“Which way do we need to go from here?” Jayden asked. “Right, am I right?” He thought he was correct, but knew they had precious little room for error.
Carter was already gazing at his diagram when he answered. “Yes, on the other side of the restaurant to our right we should get to the smoking room, and then after that, the Purser’s Room on this same level. It’s not all that far from here, really.” Yet he knew that conventional terms for distance such as “not that far” down here in the middle of the Titanic shipwreck were much different than the same distances on land. The restaurant offered maneuverable space, but neither man was fooled into thinking that hazards did not abound. The water was still and relatively undisturbed inside the inner rooms of the ship. It was possible that the sub’s movement alone could move the water around enough to cause a collapse of some sort, like a cave-in.
“Heads up on that big chandelier over there,” Hunt said, directing the spotlight until the halogen revealed the glittering of crystals in the pitch dark space, “and there’s a smaller one over there.”
“Thanks.” Jayden now knew not to let the sub be too high in the room, nor too low. He activated the horizontal thrusters and sent them scooting out into the middle of the giant room, about halfway between floor and ceiling. He caught his breath as he saw a flash of white in the floodlights on the floor, realizing it was a human skull, the rest of the skeleton unseen beneath a heavy table top. A none-too-subtle reminder that this was indeed a grave site. He pointed it out to Carter, who asked in a low voice if the video system was recording. Jayden hit a button and then replied in the affirmative. Everything around the sub would be captured in high definition video from six cameras facing every direction including above and below.
The sub made its way through the sunken restaurant, Jayden’s brow beaded with sweat despite the chilly temperature inside the specialized vehicle. They came to one area where a mass of furniture was tangled in a heap on the floor, and he had to raise the sub in order to pass over it, before dropping lower again to avoid a mass of cabling or wire of some sort that dangled from the fractured ceiling.
“Got a wall coming up,” Carter announced. “This should be the other side of the restaurant. Smoking Room’s on the other side.”
“We need to find a way through.” Jayden cut power to the thrusters and allowed the sub to come to a standstill, hovering about ten feet above the floor, over a pile of dishes and glassware, some of which was still intact.
At that moment the radio crackled with Johnny’s voice. “Topside to Voyager: checking in, requesting status, over.”
Jayden snatched up the radio mic. “Inside the restaurant now, Topside. We’re fine, having a look around, over.”
“The restaurant, copy that. Wow, I do believe you two have the dubious honor of being the deepest manned penetration of the Titanic ever. Exercise extreme caution and stay in touch. I’ll let you get back to concentrating, over.”
Jayden signed off the radio and then Carter pointed to the upper right of the restaurant’s far wall, where the spotlight illuminated an irregularity. “I think we’ve got a small break there that we might be able to squeeze through.”
Jayden appeared concerned. “Squeezing is not really something subs are good at, but okay, let’s check it out. I’ll move us in for a closer look.”
He deftly adjust the thrusters so that the sub rose higher in the room while approaching the spotlighted area of wall, high up towards the ceiling. A startled fish — a large one of some unknown type, dark in color — slithered out of the floodlights along the bottom of the room as the sub neared the wall. Another skeleton made Jayden look away and focus even harder than he needed to on maneuvering the sub. It was creepy down here, he couldn’t deny it. Miles down in the freezing, dark ocean, inside a historic tomb… His mind flashed on sunny, tropical beaches and splashing in the ocean with a beautiful woman…
“Watch it, watch, Jayden!” Carter’s voice snapped him from his daydream. “Wall coming up!”
“Sorry!” He reversed on the horizontal thrusters and the submersible backed off an instant before it would have collided softly with the wall. Even at low speeds, however, the sub weighed three tons and had a lot of power behind it once put into motion. As it was, a puff of silt billowed away from the wall, high up near the ceiling. Carter gave a sigh of frustration.
“Visibility’s clouded near our opening. We’re going to have to wait it out for a couple of minutes. How’s our vitals?”
Jayden put the sub into a hover, floating there as if in space, high up near the ceiling. He took a deep breath and exhaled while he eyed the console gauges. “Everything looks good. Time to check in with Topside.”
By the time he finished the routine radio check with the support ship, the water had cleared enough for them to be able to see over the top of the wall, where an irregular rift presented itself between the wall and ceiling. ‘”Man, that is really a tight fit. I’m not sure I can pilot us through that,” Jayden said, eyeing the possible passage dubiously.
Carter’s gaze lit on one of the sub’s controls. “What if we use the grab arm to peel back some of that twisted metal up there — create a bigger opening for ourselves?”
“You crazy? Never mind that, I know you are. But it just might work. Or it could bring the entire ceiling down on us and trap us forever. Your call,” he said, turning the tables on Carter from back when he gave him the go-no-go decision on the elevator shaft.
“I’m for it if you are,” Carter said without hesitation. “You’re the pilot, so you have to be comfortable, though. I don’t want to do it if you don’t, that’s the bottom line.”
Jayden considered this for a moment while staring up at the ceiling before replying. “I think it’ll work. If it doesn’t budge at all after the first grab arm pull, we stop. If too much of the wall or ceiling starts to come down too fast, we stop and hope it’s not too late.”
“You hold the sub in place while I operate the grab arm, right?” Carter clarified.
“Right.” Jayden had confidence in Carter’s abilities on a sub. He had seen him operate a grab arm successfully before during a critical mission, and had no qualms about letting him do it now. “Just don’t ask to drive this thing.”
Carter smiled. “I won’t. Let me check the arm before we get up near the ceiling. Carter grabbed the joystick that operated the external grab arm, and tested its controls, first extending the arm, then swiveling it back and forth, rotating the finger-like hand grips. Finally, he closed and opened the hand grips. Satisfied all was in working order and that he was prepared, he nodded to Jayden. “Ready when you are.”
Jayden took the sub up to the tear between wall and ceiling and stabilized the craft until it hung motionless, poised next to the jagged window into the next room. Carter operated the spotlight to get a look into the adjacent space. “It’s a big room in there,” he said. “Not as huge as this one, but definitely big enough to maneuver in. I see a couch, some chairs… Ah, there’s an ashtray! It’s the Smoking Room.”
“Let’s give it a go, then,” Jayden said.
Carter put his hand on the grab arm control and extended the mechanical arm, which was situated on the right front of the craft, until its claw hand was adjacent to the curl of metal coming down from the wall. He opened the claw and then adjusted its position until it was open in front of the piece of metal.
“How much more room do we need, if I can pull it down some?” Carter asked.
“Two more feet would make me feel a whole lot better about this.”