Raise the Titanic! (20 page)

Sandecker pulled his
car into the parking lot of the Alexandria College of Oceanography, climbed out from under the wheel, and walked over to a man standing beside an electric golf cart.

“Admiral Sandecker?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Murray Silverstein.” The round, balding little man stuck out his hand. “Glad you could come, Admiral. I think we've got something that will prove helpful.”

Sandecker settled into the cart. “We're grateful for every scrap of useful data you can give us.”

Silverstein took the tiller and guided them down an asphalt lane. “We've run an extensive series of tests since last night. I can't promise anything mathematically exact, mind you, but the results are interesting, to say the least.”

“Any problems?”

“A few. The main snag that throws our projections from the precise side of the scale to the approximate is a lack of solid facts. For instance, the direction of the
Titanic
's bow when she went down was never established. This unknown factor alone could add four square miles to the search area.”

“I don't understand. Wouldn't a forty-five-thousand-ton steel ship sink in a straight line?”

“Not necessarily. The
Titanic
corkscrewed and slid under the water at a depressed angle of roughly seventy-eight degrees, and, as she sank, the weight of the sea filling her forward compartments pulled her into a headway of between four and five knots. Next, we have to consider the momentum caused by her tremendous mass and the fact that she had to travel two and a half miles before she struck bottom. No, I'm afraid she landed on a horizontal line a fair distance from her original starting point on the surface.”

Sandecker stared at the oceanographer. “How could you possibly know the precise angle of descent when the
Titanic
sank? The survivors' descriptions were on the whole unreliable.”

Silverstein pointed to a huge concrete tower off to his right. “The answers are in there, Admiral.” He stopped the cart at the front entrance of the building. “Come along and I'll give you a practical demonstration of what I'm talking about.”

Sandecker followed him through a short hallway and into a room with a large acrylic plastic window at one end. Silverstein motioned for the admiral to move closer. A diver wearing scuba equipment waved from the other side of the window. Sandecker waved back.

“A deep-water tank,” Silverstein said matter-of-factly. “The interior walls are made of steel and rise two hundred feet high with a diameter of thirty feet. There is a main pressure chamber for entering and exiting the bottom level and five air locks stationed at intervals along the side to enable us to observe our experiments at different depths.”

“I see,” Sandecker said slowly. “You've been able to simulate the
Titanic
's fall to the seafloor.”

“Yes, let me show you.” Silverstein lifted a telephone from a shelf under the observation window. “Owen, make a drop in thirty seconds.”

“You have a scale model of the
Titanic
?”

“Not exactly a prize exhibit for a maritime museum, of course,” Silverstein said, “but, for a scaled-down version of the ship's general configuration, weight, and displacement, it's a near-perfect, balanced replica. The potter did a damned fine job.”

“The potter?”

“Ceramics,” Silverstein said waving his hand in a vague gesture. “We can mold and fire twenty models in the time it would take us to fabricate a metal one.” He laid a hand on Sandecker's arm and pulled him toward the window. “Here she comes.”

Sandecker looked up and saw an oblong shape about four feet in length falling slowly through the water, preceded by what looked to be a shower of marbles. He could see that there had been no attempt to authenticate detail. The model looked like a smooth lump of unglazed clay: rounded at one end, narrowed at the other, and topped by three tubes, representing the
Titanic
's smokestacks. He heard a distinct clink through the observation window as the model's bow struck the bottom of the tank.

“Wouldn't your calculations be thrown off by a flaw in the model's configuration?” Sandecker asked.

“Yes, a mistake could make a difference.” Silverstein looked at him. “But I assure you, Admiral, we missed nothing!”

Sandecker pointed at the model. “The real
Titanic
had four funnels; yours has only three.”

“Just before the
Titanic
's final plunge,” Silverstein said, “her stern rose until she was completely perpendicular. The strain was too much for the guy wires supporting the number one funnel. They snapped and it toppled over the starboard side.”

Sandecker nodded. “My compliments, Doctor. I should have known better than to question the thoroughness of your experiment.”

“It's nothing, really. It gives me a chance to show off my expertise.” He turned and motioned a thumbs-up sign through the window. The diver tied the model onto a line that traveled toward the top of the tank. “I'll run the test again and explain how we arrived at our conclusions.”

“You might begin by explaining the marbles.”

“They act the role of the boilers,” Silverstein said.

“The boilers?”

“Perfect simulation, too. You see, while the
Titanic
's stern was pointing at the sky, her boilers broke loose from their cradle mounts and hurtled through the bulkheads toward the bow. Massive things they were—twenty-nine, all told; some of them were nearly sixteen feet in diameter and twenty feet long.”

“But your marbles fell outside the model.”

