EXPLORER/BRIDGE -- DAY 17
The bridge is state-of-the-art, with computers and sophisticated navigation
and communications gear, looking like mission control with its bank of video
monitors. The Drilling Operations Supervisor, LELAND MCBRIDE, and BENDIX,
the crew chief, watch the invaders swarming the deck below.
MCBRIDE
Does not look good at all.
TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN (MINUTES LATER) showing divers working in total
blackness around some sort of installation on the bottom of the ocean. They
move through the harsh floodlights in dreamlike slow motion, looking like
space-suited figures with their helmets and umbilical hoses.
DEMARCO (V.O.)
No light from the surface. How deep are they?
MCBRIDE (V.O.)
Seventeen hundred feet.
WIDER, showing the Navy contingent crowding the control room. DeMarco is
hardcore military, brusque and efficient. Kirkhill is a small man with
pinched features, wearing a shirt and tie, which on a drill ship means
company man and/or dickhead.
DEMARCO
I need them to go to over two thousand.
KIRKHILL
They can do it.
(to McBride)
Get Brigman on the line.
CUT TO:
EXT. UNDERWATER -- DAY (TOTAL DARKNESS) 18
1700 FEET BELOW. A submersible oil-drilling platform, DEEPCORE II, an island
of light in the vast blackness. Its main framework connects two "tri-
modules" consisting of three cylinders each. These contain living and work
areas in a pressurized environment. An umbilical cable, thick as a man's
thigh, runs up from the oil rig into the darkness, to the Benthic Explorer
at the surface. In a bubble-like dome port window we see the rig foreman, or
"toolpusher," BUD BRIGMAN. He's talking (via headset) with two divers
working outside... 'CATFISH' DE VRIES, AND LEW 'BIRD-DOG' FINLER.
BUD
Hey, you guys are milking that job.
CATFISH
(Kentucky drawl)
That's cause we love freezin' our butts off out
here sooo much, boss.
OMITTED 19
INT. DRILL ROOM 20
Bud turns from the window and crosses the drill floor. The working heart of
the rig. THUNDEROUS MECHANICAL ROAR. The drill crew, in hardhats and mud-
plastered overalls, tend the massive spinning turn-table in the center of the
chamber. The semi-automated system requires only five men to operate. The
others are LUPTON MCWHIRTER, DWIGHT PERRY, JAMMER WILLIS, and TOMMY RAY
DIETZ. Bud hears his names called above the din by Jammer, a massive
roughneck/diver who stands a good head taller than the rest.
JAMMER
(yelling)
Bud! Hippy's on the bitch-box. It's a call
from topside. That new company man.
BUD
Kirkhill? That guy doesn't know his butt from
a rathole. Hey, Perry!
One of the roustabouts, a wiry Texan, turns to him.
BUD
Do me a favor and square away the mud hose and
those cable slings. This place is starting to
look like my apartment.
Perry chuckles and sets to the task cheerfully. Bud EXITS, ducking his head
through a low watertight hatch.
INT. CORRIDOR/TOOLPUSHER'S OFFICE 21
Bud tromps down the narrow corridor, his work boots gonging on steel.
P.A. (HIPPY'S VOICE)
BUD, PICK UP THE TOPSIDE LINE URGENT.
BUD
I'm coming. Keep your pantyhose on.
He enters his office, a tiny cubicle with stacks of paperwork, dust-
gathering tech manuals and waterstained Penthouse fold-outs. He picks up the
phone... punches down a line.
BUD
Brigman here. Kirkhill? What's going on?
(pause)
I am calm. I'm a calm person. Is there some
reason why I shouldn't be calm?
HOLD ON Bud's expression, darkening, as he listens.
INT. CORRIDOR/CONTROL MODULE 22
The control module is a long narrow cabin like the inside of a Winnebago,
packed with instrumentation. At the end is a small bay with multiple
viewports. Outside, at a 'Christmas tree' pipe installation, a lone diver
can be seen welding. He is accompanied by a large submersible, FLATBED, and
by a Remotely Operated Vehicle, or ROV, call LITTLE GEEK. Little Geek is an
underwater robot which operated on the end of a cable-like control TETHER.
It has a single video 'eye' in front, by which the operator pilots the little
machine. The rig's ROV pilots is ALLEN 'HIPPY' CARNES, who stands by the
window twiddling his joysticks and drinking coffee. His pet white rat,
BEANY, crawls contentedly around his shoulders. The door BANGS OPEN.
Hippy jumps, slops his coffee. Bud strides in. Not calm.
BUD
Son of a bitch.
He kicks a chair out of the way and slams his palm down on a switch marked
DIVER RECALL. A SIREN, blasting through the water from a big hydrophone
loudspeaker.
BUD
All divers. Drop what you're doing. Everybody
out of the pool.
EXT. DEEPCORE/CHRISTMAS TREE A22
Flatbed's pilot, LISA 'ONE NIGHT' STANDING, can be clearly seen behind a
bubble canopy. She is a no-nonsense lady who holds her own in the mostly
male environment by being one of the best submersible drivers in the
business. She controls a hydraulic manipulator arm, assisting the diver,
ARLISS 'SONNY' DAWSON, in his work. Little Geek hovers around them like a
tiny helicopter. One Night moves the Flatbed arm to Sonny and hands him the
pipe.
ONE NIGHT
Here you go, hon'.
SONNY
Just in time, sugar.
They react to Bud's recall, looking toward him up in the control module.
ONE NIGHT
Dammit, we just got out here.
SONNY
There was a time when I would have asked why.
One Night makes a grab for his butt with the manipulator claw, which he
narrowly avoids.
CUT TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE/UNDER SUB-BAY 23
Flatbed moves underneath the rig, a few feet above the seafloor, with Sonny
riding on its top deck. It passes under a lit opening and rises toward the
surface of the water in the chamber above. Little Geek follows like an
obedient dog.
INT. SUB-BAY/MOONPOOL 24
The opening is called the moonpool, and Deepcore's submersibles are launched
through it. From inside the sub-bay it looks just like a swimming pool.
Flatbed surfaces, nearly filling it. The chamber also contains CAB ONE, a
similar submersible. Jammer, Perry, and some of the other drill-room boys
are helping the divers out of the water. The water at this depth is only
about six degrees above freezing, and these folks are cold and prune-
fingered. Finler pulls off his demand-helmet, revealing a round, boyish
face.
FINLER
What's goin' on? How come we got recalled?
SONNY
Hell is I know.
One Night jumps 'ashore' from Flatbed's broad deck and joins them. Catfish
is unzipping his bulky dry-suit.
CATFISH
Just follow standard procedure, will ya...
flog the dog till somebody tells us what's
happening.
JAMMER
Hey, Catfish, I'll sell you my October Penthouse
for twenty bucks.
ONE NIGHT
Save you money, darlin'... the pages are all
stuck together by now.
Bud enters, approaching the group.
JAMMER
What's goin' on, Boss?
BUD
Folks, I've just been told to shut down the hole
and prepare to move the rig.
SONNY
She-hit.
BUD
We're being asked to cooperate in a matter of
national security. Now you know exactly as much
as I do. So just get your gear off and get up to
control. There's some kind of briefing in ten
minutes.
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE/COMMAND MODULE 25
The whole rig crew is somehow jammed into the room for the video briefing.
DeMarco is on the main monitor, with his aides and Kirkhill visible b.g.
DEMARCO
At 09:22 local time this morning, an American
nuclear submarine, the USS Montana, with 156 men
aboard, went down 22 miles from here. There has
been no contact with the sub since then. The
cause of the incident is not known.
PAN AROUND the reactions of the various drill crew members... shocked,
hushed, curious.
DEMARCO
Your company has authorized the Navy's use of
this facility for a rescue operation. The code
name is Operation Salvor.
ONE NIGHT
You want us to search for the sub?
DEMARCO
No. We know where it is. But she's in 2000 feet
of water and we can't reach her. We need divers
to enter the sub and search for survivors, if
any.
Bud's scowl has been deepening since DeMarco started to talk.
BUD
Don't you guys have your own stuff for this type
of thing?
DEMARCO
By the time we get our rescue submersible here
the storm front will be right on us. But you
can get your rig in under the storm and be on-
site in fifteen hours. That makes you our best
option right now.
Hippy, born suspicious and recently graduated to paranoid, leans forward...
HIPPY
Why should we risk our butts on a job like this?
KIRKHILL
I have been authorized to offer you all special-
duty bonuses equivalent to three times normal
dive pay.
CATFISH
Hell, for triple time I'd crawl through razor
blades and shower off with lime juice.
FINLER
I'm here to tell ya', you could set me on fire
and call me names.
BUD
Look, I don't know what kind of a deal you guys
worked out with the company, but my people are
not qualified for this... they're oil workers.
DEMARCO
A four-man SEAL team will transfer down to you
to supervise the operation.
BUD
You can send down whoever you like, but I'm the
toolpusher on this rig, and when it comes to the
safety of these people, there's me... then
there's God. Understand? If things get dicey,
I'm pulling the plug.
KIRKHILL
I think we're all on the same wavelength,
Brigman. Now let's get the wellhead uncoupled,
shall we?
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE/COMMAND MODULE AND CORRIDOR 26
Bud stands beside the hatchway as the others file out toward their tasks.
They comment gravely as they pass...
JAMMER
When Lindsey finds out about this, it's not
gonna be a pretty sight.
ONE NIGHT
They're going to have to shoot her with a
tranquilizer gun.
CUT TO:
EXT. OCEAN -- DAY 27
A single Navy Sea King churns through the rain under massive thunderheads.
The sea below is whipped by the storm.
INT./EXT. SEA KING 28
PANNING ALONG BOOTED FEET, four pairs of black military size twelves line
up, onto... a pair of Charles Jourdans fives under shapely ankles.
WIDER, revealing the four-man team of Navy SEALs. And a slender woman in
her early thirties. She's attractive, if a bit hardened, dressed
conservatively in a skirt and jacket. Meet LINDSEY. Project Engineer for
Deepcore. She's a pain in the ass, but you'll like her. Eventually.
She's holding on grimly, sitting crammed in with the SEALs and a bunch of
gear, getting tossed around by the storm. The SEALs are dressed alike in
black fatigues. They are muscular, finely-tuned and extremely dangerous
special-forces types. The leader of the SEAL team, LIEUTENANT COFFEY, makes
his way forward to the cockpit.
The pilot is white-knuckling his stick, trying to hold the great beast of a
helicopter in position. Through the windshield, the deck of the Benthic
Explorer can be seen below, pitching in a violent sea.
PILOT
No way I'm putting her down. I shouldn't even
be flying in this shit.
COFFEY
(cool)
Just hold it over the deck.
