Ocean Black

CHAPTER EIGHT

Penny Glenn only slept for four-and-a-half hours, and then not very well. When she awoke, and decided she wasn’t going to get back to sleep, she lay in sheets tangled by her restlessness and listened to the muted thrum of the diesel engines. The slight pitching of the yacht told her that the seas had gotten heavier during the night.

Two things bothered her and kept her from the sleep she had promised herself to make up.

First, there was Dane Brande. She had been completely surprised by her visceral reaction to him. As soon as she had stepped on the deck of the research vessel and seen him, deep inside, her stomach had begun doing flip-flops. She couldn’t remember a time in her recent history when she had been so nervous. She was sure her agitation was apparent to everyone, especially to Kaylene Thomas who acted as if she had some claim on him.

Glenn had had a number of minor infatuations in the past, always with a partner that she felt she could control, and always short-lived. Her affairs had each ended, she knew, less because of her need to dominate than as a result of her focus on her career and her goals. Social and personal diversions, she didn’t need.

But her initial reaction was that Brande could be different. First of all, she knew from her first meeting with him that he was an independent. He wasn’t the kind to be intimidated by her money or her status, if he was even entirely aware of either. That made him the kind of challenge she relished. Secondly, some instinct told her that, with Brande, she might actually lose focus for hours at a time. Years had gone by without her once losing sight of where she was going.

Sitting in that booth in the Orion’s wardroom with him, it had been difficult for her to concentrate. In one dimension of her mind, their conversation had lasted hours. In another, it had been milliseconds.

She intended to meet him again and spend more than milliseconds with him. No matter what claim the Thomas woman thought she had. Like the manganese, this was a lode worth pursuing.

Conversely, there was the other bothersome aspect that had disturbed her sleep.

She threw the covers off, slipped her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. Rummaging through her closet, she selected jeans, a black pullover, and fleece-lined, rubber-soled half-boots. Judging by the movement of the yacht, the coming day wasn’t going to be tropical.

Glenn climbed the short companionway to the salon. The lights were on, and Darryl Metcalf was already at work, picking up magazines and dusting the teak coffee and end tables belonging to the twin sofas.

He looked up at her. “Did I wake you?”

“No. I’ve got work to do.”

“You want some breakfast.”

“Sure do, Darryl. Scrambled eggs and toast. And lots of coffee.”

“Coming up.”

He went to the galley, and Glenn crossed the deep carpet to the navigator’s desk built into the salon’s aft bulkhead. She sat in the pale brown leather chair and selected the third handset hanging on the wall. It was labeled “SECURE,” and the circuitry included an encryption device that scrambled voices before transmitting them over the satellite communications network.

The top officers of AquaGeo did not have individual telephone numbers for their cars, boats, offices, or homes. Each person was assigned a separate, single number, and the computers in the Sydney offices hunted for the person attached to the number.

She keyed in the number for Paul Deride and waited almost two minutes before he was located. A blinking light on the wall panel told her that he didn’t have a scrambled phone available, and she switched the encryption circuit out.

“Deride,” he said.

“Uncle Paul, where are you.”

“Washington, D.C. I’m at the Mayflower Hotel.”

“You know Dane Brande, right?” He had leased some search robots from MVU, but she wasn’t certain whether or not he had ever met Brande.

“I do,” Deride said. “I’m buying a heavy-lift robot from him.”

“Funny he didn’t mention it.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I met him last night.”

“You did? Where?”

She told him about chasing down the research ship and going aboard.

“That’s a bloody odd place to run into him.”

“That’s why I’m calling. He said they’re working on a government contract.”

“In those waters, at this time of year?”

“He didn’t say exactly where they were going, but that was my thought, too, Uncle Paul. It would have to be an important contract to initiate an exploration project at this time of year.”

“What was their heading?”

“I’d guess it at around two-eight-zero degrees. It was almost due west.”

“You don’t suppose your activities have aroused any interest?” he asked.

She knew he was being circumspect because of the unsecured channel.

“I shouldn’t think so, not in any way that would alarm anyone. The United States government wouldn’t add to its deficit by chasing down speculative rumors,” she said.

“The taxpayers are worried about the deficit; the bureaucrats are not.”

“Oh, damn. I suppose I’d better go back.”

“That’s probably a good idea, Penny.”

