“Coffee’s on,” Dokey told him. He was wearing a T-shirt depicting an artistic shark with beret and palette and brush and easel, painting a picture of a porpoise. Brande assumed the porpoise was nude. It was difficult to tell the difference between formal and casual porpoise wardrobes.
“Let’s get some of it,” Brande said.
They went forward and entered the superstructure by a side door. Halfway across the cross-corridor, Brande turned into the wardroom.
Sorenson, Mayberry, Roskens, Polodka and Thomas had three tables pulled together, mugs, coffeepots and plates of Danish scattered across them.
The chatter was lively, similar to that on the start of many expeditions they had all undertaken. Underlying the dialogue this time, though, was an undercurrent of tension. Then, too, while there had been many expeditions in seven years, this was the first time all of them had shipped together on a single outing.
Brande went into the galley, stripped out of his wet suit, and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. He carried his running shoes and socks back into the wardroom, sat down, and pulled them on.
“How we doing, Mel?”
The captain said, “We’re five hundred and ninety nautical miles out of San Diego, Dane. On course, and flying.”
That was about 300 nautical miles more — over ten hours — than they would have been if the Orion had detoured to Harbor One to retrieve the robots.
The thrum of the diesels could be felt in the steel deck, despite the carpeting.
The television set in one corner of the wardroom was tuned to CNN, with the sound off and Bernard Shaw mute, capturing the signal with a satellite antenna.
Brande reached out for a coffeepot and poured a mug full. He asked, “Anything new on the tube?”
“The White House confirmed that the rocket carried a nuclear reactor,” Thomas said. “I think they’re trying to contain all the rumors that are flying around.”
“Did they downplay it?”
“What else?” she said. “Indirectly, anyway. The spokesman offered a comparison between the Topaz’s estimated fifteen megawatts and San Onofre in California at over eleven hundred megawatts”
“Also,” Larry Emry added, “about ten thousand college kids breached the CIS Embassy in Tokyo. The Japanese Defense Forces retrieved the embassy personnel in the nick of time by helicopter. The last we heard, something similar is happening in Seoul.”
“Ten thousand?”
“Somebody may be exaggerating. Then again, maybe not. There’s a little hysteria in the air.”
Brande recalled images of the Saigon Embassy in 1975, with choppers lifting off the roof. He could not help but think that the Russians deserved having their turn, too.
“I guess I’m going to worry about only the things over which I might have some control,” he said. “Kim, did you talk to your consulate?”
She nodded, her dark, shining hair reflecting the overhead lights. “Yes, Dane. They were not extremely happy, but they acquiesced.”
‘Valeri? Svetlana?”
Dankelov, as moody, as deep in thought as ever, only bobbed his head in affirmation.
Under the harsh lights of the wardroom, Polodka’s face appeared flushed. She said, “We offered our services, but apparently they were not needed. I was assured that CIS naval forces have everything well in hand.”
Dankelov looked over at her, but quite impassively. Brande wondered what was going on between the two of them now. He knew there had been a short-lived affair, and he had hoped at the time that it would blossom for them. It had not, and it had not affected their work, but he was certain there was some strain between them.
“All right, then. I guess we’re a team again. Larry, you’re in charge of exploration. What are we going to do when we get there?”
Emry wiped a trace of coffee from his mustache, then leaned forward in his chair and put his arms on the table. “I’ve installed our best oceanographic maps of the area back in the lab. Bob and I have been going over what’s known about the depths and the temperatures and calculating our sonar coverage at various depths. We should have final figures in the morning, which we’ll double-check with the Navy, and then I’ll lay out a search grid on top of the map. After we have some consensus, we’ll put it up on the computer.”
“Starting where, Larry?”
“I calculated a trajectory for the rocket, Dane. Knowing that it was at ninety thousand feet when it went over Tokyo helps to define its attitude when it hit the sea. All stages were apparently still attached, including the offset booster rockets. Anything could have happened immediately after it splashed down, and I suspect that it broke up. Still, my best guess is that it was nose down at about one hundred ten degrees from the vertical. It went in at one-seventy-six degrees, ten minutes, twenty-three seconds east, and my first judgment is that it drifted east as it sank. We’ll start there and work our way eastward first. Our north and south legs will get longer as we go east, anticipating that the wreckage could have veered farther north or south the farther east it went. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how far apart our legs will be.”
Brande knew the problems involved. Robert Ballard found the Titanic some twelve nautical miles from her last reported position before she went down, and that was in water depths of 13,000 feet. Poorly reported navigational positions, wind and water currents all contributed to the fact that she lay undiscovered for seventy-three years.
“We’ll have to fly sonar from the DepthFinder,” Brande said.
“Oh, I think so, with those depths,” Emry agreed.
“I’ll make up crew lists and work shifts,” Brande said. “Let’s all get a good night’s sleep, and crank off in the morning. Okey, Valeri, Svetlana and Kim, your first priority is going to be Gargantua. If we don’t have an operable robot, it won’t much matter whether or not we find the Topaz.”
The team members finished their coffee and stood, drifting from the wardroom. Dokey said, “You lucked out, Chief. You’re rooming with me in Cabin A.”
“I’ll try not to feel honored, Okey.”
Thomas stayed at the table across from him and waited until the others had departed. She had a fresh tinge of sun on her normally pale skin, and her platinum hair was windblown. Despite her long day, she looked as fresh as the sea had felt to Brande when he parachuted into it.
“Bad news,” she said.
“I don’t want to hear it.” He grinned. “You’re the president. You deal with it.”
“You’re chairman. You need to know.”
“Tell me.”
“Jim Word called. They ran out of debris field.”
“Already?”
“Already. He and George Dawson recovered fourteen ingots, one cannon barrel, six goblets, and two plates. That’s it.”
“Damn, Rae. That won’t go far, will it?”
“No.”
“There must be some good news,” he suggested.
“On some of the ingots, they’ve got numbers, and they’ve got the name of a manufacturer on the cannon barrel.”
“So we can check the Spanish archives and maybe determine the ship that carried them.”
“End of the good news,” she said.
“Well, we know the rest of the ship must be in the same area.”
“East, west, north, or south?” she asked.
“One of those.”
“Are we going to waste time looking?” Thomas put her emphasis on wasting time.
“Your decision,” he said. He ached to make it himself, but knew he would opt for wasting time. And money.
“Really?”
“It’s what you wanted. I’m doing my damnedest to stay out of your hair.”