Coffey goes back to the crew deck, moving easily in the bucking craft. He
nods to the others SEALs, MONK, WILHITE, and SCHOENICK. In the open side
door, Wilhite clips a 100 foot nylon rope to the airframe and throws out the
coil. One by one the shoulder the gear-bags, grab the rope, and step out.
Lindsey stands swaying in the chopper door, watching the SEALs fast-roping
to the deck. One, two, three. Coffey looks at her.
COFFEY
You want to be on that ship, there's only one
way it's going to happen.
He's sure she won't go for it. It's his certainty that gets her. She sets
her jaw. Opening her purse she takes out a small plastic bag, puts her
shoes and purse in the bag, and grips the bag in her teeth. Then grabs
the rope and slides down.
EXT. BENTHIC EXPLORER/HELIPAD 29
Swinging wildly in the wind like a human pendulum, Lindsey fast-ropes forty
feet to the deck. She steps away an instant before Coffey hits behind her.
Lindsey crosses the rainswept deck with athletic strides. Her nylons are
ruined. An air-crewman in the chopper lowers two additional equipment cases
using the rescue sling. The SEALs catch them as they swing radically across
the deck. They Navy chopper banks and seems to scurry away before the
mounting storm.
CUT TO:
EXT. OCEAN BOTTOM 30
BLACKNESS. Then shafts of light become visible, above a ridge of rock.
Flatbed appears, trailing two heavy two cables. Behind it, the mass of
Deepcore emerges from the darkness, its forward lighting array blazing.
Flatbed is towing it like a tug, aided by Deepcore's own mighty stern
thrusters.
INT. DEEPCORE/CONTROL MODULE 31
Bud, his feet propped up, uses joystick controls to 'fly' Deepcore,
maneuvering against currents and around seafloor obstacles. He is guided
by the side-scan sonar display, with Hippy assisting in the sonar shack.
Through the front viewport, Flatbed can be seen out ahead.
McBride appears on the bridge monitor, holding a sheet of weather-fax.
MCBRIDE (on screen)
Well, it's official, sportsfans. They're calling
it Hurricane Frederick, and it's going to be
making our lives real interesting in a few hours.
INT. EXPLORER BRIDGE -- DAY 32
Bud responds via video.
BUD
Fred, huh? I don't know. Hurricanes should be
named after women.
McBride looks up as the bridge door opens. Lindsey enters in a blast of wind,
wet as a wharf rat and twice as pissed off. Maybe Bud is right.
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE/CONTROL MODULE 33
Bud is surprised to see Lindsey's face appear on the monitor screen.
LINDSEY
I can't believe you let them do this!
BUD
(unpreturbed, almost cheerful)
Hi, Lins. I thought you were in Houston.
LINDSEY
I was, but I managed to bum a ride on the last
flight out here. Only here isn't where I left
it, is it, Bud?
BUD
Wasn't up to me.
LINDSEY
We were that close to proving a submersible
drilling platform could work. We had over seven
thousand feet of hole down for Chrissake. I
can't believe you let them grab my rig!
BUD
Your rig?
LINDSEY
My rig. I designed the damn thing.
BUD
Yup, a Benthic Petroleum paid for it. So as long
as they're hold the pink slip, I go where they
tell me.
LINDSEY
You wimp. I had a lot riding on this. They
bought you... more like least rented you cheap--
BUD
I'm switching off now.
LINDSEY
Virgil, you wiener! You never could stand up
to fight. You--
Bud hits the switch and the screen goes dead.
BUD
Bye.
Hippy looks over him, trying very hard not to crack up.
HIPPY
Virgil?
BUD
God, I hate that bitch.
HIPPY
Yeah, well you never should have married her then.
Bud nods fatalistically.
CUT TO:
EXT. EXPLORER DECK/LAUNCH WELL 34
Ten foot waves crash through the launch-well, sending up geysers of spray.
Next to the launch-well, crewman have attached a lifting cable to CAB THREE,
eighteen feet of ugly yellow submersible. It slams violently in its steel
cradle as the drill-ship rolls. Coffey and Schoenick hand the gear bags in
to Wilhite and Monk though the hatch under the rear of the submersible.
Lindsey approaches, wearing a borrowed roustabout's coverall.
She looks down at the larger of the two equipment cases brought by the SEALs,
lying on the deck. Stenciled on it are the words: F.B.S./DEEP SUIT/MARK IV.
Coffey and Schoenick push past her to pick it up.
LINDSEY
Let's go, gentlemen! We either launch now or
we don't launch.
Coffey looks up in surprise as she nimbly climbs the side of Cab Three and
grabs the lifting shackle, circling her raised hand to signal the crane man.
LINDSEY
Take her up, Byron!
Cab Three, with Lindsey riding its back, is pulled up out its cradle and
starts to swing violently as Explorer pitches. The submersible is then
swung out to the center of the launch well. It sways and gyrates above the
furious water below. Lindsey drops into the upper hatch.
INT. EXPLORER BRIDGE/D.O.C. 35
Kirkhill leans suddenly over the console to look out the window.
KIRKHILL
What the hell is she doing out there? Son of a
bitch...
(into microphone)
Lindsey... get out of Cab Three. Bates is taking
her down.
INT. CAB THREE 36
Lindsey pulls her headset as she dogs down the inside locking levers of the
hatch.
LINDSEY
Bates is sick. Besides I've got more hours in
this thing than he does.
(to Coffey)
A little change of plan.
The little sub is swinging like a pendulum on the cable, and the SEALs,
jammed in with their equipment in the tiny space, are getting slammed into
the walls. Lindsey is calmly flipping switches as she talks.
COFFEY
Lady, we better fish or cut bait.
LINDSEY
Just hold your water, okay?
(to Kirkhill)
So Kirkhill, we gonna do this or we gonna talk
about it?
INT. EXPLORER BRIDGE/D.O.C. 37
The plug is pulled on DeMarco's patience.
DEMARCO
I don't care who drives the damn thing. Just get
my team in the water.
KIRKHILL
Alright, alright. Christ Almighty!
He gestured dismissively to McBride.
MCBRIDE
Cab Three, you are clear to launch.
INT./EXT. CAB THREE 38
Lindsey reaches up a grabs a red lever.
LINDSEY
Roger.
(to Coffey)
There's only one way it's going to happen...
She pulls the lever hard. CLUNK-CLANG! The shackle-release drops the sub.
It freefalls ten feet to the water with an enormous splash and keeps right
on going after Lindsey floods the trim tanks. Coffey et al have been slammed
hard.
LINDSEY
Touchdown. The crowd goes wild. Explorer...
Cab Three. We are styling.
MCBRIDE (filtered)
Roger, Cab Three.
Lindsey cuts on the floodlights and maneuvers the descending submersible so
that the umbilical cable is a few feet ahead on her front port. Moving up
through her lights, it will guide her down to the rig. Cab Three free-falls
into increasing darkness. Soon it is a candle below us in the indigo.
EXT./INT. FLATBED 39
One Night is driving the tug one-handed, pouring coffee from a thermos and
rocking out to the great truck-driving song "Willing" on the beat-box she's
got propped up on the sonar rig. Fighting white-line fever in the best
tradition.
INT. CONTROL MODULE 40
Bud and Hippy come in for a rousing chorus.
BUD/HIPPY
... I've been driving every kinda rig that's
ever been maaaaade...
EXT. DEEPCORE 41
Lit up like a proud Peterbilt, the rig crossed the trackless wastes. We
hear them singing, carried OVER.
EXT. OCEAN DEPTHS/CAB THREE 42
In total blackness, the submersible descends along the rigorous line of the
umbilical cable. Two hundred feet below it, the lights of Deepcore resolve
out of the darkness. Now we can see the rig crawling over the ocean bottom
like some monster lawnmower.
LINDSEY (V.O.)
Deepcore, Deepcore... this is Cab Three on
final approach.
HIPPY (V.O.)
Gotcha, Cab Three. Who is that? That You,
Lindsey?
INT. DEEPCORE/CONTROL MODULE 43
Bud stop singing and snaps around at the mention of her name.
LINDSEY (V.O.)
None other.
Bud's expression is nothing less than stricken.
BUD
Oh no... you gotta be kidding me.
EXT./CAB THREE/DEEP CORE 44
Lindsey executes a 180 degree turn and cruises over the control module, back
through the A-frame toward the docking hatch. The flange of Cab Three's
lockout hatch settles over the pressure collar on the rig's back. There is
a CLUNK as it mates up.
INT. DEEPCORE/COMPRESSION CHAMBER/GAS CONTROL STATION 45
Lindsey drops down from the hatch into the small cylindrical pressure chamber.
The SEALs drop down behind her, passing their gear through hand-over-hand.
The chamber is spartan, with steel benches, a folding card table, breathing
masks, and medical supplies. Catfish greets them through the tiny porthole
at one end.
CATFISH
Howdy, y'all. Hey, Lindsey! I'll be damned!
You shouldn't be down here sweet thing, ya'll
might run ya stockings.
LINDSEY
Couldn't stay away. You running mixture for us?
Good. Couldn't ask for better.
CATFISH
Okay, here we go. Start equalizing, y'all.
HISSSS of inrushing compressed gas. The pressure in the chamber rises. The
breathing mixture is composed of helium, oxygen and nitrogen. Catfish
monitors it carefully from a station outside the chamber, watching the
gauges with a practiced eye. Lindsey and the SEALs all grab their noses
and start making funny faces... popping their ears with the familiar diver's
'equalization' technique. They continue as:
LINDSEY
Get comfortable. The bad news is we got six
hours in this can, blowing down. The worse news
is it's gonna take us three weeks to decompress
back to the surface later.
COFFEY
We've been fully briefed, Mrs. Brigman.
LINDSEY
Don't call me that, okay... I hate that. Alright,
from now on we watch each other closely for
signs of HPNS...
MONK
(as if by rote)
High-Pressure Nervous Syndrome. Muscle tremors,
usually in the hands first. Nausea, increased
excitability, disorientation.
LINDSEY
Very good. About one person in twenty just can't
handle it. They go buggo. They're no way to
predict who's susceptible, so stay alert.
COFFEY
Look, we've all made chamber runs to this depth.
We're checked out.
LINDSEY
Oh... chamber runs. Uh huh, that's good.
(Coffey turn away)
Well, hey... you guys know any songs?
They ignore her. Start going over some diagrams of the Montana's interior.
It's going to be a long six hours.
INT. GAS CONTROL STATION -- HOURS LATER 46
Catfish checks his watch, then reaches over and adjusts a value on the tri-
mix manifold, watching the gauges. Satisfied, he leans over to the pressure
window in the door, checking out the SEALs. Hippy has come down from the
control deck for an advanced look are the interlopers. Jammer is in a chair,
reading a Louis L'Amour paperback.