The research vessel was holding position in five-foot seas with the autopilot linked into the NavStar Global Positioning system. At least three of the eighteen satellites in the system were feeding data to the navigational computers on board, telling them precisely where she was located on the surface of the earth. Within a few feet, anyway.

The autopilot continually compared the coordinates it was programmed to maintain with the information transmitted by NavStar and made adjustments accordingly. To the uninitiated, it was often disconcerting to hear the diesel engines rev up and ebb apparently on their own as they directed power to the cycloidal propellers deployed beneath the twin hulls.

The sun had risen bright with the dawn, but within the hour, Brande expected it to be blurred by an increasing overcast. The slow front moving in on them from the northwest appeared unfriendly.

By seven-thirty in the morning, the center of activity aboard the ship had focused on DepthFinder. Following checklists compiled by Brande and Dokey, the people assigned to deployment activities had powered up the submersible’s systems and run them through diagnostic checks. The checklists were followed religiously; no step in the process, any of which could affect safety, would be inadvertently omitted.

DepthFinder had been declared operational at eight-twenty and the assigned crew members had retired to their cabins to suit up. Brande dug into the drawers under the bunk for his subsurface wardrobe. He pulled on woolen long johns first, and then topped them with the blue jumpsuit with the yellow MVU logo over the breast pocket. After donning two pairs of wool socks, he slipped his feet into soft-soled running shoes. Over the jumpsuit, he wore one of Dokey’s custom sweatshirts — this one proclaiming the formation of a working shark’s union. The logo was that of a Great White with a crunched boat called the Orca in its teeth. He found two sweaters and a pair of gloves to add insulation as the depth increased.

It got cold down there.

He had just folded the spare sweaters when Thomas opened the door, slipped into the cabin, and then closed the door and leaned against it.

“Be careful,” she said.

“You know me.”

“Redundancy is acceptable when it comes to safety.”

“I preach that,” he said. “You still mad?”

“She wants your body. Your mind, too, I think.”

“What?”

“It’s true.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Rae.”

“Inescapable conclusions.”

Brande had been aware of his own attraction toward Penny Glenn, but not of any overt interest on her part. He didn’t know what Thomas had detected, but he had long known that women have very sophisticated sonar when it came to detecting hidden sensitivities. If he could harness and direct that power, he’d make a few billion dollars.

Hanging his sweaters over his left arm, he moved around the bunk to stand in front of her. “Don’t worry about that which doesn’t require worrying, Rae.”

“Penny Glenn requires worrying.”

“Wrong.”

She shook her head. “There’s something strange about her. I don’t like it.”

“There’s something strange about everyone, Rae. People who go swimming in cold water, for instance.”

She didn’t respond to his attempt at humor.

Brande leaned forward, caught her chin in his right hand, and kissed her lips.

There was heat there, but he was afraid it was based in anger. She responded briefly to the kiss, but not with what he would call whole-hearted abandon.

“I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll be watching,” she said, suggesting today and the future.

They left the cabin together, went through the bridge, descended to the main deck, and entered the lab. Emry and Polodka had set up the control center at the first computer terminal. Four video monitors mounted on the bulkhead above the console were displaying blank pictures, waiting for digital input from the submersible. Emry could pick and choose among the data he wished to display. On the primary monitor in front of the keyboard, Emry’s map of the area was shown. He would update it during the dive, adding the features picked up by the cameras or other sensors.

A smaller screen next to the primary would monitor the operational telemetry signals broadcast from the sub. The readings included depth, altitude above the seabed, direction, attitude, speed, and interior and exterior temperatures. The life support systems, including battery charges, were also tracked, and in fact, were displayed in red letters while the rest of the data was in blue.

“Good luck, Dane,” Polodka said.

“Don’t break anything, please, legs or machines,” Emry added.

“Count on it.”

The stern door of the laboratory was open, and they passed through it to the aft deck, where almost every soul aboard seemed to be gathered, milling more or less purposely around the tall form of the submersible.

Dokey had the portable scaffolding in place next to the sub. “Come on, Chief. Kim and Bob are already aboard.”

“You’re getting awfully pushy.”

“The sooner you’re gone, the sooner you’re back, and the sooner I’m gone.”

“Linear logic,” Brande accused.

“The only kind, when we’re dealing with my time. I like the sweatshirt, by the way.”

“You would.”

