"You'll have to dig without us, I'm afraid," said Knight. "My orders are to get under way before 1800 hours. We've no time left for a lengthy excavation."
Gronquist was taken aback. "That's only five hours from now."
Knight made a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry, I have no say in the matter."
Pitt studied the dark spot on the recording paper. Then he turned to Knight. "If I proved positively that's a fourth-century Roman ship out there, could you persuade North Atlantic command to keep us on station for another day or two?"
Knight's eyes took on a foxy look. "What are you cooking up?"
"Will you go along?" Pitt crowded him.
"Yes," Knight stated firmly. "But only if you prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that's a thousand-year-old shipwreck. " ... Then it's a deal."
"How are you going to do it?"
"Simple," said Pitt, reeling Knight in. "I'm going to dive under the ice and come up into the hull."
Cork Simon and his crew worked quickly at cutting an access hole through the one-meter-thick ice sheet with chain saws. They quarried multiple squares until they reached the final layer. They broke through with a sledgehammer mounted on a long pipe and then removed the ice fragments with grappling hooks so Pitt could safely submerge.
When he was satisfied the hole was clear, Simon walked a few steps and entered a small canvas-covered shelter. The interior was heated and warm and crowded with men and diving equipment. An air compressor sat next to the heating unit, chugging away, its exhaust vented to the outside.
Lily and the other archaeologists were sitting at a folding table in one corner of the shelter, making a series of drawings and discussing them with Pitt as he suited up for the dive.
"Ready when you are," Simon announced.
"Another five minutes," Giordino replied while busily checking the valve assemblies and regulator on a Mark I navy diver's mask.
Pitt had slipped a special dry suit over long underwear made of heavy nylon pile for thermal insulation. Next he pulled on a hood and then a quick-release weight belt while trying to absorb a cram course in ancient ship construction.
"In early merchant vessels the shipwrights favored cedar and cypress, and often pine, for the planking," lectured Gronquist. "They mostly used oak for the keel."
"I won't be able to tell one wood from another," Pitt said.
"Then study the hull. The planks were tightly joined by tenons and mortises. Many ships had lead plates laid on their underwater surface.
The hardware may be of iron or copper."
"What about the rudder?" asked Pitt. "Anything I should look for in design and fastenings?"
"You won't find a stern-centered rudder," said Sam Hoskins. "They didn't Turn up for another eight hundred years. All early Mediterranean merchantmen used twill steering oars that extended from the aft quarters."
"Do you want a reserve 'come home' air bottle?" Giordino interrupted.
Pitt shook his head. "Not necessary for a dive this shallow as long as I'm on a lifeline."
Giordino lifted the Mark I mask and helped Pitt pull it down over his head. He checked the face seal, adjusted the position and cinched up the spider straps. The air supply was on, and when Pitt signaled that he had proper air flow, Giordino secured the communications line to the mask.
ANie one of the Navy men unreeled and straightened the air-supply hose and communications line, Giordino tied a manila lifeline around Pitts waist. He performed the predive checkout and then donned a headset with microphone.
"You hear me okay?" he asked.
"Clear but faint," Pitt answered. "Turn up the volume a notch."
"Better?"
"Much."
"How do you feel?"
"Nice and cozy so long as I'm breathing warm air."
"All set?"
Pitt answered by making an okay sign with his thumb and forefinger. He paused to hook an underwater dive light to his belt.
Lily gave him a hug and gazed up through his face mask. "Good hunting, and be careful."
He willked back at her.
He turned and walked through the entryway of the shelter into the cold outside, trailed by two Navy men who tended his lines.
Giordino began to follow when Lily clutched his arm. "Will we be able to hear him?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes, I've connected him into a speaker. You and Dr. Gronquist can stay here where it's warm and listen in. If you have a message for Pitt, simply come and tell me, and I'll pass it on."
Pitt walked stiffly to the edge of the ice hole and sat down. The air temperature had dropped to zero. It was a crystalline November day with a biting edge, courtesy of a ten-mile-an-hour wind.
As he slipped on his fins he looked up at the sheer sides of the mountains that soared above the inlet. The tons of snow and ice clinging to the steep palisades seemed as if they could fall at any moment. He turned to the upper end of the fjord where he could see glacier arms curling and grinding toward the sea. Then he looked down.
The water in the dive hole looked jade, ominous and cold.
Commander Knight approached and put his hand on Pitts shoulder. All he could see was a pair of intense green eyes through the glass of the mask. He spoke loudly so Pitt could hear.
"One hour, twenty-three minutes left. I thought you ought to know."
Pitt gave him a steel-edged stare but did not reply. He made a "thumbs up" sign and slipped through the narrow hole into the forbidding water.
He slowly settled past the encircling white walls. He felt as if he were diving down a well. Once clear, he was dazzled by the glistening kaleidoscope of color from the sun's rays that penetrated the ice. The underside of the sheet was jagged and uneven and specked with small hanging stalactites formed by brine from the rapidly freezing fresh water carried into the fjord by glaciers.
Underwater visibility was almost eighty meters on a horizontal range. He glanced down and saw a small kelp community grasping the rocky mass carpeting the bottom. Thousands of small shrimplike crustaceans suspended in the still water swirled past his sight.
A huge, three-meter bearded seal eyed him curiously at a distance, tufts of coarse bristles sprouting from its muzzle. Pitt waved his arms, and the big seal shot him a wary look and swam away.
Pitt touched the bottom and paused to equalize his ears. There was a danger in diving with a buoyancy-compensatortype life-jacket under ice and he did not wear one. He was slightly heavy, so he adjusted by removing and dropping a lead weight from his belt. The air that flowed from the compressor through a filter and then an accumulator into his mask tasted bland but pure.
He gazed upward and oriented himself from the eerie glow of the ice hole and checked his compass. He hadn't bothered to carry a depth gauge. He wouldn't be working in water over four meters deep.
"Talk to me," the voice of Al Giordino came through the mask's earphones.
"I'm on the bottom," replied Pitt. "All systems up to par."
Pitt spun and stared through the green void. "She lies about ten meters north of me. I'm going to move toward her. Give me some slack in the lines."
He swain slowly, taking care his lines didn't foul on the rock outcroppings. The intense cold of the frigid water began to seep into his body. He was thankful Giordino had had the foresight to see that his air supply was warm and dry The stern of the wreck slowly unveiled before his eyes. The sides were covered with a mat of algae. He brushed away a small area with his gloved hand, stirn'ng up a green cloud. He waited a minute for the cloud to dissipate and then peered at the result.
"Inform Lily and Doc I'm looking at a wooden hull without a stern rudder, but no sign of steering oars."
"Acknowledged," said Giordino.
Pitt pulled a knife from a sheath strapped to one leg and pried at the underside of the hull near the keel. The point revealed soft metal.
"We have a lead-sheathed bottom," he announced.
"Looking good," replied Giordino. "Doc Gronquist wants to know if there is any sign of carving on the sternpost."