6
The intruder slithered through the dark water in an explosion of bubbles that scattered schooling fish like windblown leaves. As the five-foot-long torpedo flew through the sea, the transducer pulsing under its metal skin bounced high-speed bursts of energy off the bottom. An electronic ear collected the returning echoes, and the data from the sonar tow fish flew at the speed of light along an armored fiber-optic cable hundreds of feet long. The thick cable snaked onto the deck of the turquoise-hulled ship plowing a foamy wake through the ocean about two hundred miles east of the mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S.
The cable terminated in the survey control center on the ship's main deck. Austin sat in front of a glowing screen, analyzing the side-scan sonar images. A revolutionary undersea exploration tool invented by the late Dr. Harold Edgerton, side-scan allowed the quick survey of vast areas of ocean bottom.
A dark vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the screen showed the path of the survey ship. Broad color bands to either side of the line represented the port and starboard areas being probed by the side-scan sonar. Navigational data and time were displayed on the right side of the screen.
Austin stared at the screen, his face bathed in its amber light, alert to every visual nuance. It was a tiring job, and he had been at it for two hours. He had glanced away from the screen and was rubbing his eyes when Zavala and Adler stepped through the door. Zavala was carrying a thermos of coffee and three mugs that he had picked up in the mess hall.
"Coffee break," he said. He poured the mugs full and handed them around.
The hot coffee burned Austin's lips, but it gave him a welcome wake-up lift. "Thanks for the caffeine pick-me-up," he said. "I was getting bleary-eyed."
"I can take the next shift," Zavala volunteered.
"Thanks. I'll put the scan on autopilot for now, and show you and the professor what we've been doing."
Austin set the sonar monitor to buzz if it picked up an object larger than fifty feet in size, and the three men gathered around a chart table.
"We're running a medium-range search to cover the most ground possible without distorting the results," Austin said. "The ocean depth here is about five hundred feet. We've marked out twelve-mile squares along the assumed course of the missing ship." He drew his finger along the perimeter of a rectangle marked in grease pencil on a transparent overlay. "The survey ship follows imaginary parallel lines in each square like someone mowing a lawn. We're about halfway through this square. If we don't locate the ship in this spread, we'll continue to probe a series of overlapping squares."
"Anything interesting turn up?" Zavala said.
Austin made a face. "No mermaids, if that's what you mean. Lots of flat ooze with hard sediment mixed in here and there, boulders, dips and depressions, school fish and sea clutter. No sign of our ship-or anyship, for that matter."
Adler shook his head in frustration. "You wouldn't think it would be so damned difficult with all these electronic gizmos to find a vessel that's longer than two football fields put together."
"It's a big ocean. But if any ship can find the Belle,it's the Throckmorton"Austin said in reassurance.
"Kurt's right. The instrumentation on this ship can tell you the color of a tube worm's eyes at a thousand fathoms," Zavala added.
Adler chuckled. "Deep-ocean biology isn't my area of expertise, but I wasn't aware those remarkable creatures hadeyes."
"Joe is exaggerating, but only a little bit," Austin said with a smile. "The stuff available on the Throckmortonmakes a strong case for those who argue that humans can explore the deep ocean without getting their feet wet. Instead of being crammed into a submersible vehicle, here we are sipping coffee while the side-scan fish does all the work for us."
"And what do youthink, Kurt?"
Austin pondered the question. "There is no doubt that someone like Joe can build an underwater robot vehicle that can be programmed to do everything but bring you your newspaper and slippers."
A brilliant mechanic as well as engineer, Zavala had designed and directed the construction of numerous underwater vehicles, manned and unmanned, for NUMA.
"Funny you should mention that," Joe said. "I'm working on a design that will do all that and mix a damned good margarita too."
"Joe makes my point." Austin gestured at the screens lining the walls of the survey center. "But what's missing in the comfortable confines of this room is the hunger for the one quality that will keep the human race from atrophying like an unused limb. Adventure."
Adler smiled with pleasure at having made the right decision in going to NUMA for help. Austin and Zavala were obviously sharp-minded scientists, knowledgeable in arcane areas of ocean research. But with their athletic bearing, quick humor and good-natured camaraderie the two NUMA men seemed like throwbacks. They were more like eighteenth-century swashbucklers than the seagoing academics he was used to, with their fussy intensity and taciturn personalities. He lifted his coffee mug in a toast.
"Here's to adventure," he said.
The others raised their mugs. "Maybe it's time we had a wave scientist on the Special Assignments Team," Austin said.
An urgent buzzing from the sonar monitor cut short Adler's laughter.
Austin set his coffee aside and stepped over to the sonar screen. He watched the display for a few seconds. His lips widened in a smile and he turned to the professor. "You said earlier that you'd like to assess the damage to the Southern Bellebefore you tell us about the theories you've been toying with."
"Yes, that's right," Adler said. "I'm hopeful that I can learn why the Bellewent down."
Austin swiveled the screen so that the professor could see the spectral image of a ship lying on the ocean bottom five hundred feet below.
"You're about to get your chance."
The sea had wasted no time taking over ownership of the Southern Belle.
The ship caught in the powerful spotlights of the remote-operated vehicle was no longer the magnificent vessel that had once plowed across the ocean like a moving island. Its blue hull was covered with a greenish gray growth that gave the ship a shaggy-dog appearance, as if it had grown fur. Microscopic organisms had taken up residence in the seaweed, attracting schools of fish that nuzzled for food in the nooks and crannies of what had become a huge incubator for marine life.
The ROPOS ROV had been launched from the Throckmorton'sA-frame stern soon after Austin had notified the bridge that the sonar scan had picked up the ship's image. The vehicle was around six feet long, three feet wide and high, and shaped like a seagoing refrigerator. Despite its boxy shape, the ROV's design had gone far beyond the "dope on a rope" function of the earlier remote vehicles. It was a moving ocean laboratory capable of a variety of scientific functions.
The ROV carried two video cameras, twin manipulators, sampling tools, sonar and digital data channels. The vehicle was attached to the ship by a fiber-optic tether that provided communication and the transmission of live video and other data. Driven by a forty-horsepower electric motor, the ROV had rapidly descended the nearly five hundred feet to where the ship lay on the bottom in an upright position.