Thomas squeezed his hand once, and then Brande climbed the scaffolding and eased his legs over the sail. He squatted and handed his sweaters down through the hatch to Otsuka. Standing again, he looked to see that Paco Suarez was handling the winch controls.

Dokey released the wheel brakes and pulled the scaffold aside.

“Kick us overboard, Paco.”

“Si, jefe,” Suarez said, and started drawing the lift cable taut.

The sub lifted off of her rails, and Dokey released the line snubbed to the bow. Below him, Brande could hear Mayberry talking to Sorenson on the UHF radio, testing that surface communications link.

When he had a couple feet of clearance, Paco began to ease the yoke backward. The sub drifted away from the deck, and Dokey signaled the winch operator when the submarine’s bow was clear of the decking. The sub started her descent toward the sea. While the twin hulls gave some protection to either side, Brande saw that the waves were still high, crashing into the hulls, sending spray upward. He tasted salt on his tongue, and droplets of water splashed on his face and clothing. As expected, it was cold water.

The heavy sub settled into the sea, going ever lower, until there was barely a foot of hull showing in the brief seconds when a wave wasn’t crashing over it. Brande made certain that the lift hook disengaged, then waved at those on the deck, and dropped through the hatch. He did that carefully, to avoid the thick coating of grease around the perimeter of the hatchway that was used to guarantee a tight seal.

Pulling the hatch cover closed behind him, he dogged it down and watched for the green LED (Light-Emitting Diode) that told him he had a perfect seal.

He was standing on the backs of the left and right canvas-covered seats, and he turned himself in the tight space and settled into the left seat. As pilot, Otsuka was in the right seat, and Bob Mayberry, the systems monitor, was in the single back seat, which was turned ninety degrees to those in the forward location.

Mayberry and Otsuka both had headsets in place, and the pilot was following Sorenson’s directions as she backed away from the mother ship.

The sub tilted and rolled in the wave action, and though she was as high on the surface as she could be, the portholes in front of Brande were below sea level, showing him only a roiling vision of green-tinged water. Though there was little to see, it was a clear view at this level.

Mayberry handed him a towel, and he dabbed at the spots on his jumpsuit and sweatshirt where he had been splashed. He pulled on the headset hanging from his control panel.

“Larry, you there?”

“Five by five, Dane,” Emry said.

“Let’s go over to Loudspeaker.”

“Going.”

Brande gave a thumb’s up to Mayberry, who switched the communications channel to the acoustic system. Loudspeaker had been developed by a Russian oceanographer named Pyotr Rastonov — a friend of Valeri Dankelov’s — and the technology boasted of the ability to transfer, not only voice, but digitized signals for the telemetry on acoustic wavelengths. All of DepthFinder’s transmitted data now utilized Loudspeaker, and one of the projects underway in San Diego involved using the technology for robotic control, to eliminate the need for tethered cables. Marine Visions had obtained the Loudspeaker design in exchange for the designs of a robotic arm and a couple of software packages.

When he came back, Emry’s voice carried the echo that was characteristic of the system. “You got me, Chief?”

“Got you. We’re starting down, so we’d appreciate it if you deployed Sarscan.”

“I think I’ll do that.”

Under their command protocol, the mission commander — Emry at this point — made the final decisions. While Brande was in charge of the submersible, Emry was in control of the overall dive. It was never as clear as that, of course, and decisions usually evolved as compromises.

Overhead, the deck crews would be lifting the sonar search vehicle from her cradle and lowering her into the sea. She was attached to DepthFinder by a two hundred-foot cable, and the submersible would tow her to the bottom.

A few minutes later, Emry reported, “She’s all yours, Dane.”

“Roger. We’re a complete set.”

“Are we ready, Dane?” Otsuka asked him.

He scanned the instrument panels, seeing all of the familiar readouts sending him a “Go,” message.

“Take us down, Kim.”

She didn’t actually have a choice. While standard submarines changed depth by taking on or ejecting seawater ballast, that process did not work for deep-diving submersibles because of the enormous pressures involved. DepthFinder did have a couple small ballast tanks, for changing altitude a few feet or controlling rates of descent and ascent, but her high-technology method of submerging involved tying lead weights to the bottom of her keel.

In two cavities on the underside of the hull — which appeared something like a tri-hull, the weights were held in place until it was time to ascend, then they were jettisoned on the bottom. Brande had once had an iffy time on the bottom when one of the weights got hung up and refused to drop off. He finally freed it by using a robot.

