Then a buzz from Derham’s control panel broke the spell. ‘JV1. Come in, JV1. What is your status?’
‘Armstrong,’ Derham responded. ‘We are on the ocean floor. All systems seem to be functioning at optimum levels.’ He glanced at Milford.
‘All systems check A1,’ the commander confirmed.
The sound of their voices was transmitted to the surface via a fibre optic. This was encased in a narrow sheathing made from carbon nanotubes. The entire 13,000 feet of cable weighed less than twenty pounds.
‘Congratulations,’ came the response from the bridge of the Armstrong.
‘We plan to get prepped and outside as soon as possible, Armstrong.’
‘Copy that, commander.’
‘We’ll make regular ten-minute call-ins, as planned. Out.’
Jerry Derham turned from the control panel. ‘OK, guys,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
It took more than half an hour to run the checks and get suited up. Lou, Kate and Derham stood in the stark white interior of the lock as Commander Jane Milford ran diagnostics from the control panels on the bridge. Everything checked out: integrity for each suit was one hundred per cent, communications were functioning correctly. A radio link could be maintained over distances of up to 300 yards thanks to another DARPA innovation — a wave booster that used ultra-short wavelength signals. This had been placed on the ocean floor by a remote-controlled probe a few hours before the JV1 was launched. Milford checked on this from the bridge as the other three inspected the systems on their suits.
‘OK, commander,’ Derham said through the radio link to the bridge. He glanced at Lou and Kate and they each gave him the thumbs up. ‘Suited up and ready to go.’
‘Copy that, captain. Your systems check one hundred per cent.’
They synchronized chronometers.
‘I’m limiting the time outside the sub to exactly fifty-five minutes,’ Derham said. ‘That’s well within the test parameters of the suits and gives us seven minutes forty-four seconds’ grace.’
‘Agreed. I’m calibrating pressure,’ Milford said. ‘Helmet cameras have been switched to “auto”. We’ll be recording everything in triplicate and I’m patching it through to the Armstrong.’
A hissing sound started overhead in the airlock. Kate took Lou’s besuited hand and squeezed. He couldn’t feel it through the bizarre material of the suit, but he had seen her hand move downward and lift his. He looked into her eyes and knew she was feeling the same thing as he was. They were about to enter an utterly alien world, but they had each other. Smiling, Kate released her grip.
‘It’ll be the most amazing experience of your life,’ Lou whispered through the comms.
The outer door slid open, and a moment later, they were stepping onto the ocean floor almost 13,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic.
7
The great beams of JV1 lit up the front of the Titanic, so they didn’t need their helmet lights and could save the energy for when they were inside the wreck. The port leading edge was about fifty yards in front of them, and the bow section lay at an angle, the elaborate forestay pointing away slightly.
Stepping out onto the ocean floor was just as surreal as they had expected. No one had ever been here before. Bathyspheres had descended to release remote-controlled devices that explored the outside of the ship and sent back images, but no human had ever walked on this ocean floor.
‘ JV1. We’re outside,’ Derham reported back. Milford, he knew, would be able to see the same view as them from tiny cameras built into the front of each helmet and projected onto a set of monitors on the bridge. This, along with a voice feed, was transmitted via the fibre optic back up to the Armstrong. Derham then checked the suit parameters displayed on a small screen on his lower arm. Everything was as it should be. He turned to Lou and Kate. ‘You guys OK?’
‘Fine,’ Kate replied. Lou nodded.
It took a few minutes for them to adjust to the suits and the weird experience of walking on the ocean floor. They had trained for three hours in a simulator before leaving the naval base, but as good as the simulator software had been, the real thing felt quite different. The suits were surprisingly easy to manoeuvre in, but they were hot and the noise from the internal generators and their cooling systems was louder than they had expected.
In the light from JV1 they could see thousands of shells, crustaceans of all shapes and sizes.
‘More corpses,’ Kate commented through the comms.
As they approached the wreck, they heard a grinding sound, a grating of metal on metal. ‘That’s the hull creaking,’ Kate said. ‘We’ve disturbed the water and the shockwave has moved the corroded infrastructure.’
‘What are the radiation levels?’ Lou asked Derham.
The captain glanced down at his screen where a reading was displayed in the top right corner. ‘Almost thirty times the level on the surface. A touch over two times ten to the twenty curies.’
‘Lovely.’
Derham led the way. In his left hand he had a small sonar device which he used to sweep the surface directly ahead of them. One of the greatest dangers they faced was falling into a giant hole or a disguised crevasse. This gadget indicated how solid the ground was beneath their feet.
‘The ocean floor is composed of very pure compacted sand and silt,’ Lou said. ‘It’s amazingly uniform and regular.’
‘That’s because the water is only a little above freezing point at this depth,’ Kate commented. ‘Just a few inches under our feet the sand and silt will be mixed with ice crystals.’
After five minutes they reached the base of the churned-up ocean floor heaped up against the sides of the hull like giant snowdrifts. On this side of the ship the sand and silt rose up almost to the anchor and it was packed solid, as hard as rock. Looking up, they could see the hull covered with rust, a blend of coloured oxides — greens, spots of orange and yellow, smudges of ochre.
‘I can’t get over how huge this thing is!’ Lou exclaimed, looking up at the thousands of tons of rusted steel towering over them. ‘The length of a large city block.’
‘Yeah, and this is just two-thirds of the original vessel,’ Kate replied.
Derham had started skirting the base of the sand pile that rose up against the hull. ‘This part seems to be the most stable,’ he said, coming back to join them and pointing to a region of the slope a few yards to their left. He twisted round and pulled a pack from his back, opened one of the compartments at the front and withdrew a palm-sized mini-harpoon. Pressing a button on the side, a spike appeared and slithered out six inches from the base. A release switch caused the end of the spike to open up, sending out four sharp hooks. He then took a step forward and aimed the harpoon at a point close to the anchor. The projectile shot through the water and into a hole in the hull, leaving behind an ultra-thin, but extremely strong carbon nanotube cable. He tugged on it and tested his weight. The hooks seemed to be jammed fast inside the opening in the hull. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll go first.’
Lou and Kate watched as the captain scrambled up the slope. He had tucked the mini sonar into his backpack and pulled the bag back on. The sand and silt were indeed packed solid; his boots barely produced a trail or raised sediment as he climbed. Reaching the top, he spoke into his radio. ‘Lou. You next.’
Lou took up position and followed the same course up the slope. He was neither as fit nor as strong as the naval officer and took a bit longer to reach the point just below the anchor where the slope levelled off against the side of the ship. Sixty seconds later, they were joined by Kate, who was panting a little over the radio link.