“I’m expanding my horizons downward.”
“All right. We’ll get you some time in the right seat.”
Brande scanned the ship control panel directly ahead of his joysticks — which were properly called the translation hand controller and the rotational hand controller. The panel contained a variety of readouts and gauges which translated the status of the vehicle for the operator.
Magnetic and gyro compasses kept him oriented in a horizontal direction. The depth readouts — distance to surface, altitude above bottom, rate of change, and depth of
vehicle — kept him aware of his vertical position and how fast he was changing it. There were tachometers for the port and starboard propellers, readouts for vertical thrust forward and aft in RPM and pounds, forward and aft lateral thrust in pounds, lateral speed through the water based on RPM, and Doppler speed over ground. Additional indicators monitored the pitch rate and pitch angle of the vehicle, the turn rate, the angle of the rudder and stem planes.
That was one instrument panel. Considering that there were fifty-five small and large panels in the forward end of the submersible, there were enough readouts, monitors, light-emitting diode indicators, switches, cathode ray tubes, and rheostats to keep a Boeing 747 pilot happy for hours.
Since they continued to dive, following the slope, Brande reset the trim tabs on the diving plane.
Though he knew that Connie Alvarez-Sorenson was watching the warning light panels, Brande automatically scanned them every couple of minutes. It was habit.
An hour later, they were at 17,000 feet of depth, and Alvarez-Sorenson had made four more reports to the Orion. They had encountered nothing particularly startling. Brande likened it to driving across Iowa and Nebraska, a rather monotonous landscape. Or seascape.
Occasionally, SARSCAN pinged them when it picked up a small peak or rock outcropping that entered the thirty-foot range of the sonar. Then Otsuka would lean forward, concentrating on her video screen, easing the hand controller back or to one side as she dodged the obstruction.
He stabilized the sub for a few minutes while Otsuka and Alvarez-Sorenson changed places. In the confines of the pressure hull, the exchange was the major feat of their dive so far. He got back under way, and Otsuka spent thirty minutes supervising the new operator in the handling of SARSCAN.
Brande thought that Alvarez-Sorenson was something of a natural with the remote controls. In the back of his mind, he was already setting up a training schedule for her, working next into Sneaky Pete, who was a great deal more maneuverable and sensitive to the controls since the ROV had its own propulsion systems. Then Turtle, Atlas, and Gargantua.
The big ROV would require a Great Debate, of course. To date, only Dokey and Andy Colgate, back at Harbor One, had gotten their hands on Gargantua.
During the routine of following the search pattern, Brande’s training and automatic reflexes piloted the DepthFinder. Part of his mind was devoted to worry, and that was a first.
No previous dive had ever had a deadline placed on it, beyond perhaps that of encroaching weather or season changes or the condition of batteries. He was acutely aware that, in two days, the Topaz reactor could begin its deterioration into meltdown.
He would have a decision to make then. And he had pretty much decided that, no matter how the team might vote, he would not subject them to the risk.
Two days to find an elusive rocket.
He was also acutely aware of the limitations of sonar. If the rocket body had dropped into a depression, the sonar would never pick it out.
The odds were slightly better, of course, because the A2e would certainly have broken up after impact, perhaps into three or four large pieces. Not all of it would be hidden from the sonar.
He hoped.
“Kim, would you see if you can get hold of Dokey?”
Four minutes later, she handed him the phone.
“What’s happening, Chief?”
“Okey, you think you could fly both Sneaky and SARSCAN at the same time?”
“Rugged terrain, huh?”
“Yeah, there’s lots of hiding places. I think it might be a good idea to get both sonar and visual, if we can.”
“This calls for SARSCAN II,” Dokey said.
“Which we don’t have yet.”
“Who’s piloting?”
“Rae convinced me she’s supposed to take her turn. And Bob Mayberry is in the third seat,” Brande said.
“I’d use the portable joystick panel on SARSCAN, and if I got in trouble, I could pass it back to Bob. Yeah, hell, let’s try it.”
“Go ahead and set it up, then, Okey. What’s the weather like up there?”
“We picked up a couple knots in wind speed. Rain’s holding off, though.”
“All right, let’s make the change now, before it gets worse. We’re coming up.”
Brande reduced power on the propellers until the DepthFinder slowed to a stop, slewing sideways as it did. Then he reached forward, raised the plastic flap, and toggled the port weight release.
The sub lurched and felt more buoyant. It began to rise slowly.
He raised the other flap and flipped the switch for the starboard weight release.
Nothing happened.
Almost eight hours went by before Unruh called him back.
“What the hell’s going on, Carl?” Hampstead demanded.
“Well, Avery, I had to clear some things with some people, and most of the people didn’t want them cleared. It took a while.”
“Talk English.”
“Yeah. Dokey’s right on that control module. The Soviets call it the F-two-six module, and the same one is being used in the Topaz Four.”
“How do you know all of this, Carl?”
“Oh, we’ve picked up a few bits and pieces out of Plesetsk,” Unruh admitted.
He looked over at the nuclear experts, all bunched up around their own table in the corner.
“Do the NRC people know about this?”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“And they haven’t raised hell?”
“No one knows what will really happen, Avery.” Hampstead stood up, taking the phone with him. He arched his back to stretch the tired muscles and then began to pace around one end of the table, at the full extension of the phone’s cord.
He was suddenly damned sure he had not been getting the full story out of Washington, but he did not know how long it had been going on.
“I’m going to recommend to Admiral Potter that we order all ships out of the target zone,” he said.
“What!”
“All civilian, naval, and research ships. Along with the submersibles, robots, everything.”
“You can’t do that!” Unruh yelled. “Potter won’t let you on the air.”
“I can go to the closest radio station. Maybe they’ll listen to me, maybe not.”
“Shit, Avery. Settle down.”
“Tell me what you’re not telling me.”
“Ah, fuck! Between 0800 hours September eight and 2400 hours September nine.”
Hampstead closed his eyes. “Where’d those numbers come from?”
“From a Commonwealth modeling program. Their best estimate, we think.”
“Damn you spooks.”
“Keep it to yourself, Avery. You pass it around, and we may just lose everything”
“It’s already past the start time in the target zone,” Hampstead said.
‘Yes, we know.ˮ
The Topaz Four could have gone into its supercritical stage over four hours before. That was what the scientists had projected, and Col. Gen. Dmitri Oberstev had come to rely upon the scientists.