That experience, in fact, was the rationale for having Atlas along. Atlas was a small, tethered robot, built along the lines of Gargantua, looking like a child’s snow sled with a fiberglass enclosure. Three multi-bladed propellers set at odd angles — aimed obliquely upward and at a 45 degree angle across the stern — controlled its movement in the water. The ROV had two medium-sized manipulator arms, along with still and video cameras. One arm terminated in a thumb-and-two-fingered hand, and the other arm was used for tools. Currently, a cutting torch was in place. Parked in a sheath located beneath the forward bow, the ROV could be urged into action by remote controls in the sub, the signals transmitted over a 250-foot cable that unreeled from the sheath and trailed after the robot.

Inside the pressure hull, a spherical container within the fiberglass and carbon streamlined outer hull, the space was cramped for three humans. The hull was composed of ten-inch thick titanium alloy in order to withstand the pressures at 20,000 feet of depth, and the interior diameter was eight feet. The space was further compromised, however, by the equipment and instrumentation mounted behind dozens of triangular, hexagonal, and square panels that fit into the curvature of the hull. Containing gauges, cathode ray tubes, switches, rheostats, and circuit breakers, the panels supervised systems like the central processing computer, graphic recorders, power routing, the tracking transponder transceiver, liquid coolant, alarms, sonar components, depth plotter, doppler transceiver, main propulsion, and the altitude/depth transceiver.

There were more systems to watch, the primary responsibility of the systems monitor — Bob Mayberry on this dive. The life support system was critical, of course. Pure oxygen was slowly fed into the sphere from external tanks, and a lithium hydroxide blower re-circulated the air while removing carbon dioxide. The system worked well, but it left the air tasting stale. After a typical nine or ten hour ride, aquanauts emerged from the submersible with cottony, dry mouths.

As they started down, Brande felt the slight tug as the tow cable came taut. Reading the indicators set into his control panel, he noted the attitude of Sarscan’s diving and steering planes, and adjusted them slightly for downward travel with his joysticks, then trimmed them into place. He was in charge of the towed vehicle.

“Five hundred feet,” Mayberry called out.

With the wave action left behind, the sub felt perfectly stable, and there was almost no sense of movement.

“Going passive,” Otsuka said and started tapping pressure-sensitive switches.

In order to preserve precious electrical energy, interior and exterior lights were turned off and motors and computers were set at minimum draw during the descent. Inside, the only illumination was provided by the dozens of red, amber, blue, and green LEDs on the instrument panels. At 1200 feet, beyond the ability of the sun to penetrate the depths, the view through the portholes was of utter blackness.

Claustrophobic people did not go well with deep-diving submersibles.

There were three portholes. One was set in the hull directly forward, and the other two were at angles to port and starboard. Directly beneath them were three video monitors used for a variety of tasks, from mapping to sonar display to repeating the video images captured by robotic vehicles.

As Mayberry called off the 1000-foot marker, Brande saw that his view through the portholes was diminishing. Visibility was perhaps thirty feet and very dim. A school of tiny orange-and-blue-skinned fish passed the starboard porthole.

Since they had learned from experience that changing seats in the cramped quarters, so as to relieve each other’s responsibilities, was a difficult proposition, Brande and Dokey had redesigned the control panels in front of each controller seat, duplicating the controls for each position. The front edge of the horizontal panel had a cushioned lip on which the controller could rest his wrists, lessening the fatigue factor. Just beyond the lip were two joysticks and a set of slide switches used for manipulating power to the propulsion systems that provided upward, downward, sideways, and forward or reverse thrust. A master switch on each panel selected the submersible, a robot, or a robot’s manipulator arms as the controlled device from either controller position.

Kim Otsuka’s control panel was currently in charge of DepthFinder.

“Two thousand feet,” Mayberry said. “Twenty-one minutes elapsed.”

“I could increase the descent rate by a few more feet,” Otsuka said.

“We’re all right where we’re at,” Brande said. “No sense in pushing it.”

It was going to take them three hours to reach the planned depth of 17,500 feet. There was no way to overcome those physics.

“What have we got today?” Brande asked, squirming around in his seat to get the first of his sweaters on.

“I brought along the soundtrack for ‘The Mikado,’“ Otsuka said.

Mayberry issued and anguished groan. “I have my Garth Brooks tapes.”

