Carter looked ever at Jayden. “That still gives us time to look around down here. No later than an hour before they get down here, we’ll begin our ascent. They won’t be able to find us once we’re up off the bottom.”
Jayden nodded slowly, as if considering this, before replying into the radio. “Copy that, Topside. We’re going to proceed with our inspection down here, but we’ll make sure to begin our ascent well before their arrival time, over.”
Johnny agreed, and then Jayden updated him on their position relative to the wreck. Carter signaled to Jayden that he wanted the radio mic and Jayden handed it to him, glad to be able to focus his full attention on piloting the sub around the hull of the hulking shipwreck.
“Co-pilot here, Topside,” Carter began. “Even though they’ve already deployed their craft, it would be best to keep up the pressure on the rest of their ship’s crew. Keep up the requests for radio contact, make sat-phone calls — you can bill them to us — for permit requests, Coast Guard reports, that kind of thing. Don’t make them feel welcome, is what I’m saying.”
“Copy that, Deep Voyager. We’ll keep up the pressure. Stay safe down there. Over and out.”
Carter replaced the radio mic to the instrument console and then returned his focus to the wreck outside the sub. Using a joystick on the panel in front of him, he swept the powerful spotlight mounted on the bow of the sub along the rust-streaked hull of the Titanic. Stalks of sea anemones, sponges and other unknown life forms dotted and encrusted the long-dormant structure.
Unfolding a diagram that showed the Titanic in cutaway form as it lay on the seafloor, Carter tried to reconcile what he was looking at out his window with the drawing in his lap. He used a penlight to illuminate a section of the chart that depicted the bow portion of the ship, before staring out the window and adjusting the spotlight against the massive hull.
“We have a ways to go before we get to the break in the wreck,” Carter said, referring to the fact that the ship lay in two major pieces on the seafloor: the larger forward section, including the bow, which they now skimmed past. Then there was a gap of almost a football field of empty seafloor, perhaps with some strewn debris, with the stern portion of the ship lying alone after that, more or less in line with the rest.
Jayden glanced at his instruments before responding. “I’ll increase thruster power by ten percent.” He grabbed a throttle-like control with his right hand and slowly pushed it up. The whirring noise of the thruster motors increased slightly in pitch and their life-supporting craft propelled them along a little faster at the expense of remaining battery power.
In spite of the fact that he knew he was coasting along next to the Titanic, Carter found the view in this part of the dive to be somewhat monotonous, an ever-changing-yet-always-the-same pastiche of encrusted, rust-streaked metal wall. Directing the spotlight above him, at its steepest angle, he could just make out the lip of the deck. They could have taken the sub over the deck, but it was a trickier route, beset with potential obstacles and tangled, twisted wreckage in which to become snagged. The seafloor along the side of the hull would keep them on track while presenting relatively safe passage to their desired entrance point into the shipwreck.
Carter tried to keep the insane amount of pressure, some 377 atmosphere’s worth—5,500 pounds per square inch — that their little craft absorbed in order to keep them alive, out of his mind as they glided along over the bottom. Outside of the external lights’ radius it was beyond pitch black — a complete and total absence of light save for the sporadic pinpricks of bioluminescent light from unseen creatures. This world was so forbidding, so alien to human life, that they may as well be in deep space. If anything went wrong down here with their equipment, it was a matter of life and death, with death the more likely outcome.
Before long Carter announced they were approaching the great rift between the much larger front section of the wreck and the aft section. He couldn’t actually see it yet, but was able to calculate it by using their speed in knots and the length of the forward section from the diagram.
“About thirty more seconds at this velocity,” Carter told Jayden, who shot him a doubting sideways glance, but nodded. Twenty-eight seconds later, bare seafloor took the place of the metal hull, and Jayden shook his head as he slowed the sub.
“And to think the best use I ever found for high school math class was to see how long I could hold my breath.” Jayden brought the sub around the end of the open wreckage in a wide arc while Carter laughed at the mental image of a young Jayden goofing off in school. Both occupants of the craft held their breath when they saw the open end of the Titanic’s forward section.
They were looking straight into history.
Carter was not prepared for the wave of emotion that flooded over him at that moment. This wasn’t some photograph, or artist’s rendering. This was the real thing, witnessed directly with his own eyes. Not much was visible beyond the floodlights, but by aiming the starboard spotlight, they could see some ways into the cavernous maw of the historic wreck. Nothing iconic yet, only unidentifiable debris within the outline of the mega-hull, but it was remarkable, nonetheless.
“You ever think we’d be staring into the freakin’ Titanic?” Jayden asked, voice laden with reverence. Carter could only shake his head wordlessly, until Jayden tore his gaze from the mesmerizing view and eyed his controls. He made a slight adjustment to the sub’s depth, raising it a few feet off of the ocean floor lest they stir up the silt. Then he pivoted the sub to the right while hovering in place so that they were parallel to the open end of the wreck.
“Gonna take us forward now to the middle of the opening,” Jayden said, both to Carter and into the radio. It was important to announce each and every step, like how an astronaut relayed his each and every move to the crew during a spacewalk or spacecraft docking maneuver. It gave the opportunity for the crew to remind the pilot of a missing step, for one thing, and kept everyone appraised of exactly what was happening.
“Copy that, Deep Voyager,” Johnny acknowledged over the comm system. Carter and Jayden each aimed the spotlights on their respective sides of the submersible out in front of them, surveying what lay ahead. Satisfied that to move forward represented a clear path, Jayden activated the forward thrusters and the sub creeped along over the bottom. Carter occasionally swept his spotlight out toward the wreck to get a look at their progress across its open maw and to ensure they were well clear of any protruding obstacles.
Even with their slow and cautious progress, it didn’t take long to reach the midpoint of the shipwreck’s width. Again, Carter confirmed they were about halfway across the open ship using the diagram in combination with their speed. Jayden eased off the thrusters and brought the sub into a controlled hover before using only the left thruster to pivot the craft around to their right so that the nose pointed toward the open end of the Titanic’s gargantuan forward piece.
“Here we are,” he said to Carter before notifying Topside of their position on the wreck. After another systems evaluation during which everything checked out nominal, Jayden informed Johnny via radio that they were ready to begin the penetration phase of their dive.
“Copy that, Deep Voyager. Proceed with extreme caution. Reminder that you have an hour or so before you have company down, there. Over.”
Jayden acknowledged the request and turned to Carter. “You ready?”
Hunt glanced ahead of them into the cavernous structure that awaited before nodding.