“Better,” said Garza.
Gideon checked the clock—Jesus, it had only been seven minutes. Thirty-three more to go. One screen showed a continuous sonar image of the seafloor below, and he focused on it to distract himself. The image gradually grew clearer. Two brighter images began to resolve themselves, representing the two pieces of the Rolvaag on the seafloor. To the west of the wreck he could see the strange, ever-shifting, pixelated cloud of sonar return that cloaked the place where the meteorite had landed.
Twenty minutes. He glanced around, refamiliarizing himself with the controls, then checked the depth gauge, continuously reeling off his depth. Two thousand meters, two thousand ten, two thousand twenty…
The sonar image of the wreck continued to sharpen. But the sonar cloud to its west was, if anything, getting bigger and blurrier.
Thirty minutes. He was almost there.
“Slowing descent to fifty meters per minute,” said Garza.
Gideon felt the change. Or perhaps it was his imagination? Now he could see the Rolvaag in detail on the sonar screen. It lay on the seafloor, torn in half, with a debris field scattered around it. Both pieces of the ship—each one impossibly huge—were lying on their sides, at an angle of perhaps one hundred and twenty degrees. Other than that, the seafloor extended flat in all directions—except for an area about a hundred meters in diameter at the spot where the meteorite was estimated to have landed, which was still just a blurry, shifting cloud of pixels—random sonar return.
The wreck grew until it filled the sonar screen, and still kept growing. He could see the DSV was aiming for a spot on the seafloor perhaps fifty meters from the ship’s stern.
“Slowing descent to twenty meters per minute,” said Garza. “Gideon, Ringo’s lights have a reach of about a hundred meters. You’ll be able to see the Rolvaag in visible light through the downward viewport at any moment now.”
“Roger.” Gideon kept his eye fixed on the viewport.
“The autopilot will bring you to rest on the seafloor,” said Garza. “Then the DSV will automatically blow the ballast tanks to achieve neutral buoyancy, and the autopilot will bring you up ten meters. Hopefully the action won’t throw up too much silt, but if it does, you’re downcurrent from the ship and you will remain stationary until the silt clears away.”
“Understood.”
So far Gideon had done nothing but monitor the screens. Gazing through the viewport, he could now see the details of the bottom approaching, faint in the DSV’s lights. It was smooth mud with a few scattered depressions and some unrecognizable pieces of debris. The wreck itself was still out of view.
The DSV settled down ever so slowly, the bottom coming up to meet him. The muck of the bottom obscured the view out the lower port, and he shifted his gaze to the left and right viewports. To his right, with a start, he realized he could see the dim form of the Rolvaag’s stern, with two gigantic, mangled screws affixed to what looked like pods. The crumpled hull, split along riveted seams, extended on into the blackness.
“Ready to blow tanks,” came Garza’s voice through the communications wire.
“Roger.”
Now he felt a series of jolts, and a cloud of silt rose up to obscure his view. The DSV ascended briefly, then became stationary again. The viewports remained completely obscured by silt, which was reflecting the headlights back into the DSV, making it bright inside.
“We’re waiting for the silt to drift downcurrent,” said Garza.
Within two minutes, the silt had cleared away. He was, as Garza promised, about thirty feet off the bottom. Now he could see the Rolvaag in more detail, still faint and at the edge of the spotlights’ penetration. Strangely, there was no sign of any deep-sea life, no fish or sea creatures around, and nothing on the ocean floor save scattered bits and pieces of debris.
“Ringo, the DSV is yours. Begin recon.”
“Roger that.” Gideon’s briefing had been very specific: to pass over the length of the wreck at a height of twenty meters, from stern to bow, then make a second, sideways pass. The DSV was pre-programmed to do a complete photographic, sonar, and magnetic survey. All he had to do was pilot it, making sure to steer clear of any snags—not that it mattered, since Ringo’s autopilot would avoid them anyway. Then, in phase two of the recon, he was to make his way toward the site of the meteorite and see what the sonar cloud was all about—whether it was a cloud of silt, seafloor venting, or something else.
Gingerly moving the joystick, Gideon turned the DSV to face the ship’s stern, then pushed it forward. With a smooth motion, the DSV hummed along at a slow pace. He maneuvered the mini sub to a higher altitude above the seafloor. Gradually the stern came into sharper view, each of its two giant screws larger than his entire vessel. He increased altitude, the DSV responding with the brief delay he was now used to. He made continuous adjustments to keep the path steady and even.
“Proceed to the predetermined waypoint,” said Garza.
A chartplotter on the main screen showed the waypoint in x-, y-, and z-axes, and it took only the merest nudging for the submersible to reach it, at which point he came to a halt.
“Commence survey.”
Again the DSV needed almost no help from Gideon, who only had to push the joystick slightly for the craft to follow the predetermined survey line, smoothly and expertly. The whole thing was pre-programmed and Gideon began to feel that his presence was more or less optional.
As he cruised about fifty feet above the wreck, Gideon became even more impressed by its enormous size. They had told him it was bigger than the Empire State Building, and now he was experiencing just how true that was. It went on and on, the warped hull sliding past. He passed the superstructure, then the bridge, lying on its side, crushed and scattered about the seafloor in great wrinkled heaps, with all kinds of cables draped about. One bridge wing stuck up from the hull, its windows shattered.
Odd, thought Gideon, that there were no signs of life around the wreck—no fish moving in and out, no plant growth. The entire place seemed dead. But that would be explained, perhaps, by the great depth and lack of light.
He reached the spot where the hull had split, the great riveted plates of the ship ripped apart, the petaled pieces of metal warped outward. Clearly, an explosion inside the hold had torn the ship in half. And in the space between the two halves of the ship lay a huge, rotten pile of debris, a gigantic tangle of split timbers and metal struts, which he assumed must be the remains of the “cradle” for the meteorite.
Suddenly he had a jolt: he could see, lying on the seafloor just outside one section of the hull, an oblong shape that—as he peered more closely—was all too obviously a human corpse. It was missing its head and both of its arms. And as he continued scanning the slowly passing view, he saw another folded shape nearby that, too, was a body. This one was not only headless and armless but missing one leg as well. Apparently, the limbs had been torn away by the force of the explosion that sank the Rolvaag.
Jesus.
“I see human remains down here,” he said.
Garza’s calm voice came back. “We see them, too. This is not unexpected. Carry on.”
“Roger.”
He swallowed. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? And why hadn’t they mentioned this in the briefing? Other than the violence done to them by the explosion, both corpses seemed remarkably well preserved, which, he figured, must be due to the great depth.
Now he could see the blunt bow approaching.