“Kick his butt overboard, Mel.”
“On the way, Okey.”
A crane operator hoisted the ROV from the deck, swung it out over the side, and lowered it into the tossing sea.
Dokey turned on the video camera, and they saw Gargantua’s view of the surface for a few minutes before he began to sink.
“Okay, Mel, we’ve got greens.”
“Luck,” Sorenson said.
Brande felt the sub rolling backward on her tracks, then the lift from the deck. Because of the rolling deck of the Orion, they started into a pendulum movement, but the arc of the swing was not too great because of the sub’s weight.
There was an elevatorlike sensation of falling, until they hit the sea with an abrupt stop. The crane operator released the hook by remote control.
“Hit reverse, Chief!” Sorenson called.
Brande pulled back hard on the left joystick while leaning forward to look out the porthole. The left catamaran hull was sliding toward him. Or he toward it.
He tugged on the stick, but it was already at the back stop.
The motors whined.
The sub gained momentum, and pulled out of the path of the hull.
She was already sinking, and within moments, the world was darkening, a trade-off for the smooth ride.
Brande brought up the interior lights to dim, then settled back in his seat. Dokey was diddling with his control sticks, putting Gargantua into a steep glide, using as little power as possible.
At 200 feet, Brande tried the Loudspeaker system.
“Anyone there?”
“Right here,” Rae said. Her voice seemed clearer on the Commonwealth acoustic system.
“You want to try a picture?”
“Damn right.”
He activated DepthFinder’s camera, put it on the center screen, and then flipped the toggle switch that Mayberry had jury-rigged to the side of the power panel.
“We’ve got a picture!” Rae said.
“Is it any good?”
“Not too clear, but clear enough. Like a slightly off-tuned TV set.”
“We’ll give you Gargantua.”
Brande slapped the toggle to the off position, then hit a second switch.
“We’ve got that, too.”
“All right, good,” Brande said. “We’re going passive, now.”
They curtailed the power consumption for all of the systems they could in order to reduce the drain on the batteries aboard both the submersible and the robot.
In the next three-and-a-half hours, they talked to Rastonov a couple times — the Sea Lion was already in the canyon at 22,000 feet-no radiation readings — alternately dozed, told some old jokes, and predicted San Diego Chargers outcomes against the Raiders, Broncos, and Seahawks. The projected results were dismal, given the outcome of the first game of the season.
At 900 feet, they lost what daylight the cloud cover had allowed to penetrate.
At 2,000 feet, most of the active sealife disappeared.
Sinking steadily into the abyss at 100 feet per minute.
At 15,000 feet of depth, with the thermostat at full up, it was still cold. Brande wished he had worn a sweatshirt, too.
At 20,000 feet, Brande dumped a little water ballast to slow the descent.
“Dane?” Rae Thomas said.
“Still here.” He gave her an oral report on their status.
“That agrees with what we’re seeing,” she said.
Not all of the monitoring systems had been connected through the Loudspeaker acoustic system, but some data was shown on a separate video display terminal on the operations desk via telemetry. The depth, altitude above ground, heading, inertial navigation readings, battery charges and oxygen supply could be monitored without verbal reports.
Dokey put the sonar waterfall display on the port video screen.
“There’s the canyon rim, Chief. Three hundred yards behind us.”
“I guess we keep going down, then.”
“Until something stops us.”
“Like the Atlantic Ocean?” Brande asked.
Brande used the acoustic microphone. “Pyotr?”
“I am here, Dane.”
“How about some coordinates?”
They did not have the luxury of Emry’s search program on screen, so Brande had to form his own mental pictures. The CIS submersible was nearly a mile west of them and 800 yards south. It had found a slanting bottom at 23,500 feet of depth. The terrain was rugged and steep, and according to Rastonov, looked fragile where they had seen it in their video relay from Seeker.
When the depth readout read 23,675, the altitude indicator kicked in, showing 56 feet.
“Easy up,” Dokey said.
Brande blew off more ballast, and the sub slowed its descent.
“Where’s Gargantua?” Brande asked.
“Two hundred feet in front of us, and about thirty feet lower.”
“Let’s watch the movies.”
They routed power to the cameras and floodlights on both vehicles.
There was nothing to be seen.
“All right, Okey, you do the snooping, and I’ll follow you around.”
“Gotcha.”
Using DepthFinderʼs downward-looking sonar as his guide, Dokey began making wide sweeps to the left and right with Gargantua, moving down toward the slope of the canyon until they had a picture on the starboard VDT.
It was a bleak, dull gray place, a steep slope with rocky outcroppings and what could have once been a lava flow. There was no life that could be seen.
“This is as deep as we’ve ever been,” Brande said.
“Better report it, then.”
“They’re supposed to be able to see it.”
“Yeah, but it’s a new system,” Dokey said.
Brande reported to the surface.
“Is Dokey awake yet?” Rae asked. Trying to be light about it, Brande was sure.
“I’ll pinch him in a minute and find out.”
Emry broke in, “Dane, why don’t you head out west for a bit?”
“You think so, Larry? That would be a hell of a curve for the rocket to take.”
“I’m the one who said it didn’t rotate. You gave me fifty-fifty on that, remember?”
“Heading west”
Dokey put Gargantua into a long, sweeping curve, and Brande followed along.
The bottom dipped away, disappearing from the robot’s camera.
“Jesus.” Dokey dove the ROV, and the bottom reappeared.
Down 24,056 feet.
Brande fought off thinking about the immense pressure of all that water trying to get inside his tiny sphere.
Ping!
The sonar volume, set low, sounded off.
Brande glanced at the waterfall display, saw the slope of the canyon rising to the right. Outcroppings above them. He would have to watch out for that, warn Rastonov.
Small ridge coming up, still below them.
Ping, ping.
Not a ridge.
“Right there, Dane.”
Brande switched his attention to the starboard display and saw what Gargantua was seeing.
Soviet A2e rocket.
The top stage, with stabilizing fins, was still connected to the payload stage, the pointed module end lower on the slope. It was a hell of a lot bigger than he had expected it to be. He had seen the recorded video pictures of the boosters and first stage, but with only the perspective offered by the sea floor, he had not gotten a feeling for the size of the thing.
“Hot damn!” someone from above shouted.
“Let’s get the hoods on, Okey.”
They donned the protective hoods, and Brande immediately felt handicapped. The big glass plate visor restricted his vision to the side.
Easing the power stick forward, and nosing down with the right stick, Brande moved the submersible in until the cliff and the rocket body became visible under DepthFinder’s floodlights.