Brande tried to settle himself comfortably in the canvas-covered seat and almost achieved it.

“What the hell,” he said. “Let’s start off with ‘The Mikado.’“

Mayberry groaned again.

Wilson Overton sat on the edge of his hotel bed, picked up the phone, and called the Greenpeace representative on his boat once again.

“Wilson,” Mark Jacobs said, “we’ve talked three times in the last two days. That’s more than in the last year.”

“I know, but I just had another thought, and I called the Earthquake Information Center in Colorado.”

“What did they say?”

“About the same thing Brande told you. There have been some disturbances on the seabed. Not earth-shaking, if you’ll forgive that pun. Barely touching one-point-oh on the Richter Scale. They gave me the coordinates.”

“And then?”

“And then I called Brande’s outfit in San Diego. I talked to Dr. Ingrid Roskens, who seems to enjoy working on Sundays. She said Brande was off on some diving expedition.”

“Brande didn’t mention that,” Jacobs said. “I didn’t think to ask him where he was when I talked to him.”

“And then I thought about those Navy guys. They use sonar for mapping, right?”

“That can be done.”

“But do they chase earthquakes with it?”

“I don’t know,” Jacobs said, “Maybe they want to see if there’s been any change in the seabed terrain as a result of the quake.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“That’s what I asked,” Overton said.

“You’re assuming that Brande’s going out there to do something for the Navy.”

“That’s the assumption. I’m reaching a little, I know. But for one thing, Mark, who gives a damn what the seabed looks like, either before or after an earthquake? Especially a tiny earthquake. For another, I ran over to the library and took a look at the Pacific maps. As far as I can tell with generalized maps, that part of the Pacific is largely unexplored. Why do it now, with winter coming on?”

“You think somebody’s worried about something?”

“What do you think?”

“If, and I do say if, Wilson, Brande’s on his way out there, then something’s funny.”

“Let’s go look,” Overton said.

“We’d probably find a wild goose.”

“My instincts don’t let me down often, Mark. I’ll pick up your fuel costs.”

Overton cringed when he said that. He hadn’t checked with Ned, and he might well end up diving into his savings account for the money.

“We were looking for something to do, anyway,” Jacobs told him. “I guess we could waste a week, as long as you’re covering the diesel fuel.”

“I’ll be checked out of here in ten minutes,” Overton said.

“One more thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You have to do a favor for me.”

Paul Deride was tied up in a long meeting for the morning, which was followed by a luncheon he would just as soon have missed. When he got back to his room in the Mayflower, he called Camden.

Anthony Camden had worked for him for twenty-one years, first as an occasional contract writer, then as full-time counsel for Aqua-Geo. Like Penny Glenn, Camden was a multi-millionaire as a result of his association with Deride, and like Penny, the lawyer had never demonstrated anything but total loyalty to Deride.

He found the man in Japan, as expected, but he was in a meeting with the Matsumoto Steel people — discussing the potential and plant requirements for expanded production — and he had to wait ten minutes for Camden to call back.

He could picture the man at work. At five-two, he would fit the scale of the people he was dealing with. His steel-rimmed glasses would enlarge those big blue eyes, making him appear a little bug-eyed and perhaps less intelligent than he really was. Camden stunned his adversaries from time to time with his insights, his legal maneuvering, and his downright ruthlessness. He rarely lost a point, and when he did, it cost the opposition something — money, status, bargaining position. Deride had never seen him without a tie neatly knotted under the spread collar of his tailor-made shirt. His suits were made in England and his shoes in Italy. It was Camden who gave Deride advice on his business wardrobe.

When he called back, he said, “Yakima says he’ll need to hire a thousand people, add two furnaces, and three rolling mills.”

The two of them never bothered with the preliminaries of greetings or small talk.

“Is he happy about that?” Deride asked.

“Ecstatic. He’ll draw up preliminary plans, so we’re ready to go when the time is right. I’m also checking into leasing a refinery.”

“Good. And speaking of preliminary plans, I think you should be in San Francisco.”

“Problem?”

“There might be.” Deride explained Glenn’s chance meeting with Brande. “If the U.S. wants to raise hell about anything, I want us in a position to say, ‘bugger off.’“

“Why Brande?” Camden asked.

“They use him a lot on special projects, Anthony. This reeks of special project.”

“He sent your check back.”

