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They were massed around the computer-enhanced screen on the Klein System 5000 recorder, watching the seabed twenty thousand feet below unreel as if on a scroll. The colored image showed a fairly smooth bottom that sloped off into the deep abyss. Burch turned as Pitt and Giordino entered and pointed at the Global Positioning System digital readout that showed the distance remaining to the target.
"She should be coming up in another mile," he commented.
"Is this the GPS position given by the tug?" asked Giordino.
Burch nodded. "Where the liner went down when the tow rope broke."
Every eye in the compartment in the command center focused on the Klein imagery screen. The seabed deep below the sensor that trailed far behind the Deep Encounter on a cable showed the flat, desertlike surface covered with dingy, gray-brown silt. No jagged rocks or hills were visible. No wasteland came close to being so desolate. Still, the image was mesmerizing because everyone was waiting expectantly for an object to materialize and creep across the screen.
"Five hundred yards," Burch announced.
The crew and the men and women of the scientific team went silent. The command center became as quiet as a crypt. To most, the wait would have been agonizing, but not to the men and women who searched the seas. These were patient people. They were used to spending weeks at a time staring at instruments, waiting for an interesting object, a sunken ship or an unusual geological formation to reveal itself, but usually seeing nothing other than a seemingly endless and sterile seabed.
"Something's coming," announced Burch, who had the best view of the screen.
Slowly, the recorder showed a hard image that took on a man-constructed shape. The outline looked jagged and uneven. It looked too small, not at all the immense image of the cruise liner they were expecting.
"That's her," stated Pitt firmly.
Burch grinned like a happy bridegroom. "Got her on the first pass."
"The tug's position was right on the money."
"'It's not the right size for the Emerald Dolphin," Giordino observed in. a monotone.
Burch aimed a finger at the screen. "Al's right. We're only seeing part of her. Here comes another piece."
Pitt studied the images on the screen thoughtfully. "She broke up, either on the way down or on impact when she struck bottom."
A large section of what Burch identified as the stern crept across the screen. A vast debris field between the fragments of the wreck revealed hundreds of unidentifiable objects large and small, scattered as if hurled by a passing tornado.
Giordino made a quick sketch of the images on a notepad. "It appears to be broken in three pieces."
Pitt studied Giordino's sketches and compared them with images on the sonar screen. "They rest about a quarter of a mile from one another."
Burch said, "Because of the ship's weakened internal structure from the fire damage, she probably disintegrated on the way down."
"Not unheard of," said one of the scientific team. "The Titanic broke in half as she sank."
"But she pitched downward at an extreme angle," Burch clarified. "I talked to the tugboat captain who had the Dolphin under tow when she sank. He claimed that she plunged under rapidly on a very shallow angle of not more than fifteen degrees. The Titanic dove at a forty-five-degree angle."
Giordino stared through the forward window at the sea ahead. "The most logical scenario is that she sank intact and shattered when she struck bottom. Her speed was probably somewhere between thirty and forty miles an hour."
Pitt shook his head. "If that were the case, the wreckage would be more concentrated. As we can see, she's spread all over the landscape."
"Then what caused her to break up on the way down?" Burch asked no one in particular.
"With luck," Pitt said slowly, "we'll find the answers when and if Sea Sleuth lives up to her name."
A dazzling orange sun rose across the flat blue horizon in the east as the Sea Sleuth hung under a new crane that had replaced the one dumped overboard during the rescue. It had been installed at the shipyard, and the crew had finished connecting the winch and its cable only hours earlier. Anticipation reigned as the oblo
ng AUV was swung over the stern. The sea was fairly smooth, with waves running no more than three feet.
The ship's second officer directed the launch, and signaled to the crewman operating the winch when the vehicle was free of the stern. Then he waved an all-clear, and Sea Sleuth was lowered until just above the surface. One final check of her electronic systems, and then she was slowly dropped into the blue Pacific. As soon as she was afloat, a switch was activated, the electronic snap released and the lifting cable came free.
Inside the command center, Giordino sat in front of a console with a series of knobs and switches mounted around a joystick. He would pilot the Sea Sleuth during its journey into the abyss. As one of the team who'd written the probe's computer software, he was also the chief engineer in charge of its production. Few men knew more about the eccentricities of piloting an AUV four and half miles deep under the ocean than Giordino. As he glanced at the monitor that showed the AUV floating free of the ship in the water, he activated the valves of the buoyancy tank and watched as she descended beneath the waves and disappeared.
Next to him, Pitt sat at the keyboard, entering a series of commands into the computer on board the AUV. While Giordino controlled the vehicle's propulsion and attitude systems, Pitt operated the cameras and lighting systems. In back of them and to their side, Misty Graham sat at a table studying a copy of the Emerald Dolphin's construction plans that had been flown in from the architects. All other eyes were locked on the array of monitors that would relay images of what Sea Sleuth recorded in the depths.
