But Spanish gold came in bars, coins, great decorative chains. This was barely larger than a particle of dust.
When the answer came to her, it brought with it so much adrenaline that the feeling was closer to terror than understanding. She leaped to her feet, unable to contain the excitement within one body.
“Star! — Star!!”
At a quiet corner table in the Poseidon cafeteria, the four interns met with Captain Vanover.
Dante stared at the tiny fleck on Adriana’s fingertip. “That’s not treasure! That’s a molecule!”
“It’s a gold molecule,” Star said in irritation. “And keep your voice down.”
“It is pretty small,” Vanover pointed out. “I can’t explain it, but I guess there’s a chance it occurs naturally.”
“I thought so too,” said Adriana. “But then I remembered something I read on the Spanish government web site. All treasure arriving in Spain from the New World was heavily taxed. But you could never know how much more was smuggled in to avoid the taxes. And the easiest treasure to sneak past the authorities was gold dust.”
“Yeah,” said Kaz dubiously, “but one piece?”
Star took up the explanation. “Think about what happens when a boat sinks. It creates a whirlpool effect, like the Titanic. Something as light as gold dust would get sucked up into the whirlpool, and end up spread out all over the bottom around the wreck.”
“So we tried a little experiment,” Adriana took up the tale. “We pulled all our muddy clothes out of the hamper. And there was another speck on Star’s shirt.” Her eyes shone. “We’re not wrong about this. The debris field we photographed last night has the treasure in it — the real treasure! We can’t get at all that dust, but the rest of it is lying there, just waiting to be claimed!”
Dante choked back a whoop. “I can’t believe it! We found it! It’s ours! Now all we have to do is figure out how to bring it up.”
“Not so fast,” the captain said seriously. “What we saw last night was at three hundred and fifty feet. And that was just the top of the debris field. Who knows how much farther down the slope the treasure could be? There’s no way I can let you kids — even you, Star — dive so deep.”
Star’s jaw stiffened. “That’s not your decision to make! No offense, Captain — you’ve been great to us. But we’re talking about a billion dollars here!”
“It isn’t worth a dime if you get yourself killed going after it.”
Dante was horrified. “You mean we’re just going to leave it there?”
“Calm down,” Vanover soothed. “There are ways to salvage things from deep water. It’s possible, but it’s tricky. And you have to know exactly what you’re doing. Take it easy. We’ve got time. Cutter’s looking in the wrong place; and he doesn’t know that you guys are looking at all.”
Kaz and Dante exchanged a worried look. “That’s not exactly true,” Kaz began slowly. He told the others about finding the footprints on the cabin floor in front of the bell. “We have to assume it’s Cutter,” he finished. “Who else could it be?”
Star looked alarmed. “That’s trouble. If he sees us nosing around the second debris field, we’ll be leading him right to the treasure.”
Captain Vanover looked like a man who had just made up his mind. “All right — here’s what we’re going to do. Poseidon maintains a research sub called Deep Scout. I’m going to requisition it, and we’re all going down there. If we can snag a piece of that treasure and match it to the cargo list on the web site, we can file a claim on the wreck with the International Maritime Commission.” He made eye contact with all four. “Then it won’t matter what Cutter knows. It’ll be our prize, not his.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
If a bubble helicopter married a submarine, their offspring might look very much like the DSV Deep Scout. A gleaming sphere made of clear acrylic sprouted from a titanium hull that was pockmarked with lights, cameras, and other instruments. Six folded manipulator arms gave the submersible an almost insectlike appearance.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” crowed Captain Vanover.
“No,” said Dante with conviction.
“I guess not,” the captain conceded. “But she’ll take us where we need to go. Besides, this boat is usually booked six months in advance. You kids have no idea how many favors I had to call in and people I had to lie to in order to get us on the schedule on such short notice.”
Deep Scout sat on the launch deck of its support vessel. Scoutmaster was a much larger ship than the Hernando Cortés or the Ponce de León. It had to be to house the crane mechanism required to place the deep-sea vehicle in the water, and to pluck it out again when the mission was done.
Kaz’s head was spinning by the end of the handshakes and introductions. “It takes this many guys to run one little submersible?” he whispered.
“Most of these are Scoutmaster’s crew,” Vanover replied. “But there’s always a tech on board monitoring the sub’s every move. Remember, Deep Scout was built to explore the ocean floor at depths of up to two miles.” Seeing Dante turn gray, he added quickly, “We won’t be going that far down.”
Vanover left them and climbed the metal ladder to the big ship’s towering bridge. It was his job to direct Scoutmaster’s captain to the correct coordinates where Dr. Ocasek’s camera array had spotted the second debris field.
Dante leaned against the rail, observing the beehive of activity. “You think we’re going to have to split the money with all these people?”
Adriana was disgusted. “Is that all this is to you? Money?”
“Yeah, well, maybe those of us who don’t already have one-point-two billion dollars are kind of looking forward to seeing how the other half lives,” Dante shot back.
Her eyes narrowed in anger. “You have no way of knowing how much my family has or doesn’t have.”
“You don’t have to apologize for being rich,” Dante insisted. “But don’t act all superior because you’re in this for pure archaeology. It’s easy to be high-minded when you don’t need the money. I do.”
“I don’t care about the money,” Star put in grimly. “I just want to see the look on Cutter’s face when we show up with that treasure. Us — the losers he picked because we wouldn’t be a threat… the cripple who couldn’t possibly dive….” Her voice trailed off, but her eyes were blazing. “I just want to see that.”
Money. Science. Revenge. Kaz marveled at the different reasons his fellow interns had for coveting this treasure. His mind was on something else entirely — the skull they had unearthed at Cutter’s excavation. More than three hundred years ago, people had perished in this shipwreck.
And we’re going to take their stuff because they’re in no shape to protect it anymore.
The logic was ridiculous. All the gold in the world wouldn’t help those poor sailors, three centuries dead, their descendants scattered across dozens of generations.
Besides, if we don’t get that treasure, Cutter will.
His reverie was interrupted by Vanover’s call from the bridge. “Show time, folks!”
If Scoutmaster’s deck was busy and frenetic, the cabin of the submersible was an incredibly lonely place. When the hatch was sealed, the five-inch-thick acrylic bubble blotted out all sound. It was like being shut inside a glass tomb. They were immersed in Deep Scout’s titanium hull up to chest level. Above that, the sphere created a greenhouse effect. Brilliant sunlight baked the cramped interior.