“Bloody hell!”

He had been certain that Brande, or at least Thomas, would have yielded to the power of two-and-a-half million dollars. It was like a slap in the face, and no one slapped Deride and got away with it.

“Just catch an airplane, Anthony.”

Kaylene Thomas was in the left seat of DepthFinder. She had been there for nearly four hours, and she had enjoyed every minute. Seven months had elapsed since she made her last deep dive, and she vowed that that wouldn’t happen again.

The first dive had been cancelled after an hour and forty-six minutes on the bottom when two cells in the main battery pack had indicated a malfunction. After the three-hour ascent, the crew, the film packs, the video tapes, and the battery tray had been exchanged for fresh versions, and DepthFinder had immediately returned to her element.

Brande’s dive had located the sites of the first two disturbances. The sonar map record didn’t demonstrate much since they had nothing to compare it to, but the video and camera imagery had shown two craters on the seabed. Each was approximately thirty feet deep and sixty feet across. The immediate consensus of all team members was that they were man-made. Brande and Otsuka had found nothing else in the vicinity of either crater.

Over her headphones, Thomas heard Brande’s voice. He was now manning the command console on board the ship. “Svetlana, let me have a status report.”

Periodically, voice reports were issued to confirm the telemetry data.

She heard Polodka changing position to relieve cramped muscles.

“Yes, Dane. The depth: seventeen thousand, seven hundred, and twenty-six feet. The altitude above seabed is nine-one-eight.”

She and Dokey were attempting to “fly” the submersible about eight hundred feet above the sea floor. Sarscan, trailing behind them by fifty feet, and below them by two hundred feet, captured the best imagery at that distance. While her range was limited, her power gave them good readings for a thousand feet down and three thousand feet to either side. Because they were scanning the bottom, rather than searching for a single object suspended in water, Thomas had squelched out the “ping” of sonar returns so as not to drive them crazy.

“Heading, two-eight-five,” Polodka continued. “Speed, six knots.”

The submersible could easily triple that speed, but the noise produced by the electric motors and the water movement against the hull added interference to the sonar vehicle’s readings.

Polodka rattled off the current capacities on batteries and life support systems.

“Roger that, Svet,” Brande said. “Looking good.”

Through the portholes, and despite the six million candlepower of the halogen floodlights, the view ahead was limited to about thirty feet. Microscopic bacteria lived out there, but nothing else, and the waters were clear and clean.

Thomas had put the waterfall display of Orion’s forward-looking sonar on the starboard video monitor, close to Dokey. It was good for about 1500 yards, but wasn’t sounding any alarms. There was nothing of collision concern ahead of them.

The center monitor played the video image from Sarscan’s camera, relayed over the fiber optic cable, and under the robot’s powerful floodlights, the dive team had another view of endless water.

The port monitor did have a display. The seabed, as depicted by the robot’s down-looking sonar was shown as a dark green mass across the bottom of the monitor. The irregular lines and abrupt rises in the dark green suggested a rugged bottom with large outcroppings.

It seemed to be drifting away, and Thomas checked the scale imposed by the computer on the left margin of the monitor.

“Okey, the seabed’s in decline.”

“I see it, Kaylene. We’ll take a ten-degree dive.”

Dokey eased his right stick forward, and the bow aimed downward. The twin electric motors driving the propellers forced them lower.

With her own control sticks, Thomas aimed the robot downward and watched the readout until it was showing a ten-degree negative reading.

Four hundred feet farther down, they leveled off.

Polodka, who had a chart spread over her knees, said, “We’re approaching the coordinates. Okey, bear to the left two degrees.”

“Done, Svet.”

Thomas glanced at the magnetometer readout. They had crossed some heavy deposits of probable iron, but at the moment the sensor was not detecting anything out of the ordinary. No sunken ships full of gold and silver ingots.

Dokey reached over his head and pressed the “Power On” pad for the radiometer.

“We ought to see if we’re getting zapped by anything radioactive, ladies.”

Thomas had a quick flashback to the Russian missile recovery, with its Topaz IV nuclear reactor payload. “Why’d you bring that up,” she asked.

“Just curious.”

“That’s bull, Dokey. You have a theory going?”

“Those holes Dane photographed look like they could have been dug with a single nuclear charge, Kaylene. They’re sometimes used in mining.”

“How large?”