CATFISH
Those guys ain't so tough. I fought plenty of
guys tougher'n them.
HIPPY
Now we get to hear about how he used to be a
contender.
Catfish hold up one calloused fist up in front of Hippy's face.
CATFISH
You see this? They used to call this the Hammer.
JAMMER
Hippy wasn't born then.
INT. PRESSURE CHAMBER 47
It looks like the end of a long bus trip. Everyone silent... leafing
through beat-to-hell magazines or just staring. Lindsey has her feet propped
up on the smaller of the SEALs' two equipment cases. She casually toes open
one of the latches, then the other. Glances at Coffey. He's reading. She
begins to lift the lid with her toe. Gets a GLIMPSE INSIDE, of packing foam,
and what looks like a SMALL BLACK METAL BOX. Then... WHAM! Coffey's foot
comes down on the lid, slamming it shut. Startled, she looks up into his
cool gaze.
COFFEY
Curiosity killed the cat.
CUT TO:
INT. GAS CONTROL STATION/CHAMBER DOOR -- LATER 48
TIGHT ON CATFISH'S hands... closing values... spinning the wheel on the
chamber hatch. CUT WIDER as it cracks open with a virgin's sigh and swings
aside.
CATFISH
Y'all'er done to a turn and ready to serve.
Everybody okay?
The SEALs nod peremptorily and shoulder their gear. Lindsey exists first,
followed by Monk, Wilhite, and Schoenick. Coffey bends to relatch the small
equipment case. He is alone for one moment in the chamber. He raises his
hand and stares at it. The fingertips are trembling the slightest bit. He
clenches them into a fist and walks out.
INT. CORRIDOR 49
As Lindsey emerges into the main corridor of the rig, she bumps into a large,
dark mass.
LINDSEY
Hey, was there a wall here before? I don't
remember a wall here. Oh, Jammer! Hi.
The 'wall' grins down to her.
JAMMER
Howdy, there, little lady.
Coffey emerges behind them and, ignoring Lindsey, faces Jammer.
COFFEY
(to Jammer)
Show us the dive prep area. We need to check
out your gear.
Jammer scowls, turns and leads the SEALs in the sub-bay. Catfish and Lindsey
exchange a look.
LINDSEY
Those guys are about a much fun as a tax audit.
CUT TO:
INT. COMMAND MODULE 50
TIGHT ON HIPPY, bathed in the light of the sonar display. He is making
kissing sounds at Beany, who has his inquisitive nose right up to Hippy's
lips.
LINDSEY
Hippy, you're going to give that rat a disease.
WIDER, as Hippy and Bud to see Lindsey leaning in the doorway. She and Bud
size each other up. He opts for a jovial approach, his eyes wary.
BUD
Well, well. Mrs. Brigman.
LINDSEY
Not for long.
Lindsey crossed past him, her eyes scanning the banks of equipment, almost
unconsciously checking, checking... getting the pulse of her big iron baby.
BUD
You never did like being called that, did you?
LINDSEY
Not even when it meant something.
(looking through the front port)
Is that One Night up in Flatbed?
BUD
Who else?
Lindsey leans past Bud to the gooseneck mike on the console.
LINSEY
Hi, One Night, it's Lindsey.
INT. FLATBED 51
One Night mimes a puking motion, finger down her throat. Then she replies
with sickening sweetness...
ONE NIGHT
Oh, hi, Lindsey.
INT. COMMAND MODULE 52
Lindsey fives the sonar shack the once-over. She tweaks some knobs.
BUD
I can't believe you were dumb enough to come
down. Now you're stuck here for the storm...
dumb, hot-rod... dumb.
LINDSEY
Look, I didn't come down here to fight.
She crosses past Bud and exits into the corridor. Bud bolts out of the chair
to follow her and Hippy scrambles in to take over.
INT. CORRIDOR/LADDER-WELL/LEVEL ONE LANDING 53
Bud catches up with Lindsey in the corridor, and through the following keeps
pace with here as she make here inspection.
BUD
Then why'd you come down?
She stops abruptly to look at a leaky pipe. He almost slams into her. She
moves on, climbing down the ladder to the lower level.
LINDSEY
You need me. Nobody knows the systems on this
rig better than I do. What is something was
to go wrong after the Explorer clears off? What
would have you done?
BUD
Wow, you're right! Us poor dumb ol' boys might've
had to think for ourselves. Coulda been a
disaster.
On the lower level landing, Lindsey opens a hatch into one of the machine
rooms. ROAR OF PUMPS AND COMPRESSORS.
INT. MACHINE ROOM 54
Lindsey enters and moves expertly through the dark labyrinth of pipes and
roaring machinery. Her eyes rove constantly over fittings, gauges, circuit
panels.
BUD
(yelling)
You wanna know what I think?
LINDSEY
Not particularly. Jeez, look where this is set!
Morons.
She scowls at a pressure gauge and turn a valve minutely.
BUD
I think you were worried about me.
LINDSEY
That must be it.
Lindsey's on the move again, and Bud scrambles through the pipes to keep up.
BUD
No, I think you were. Come on, admit it.
LINDSEY
I was worried about the rig. I've got over four
years invested in this project.
BUD
Oh, yeah, right... and you only had three years
with me.
She looks up at him.
LINDSEY
You've got to have priorities.
CUT TO:
INT. BUD'S ROOM 55
Darkness. The door opens and Bud snaps on the light.
BUD
My bunk's the only one I can guarantee won't be
occupied. You can grab a couple hours before
we get there.
Lindsey slips past him into his tiny state-room, the only private bunk on the
rig. Rank had its privileges. His hand on the door is just level with her
eyes. She notices his wedding ring, a massive band of pure titanium
(something your fiancee might have picked out if she had a degree from
M.I.T.).
LINDSEY
What are you still wearing that for?
BUD
I don't know. Divorce ain't final. Forgot to
take it off.
Bud stays in the doorway. Lindsey takes a heaps of Bud's cloths off the
narrow bunk. Start unconsciously straightening the room.
LINDSEY
I haven't worn mine in months.
BUD
Yeah, what's-his-name wouldn't like it. The
Suit.
LINDSEY
Do you always have to call him that? The Suit?
It makes you sound like such a hick. His name
is Michael.
Lindsey takes off her borrowed tennies and socks.
Bud eyes her, sounding too causal.
BUD
So what about "Michael" then... Mr. Brooks
Brothers... Mr. BMW. You still seeing him?
LINDSEY
No, I haven't seen him in a few weeks.
BUD
What happened?
LINDSEY
Bud, why are you doing this? It's not part of
you life any more.
BUD
I'll tell you what happened... you woke up one
day and realized the guy never made you laugh.
LINDSEY
You're right, Bud. It was just that simple.
Aren't you clever? You should get your own
show... Ask Dr. Bud, advice to the lovelorn
from three hundred fathoms.
She closes the watertight door, forcing him out. Locks it. She turns and
throws her shoe hard against the far wall.
LINDSEY
AAAARRRGGH!
She flops down on the bed, sitting... staring at the wall. Her armor is
gone. She looks small and vulnerable. A long beat. She reaches over to the
tiny sink. Amid the clutter is a bottle of Bud's aftershave. She unscrews
it and takes a sniff. Catches herself. Tosses it.
LINDSEY
Shit.
INT. QUARTERS/HEAD 56
Bud barges into the tiny head and puts some soap on his ring finger. He pulls
the ring off roughly and throws it into the toilet. He reaches forward to
flush. Can't do it. Now really pissed off at himself, he reaches into the
toilet bowl, wrist deep in the chemical-blue water, and salvages the ring.
He puts it on and washes his hands. The right hand stays faintly blue no
matter how hard he scrubs.
BUD
Shit.
CUT TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE 57
The platform is stopped, hovering in place. Like a great spacecraft setting
down on a barren planet, the rig settles into the bottom ooze. Flatbed
releases its tow lines and heads back to its berth inside.
CUT TO:
INT. SUB-BAY 58
CLOSE ON A PHOTOGRAPH, actually a computer-composited down-looking scan from
a towed LIDAR (laser imaging sonar) rig. It shows a faint, blurry outline of
the Montana lying on her side on a ledge part-way down the canyon wall. There
is no detail. A finger points to a flat ledge nearby. An "X" has been put
on with a grease pencil.
COFFEY (V.O.)
This is us. We're just on the edge of the Cayman
Trough. The Montana is here, on its side, 300
meters away and 70 meters below us. We think she
slid down the wall, and lodged against this
outcropping.
CUT WIDE, showing the rig crew gathered around a worktable in the sub-bay.
The divers, Bud, Catfish, Sonny, Finler, Jammer, and the four SEALs have
their dry-suits on. The pre-dive briefing. Lindsey, One Night, and Hippy
will crew the submersibles. Wilhite is going around clipping DOSIMETER
BADGES on everybody.
SONNY
This tells us how much radiation we get?
HIPPY
Hey, whoah... I can't handle no radiation, man.
Forget it! Include me out.
CATFISH
Hippy, you pussy.
HIPPY
What good's the money if your dick drops off in
six months?
COFFEY
We'll take reading as we go. If the reactor's
breached or the warheads have released
radioactive debris, we'll back away. Simple.
BUD
Okay... Hippy's not going... McWhirter, you
can run Little Geek.
Bud pats the top of a small ROV, sitting next to its larger brother, Big
Geek.
HIPPY
No way! No way! He can't fly an ROV worth
shit. I'll go. Shit!
COFFEY
(to all)
On the dive, you will do absolutely nothing
without direct orders from me, and you will
follow my instructions without discussion. Is
this clear? Alright, I want everyone finished
prep and ready to get wet in fifteen minutes.
The rig crew disperses, picking up helmets and diving gear. Some are studying
the diagrams of the Montana's interior layout. Bud takes Coffey aside as
the others prepare.
BUD
Look, it's three AM. These guys are running on
bad coffee and four hours sleep. You better
start cutting them some slack.
COFFEY
I can't afford slack, Brigman.
BUD
Hey, you come on my rig, you don't talk to me,
you start ordering my guys around. It won't
work. You gotta know how to handle these
people... we have a certain way of doing things
here.
COFFEY
I'm not interested in your way of doing things.
Just get your team ready to dive.
End of discussion. Coffey is walking away. Burning, Bud crosses to his gear
locker. Picks up his helmet. Finler is suiting out next to him.
FINLER
Hey, you know your hand is blue?
BUD
Shut up and get your gear on.
NEARBY, Monk comes over to pick his helmet up off the worktable. Hippy
points to the heavy equipment case that says F.B.S. DEEP SUIT/MARK IV.
HIPPY
I've been meaning to ask you what this thing is.
