“Any idea where to start?” Dom asked, his internal suit radio on open channel to be broadcast throughout the ship.
“I have estimated that it would take a minimum of five kilos of plastique to blow her,” Doris said. Her voice was cool, professional. “However, with the masses I’m dealing with in the hold I can’t distinguish so small a weight. The problem is compounded by a minor difference in temperature in various hold sections, enough to vary weight per unit of water.”
“Make a note of that,” Dom said. “In future well want to be able to scan the interior of the hold. Right now we have to figure on combing every inch of the hold, right?”
“I’m afraid so,” Doris said.
“Maximum effect would be obtained by placing the charge near the geometric center,” Neil said.
“Good thinking,” Dom said. “Well start from the center bulkheads and work toward bow and stern. I’ll go sternward, Neil. I’d say check the hogging girders and bulkhead supports first. Bensen must be sharp enough to realize that convection currents will be set up in this mass of water, so if he wanted to keep his blast near the center of mass, he’d secure it so that it wouldn’t float around on the currents.”
“That’s a roger,” Neil said.
The lock filled and opened into the hold. Dom could feel the psychological weight of tons of water on him as he moved out into the vastness. The blackness was total. Their lights made lances of brightness into the pit ahead of them. They swam side by side through huge bays of the hold and reached the center after what seemed to Dom to be miles of swimming. They were back to back for a moment, light beams pointing in different directions. Dom moved off, moving his head to direct the light. Reaching the first system of supports, he began a swift but careful search. He noted the time required to completely examine the bulkhead and did a calculation in his head. At that rate the bomb would explode, estimating that the terrorists would act when the turnaround time came and went and no broadcast went out to Earth, before they could cover half of the hold area.
He had never liked being underwater. He was a creature of the openness of space. He wanted space around him, the reach of interplanetary distance, not the oppressive weight of a liquid. He fought the urge to swim upward, although there was no up, to reach for the surface and for air. Even in the smallest ships he had never felt so confined as he did by the dark weight of the water in the hold. He forced himself to breathe evenly, for he tended to pant. He swam onward toward the next set of girders.
“I spent too much time at that first bulkhead,” he said.
“Roger,” Neil answered. “And ditto.”
“And if we just hit the most likely places we could miss the mother,” Dom said. “There’s no choice. We just have to search carefully and hope that he put it near the center so that well find it before turnaround time.”
“Captain Gordon,” Ellen Overman said, “I am qualified for life-support-system work.”
“Do you remember from your indoctrination how the internal supports are constructed?” Dom asked.
“Roger,” Ellen said.
“Suit up, then,” Dom said. “Come in through lock four and move toward the bow. If you see anything don’t try to handle it yourself.”
“I am also qualified to handle explosives,” Ellen said.
“Dom,” Art said, “I can suit up, too.”
“Not a chance,” Dom said. “Not with your lungs.”
“I can handle it,” Art said.
“Stay where you are, and that’s an order,” Dom said.
“You’ve been down fifteen minutes,” Doris said. “Two hours and twenty-four minutes to turnaround.”
“They might give us a few extra minutes,” Dom said.
“Don’t count on it,” J.J. said. “We’d better figure them to panic when we don’t start that broadcast on time. By that time that bomb had better be in free space a long way from the hull. If Bensen and his nuts get the idea we’re trying to be tricky they’ll push the button without a moment’s hesitation.”
“I can’t figure why they want the Kennedy to return to the moon anyhow,” Paul Jensen said. “It would be to their advantage to blow her up in space. Then they could be sure she’d never fly again.”
“That’s the way I had it figured,” Dom said, “when I told them we wouldn’t broadcast until we were turned. I figured they’d blow the bomb the minute the broadcast was over. I just didn’t want to worry anyone with my private fears.”
“You two are little rays of sunshine,” Neil said.
Dom was swimming around and through a maze of hogging girders. His light picked up dozens of little angles which would offer excellent spots to plant a bomb.
“I think we can figure it that way,” J.J. said. “The minute the broadcast is finished, they bust the button.”
“My God,” Ellen Overman said, as she emerged from the lock into the hold. “It’s big.”
“There are no sharks,” Dom said. “That’s in our favor. Move forward. You’ll make visual contact with a girder system.”
“Got it,” Ellen said, “Don’t worry about me. I just felt lonely there for a second.”
“Twenty-five minutes,” Doris said.
The pattern was set and would continue with mounting tension for the next two hours. Doris called out the time used at five-minute intervals, and Dom began to match his movements to five-minute units.
By turnaround time just over half of the hull supports would have been examined.
At the end of the first hour Dom began to fear that he had bet the lives of his crew and the existence of the ship on a snap judgment that the terrorists would have tried for maximum force by placing the charge near the center of mass. Doubts made him sweat inside his suit, and the fluid reclamation system had to work hard. He and Neil continued to work away from each other, moving away from the center. Ellen was forward, working in the same direction as Neil. At the end of one and a half hours, Neil reached bulkhead seven-three, where Ellen had begun her search. He resisted an urge to check behind her. If she missed it, she missed it. It was all a guessing game anyhow. There was always the chance that the charge was not even in the hold, but elsewhere in the ship. He swam rapidly and caught up to Ellen within a few minutes.
“Nice to have company,” she said.
“We’ll try it together and see if we get in each other’s way,” Neil said. “You go port on the next bulkhead.”
They moved faster than Dom, who was still working alone. J.J. announced the passage of one hour and fifteen minutes. The huge central area of the ship seemed endlessly long.
“I have a very interesting phenomenon,” Doris said. “Your movements send energy impulses against the hull. I got faint readings when all of you were swimming alone, and now with Neil and Ellen close together the force generated by their movements is strong enough to register well.”
“So?” Dom asked.
“Nothing, really,” Doris said. “But based on the readings I’d say that the hull could take an explosion of just under one and a half kilos of Dupont XP without rupture.”
“That might be encouraging if we knew that the explosive is merely Dupont XP and not more than one and a half kilos,” J.J. said.
“They had the new German stuff in the Gulfport raid last month,” Art said. “It’s twenty-five percent more potent.”
“Yeah, leave it to the Germans,” Dom said.
“Dupont XP is the standard explosive used on the moon,” Doris said.