“Yes, our calculations indicate that at least nineteen of the boilers smashed their way through the bow and dropped to the bottom separately from the hull.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because if their fall had been contained, the tremendous shift in ballast caused by their journey from amidships to the forward section of the ship would have pulled the
Titanic
on a ninety-degree course straight downward. However, the reports of the survivors watching from the lifeboats—for once, most all tend to agree—state that soon after the ear-splitting rumble from the boilers' crazy stampede had died away, the ship settled back a bit at the stern before sliding under. This fact indicates to me, at any rate, that the
Titanic
vomited her boilers and once free of this superincumbency, righted herself slightly to attain the seventy-eight-degree slant I mentioned previously.”

“And the marbles bear out this theory?”

“To the letter.” Silverstein picked up the telephone again. “Ready whenever you are, Owen.” He replaced the receiver on its cradle. “Owen Dugan, my assistant above. About now he'll be setting the model in the water directly over that plumb line you see in the water off to one side of the tank. As the water begins coming in through holes drilled strategically in the bow of the model, she'll begin to go down by the head. At a certain angle the marbles will roll to the bow and a springloaded door will allow them to fall free.”

As if on cue, the marbles began falling to the floor of the tank, followed closely by the model. It struck about twelve feet from the plumb line. The diver made a tiny mark on the bottom of the tank and held up his thumb and index finger, indicating one inch.

“There you have it, Admiral, a hundred and ten drops and she's never touched down outside a four-inch radius.”

Sandecker stared into the tank for a long moment, then turned to Silverstein. “So where do we search?”

“After a few dazzling computations by our physics department,” said Silverstein, “their best guess is thirteen hundred yards south of east from the point the
Sappho I
discovered the cornet, but at that, it's still a guess.”

“How can you be certain the horn didn't fall on an angle, too?”

Silverstein feigned a hurt look. “You underestimate my genius for perfection, Admiral. Our evaluations here would be worthless without a clear-cut picture of the cornet's path to the seafloor. Included in my expense vouchers you will find a receipt from Moe's Pawnshop for two cornets. After a series of tests in the tank, we took them two hundred miles off Cape Hatteras and dropped them in twelve thousand feet of water. I can show you the charts from our sonar. They each landed within fifty yards of their vertical departure line.”

“No offense,” Sandecker said equably. “I have a sinking feeling, if you'll pardon the pun, that my lack of faith is going to cost me a case of Robert Mondavi Chardonnay 1984.”

“1981,” Silverstein said, grinning.

“If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a schmuck with good taste.”

“Think how common the world would be without us.”

Sandecker made no reply. He moved up to the window and stared inside the tank at the ceramic model of the
Titanic
. Silverstein moved up behind him. “She's a fascinating subject, no doubt of it.”

“Strange thing about the
Titanic
,” Sandecker said softly. “Once her spell strikes, you can think of nothing else.”

“But why? What is there about her that grips the imagination and won't let go?”

“Because she's the wreck that puts all the others to shame,” Sandecker said. “She's modern history's most legendary yet elusive treasure. A simple photograph of her is enough to pump the adrenaline. Knowing her story, the crew who sailed her, the people who walked her decks in the few short days she lived, that's what fires the imagination, Silverstein. The
Titanic
is a vast archive of an era we'll never see again. God only knows if it is within our power to bring the grand old dame into daylight again. But, by heaven, we're going to try.”

The submersible
Sea
Slug
looked aerodynamically clean and smooth from her outside, but to Pitt, as he contorted his six-foot-two frame into the pilot's chair, the interior seemed a claustrophobic nightmare of hydraulic plumbing and electrical circuitry. The craft was twenty feet long and tubular in shape, with rounded ends like its lethargic namesake. It was painted bright yellow and had four large portholes set in pairs on its bow, while mounted along the top, like small radar domes, were two powerful high-intensity lights.

Pitt completed the checklist and turned to Giordino, who sat in the seat to his right.

“Shall we make a dive?”

Giordino flashed a toothy smile. “Yes, let's.”

“How about it, Rudi?”

Gunn looked up from his prone position behind the lower viewports and nodded. “Ready when you are.”

Pitt spoke into a microphone and watched the small television screen above the control panel as it showed the
Modoc
's derrick lift the
Sea Slug
from her deck cradle and gently swing her over the side and into the water. As soon as a diver had disconnected the lift cable, Pitt cracked the ballast valve and the submersible began to sink slowly under the rolling, deep-troughed waves.

“Life-support timer on,” Giordino announced. “An hour to the bottom, ten hours for the search, two hours for surfacing, leaving us a reserve of five hours just in case.”

“We'll use the reserve time for the search,” Pitt said.

Giordino knew well the facts of the situation. If the unthinkable happened, an accident at twelve thousand feet, there would be no hope of rescue. A quick death would be the only prayer against the appalling suffering of slow asphyxiation. He found himself actually amused at wishing he was back on board the
Sappho I
, enjoying the uncramped comfort of open space and the security of her eight-week life-support system. He sat back and watched the water darken as the
Sea Slug
buried her hull in the depths, his thoughts drifting to the enigmatic man who was piloting the craft.