Mink opens the case and shows them an unfamiliar diving suit, what looks like
a space helmet, and a large backpack.
MONK
Fluid breathing system. We just got them. We
use it if we need to go really deep.
HIPPY
How deep?
MONK
Deep.
(shrugs)
It's classified... you know. Anyway, you
breathe liquid, so you can't be compressed.
Pressure doesn't get to you.
Catfish is grappling with the concept.
CATFISH
You're saying you get liquid in your lungs?
MONK
Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion.
Monk take a clear plastic box full of O-rings off the shelf and dumps them
out. He opens a valve on the backpack and allows some of the fluid inside
it to drain into the box. Then he take Beany by the tail off Hippy's
shoulder.
HIPPY
Hey!
MONK
Check this out.
He drops Beany in the box and, before Hippy can protest, closes the lid.
Beany is forced under the surface. He struggled for a second, and bubbles
come out of his mouth. Then he casually swims around in there, completely
submerged... breathing liquid. Catfish and the others stare into the box,
amazed.
MONK
See? He's diggin' it.
Monk takes Beany out and hold him by the tail for a few seconds to drain his
lungs. Then hands him back to Hippy. The rat is annoyed, but otherwise
alright.
CATFISH
This is no bullshit hands down the goddamnedest
thing I ever saw.
CUT TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE/DROPOFF 59
Three sets of moving lights move outward from Deepcore. Cab One and Three,
with Lindsey and Hippy at the controls respectively, and One Night in the
Flatbed. Lindsey is in the lead. She approaches the cliff-like drop-off
and starts to descend.
LINDSEY
Com-check, everybody. Flatbed, you on line?
ONE NIGHT
Ten-four, Lindsey, read you loud and clear.
LINDSEY
Cab Three?
HIPPY
Cab Three, check. Right behind you.
LINDSEY (V.O.)
What's you depth, Cab Three?
HIPPY
1840... 50... 60... 70...
LINDSEY
Going over the wall. Coming to bearing 065.
Everybody stay tight and in sight.
ONE NIGHT
Starting out descent. Divers, how're you doing?
EXT. FLATBED 60
Eight divers ride the back of Flatbed like itinerant workers on the way to
the fields. Bud and his civilian crew, Catfish, Finler, and Jammer... sit
across from the SEALs. They are in their gear and breathing from umbilical
hooked in Flatbed's low-pressure manifold.
BUD
Okay so far.
JAMMER
How deep's the drop-off here?
CATFISH
This here's the bottomless pit, baby. Two and
a half miles straight down.
COFFEY
Knock off the chatter. Cab One, you getting
anything?
INT./EXT. CAB ONE 61
Lindsey consults her array of instruments.
COFFEY
Cab One, do you see it yet?
LINDSEY
The magnetometer is pegged. Side-scan is showing
a big return, but I don't see anything yet. Are
you sure you got the depth right on this?
BUD (V.O., filtered)
You should be almost to it, ace.
She turns the submersible and...
The spotlight flares back from the great brass screw of the Montana. It
dwarfs Cab One, FILLING FRAME.
LINDSEY
Uh, yeah, roger that... uh, found it.
EXT. MONTANA/SUBMERSIBLES 62
Cab One maneuvers along the flank of the enormous sub, while Flatbed and Cab
Three move above it. Wilhite take readings with a hand-held neutron counter.
COFFEY
Cab One, radiation readings?
LINDSEY
Neutron counter's not showing very much.
COFFEY
Wilhite, anything?
WILHITE
Negative. Nominal.
COFFEY
Just continue forward along the hull.
LINDSEY
Copy that, continuing forward. You just want
me to get shots of everything, right?
COFFEY
Roger, document as much as you can, but keep
moving. We're on a tight timeline.
LINDSEY
Copy that.
The great black hull of the Montana recedes into the darkness beyond the
puny beams of their lights. It seems bigger than the Titanic and just as
eerie in its final resting place. On it side, the sub's top deck becomes a
wall along which the tiny submersibles are moving. Ahead, in the lights, is
a white painted circle.
COFFEY
That's the midship hatch. You see it, Cab Three?
HIPPY
Roger, I see it.
BUD
Just get around so your lights are on the hatch.
HIPPY
Check. Then I just hang with these guys, right?
COFFEY
Right.
ONE NIGHT
How do you want me?
COFFEY
Just hold above it. Alright, A team.
Wilhite, Schoenick, and Monk unhook their short whip-umbilicals from the
central manifold and roll off the side of Flatbed. They maneuver down toward
the sub's hatch. Hippy guides Cab Three in closer to the hatch area.
INT. CAB THREE 63
Hippy turns to Perry back in the lockout chamber, ready to launch Little Geek.
The ROV has a handheld neutron-counter gripped in its manipulator arm.
MONK (V.O.)
Stand by on the ROV.
HIPPY
Perry, stand by on the ROV.
(to Little Geek)
Sorry about this, little buddy. Better you than
me, know what I mean?
Hippy nods and Perry drops Little Geek through the hatch into the water and
feed out a length of tether. Hippy picks up the control box and watches the
video screen, guiding the ROV toward the Montana's hatch.
EXT. MONTANA HATCH AREA 64
The three SEALs have unlatched the deck cover and revealed the hatch. They
open the out hatch and Monk swims down into to narrow escape trunk. He bangs
on the inner hatch with a wrench, listening carefully with his helmet pressed
against it.
MONK
It's flooded. Alright, I'm opening her up.
Straining hard in the confined space, he get the lower hatch open, then swims
backs out immediately. He gestures to Hippy, via Little Geek's vision, and
Hippy flies the ROV into the hatch.
EXT./INT. CAB ONE/MISSLE DECK 65
Meanwhile Cab One and Flatbed have proceeded forward along the hull. Beyond
Lindsey's front port, the great hatches of the Trident missile tubes roll
toward us in procession. Several of the hatch covers have been forced
partway open by the warping of the hull.
COFFEY (V.O.)
Radiation is nominal. The warheads must still
be intact.
LINDSEY
How many are there?
COFFEY (V.O.)
24 Trident missiles. Eight MIRVs per missile.
LINDSEY
That's 192 warheads... And how powerful are
they?
SCHOENICK
Your MIRV is a tactical nuke, 50 kilotons
nominal yield. Say times time Hiroshima.
LINDSEY (V.O.)
Jesus Christ... this is World War Three in a
can.
COFFEY (V.O.)
Let's knock off the chatter, please.
INT. CAB THREE 66
TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN -- LITTLE GEEK'S CAMERA. Passing through a hatch, into
a large grotto filled with pipes and machinery. The engine room.
MONK (V.O.)
Getting a reading?
HIPPY
It's twitching but it's below the line you said
was safe.
EXT. MONTANA MIDSHIP HATCH 67
Monk moves into the opening.
MONK
Alright. Let's get in there.
Wilhite and Schoenick follow him through the escape trunk, into the dark
corridor beyond.
EXT. MONTANA/BOW SECTION 68
Out of the darkness ahead emerges the trailing edge of the sail, big as a
five-story building. Far below her, Flatbed moves along the edge of the
ledge which supports the vast sub. Its lights, and Lindsey's strobes, reveal
the tremendous damage to the forward section as they pass the sail. The torn
and twisted hull looms above Flatbed as it sets down.
Coffey indicated an enormous rent where the bow section is almost torn away
from the rest of the hull.
COFFEY
We'll go in through that large breach.
BUD
Let's go, guys.
Bud's team leaves Flatbed, swimming forward. The opening is a black mouth in
their lights. Coffey moves inside. Bud attaches one end of an orange nylon
line to a piece of pipe and moves into the wreck behind him.
BUD
Take it slow, stay on the line, and stay in
sight. Watch for hatches that could close on
you, or any loose equipment that could fall.
Jammer, Catfish, Finler, and Sonny follow him inside.
INT. MONTANA/FORWARD BERTHING SECTION 69
They find themselves in the forward berthing compartment with its rows of
bunks. The room is twisted and disheveled, with bedding hanging from the
bunks like the lolling tongues of dead dogs. Papers float in gentle
eddying currents, letters, pages from paperback novels, photos of girlfriends.
Bud pays out the line and follows Coffey forward. As they pass sealed doors,
Coffey pounds with a tool, listening. All flooded.
INT. ENGINE ROOM 70
Monk leads his team along a corridor, following Little Geek's tether. Through
a hatch into the engine room. Their lights play over flooded machinery.
INT. COMPANIONWAY/CONTROL ROOM AND ATTACK CENTER 71
From the berthing Coffey's team swims up a companionway towards the attack
center. He pulls at a buckled watertight door.
COFFEY
It's jammed. Give me a hand.
Jammer and Bud squeeze in around Coffey. Together they wrench the door open
on its squealing hinges. It give way suddenly, flying open. The suction
pulls SOMETHING THROUGH. It slams Bud's shoulder. He turns. A FACE...
RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM! He jerks back, gasping.
Face to face with Barnes, the sonarman. The ensign seems unmarked, merely
dismayed at his own mortality, judging from his wide eyes and mouth. Coffey
reaches past Bud and pushes the ensign's body out of the way.
COFFEY
Alright, let's keep moving. We knew we were
going to see this.
They enter the control room. Their lights play over the high-tech wreckage.
Floating debris and bodies make shifting shadows on the walls as they swirl
in the currents. A languid, weightless waltz. They move through the carnage.
Their lights pick out tableaux... the planesman still strapped in his chair,
someone jammed into the ceiling pipes, hanging down. Dead faces, pale in the
lights. Still. We see only glimpses.
Coffey locates the captain's body and rolls it over. Removes the missile
arming key which hangs on a chain around the dead man's neck. Moves on. All
business. Bud turns back to his guys. Checking them. He notices Jammer is
breathing so rapidly he's fogging his helmet. Catfish, Finler, and Sonny
aren't much better. A wave a panic seems imminent.
BUD
How you guys doing?
SONNY
I'm alright, I'm dealing.
CATFISH
Triple time sounds like a lotta money, Bud. It
ain't. I'm sorry...
BUD
We're here now. Let's get her done.
We see Bud working, calming them, talking them through it. He's sweating
rivers in his helmet, not looking too steady. His projection of calm to the
others is his own salvation.
Coffey pauses in the doorway to the communications room.
COFFEY
This part I do alone. Brigman, take you men and
continue aft. Split up into two teams of two.
Let's get moving... we head back in fourteen
minutes.
Bud leads his team into a narrow corridor.
INT. CORRIDOR/ROOMS 72
They search the rooms along the corridor with their lights until they come to
a vertical hatch, open. a pit of darkness below.
BUD
Okay, Cat, Lew, Sonny. You guys stay on this
deck. Hook you line onto mine. Any problem,
you tug my line. Two pulls. Jammer, you're
with me.
