He listened for a moment, said, “Damned sure, Avery,” then handed the phone to Brande. “This guy speaks a foreign language. East coast, I think.”
Brande pressed the set close to his mouth, to overcome the wind noise. “Afternoon, Avery.”
“Are you real busy, Dane?”
“If I say I’m not, the price goes down, right?”
“There’s some people around here who would like to have you take a little trip.”
“Where?”
“North and west a bit. About three miles down.”
“We looking for something interesting?”
Hampstead told him about the little tremors spooking the earthquake people.
It sounded intriguing. All mysteries and all unknowns below the sea intrigued Brande. The fact that Hampsted was passing the data over an unsecured, scannable cellular telephone suggested to Brande that the project, while it was mysterious, wouldn’t carry some of the bureaucratic and mostly unnecessary security classifications he hated.
“There’s a little problem, Avery. Orion’s drydocked for maintenance.”
“Damn. How soon will she be ready?”
“Connie tells me a couple weeks.”
“There’s no chance you could go earlier?”
“Who’s backing this little foray?” Brande asked.
“Navy, CIA, and myself, I guess.”
“That’s quite a crowd you’ve put together. Is someone worried about something?”
“I don’t know that worry is the right word, Dane. We’d like to satisfy some minds.”
“I guess we could hold off on a few of the topsides chores for awhile.”
“It could be worth a nice bonus, on top of your regular fee.”
“Could be?”
“Will be.”
“I’ll have to check with Mel Sorenson and Connie, but we could take off a couple days from now, maybe.”
Dokey sat up tall in his seat, finally showing some interest in his day.
“Plan on it, then,” Hampstead said. “This shouldn’t take you more than a day or two, I shouldn’t think.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Sarscan II was almost identical to her predecessor, SARSCAN, and had been given the name instead of the acronym for Search and Rescue Scanner.
The sonar search vehicle was twelve feet long and almost four feet wide — a fiberglass box with rounded corners, but she did not have robotic arms. Sarscan II was an improvement over her predecessor in that she mounted floodlights and cameras, combining the sonar and visual search functions. Because of her size, she was not a total replacement for the much smaller Sneaky Pete, who could maneuver his cameras into some very tight places, but on search or research missions with a scale grander than the pilothouse or cargo hold of a sunken ship, she precluded the requirement to operate two separate ROV’s — remotely operated vehicles.
She was still a towed vehicle utilizing rudders and planes for stability and limited guidance, but unable to move on her own. Brande anticipated that the next generation of Sarscan would also have a self contained propulsion system. If developments that were showing promise in the Loudspeaker acoustical system proved out, she might also operate without the hindrance of a tether.
Dressed in the corporate colors and resting on a trailer parked next to the Commercial Basin warehouse, Sarscan II appeared simplistic. Her innards, as Dokey called them, were considerably more complex, however. An open gridwork supported the exterior streamlining panels as well as the interior sonar antennas and miniature pressure hulls containing computers, batteries, and transducers. One reinforced ball housed the solenoids that controlled the stubby rudder and the diving planes on the aft end. The heavy duty connector that coupled her, via a Tevlar shielded fiber optic cable, to the tow vehicle was mounted on the top surface of the forward end. On either side of the coupling connection were fairings that housed the floodlights and two cameras. One was a seventy-millimeter still camera, and the other was a video camera that had a limited forty-degree range of travel from side to side, as well as up and down.
Designed for intensive bottom searching, the sonar did not have a lot of range, but it was very powerful and very accurate downward for a thousand feet and sideways for three thousand feet. The images it picked up were transmitted through the optic fiber towing cable and displayed on screens aboard the towing vehicle. Sarscan’s functions were a great deal more complex than her appearance sitting on a trailer on a San Diego dock in the early morning.
The sun was well above the horizon and a light fog was burning off as Brande waited on the dock for the arrival of Orion. It promised to be a blue-sky day, typically balmy, and a great substantiation of his rationale for headquartering MVU in San Diego.
Waiting with him was Kenji Nagasaka, one of Orion’s helmsmen, who had helped him move Sarscan to the dock from the workshop. Nagasaka had obtained his degree from the University of Southern California the previous spring, but his year of internship on board the research vessel was one factor that had convinced him that he wanted to stay near the water. Brande knew the obsession.
Nagasaka was short and slim, with lanky black hair under little control. He was also madly in love with Kim Otsuka, who was eight years his senior and, Brande thought, bound to frustrate him. She had other interests.
Nagasaka sat on one of the trailer’s fenders. He said, “This was a sudden decision, wasn’t it, Dr. Brande?”
At sea, Nagasaka was given to calling him “Chief,” as most everyone did, but his innate politeness prevailed ashore.
“Someone is in a hurry, Kenji. It kind of filters down to us.”
“What are we looking for?”
“That’s the fun part,” Brande said. “We don’t know.”
“Well, I’m happy to be doing something. Waiting around for Orion to be overhauled is nerve-wracking.”
Brande remembered his youth on the Minnesota wheat farm as filled with the same inaction. The highlight of every year occurred during harvest when the unruly custom combine crews came through. Their long, hard days and their brawling nights had made his life seem lazy by comparison. Those indolent years occasionally seemed desirable now, but they had driven him to skiing, scuba diving, automobile racing, and sky diving. Action in any form.
A dark blue Buick Park Avenue turned in from the street and parked in the cramped parking lot at the side of the building. Lawrence Emry got out, locked the door, and headed toward them carrying a small duffle bag.
Emry was tiny at five-five. He sported a full, gray moustache in compensation for his baldness. At sixty-four, he was the oldest employee of MVU, but his experience went far beyond his doctorate in geophysics toward making him a wise man. He was the Director of Exploration.
“Where’s the damned boat?” he asked.
“Good morning to you, too,” Brande said.
“Kaylene caught me last night, two hours before I was to take off for Tahiti. My morning was supposed to be quite different from this.” Emry waved a hand at the freighters docked around the basin.
“Well, hell, Larry. I forgot about your vacation,” Brande grinned at him. “Tell you what. You reschedule your flight, and I’ll handle the mapping.”
“And no doubt get yourself lost, Dane. No, I’d better go along this time.”
Emry wouldn’t pass up an intriguing expedition for anything in the world, Tahiti included.
“Here she comes,” Nagasaka said, scrambling up from his seat on the trailer fender.
Brande looked east to see Orion turning into the basin. As Connie Alvarez-Sorenson had said, she appeared much more natural in the water.
The topsides paint still looked a little dingy, but a fresh coat could wait. They had things to do and places to go, and Brande was almost as excited about the prospects as he had been the day he left the farm.