Giordino went back with Pitt to their high-school days, when they had built and raced hot rods together down the lonely farm roads behind Newport Beach, California. He knew Pitt better than any man alive; any woman, for that matter. Pitt possessed, in a sense, two separate inner identities, neither directly related to the other. There was the congenial Dirk Pitt, who rarely deviated from the middle of the road, and was humorous, unpretentious, and radiated an easygoing friendliness with everyone he met. Then there was the other Dirk Pitt, the coldly efficient machine who seldom made a mistake and who often withdrew into himself, remote and aloof. If there was a key that would unlock the door between the two, Giordino had yet to discover it.

Giordino turned his attention back to the depth gauge. Its needle indicated twelve hundred feet. Soon they passed the two-thousand-foot mark and entered a world of perpetual night. From this point downward, as far as the human eye was concerned, there was only pure blackness. Giordino pushed a switch and the outside lights burst on and sliced a reassuring path through the darkness.

“What do you think our chances are of finding her on the first try?” he asked.

“If the computer data Admiral Sandecker sent us holds true, the
Titanic
should lie somewhere within a hundred-and-ten-degree arc, thirteen hundred yards southeast of the spot where you reclaimed the cornet.”

“Oh, great,” Giordino mumbled sarcastically. “That narrows it down from looking for a toenail in the sands of Coney Island to searching for an albino boll weevil in a cotton field.”

“There he goes again,” Gunn said, “offering his negative thought for the day.”

“Maybe if we ignore him,” Pitt laughed, “he'll go away.”

Giordino grimaced and motioned into the watery void.

“Oh sure, just drop me off at the next corner.”

“We'll find the old girl,” Pitt said resolutely. He pointed at the illuminated clock on the control panel. “Let's see, it's oh-six-forty now. I predict we'll be over the
Titanic
's decks before lunch, say about eleven-forty.”

Giordino gave Pitt a sideways look. “The great soothsayer has spoken.”

“A little optimism never hurts,” Gunn said. He adjusted the exterior camera housings and triggered the strobe. It flashed blindingly for an instant like a shaft of lightning, reflecting millions of planktonic creatures that hung in the water.

Ten thousand feet and forty minutes later, Pitt reported to the
Modoc
, giving the depth and the water temperature: thirty-five degrees. The three men watched fascinated as a small angler fish, ugly in its stubby appearance, slowly swept past the viewports; the tiny luminous bulb that protruded from the top of its head glowed like a lonely beacon.

At 12,375 feet the seafloor came into view, moving up to meet the
Sea Slug
as though she were standing still. Pitt turned on the propulsion motors and adjusted the altitude angle, gently stopping the
Sea Slug
's descent and turning her on a level course across the bleak red clay that carpeted the ocean floor.

Gradually, the ominous silence was broken by the rhythmic hum that came from the
Sea Slug
's electric motors. At first, Pitt had difficulty distinguishing rises and gradual drops on the bottom; there was nothing to indicate a three-dimensional scale. His eyes saw only a flatness that stretched beyond the reach of the lights.

There was no life to be seen. And yet, evidence proved otherwise. Scattering tracks from the depth's habitants meandered and zigzagged in every direction through the sediment. One might have guessed that they were made only recently, but the sea can be misleading. The footprints from deep-dwelling sea spiders, sea cucumbers, or starfish might have been made several minutes ago or hundreds of years past, because the microscopic animal and plant remains that comprise the deep-ocean ooze filters down from above at the rate of only one or two centimeters every thousand years.

“There's a lovely creature,” Giordino said pointing.

Pitt's eye followed Giordino's finger and picked out a strange blue-black animal that seemed a cross between a squid and an octopus. It had eight tentacles linked together like the webbed foot of a duck, and it stared back at the
Sea Slug
through two large globular eyes that formed nearly a third of its body.

“A vampire squid,” Gunn informed them.

“Ask her if she's got relatives in Transylvania?” Giordino grinned.

“You know,” Pitt said, “that thing out there sort of reminds me of your girlfriend.”

Gunn jumped in. “You mean the one with no boobs?”

“You've seen her?”

“Rave on, envious rabble,” Giordino grumbled. “She's mad about me and her father keeps me floating in quality booze.”

“Some quality,” Pitt snorted. “Old Cesspool Bourbon, Attila the Hun Gin, Tijuana Vodka. Who the hell ever heard of those labels?”