Bud drops down through the hatch to the level below, followed by Jammer, who
barely fits through. Catfish hooks his safety line onto Bud's with a
carabiner and move along the corridor with the others.
EXT./INT. CAB ONE 73
Lindsey circles the hull, documenting, photographing. Her strobes sear the
darkness, give glimpses of the dead leviathan's form as her tiny submersible
circles it like a bee.
INT. COMMUNICATIONS CENTER 74
Working from a plastic card, Coffey spins the dial on the wall safe and opens
it. He removes several plastic binders... the code books. He also grabs
handfuls of classified documents and orders, and a set of missile arming keys,
all which he places in a pouch at his waist.
INT. CORRIDOR 75
Bud leads Jammer through a long, claustrophobically narrow corridor, tapping
on the walls and hatches periodically. After he taps, he waits a few
moments. There are no answering taps. They open doors and shine their lights
into the rooms. The are bodies, but they seem anonymous. Crumpled shapes
in khaki or blue. They undog and open a hatch. Beyond it is the largest
chamber of the sub, the...
INT. MISSLE COMPARTMENT 76
The missile compartment is the large gallery a hundred and twenty feet long
and forty feet high, with two rows of vertical launch tubes, 24 in all. The
chamber is divided into three levels by a floor of open steel grillwork.
JAMMER
Where are we?
BUD
Missile compartment. Those are the launch tubes.
They sweep their lights around the chamber. Jammer turns... his beam
illuminating a body just beyond the door. A coveralled seaman turning
slowly in the eddying current. Small albino crabs crawl slowly over the
man's face. One scuttles out of his gaping mouth.
JAMMER
Lord Almighty.
BUD
Hey, you okay?
Bud goes to him. Gets up close to his face. Sees that he's not. That he's
hyperventilating. Fighting nausea. Bud grabs him by the shoulders.
BUD
Deep and slow, big guy. Deep and slow. Just
breathe easy.
JAMMER
I... they're all dead, Bud. They're all dead.
I thought... some of them... you know...
BUD
I'm taking you back out.
JAMMER
No! I'm okay now. I just don't... I can't go
any further in.
Bud sees that the big diver's breathing has stabilized. He looks at his
watch. Checker Jammer's pressure gauges.
BUD
Okay, Jammer. No problem. You stay right here.
I have to go there to the end... you'll see my
lights. We'll stay in voice contact. Just hold
onto the rope. Five more minutes. Okay?
JAMMER
Yeah, okay. Okay.
He moves off through the center aisle of the gallery swimming between the huge
cylinders. He pays out the lifeline as he goes.
INT. COM-ROOM 77
Coffey is working rapidly and efficiently, moving from one rack of electronics
gear to the next, setting thermite grenades at vital points. As the thermite
ignites, it generates an intense arc-bright light and tremendous heat. The
circuit chasses melt. Coffey works calmly in the infernal glare.
INT. MISSLE COMPARTMENT 78
Bed negotiates his way through the tangle of wreckage near the far end of the
missile compartment. He goes down a stairwell to the lower level. A HUNDRED
FEET AWAY, Jammer loses sight of Bud's dive-lights. He starts to get
nervous. Suddenly his own lights begin to DIM, flickering lower and lower.
They become little orange candles, the filament barely glowing. The darkness
closes in.
JAMMER
Bud? BUD?! You readin' me? BUD?!!
BUD, at the same moment, is fiddling with the connector cables on his helmet
lights, which are dimming and flickering. He hears nothing from his helmet
transceiver.
JAMMER, smacks the side of his helmet. Shakes the transceiver on his belt.
Nothing... just static. Then even the static dies. Panic time.
He grabs the safety line and pulls twice. Hard. It is snagged on a sharp
metal edge ten feet from him. He pulls twice more, harder, hauling the
thing. The line severs. Jammer stared at the frayed and floating toward
him. His eyes bug. He looks all around in the darkness. Can't see Bud.
Can't decide what to do. We can see hysteria revving up inside him like a
flywheel.
Then he becomes aware of a faint radiance flickering over the walls. It is a
cold and ethereal light, unlike the warm-white of their dive lights.
It grows brighter. He turns slowly toward it.
The glow is moving beneath the steel grill of the deck, sending shafts of
cold light flickering upward hypnotically, coming toward him.
JAMMER
Bud? Is that you?
C.U. JAMMER, shielding his eyes, staring into the radiant source.
Guess what, Jammer? It's not Bud. In the brightest center of the glow,
SOMETHING is moving, a figure casting strange inhuman shadow across the walls.
Jammer blinks against the glare, his face registering total, outright
astonishment melting into terror.
The glare pulses subtly, hypnotically. The shifting shadow falls across
Jammer. He finally snaps out of his fixity...
Screaming and gulping air he spins away and starts clawing hand over hand
through the treacherous wreckage.
His harness catches on a twisted pipe.
He struggles, totally out of control... the big man reduced to a blind panic.
Jammer heaves forward with all his adrenalized strength.
He tears free of the entangling debris. Launches like a torpedo... slamming
his backpack full force into the top sill of the hatchway. His tri-mix
regulator takes the full brunt of the impact.
ON BUD, swimming furiously back toward Jammer's position. The strange
radiance is gone. His dive light flare back to full brightness.
BUD
Jammer? Answer me, buddy, JAMMER?!
He reaches Jammer only to find him thrashing violently in place. A seizure.
Bud grapples with him.
BUD
Hang on, big guy. Hand on!
Catfish, Sonny, and Finler arrive from the corridor a moment later. They
leap into the fray.
BUD
He's convulsing!
CATFISH
It's his mixture! Too much oxygen!
Then they're all yelling at once, grappling with the big man, struggling with
the valves on his breathing gear.
FINLER
Crank it down, man! We're gonna losing him...
BUD
SHIT, it's stuck... goddamnit!
SONNY
You got it?! You got it?
BUD
Yeah, yeah... yeah. It's turning.
Jammer's convulsion ends. He goes limp.
BUD
We gotta get him out of here. Come on!
(to Jammer)
Hang on, buddy.
They drag Jammer's slack form into the corridor, hauling their way rapidly
back along the lifeline.
INT./EXT. CAB ONE & MONTANA SAIL 79
Lindsey is approaching the monolith of the sail, maneuvering to clear the
horizontal diving plane. Then her lights go dim and her thrusters loose
power.
Suddenly a bright corona breaks around the bulk of the sail and SOMETHING
appears right in front of her, a glowing object moving like a bat out of
hell right at her! It is slightly smaller than submersible and we only get
a glimpse. What we think we see in the diffuse glow is a translucent ovoid,
open at the front with a spinning vortex of light inside... like some
hallucinatory jet engine. And it's hauling ass.
Lindsey jinks left. The object jogs right. She fights the control as her
sub slews around, slamming broadside into the sail. K-BAM! Her power comes
back up. Righting Can One, she spins to look through the aft viewport in
time to see the object racing away in a broad arc. It pulls a high-G turn
and dives straight down.
We see the object zip behind Flatbed. One Night can't see it. The thing
spirals down into the darkness like a hit-and-run drunk, diving along the
wall into the abyss until it is lost to view.
HOLD ON Lindsey excited, amazed... dazed. Her hands are shaking. Suddenly
Bud's voice blares out over the open frequency.
BUD (V.O.)
CAB ONE! CAB ONE! Meet me at Flatbed! This
is a diver emergency!! Do you copy? Lindsey?!
She has a hard time focusing on what he's saying. Finally...
LINDSEY
Copy you, Bud. On my way.
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE INFIRMARY -- AN HOUR LATER 80
Jammer is unconscious on a folding cot set up in the tiny cubicle of the
infirmary. Monk, who is cross-trained as a medic as well as a demolitions
man, has hung an IV of something. Bud and the SEAL are in the room, the
others hovering outside.
BUD
Whattya think?
MONK
I'm a medic, which is mostly about patching
holes. This type of thing... there's not much
I can do. The coma could last hours or days.
Bud, torn by guilt, gazes at the big man lying pathetically on the cot.
CUT TO:
INT. CONSOLE MODULE 81
The SEALs, minus Monk, are all gathered inside, debriefing with DeMarco via
closed-circuit video.
DEMARCO (video)
Did any of you see it?
COFFEY
Negative. But there was definitely a Russian
bogey. The Brigman woman saw it.
DEMARCO
CINCLANTFLT's gonna go apeshit. Two Russian
attack subs, a Tango and Victor, have been tracked
within fifty miles of here... and now we don't
know what the hell they are. Okay, I don't have
any choice. I'm confirming you to go to Phase
Two.
Wilhite and Schoenick glance uneasily at each other.
Coffey is silent. He is vibrating with tension... his fists clenched to
prevent the shaking. He is wrestling with the moment, knowing it is, in a
way, a point of no return.
DEMARCO
Is there any problem?
COFFEY
Yes... I mean no. Negative, sir.
Coffey takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Phase Two is clearly a big deal.
CUT TO:
INT. MAINTENANCE ROOM B/DARKROOM 82
The maintenance room doubles as a camera workstation. An adjoining head serves
as darkroom. Lindsey is glumly reassembling Cab One's camera housings.
BUD
Did you get anything on the cameras. Video or
anything?
LINDSEY
No. Look, forget it. I don't want to talk
about it.
BUD
Fine. Be that way.
LINDSEY
I don't know what I saw. Okay? Coffey wants to
call it a Russian submersible, fine. It's a
Russian submersible. No problem.
BUD
But you think it's something else. What? One
of ours?
LINDSEY
No.
BUD
Whose then? Lindsey? Talk to me...
Lindsey is wrestling with a feeling which is somehow also certain knowledge.
LINDSEY
Jammer saw something in there, something that
scared the hell out him--
BUD
His mixture got screwed up. He panicked and
pranged his regulator.
LINDSEY
But what did he see that made him panic?
BUD
What do you think he saw?
LINDSEY
I don't know. I DON'T KNOW!
Hippy comes pounding up, sticks his head in, gesturing animatedly.
HIPPY
Hey, you guys... hurry up, check this out!
They're announcing it.
They follow him into the corridor, trotting down to the mess hall.
INT. MESS HALL 83
General melee as they rush in, everybody focused on the TV.
CATFISH
Quiet! Quiet!
HIPPY
Turn it up, bozo.
ANCHORMAN
... the Kremlin continues to deny Russian
involvement in the sinking of the Trident sub
USS Montana. The Navy has not released the names
of the 156 crewmembers, who are all presumed
dead at this time. Civilian employees of a
Benthic Petroleum offshore drilling rig--
HIPPY
Hey that's us!
CATFISH
SSSSHHH!
