When the research vessel drew near, the tone of her diesel engines ebbing, he could see Mel Sorenson’s face behind the safety glass windscreen of the bridge. Fred Boberg, the other helmsman was on the wheel, and Frank Vogl, the chief and only engineer, was standing next to Sorenson.
Bucky Sanders and Paco Suarez, the two communications specialists were leaning against the railing on the main deck, alongside the superstructure. They shared the chores in the radio shack, but anymore, the ability to turn a knob was not an adequate job description. Both men were engineering students, completely familiar with all of the electronic wizardry that filled the communications and chart compartments. Nothing made them happier than when Brande had made a finger-walking tour through a marine electronics catalog.
Sorenson issued the orders, and Orion slowed, turned, and began to back into the pier. Normally, she was dock abeam of the pier, but loading Depthfinder required that she be stern-on to the pier.
Seamen and women appeared on the deck to handle lines, and Nagasaka ran forward to help.
Twenty minutes later, the ship was snugged up against her fenders, and Emry had carried his charts and CD-ROM discs aboard to begin setting up his computers.
This expedition was one of search, rather than recovery, and Brande had selected his deep submergence vehicles with that objective in mind. Sarscan was wheeled forward onto the dock, and a marine biologist switched hats and became a crane operator, maneuvering the starboard aft crane into position to lift the sonar search vehicle aboard. She would be tied down on the starboard, stern hull.
Dokey arrived by the time they had opened the big sliding doors to the warehouse. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the one-foot high red letters, “YES!” emblazoned on the back. Dokey and the women of MVU were fighting a sexual innuendo battle through decorative shirts. The female version was “NO!”
He was also working his way through breakfast burritos and a tall cup of coffee.
“Hell, Chief,” he said. “I thought you’d be loaded by now. I was ready to go aboard and climb into my bunk.”
Brande looked him over carefully. “I think you’re getting old, Okey. Little more gray at the temples. Timing’s way off. I’m going to be worried about your reflexes.”
Dokey snorted. “My reflexes are excellent. Where they count.”
They grinned at each other and turned to enter the warehouse.
With the doors open, Depthfinder was visible. Her sister, Depthfinder II, was aboard the Gemini, now working the Caribbean out of Galveston. Brande was always happy when both research vessels were on contract simultaneously, making some effort to cover their costs of operation.
The early light sifted through the doorway and reflected off the submersible’s waxed paint. The outer hull was composed of carbon fiber reinforced plastic and fiberglass. On the surface of the sea, she appeared sleek, the outer hull disguising the round ball of the pressure hull. She was thirty eight feet long, with a beam of eleven feet, and she weighed in at forty three tons. The main hull was twelve feet high, and she towered above them.
Adding to the perceived immensity, the sail was four feet high. It was fiberglass and utile solely in preventing waves from splashing through the hatchway when she was moving on the surface. In the water, the top of the hull stood barely a foot above the surface of the sea. The transponder interrogator, a UHF antenna, and the depth sonar were mounted on the aft end of the sail. Within the enclosed sail was room for two people to stand, if they liked each other relatively well.
The outer hull was a streamlined enclosure containing the spherical pressure hull that protected humans from the crushing pressures in the ocean depths. The secondary hull was not subjected to the same pressures, and it also contained the spherical tanks used for variable ballast, high pressure air, hydraulic power supplies, and fore and aft mercury trim. Forward of the pressure hull were thirty five and seventy millimeter still cameras, video cameras, halogen lights, ballast tanks, and the forward looking sonar. To the rear of the pressure hull were altitude and side looking sonars, the magnetometer gear, weight droppers, the massive propulsion motors, controller and junction boxes, and the three banks of batteries. Syntactic foam had been sprayed into all empty spaces.
Barely protruding from the lower hull were small flanged steel wheels. They kept the submersible aligned on a portable section of railroad track. It matched the tracks on the deck of the Orion.
While half-a-dozen people began moving additional sections of track into place across the dock, Brande found a ladder, leaned it against the hull, and climbed up to, and over, the sail. He opened a watertight compartment in the decking and switched off the shoreside power. When Depthfinder was aboard her mother ship or stranded on land, her computers and electronics were fed from outside power sources in order to preserve her batteries.
With minimal use of the electric propulsion motors and energy consuming electrical systems, the three sets of batteries could provide 150 hours of life support. Eighty hours of time was available at normal consumption rates, and thirty five hours was the safety limit at maximum current draw. Additionally, there was a backup system within the pressure hull, good for another five hours with minimal usage of the submersible’s systems. Brande’s safety consciousness, however, had dictated an MVU policy that battery packs be exchanged one set recycling and recharging on board the research vessel any time a submersible surfaced after more than three hours down.
He looked over the side.
Dokey looked up at him. “Clear?”
“Clear.”
Dokey unplugged the umbilical to the warehouse power.
When the portable track sections were in place, everyone gathered around the submersible. Dokey pulled the chocks from the wheels, and two dozen willing hands began to push the submersible from the warehouse and out onto the dock toward the stern of the research vessel.
They eased her to a stop with her bow projecting out over the water, almost centered between the aft hulls of the ship.
The massive steel yoke above Brande started moving backward, toward him, stopping when it was almost directly above. Its two legs rotated in mounts attached to each of the catamaran hulls. Cables stretched to winches on the main deck controlled the forward and aft movement of the yoke. The main lift cable was suspended from the center of the yoke. The lift operator, a seaman named Del Rogers, signaled Brande, and he turned a thumb downward. The weighted cable, its length snaking through multiple block-and-tackle units, descended toward him.
Brande raised his hands to guide it aft, then leaned way over the sail and snapped it into the lifting eye. Raising his arm, he signaled reverse by circling his hand, and Rogers started it in the opposite direction.
Slowly, Depthfinder lifted off the tracks, and then began to turn sideways. Dokey grabbed a bow line and tossed it to a woman aboard the ship, and she used it to keep the bow aligned. At full lift, Rogers broke the ascent, and then started the yoke moving forward.
The submersible left the safety of the dock and approached the ship. Brande could have sworn he felt her hull vibrating in eagerness as she returned to her proper environment.
Above the deck, Rogers lowered her, and deckhands guided her onto her tracks. The big doors into the main laboratory were open, and a cable from an interior winch was snapped into the sub’s bow eye. She could be hauled inside for maintenance if it were necessary.
While she was being snugged down to the deck, Dokey leaped to the deck of the ship and rolled a scaffold into place against the sub’s hull, and Brande crawled over the sail and descended from his high perch.