“Not monsters. Maybe five kilotons of explosive power. Smaller than tactical nuclear weapons.”

All three of them were looking up, watching the digital numbers on the radiometer.

“Levels are normal,” Dokey said.

But he left it on.

“One more mile,” Polodka said.

“We’ll have to bear left some more,” Thomas said. “I’m reading a seamount dead ahead.”

Dokey glanced at his sonar readout, and then eased the joystick to the left, and the sub banked slightly into the turn. They bypassed a mountain peak that rose nearly five hundred feet above their level, then straightened out again.

“Down again,” Polodka said.

They descended another two hundred feet.

The first pass over the site of the Earthquake Center-provided coordinates gave them nothing extraordinary on the sonar.

Dokey turned into a spiraling descent, headed back over the area.

“We want,” he said, “to get Sarscan-baby about fifty feet off the seabed.

“Well, slow it down some,” Thomas told him.

“Slow it! Honey, we’re barely making headway at this speed.”

The sub was, in fact, headed into a current of about two knots, so the forward speed over the sea floor was about three knots.

“I don’t want to dent anything,” she told him, remembering Dane’s convertible as well as the one-and-a-half million dollar price tag on Sarscan.

Watching the robot’s sonar image carefully, Thomas increased the descent, aiming Sarscan downward until the floodlights and cameras could pick up a clear view of the bottom.

“You don’t have to be nervous, Kaylene,” Dokey said, making her nervous.

“Shut up,” she told him.

“Is there something to be nervous about, darlin’?” Mel Sorenson asked from the surface.

They had elected to keep the Loudspeaker channel open, so the ship could monitor their conversations.

“Where’s Dane?” Thomas asked.

“Went to the head. You want him?”

“No.”

“Here we go,” Dokey said. “We’ve got a picture.”

She glanced at the center screen. A murky bottom was showing up, growing clearer as the lights penetrated the darkness.

She began to level off the robot.

The scene on the monitor was almost that of a lunar landscape. Gray, shades of gray, and utter black shadows predominated. It was a little smoother than she had expected, but a low ridge on the north alarmed her, and she steered the robot to the left.

There were outcroppings covered with silt, though some faces of the rocks had been eroded by the current.

The seabed unrolled slowly on the screen. It started to fade away again, and she added angle to the diving planes to keep the robot heading downward.

“Crater,” Dokey said.

It appeared at the top of the screen.

“Rolling camera,” Thomas said, turning on the seventy-millimeter camera.

“Same as Dane saw,” Dokey said. “The dimensions are the same, too, at first guess.”

Brande’s voice echoed on the acoustic transceiver. “Rae, do a few banks left and right.”

“All right.”

She worked the controller, moving Sarscan left and right, to collect images on either side of the crater.

“Something there,” Dokey said.

She had seen it, also. A flash from a metallic object as the lights hit it, and then it was gone.

“We’ll make another pass,” she said.

THRUMMM!

“What the hell?” Dokey said.

It was just a minute suggestion of sound. A vibration ran through the submersible.

“What was that?” Thomas asked.

“What’s going on?” Brande asked.

“I don’t know, Chief,” Dokey said, his head wagging as he scanned the fifty-five instrument panels surrounding them. “We had a vibration and a kind of dull boom. Nothing showing on the instruments. No red lights.”

“Kaylene,” Brande said, “bring her up.”

“We need to make another pass, Dane. We saw something.”

“We’ll work off the tapes. Up.”

She was going to protest again, but realized he was right.

“Let’s initiate ascent, Okey.”

“Right away, boss.”

“There’s something else,” Polodka said, pointing up at the radiometer.

Thomas followed her pointing finger.

Now they were showing above-normal radiation.

“You people want to speak in full sentences?” Brande asked. “We’d kind of like to know what’s going on.”

“Remember those x-ray machines in shoes stores, Chief?”

“I do, Okey.”

“We’re showing a rad count close to maybe four or five of them. Nothing serious.”

“Hold on,” Brande said. A minute later, he said, “I want you to follow the currents on the way up. Drift with them, and keep the lights and video running, as well as the radiometer. We’ve got a record of current direction at each level, and Mel will feed it to you.”

“Do you know something we don’t?” Thomas asked.

“Just a hunch,” Brande said.

The problem with both Brande and Dokey, she thought, was that they both operated on gut instinct.

Worse, they were quite often right.