ANCHORMAN
--are apparently participating in the recovery
operation but we have little information about
their involvement. On the scene now is--
FINLER
BOOOOH! We want names!
SONNY
Hey, hey! There's the Explorer.
A LONG LENSE VIDEO SHOT of the Benthic Explorer and the other vessels in a
stormy sea CUTS TO a shot of BILL TYLER, the on-scene reporter, in rain
gear, clutching his microphone. He is on the deck of a Navy support ship,
being used as a staging area from the press, well away from the center of the
operation.
TYLER
--there is a tremendous amount of activity.
With Cuba only 80 miles away, the massive buildup
of US ships and aircraft in the area has drawn
official protest from Havana and Moscow and has
led to a redirection of Soviet warships into the
Caribbean theater.
ANCHORMAN
How would you describe the mood there?
TYLER
The mood is one of suspicion, even confrontation.
A number of Russian and Cuban trawlers,
undoubtedly surveillance vessels, have been
circling within a few miles throughout the day,
and Soviet aircraft have repeatedly been warned
away from the area...
HIPPY
This sucks.
INT. CORRIDOR/SUB BAY 84
Bud, Lindsey, and Hippy walking along the corridor, Hippy in a black mood of
incipient paranoia.
BUD
What's the matter with you?
HIPPY
Now we're right in the middle of this big-time
international incident. Like the Cuban Missile
Crisis or something.
LINDSEY
Figured that out for yourself, did you?
HIPPY
We got Russian subs creeping around. Shit!
Something goes wrong they could say anything
happened down here, man. Give our folks medals,
know what I mean?
BUD
Hippy, just relax. You're making the women
nervous.
LINDSEY
Cute, Virgil.
HIPPY
No, I mean it. Those SEALs aren't telling us
diddly. Something's going on.
BUD
Hippy, you think everything's a conspiracy.
HIPPY
Everything is.
One Night is pounding down the corridor from the sub bay.
ONE NIGHT
Hurry up! Coffey's splitting with Flatbed! He
got me to show him the controls, then his guys
suited up and they're rolling.
Bud breaks into a run, passing her.
BUD
Goddamnit! D'you tell him we need it right now?
ONE NIGHT
I told him we had to get the umbilical unhooked
ASAP.
INT. SUB BAY 85
Bud clears the door in time to see an empty moonpool, roiling with turbulence.
He runs to the edge and looks down. Flatbed is a vague shape moving off.
BUD
Unbelievable.
CUT TO:
EXT. EXPLORER BRIDGE -- DAY 86
The sky is charcoal, the sea is a mountain range of gray slopes. Waves
thunder over the foredeck, whipped by eighty-know winds. Men in life
jackets scurry like insects. Off the port bow, the ASW destroyer ALBANY
vanishes and reappears among waves sixty feet tall. McBride scream orders
that can't be heard to the crewmen on deck. He staggers back along the bridge
railing.
INT./EXT. BENTHIC EXPLORER BRIDGE -- DAY 87
McBride steps into the quiet of the control room. He turns on De Marco.
MCBRIDE
We're trying to get unhooked and get out of
here... and your boys go sightseeing!
DEMARCO
They'll be back in two hours.
MCBRIDE
Two hours?! We're gonna be getting the shit
kicked out of us by our friend Fred in two hours!
De Marco's expression is infuriatingly calm... icy. McBride looks at his
watch and swears under his breath.
CUT TO:
EXT. USS MONTANA WRECK SITE 88
For a second time the black hull of the ballistic missile sub is illuminated
by diver's lights. Tiny figures, the divers move like moths around a distant
streetlight. Wilhite, Monk and Schoenick are clustered around an open missile
hatch. Using a large lift bag, they are removing the frangible fiberglass,
or 'diaphragm'. Coffey pilots Flatbed with increasing deftness, deploying
the big arm to aid in the work.
DOWN ANGLE as the diaphragm lifts away... revealing the blunt nose of the
TRIDENT C-4 MISSLE. Like looking down the barrel of a gun at the bullet
aimed right at you.
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE/MESS HALL 89
TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN: A HELICOPTER SHOT of a warship burning, rolling
ponderously as it sinks in stormy seas.
NEWS ANCHOR (V.O.)
Little is known at this hour about the events
leading up to the collision. The US Navy guided
missile cruiser Appleton apparently struck the
Soviet 'Udaloy' class destroyer in low visibility
conditions...
VARIOUS CUTS of men in life jackets among huge waves... Rescue helicopters
hovering. Shaky camera work. Wind blasting. INTERCUT WITH REACTIONS of the
rig crew watching.
NEWS ANCHOR (V.O.)
In violent seas little hope remains for over a
hundred Russian crewmen still missing after the
sinking an hour ago.
SHOT OF AMERICAN CRUISER, burning, listing to one side in heavy seas.
Replaced by SHOT OF NETWORK ANCHORMAN.
NEWS ANCHOR
Soviet military spokesmen have claimed that
the collision constituted an unprovoked attack.
This was denied--
It continues. Bud looks at Lindsey. She turns to him, expression grim.
LINDSEY
Bud, this is big time.
CUT TO:
EXT. MONTANA WRECKSITE 90
The divers are working head-first in the missile's launch tube. Monk reads
from a plasticized card, directing the other two step by step. The arcane
litany is punctuated by the hissing rasp of their breathing.
WILHITE (filtered)
Separation sequencer disconnected. Next?
MONK (filtered)
Remove explosive bolts one through six in
counterclock-wise sequence.
SCHOENICK (filtered)
Check... removing bolt one.
INT. DEEPCORE 91
ON THE RIG CREW, watching. Bathed in the light of the video screen.
NEWSCASTER (V.O.)
... just learned that Soviet negotiators have
walked out of the strategic arms limitation
summit in protest over the incident this morning.
Bud switches the channel.
ANOTHER NEWSCASTER
... US and NATO military forces have been put on
full alert worldwide this morning in the wake
of...
BUD
It's on every channel.
Bud switches again. Reception is getting worse as the storm affect the
satellite down-link to Explorer. THE SCREEN shows a reporter on a city
street, stopping people at random. Their answers are edited together:
YOUNG WOMAN
You just feel so hopeless. You can see it coming,
but what can you do? What can anyone do?
CONSTRUCTION WORKER
Hey, they don't want war any more than we do.
You think about it, you say... hey, they love
their kids too. So why are we doing this?
He is replaced by a self-righteous, middle-aged woman.
WOMAN
If the Russians sank that submarine, they deserve
what they got and a lot more, if you ask me,
and you did. I think we've been pussyfooting
around with them long enough.
EXT. USS MONTANA 92
It is now clear what the SEALs are doing. Using large lift bags and Flatbed's
big arm, they have pulled one of the Trident C-4 missiles partway out of its
launch tube, and have partially disassembled the nose-shroud, exposing
several of the MIRV warheads within.
Moving very carefully, Wilhite and Schoenick ease one of the individual MIRVs
out of its bracket. Hanging under a lift-bag in a jerry-rigged harness, the
three-foot long warhead is move gently by the divers to the back of Flatbed.
INT. DEEPCORE/VIDEO SCREEN 93
Another man in the street interview, tortured by static.
MAN
Scared? I'm scared ____-less. But if it happens
it happens, nothing I can do about it. Right?
So why think about it?
CUT TO:
INT. SUB-BAY 94
Flatbed surfaces in boiling foam. The rig crew are all waiting. Like a
crack pit-crew Bud's people leap onto Flatbed while its deck is still awash
and start to work on to Navy divers, unsealing their helmets and uncoupling
their umbilicals. Hippy and Bud start to untie a cylindrical object wrapped
in one of the SEAL's gear bags. Coffey emerges from the hatch.
COFFEY
Don't touch that. Just step away. Now!
HIPPY
Excusez moi.
BUD
Coffey, we're a little pressed for time.
COFFEY
Monk, Schoenick... secure the package.
The two SEALs unlash the object in the black bag. Bud an Lindsey exchange a
glance. He glares at Coffey as they pass each other. One Night nimbly
climbs the hatch-tower and drops in. Bud swings the heavy hatch up,
balancing it, and grins down at One Night.
BUD
This ain't no drill, slick. Make me proud.
ONE NIGHT
Piece of cake, baby.
He swings the hatch closed with a CLANG.
CUT TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE 95
The big A-frame, massive as a railroad bridge, to which the umbilical from
the Explorer is attached. Flatbed rises INTO FRAME arcing around the
coupling mechanism F.G. One Night deploys the big hydraulic arm.
It unfold from Flay bed like a huge steel spider leg, its claw-like 'gripper'
opening.
INT./EXT. BENTHIC EXPLORER BRIDGE -- DAY 96
An ALARM sounds stridently on the dynamic-positioning console.
BENDIX
We're losing number two thruster. Bearing's
going.
INT. THRUSTER ROOM TWO 97
Deep in one of the catamaran hulls, the positioning thruster motor is
SCREAMING like a steel banshee above its usual roar. It EXPLODES with smoke
and shrapnel. A roaring fire erupts. Crewmen run shouting in the smoke.
INT. EXPLORER BRIDGE 98
Now a KLAXON is going off as the ship begins to slew in the high winds.
BENDIX
It's not holding. We're swinging out of
position!
EXT. EXPLORER'S DECK/LAUNCH WELL 99
As the ship slews, the umbilical is drawn off vertical. It goes tight as a
bowstring. Pulled to the edge of the launch well, it rips down the side
with a godawful screech, tearing loose ladders and floats.
EXT. DEEPCORE/A-FRAME 100
Flatbed's manipulator has gripped the de-coupling mechanism when the cable
suddenly pulls taut. The sub is jerked sideways, its grip dislodged. We
see One Night get tossed around inside.
INT. DEEPCORE 101
Lindsey is in the corridor with a cup of tea when the whole rig BOOMS LIKE A
GONG and lurches sideways. She's wearing her tea when Bud tears through a
doorway and goes pounding past her. The intercom blares...
HIPPY (intercom)
Bud to control! Emergency! Bud to Control!
Bud claws his way up the ladder to level two. The rig BOOMS and shudders
as...
EXT. DEEPCORE 102
The rig begins to move. The enormous skid breaks loose. Start to slide,
plowing furrows in the bottom. One Night junks the controls, pivoting her
submersible as the A-frame looms toward her.
INT. DEEPCORE/CONTROL MODULE 103
Bud runs in, past Hippy, and grabs the mike.
BUD
Topside, topside... pay out some slack, we're
getting dragged!
EXT. EXPLORER DECK 104
The winch man staggers along the railing, blasted by 80-knot winds. He
sprints for the base of the enormous crane which supports the umbilical
winch. A wave blasts him into the bulkhead. He half-crawls to the ladder
going up to the winch-house. As he climbs the winch's heave-compensator
slides up and down, FILLING FRAME behind him.