Throughout the next few hours, the wit and the sarcasm bounced off the walls of the
Sea Slug
. Actually, it was put on, a defense mechanism to relieve the gnawing pangs of monotony. Unlike romanticized fiction, wreck-hunting in the depths can be a grueling and tedious job. Add to that the aggravated discomfort of the cramped quarters, the high humidity and chilling temperatures inside the submersible, and you have the ingredients for provoking an accident through human error that could prove both costly and fatal.

Pitt's hands stayed rock-steady as they handled the controls, guiding the
Sea Slug
a scant four feet above the bottom. Giordino's concentration was nailed to the life-support systems, while Gunn kept his eyes skinned on the sonar and magnetometer. The long hours of planning were over. It was now a case of patience and persistence, mixed with that peculiar blend of eternal optimism and love of the unknown shared by all treasure seekers.

“Looks like a pile of rocks up ahead,” Pitt said.

Giordino stared up through the viewports. “They're just sitting there in the ooze. I wonder where they came from.”

“Perhaps ballast thrown overboard from an old windjammer.”

“More likely came from icebergs,” Gunn said. “Many rocks and bits of debris are carried over the sea and then dropped to the floor when the icebergs melt—” Gunn broke off in the middle of his lecture. “Hold on…I'm getting a strong response on the sonar. Now the magnetometer is picking it up, too.”

“Where away?” Pitt asked.

“On a heading of one-three-seven.”

“One-three-seven it is,” Pitt repeated. He swept the
Sea Slug
into a graceful bank, as though she were an airplane, and headed on the new course. Giordino peered intently over Gunn's shoulder at the green circles of light on the sonarscope. A small dot of pulsating brightness indicated a solid object three hundred yards beyond their range of vision.

“Don't get your hopes up,” Gunn said quietly. “The target reads too small for a ship.”

“What do you make of it?”

“Hard to say. No more than twenty or twenty-five feet in length, about two stories high. Might be anything….”

“Or it might be one of the
Titanic
's boilers,” Pitt cut in. “The seafloor should be littered with them.”

“You move to the head of the class,” Gunn said, excitement creeping into his tone. “I have an identical reading, bearing one-one-five. And here comes another at one-six-zero. The last has an indicated length of approximately seventy feet.”

“Sounds like one of her smokestacks,” Pitt said.

“Lord!” Gunn murmured hoarsely. “It's beginning to read like a junkyard down here.”

Suddenly, in the gloom at the outer edge of the blackness, a rounded object became visible, haloed in the eerie light like an immense tombstone. Soon the three pairs of eyes inside the submersible could distinguish the furnace gratings of the great boiler, and then the row upon row of rivets along the iron seams and the torn, jagged tentacles of what was left of its steam tubing.

“How would you like to have been a stoker in those days and fed that baby?” Giordino muttered.

“I've picked up another one,” Gunn said. “No, wait…the pulse is getting stronger. Here comes the length. One hundred feet…two…”

“Keep coming, sweetheart,” Pitt prayed.

“Five hundred…seven…eight hundred feet. We got her! We've got her!”

“What course?” Pitt's mouth was as dry as sand.

“Bearing zero-nine-seven,” Gunn replied in a whisper.

They spoke no more for the next few minutes as the
Sea Slug
closed the distance. Their faces were pale and strained with anticipation. Pitt's heart was pounding painfully in his chest, and his stomach felt as if it had a great iron weight in it and a huge hand crushing it from the outside. He became aware that he was allowing the submersible to creep too close to the ooze. He pulled back the controls and kept his eyes trained through the viewport. What would they find? A rusty old hulk far beyond hope of salvaging? A shattered, broken hull buried to its superstructure in the muck? And then his straining eyes caught sight of a massive shadow looming up ominously in the darkness.

“Christ almighty!” Giordino mumbled in awe. “We've struck her fair on the bow.”

As the range narrowed to fifty feet, Pitt slowed the motors and turned the
Sea Slug
on a parallel course with the ill-fated liner's waterline. The mere size of the wreck when viewed from alongside her steel plates was a staggering sight. Even after nearly eighty years, the sunken ship proved to be surprisingly free of corrosion; the gold band that encompassed the 882-foot black hull glistened under the high-intensity lights. Pitt eased the submersible upward past the eight-ton portside anchor until they could all clearly make out the three-foot-high golden letters that still proudly proclaimed her as the
Titanic
.

Spellbound, Pitt picked up the microphone from its cradle and pressed the transmit button. “
Modoc
,
Modoc
. This is
Sea Slug
…do you read?”

The radio operator on the
Modoc
answered almost immediately. “This is
Modoc
,
Sea Slug
. We read you. Over.”

Pitt adjusted the volume to minimize the background crackle. “
Modoc
, notify NUMA headquarters that we have found the Big T. Repeat, we have found the Big T. Depth twelve thousand three hundred and forty feet. Time, eleven-forty-two hours.”

“Eleven-forty-two?” Giordino echoed. “You cocky bastard. You only missed by two minutes.”