It is bottoming-out with a sound like a piledriver, overloaded by the strain
on the cable. It chooses that moment to fail. GRINDING CRASH OF METAL.
INT./EXT. DEEPCORE CONTROL MODULE 105
Lindsey has joined Bud, looking out the front viewport.
LINDSEY
We're heading right for the drop off!
EXT. EXPLORER DECK 106
The deck is ripped upward as the entire 40-ton crane is pulled over by the
weight of Deepcore. It topples in the launch well with a roar of tortured
steel that rivals the storm. An EXPLOSION OF WATER. UNDERWATER, the crane
tumbles between the twin hulls. Trailing a vortex of foam and debris, it
roars down on us, FILLING FRAME WITH BLACKNESS.
INT. EXPLORER BRIDGE 107
McBride stares in shock at the churning cauldron of the launch well. Grabs
the underwater telephone.
MCBRIDE
Bud! We've lost the crane!
BUD (V.O.)
What? Say again.
MCBRIDE
THE CRANE! WE'VE LOST THE CRANE. IT'S ON ITS
WAY TO YOU!!
INT. DEEPCORE/CONTROL MODULE 108
Everyone is stunned by what is happening. Lindsey fires up the sonar.
LINDSEY
Got it! It's dropping straight to us.
She puts the signal over the speakers and the room fills with eerie PINGING.
Bud shouts over the intercom.
BUD
Rig for impact! Seal all exterior hatches.
Move it! Let's go!
VARIOUS ANGLES, QUICK CUTS, as everyone runs to comply:
The rig crew pounding down the narrow corridors. Diving through low
hatchways. Hatches are closed and the wheels spun down. Hippy puts into a
ZIP-LOK BAG and seals it.
EXT. DEEPCORE 109
The umbilical drops down in slack loops out of the blackness above, draping
itself over the habitat in large coils. One Night pilots her submersible
feverishly among the falling loops. She banks and twists. A length of heavy
umbilical slams onto her neck, tipping the sub.
She manages to get out from under it a keep going.
INT. CONTROL MODULE 110
Through the front viewport they can see the coils of cable piling up in front
of the rig. The hull booms with impacts as the massive stuff hits.
Everyone hold their breath as the sonar return-pings get closer... and
closer. And closer...
An ENORMOUS SHAPE plunged into the floodlight in front of the rig.
K-WHAM!! The 40-ton crane hits like a flatiron thirty feet in front of them.
A clean miss. Much WHOOPING AND CHEERING. Then...
The crane topples slowly over the back. It rolls down the slope of the drop-
off, gathering speed. Then tumbles over the cliff into the abyssal canyon.
The coiled umbilical starts to pay out after it like rope after a harpoon.
And they're still attached.
LINDSEY
Oh shit.
An agonizing few seconds. Then... the cable pulls taut.
K-BOOM!! The rig is slammed by the shock. Everyone is knocked off his feet,
into walls and equipment.
EXT. DEEPCORE 111
The rig begins to slide. It tilts over the embankment and grinds down the
slope of the drop-off in a cloud of silt. The cable pulling it inexorably
toward the cliff. The framework twists and slams into rocks. SCREECHING
AND GROANING of tortured steel.
INT. DEEPCORE/CORRIDOR/LADDERWELL/MAIN CORRIDOR 112
All hell has broken loose. SIRENS, SCREAMING, a KLAXON HOOTING moronically.
Bud sprints from Control, bouncing off the corridor walls as the rig
lurches and tilts. The lights go out. Emergency light come on. He trips
and falls, scrambles up, running on.
IN THE LADDERWELL of trimodule C, Lindsey runs toward the machine rooms.
K-BOOM! A searing bright EXPLOSION in the electrical room. Flames roar
through the doorway. She dashed to a seawater hose hanging nearby and starts
to unroll it. She sees Coffey and Schoenick in maintenance, lashing down
the mystery package.
LINDSEY
Hey! Get on this hose, you turkeys!
INT. TRIMODULE C/COMPRESSOR ROOM 113
Monk is working in a spray of seawater, turning valves to stop the flow of
ruptured pipes. Behind him, a wall of flame blossoms through the door from
the electrical room, driving the back with the heat. A reservoir-tanks
breaks loose from one of the compressor assemblies. In rolls at him,
crushing his legs against machinery. The fire roars into the room.
INT. SUB BAY 114
Hippy runs in. The place is going nuts. Water floods from the moonpool as
the rig tilts. Wilhite is dancing across the deck, leaping over compressed-
gas cylinders which are rolling around loose. Cab One jumps clear off its
cradle and slides SCREECHING across the deck. Wilhite, running before the
12-tom juggernaut, had no place to go. The SEAL dives into the churning
moonpool. Cab One slams into the end wall, then spins and rolls toward
Hippy.
He starts to run. Drop something. Looks back.
Beany, in his zip-loc bag, is lying in the path of the slide submersible.
Hippy runs back. Scoops up the baggie. Cab One FILLS FRAME behind him.
He makes it through the door an instant before the thing hits behind him,
buckling the steel doorframe.
Wilhite is clawing up the sheep skirting of the moonpool. He gets his fingers
over the top. Pulls himself up...
A steel helium tank slams against his fingers, crushing them, and he falls
back. More tanks bounce over the lip of the pool, hammering Wilhite down
into the foaming water.
He doesn't surface.
EXT. DEEPCORE 115
The rig is sliding to the edge of the cliff. Beyond it... the bottomless
pit of the Cayman Trough. It slams, crushing and twisting, into a rock
outcropping and stops, hanging over the precipice.
INT. TRIMODULE A/QUARTERS 116
Perry is trapped as the trimodule floods with stunning swiftness. He makes
it through an emergency hatch between floors but can't get it closed. The
inrushing tide blasts it open. He scramble upward to the next hatch. Spins
the wheel. No time. He is slammed against the ceiling by the force of the
water.
OMITTED A116
INT. DRILL ROOM B116
Lew Finler, Tommy Ray Dietz, and Lupton McWhirter fight their way toward the
door as the drill room floods rapidly. Ahead, the big automated watertight
door is closing like a motorized bank-vault. They reach it just as it is
closing, but can't prevail against the strength of the motors. FROM THE FAR
SIDE, we can see them screaming soundlessly at the tiny pressure window in
the door. We can hear the dull THUNK of their pounding.
INT. TRIMODULE C/LADDERWELL AND COMPRESSOR ROOM 117
Coffey and Schoenick, in emergency breathing masks, are fighting the fire with
a seawater hose and fire extinguishers. Smoke and steam choke the dark
chambers.
Nearby, Lindsey grabs Hippy's arm as he is running past and drags him into the
blazing compressor room. Hands him her seawater hose. Wide-eyes, he starts
blasting everything in sight with water.
LINDSEY
No! Hold it on me!
She rushed into the teeth of the fire as Hippy blasts her with a spray of
water, following her into the intense heat. She grabs Monk, who is
semiconscious, and drags him out of the blazing room... Hippy dancing back
with the hose, tripping, blasting her in the face.
But it works. They get Monk clear.
INT. DRILL ROOM CORRIDOR 118
Bud comes pounding down the flooding corridor in time to see the water in the
drill room swirl above the pressure window, obscuring the faces of the
trapped men. He claws futility at the door. The motors and the fail-safe
latching mechanism are on the opposite side. Through the pressure window he
watches helplessly as they drown. We don't see what he sees, but we know
what he sees. Suddenly the bulkhead next to him gives way and a freezing
torrent thunders in. Bud is blown off his feet a hurled along the corridor.
He scramble up somehow, splashing waist deep toward the opposite end of the
corridor where another of the hydraulic doors is closing inexorably. He's
not going to make it. He reaches it a moment too late to squeeze through.
Grabs the edge of the door and desperately tries to stop it from closing with
the strength of this arms. It doesn't work. The steel door closes on the
fingers of his left hand, pinning them in the doorframe.
But something amazing happens. His wedding ring lodges between the door and
frame, preventing his fingers from being crushed and the door from
sealing and locking.
It resists tons of pressure, denting but not collapsing.
The freezing sea pours in until only his head is clear.
BUD
Heeyy!! HHHEEEYYY!!
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, Catfish and Sonny come pounding up. They see
his face at the tiny window and his hand jammed in the door. Sonny wedges
a crowbar in the narrow opening and starts to pry. Catfish whips open his
jackknife and slashes the hydraulic hoses on the door actuator. He is
sprayed with red hydraulic fluid, machine blood.
Together they force open the door. Bud is blown through in a torture of
water. Sonny is thrown back into some pipes. Breaks his arm.
Together they somehow heave the door shut manually, cutting off the flow.
Catfish hammers the fail-safe latch home with the crowbar.
Bud lies gasping and shivering... staring at the tiny band of metal that
saved him.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE/ONE HOUR LATER A118
LOOKING DOWN THE WALL of the canyon as Big Geek moves beneath us, tilting up
to show Deepcore perched at the very edge of the abyss. The rig is twisted
and dented, covered with loops of umbilical, trimodule-A a mass of wreckage.
The ROV passes across the front of the control module. Through the front
port, two figures can be seen in the light of a single emergency lamp.
SONNY (V.O. static)
Mayday, mayday. This is Deepcore Two calling
Benthic Explorer. Do you read, over?
INT. CONTROL MODULE B118
Sonny flips some switches on the UQC acoustic transceiver. Tries again.
SONNY
Benthic Explorer, Benthic Explorer. Do you read,
over? This is Deepcore--
BUD
Forget it, Sonny. They're gone.
INT. TRIMODULE C 119
Bud walks down the corridor from control, slowly... as if carrying a great
weight. The air is still thick with smoke. The power off... everything
lit by emergency lights. Makeshift quarters have been set up in the mess
hall, with blankets laid out on the tables, and with folding cots in the
storage room across the hall. Jammer is still unconscious. Coffey and
Schoenick bring Monk in on a stretcher, and set him up on a table. He is
conscious but dazed with painkillers, his led splinted.
BUD
Did you find Wilhite?
COFFEY
No.
He and Bud lock eyes. Bud bites back on his recriminations, but his gaze
blames Coffey. He turns away.
COFFEY
Brigman.
(Bud turns)
I was under orders. I had no choice.
Coffey's manner is subdued, contrite. A marked contrast to his previous
brusque arrogance. He's wrestling with his own loss, a sever blow to the
tight brotherhood of a SEAL unit. Bud's anger is not dispelled. But he
can't address it now. He moves on.
PAST THE INFIRMARY, where Sonny Dawson is rigging a sling over his own broken
arm. He cries out in pain, cursing at himself. LOOKING DOWN THE CENTRAL WELL
as Bud crosses. Down through the grill decking we can see the bottom level
of the module is flooded. Catfish is down there welding, sending shivering
reflections through the chamber.
INT. MACHINE ROOM 120
Lindsey is working, up to her knees in water. She is covered with grease,
tools scattered around. Bud puts his hand on her shoulder. She looks up,
blows some hair out of her eyes.
BUD
What's the scoop, ace?
LINDSEY
I can get power to this module and sub-bay if
I remote these busses. I've gotta get past the
mains, which are a total melt-down.
Rather than trigger anger and invective, the disaster seems to have affected
her in a different way. She's accepted the situation, now that's it's done,
and is immersing herself in technical tasks, which are for her therapeutic.
BUD
Need some help?
LINDSEY
Thanks. No, I can handle it. Bud... there
won't be enough to run the heaters. In a couple
hours this place is going to be as cold as a
meat locker.
BUD
What about O-2?
LINDSEY
Brace yourself. We've got about 12 hours worth
if we close off the sections we're not using.
BUD
The storm's gonna last longer than 12 hours.
LINDSEY
I can extend that. There's some storage tanks
outboard on the wrecked module. I'll have to go
outside to tie onto them.
She goes back to her task, working efficiently with a socket wrench.
BUD
Hey, Lins...
(she looks up)
I'm glad your here.
LINDSEY
Yeah? Well I'm not.
OMITTED 121
OMITTED 122
The sub bay is still a mess. Dark. A few battery-operated lamps. Flatbed
is back, floating in the moonpool.
One Night and Hippy are in deep concentration, piloting the two ROVs in a
damage survey of the rig. Bud comes up behind them, check her screen first.
BIG GEEK'S MONITOR shows a view of the aft section of the rig. The drilling
derrick had collapsed across Cab Three, totaling it. A girder is jammed
through its acrylic front dome.
ONE NIGHT
Right through the brainpan. Deader'n dogshit,
boss.
BUD
(to Hippy)
Where're you?
HIPPY
Quarters. Level two.
INT. TRIMODULE A/QUARTERS A123
Little Geek rises up through the open central hatch, pivoting in a circle to
scan the flooded interior.
INT. SUB BAY/R.O.V. STATION B123
TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN, LITTLE GEEK'S POV. The interior of the structure is a
shambles. The lights of the little robot fall upon a figure... Perry.
Lying on the deck, almost looking like he's asleep.
HIPPY
That's Perry.
BUD
(lets his breath out slowly)
That's it then. Finler, McWhirter, Dietz, and
Perry. Jesus.
HIPPY
(gestured at the screen)
Do we just leave him there?
BUD
Yeah, for now. Our first priority's to get
something to breathe.
CUT TO:
EXT. DEEPCORE 124
Catfish and Lindsey, in suits and helmets, drop down from the glare of the
moonpool onto the dark sea floor under the rig. Walking, they pull their
umbilicals behind them and head out through the twisted wreckage. Little
Geek follows along like a dog at their heels. They settle beside a valve
assembly at the base of the wrecked module.
LINDSEY
Cat, you tie onto this manifold. There's some
tanks on the other side; I'm gonna go check
them out.
CATFISH
You watch yourself.
He begins to attach one end of a coiled-up high-pressure hose to a manifold.
She takes the other end of the hose and moves off into the darkness. Little
Geek goes with her faithfully.
INT. SUB BAY 125
Cab One is hanging from the overhead crane while One Nigh works to repair it.
Bud is nearby, tending hose for the divers and handing her tools. Talking
while they work. Hippy is across the moonpool running Little Geek.
ONE NIGHT
Gimme a three-eighths socket on a long extension.
(he hands it to her)
So there you were--
BUD
There we were, side by side, on the same ship,
for two months. I'm tool-pusher and we're
testing this automated derrick of hers. So, we
get back on the beach and... we're living
together.
ONE NIGHT
Doesn't mean you had to marry her.
BUD
We were due to go back out on the same ship.
Six months of tests. If you were married you
got a state-room. Otherwise it was bunks.
ONE NIGHT
Okay, good reason. Then what?
BUD
It was alright for a while, you know. But then
she got promoted to project engineer on this
thing, couple years ago.
ONE NIGHT
She went front-office on you. Tighten that for
me, right there. That's it.
BUD
Well, you know Lindsey, too damn aggressive--
Son of a--!!
He's jammed his fingers with a wrench torquing down a bolt. Whips his hand
out.
BUD
She didn't leave me... she just left me behind.
She puts her arm around his shoulders, somehow managing to be fraternal,
maternal and suggestive all at the same time.
ONE NIGHT
Bud, let me tell you something. She ain't half
as smart as she thinks she is.
She smiles and pretends to kink Lindsey's air-hose.
ACROSS THE CHAMBER, Hippy scowls as Little Geek's screen starts to go haywire
with interference.
HIPPY
Hey, Lindsey, you reading me? Over.
OMITTED 126
EXT. DEEPCORE/TRIMODULE A 127
Catfish is working on one side of the wrecked module while Lindsey is on the
other, out of sight. She is standing on the bottom at the base of the
wreckage, checking valves on a rack of oxygen bottles amongst the wreckage.
Right at the edge of the canyon wall. Behind her is a sheer drop to
nothingness
LINDSEY
Yeah, Hippy, I read you. What's the matter?
The reply is GARBLED by a wash of static. Then, for no apparent reason,
Lindsey's helmet light begins to dim out. Little Geek's lights fade. His
motors whine to a stop.
ON CATFISH, as his lights drop to candleglows.
INT. SUB BAY A127
The emergency lights are dimming, like a brownout. Bud grabs the diver
intercom mike.
BUD
Lins, how're you doing? Lindsey?
EXT. TRIMODULE A 128
ON LINDSEY, as she fiddles with her lights and transceiver pack.
LINDSEY
Catfish... I got a problem here. You there?
Catfish?
Behind her, SOMETHING rises from the depths.
It is the little vehicle she almost collided with at the Montana wreck.
It comes right up behind her. She doesn't know it's there. It hovers
sideways like a hummingbird, as if curious, trying to get a better look. She
becomes aware of the pulsing glow on the ground around her. She turns
slowly. We see her react as the glowing, pulsing apparition is reflected in
her faceplate.
A more powerful glow washes up onto her from below.
Her eyes go down. She gasps, absolutely stunned...
Above the edge of the wall, AN ENORMOUS SHAPE RISES SILENTLY OUT OF THE
DEPTHS. Over sixty feet across. It looks like a blown glass manta ray, its
transparent outer hull housing interior structures of great delicacy and
complexity, pulsing with a blue-violet glow.
Lindsey stand before it, unable to move. Absolutely rapt.
Captivated by its ethereal beauty. It begins to turn, majestically, one
rounded wing passing only a few feet above her. She reaches up. Touches it
as it passes over her.
Lindsey is without fear, completely mesmerized.
The thing completes its turn and dives gracefully down along the wall. She
is gently lifted by a backwash of turbulent water.
About that time, Lindsey remembers she has a still camera, a little Nikonos.
She fumbles to set focus and exposure with her bulky gloves as the beautiful
machine glides into the depths. Gets all set for a shot and...
WOOSH! The little 'scoutschip' whizzes past her from behind, startling her.
She completely misses the shot of the 'manta ship'. She pivots, trying to
get a shot of the little one as it zig-zags down along the wall, fast as a
meteor. CLICK. She get a shot a second before it disappears.
From around the flank of the rig module, Catfish appears. Their com-sets
come backs to life, along with their lights.
LINDSEY
You better not say you missed that.
CATFISH
Missed what?
CUT TO:
INT. DEEPCORE/MESS HALL 129
TIGHT ON SLIDE STRIP. Lindsey's fingertip in for scale. The shot is black
with a little squiggle of light in the center. Pathetic.
BUD
Nice shot, Lins.
SONNY
What is that? You drop your dive light?
WIDER, SHOWING THE GROUP huddled around Lindsey who has her freshly-processed
slide roll laid out on the pinball machine, using it as a light table.
LINDSEY
Come on, you guys... look, this is the little
one right here. You can see how it's kind of
zigging around.
BUD
If you say so. It could be anything.
LINDSEY
I'm telling you what is there. You're just not
hearing. The impulses somehow aren't getting
from you ears to your brainpan. There's something
down there. Something not... us.
She looks around. Sees a lot of skepticism in the eyes around her.
CATFISH
Y'all could be more specific.
LINDSEY
Not us. Not human. Get it? Something non-
human, but intelligent...
HIPPY
You mean like Coffey?
Lindsey is reddening. Despite her conviction, this is really hard.
LINDSEY
A non-terrestrial intelligence.
HIPPY
Non-Terrestrial Intelligence. NTIs. Yeah, I
like that better then UFOs. Although that
works too... Underwater Flying Objects.
Hippy is not really mocking her. He's actually into it. But it has that
effect. Catfish is eyeing Lindsey like he's never seen her before.
CATFISH
Are we talkin' little space friend here?
HIPPY
Right on! Hot rods of the Gods. Right, Lins?
Hey, no really! It could be NTIs. The CIA has
known about them for years. They abduct people
all the time. There was this woman I knew in
Albuquerque who--
LINDSEY
Hippy, do me a favor... stay off my side.
Bud takes her firmly by the arm. Heads her out into the corridor.
BUD
Lindsey, will you step into my office for a
minute...
INT. CORRIDOR/LADDER WELL 130
He propels her along the corridor, away from the mess hall doorway. They
face each other in the narrow space.
BUD
Jesus, Lindsey--
LINDSEY
Bud, something really important is happening
here.
BUD
Look. I'm just trying to hold this situation
together. I can't allow you to cause this kind
of hysteria--
LINDSEY
Who's hysterical? Nobody's hysterical!
They're talking across each other, not connecting. Bud weary and frustrated.
Lindsey is cranked up with the afterglow of her encounter.
BUD
All I'm saying is when you're hanging on by your
fingernails, you don't go waving you arms around.
LINDSEY
I saw something! I'm not going to go back there
and say I didn't see it when I did. I'm sorry.
BUD
God, you are the most stubborn woman I ever knew.
LINDSEY
I need you to believe me, Bud. Look at me. Do
I seem stressed out? Any of the symptoms of
pressure sickness, any tremors, slurred speech?
BUD
No.
LINDSEY
Bud, this is me, Lindsey. Okay? You know me
better than anybody in the world. Now watch my
lips... I saw these things. I touched one of
them. And it wasn't some clunky steel can like
we would build... it glided. It was the most
beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Bud is stilled by her intensity. She moves close to him. Eyes alive and
luminous.
LINDSEY
It was a machine, but it seems almost alive.
Like a... dance of light. Bud, you have to
trust me..