That experience, in fact, was the rationale for having Atlas along. Atlas was a small, tethered robot, built along the lines of Gargantua, looking like a child’s snow sled with a fiberglass enclosure. Three multi-bladed propellers set at odd angles — aimed obliquely upward and at a 45 degree angle across the stern — controlled its movement in the water. The ROV had two medium-sized manipulator arms, along with still and video cameras. One arm terminated in a thumb-and-two-fingered hand, and the other arm was used for tools. Currently, a cutting torch was in place. Parked in a sheath located beneath the forward bow, the ROV could be urged into action by remote controls in the sub, the signals transmitted over a 250-foot cable that unreeled from the sheath and trailed after the robot.
Inside the pressure hull, a spherical container within the fiberglass and carbon streamlined outer hull, the space was cramped for three humans. The hull was composed of ten-inch thick titanium alloy in order to withstand the pressures at 20,000 feet of depth, and the interior diameter was eight feet. The space was further compromised, however, by the equipment and instrumentation mounted behind dozens of triangular, hexagonal, and square panels that fit into the curvature of the hull. Containing gauges, cathode ray tubes, switches, rheostats, and circuit breakers, the panels supervised systems like the central processing computer, graphic recorders, power routing, the tracking transponder transceiver, liquid coolant, alarms, sonar components, depth plotter, doppler transceiver, main propulsion, and the altitude/depth transceiver.
There were more systems to watch, the primary responsibility of the systems monitor — Bob Mayberry on this dive. The life support system was critical, of course. Pure oxygen was slowly fed into the sphere from external tanks, and a lithium hydroxide blower re-circulated the air while removing carbon dioxide. The system worked well, but it left the air tasting stale. After a typical nine or ten hour ride, aquanauts emerged from the submersible with cottony, dry mouths.
As they started down, Brande felt the slight tug as the tow cable came taut. Reading the indicators set into his control panel, he noted the attitude of Sarscan’s diving and steering planes, and adjusted them slightly for downward travel with his joysticks, then trimmed them into place. He was in charge of the towed vehicle.
“Five hundred feet,” Mayberry called out.
With the wave action left behind, the sub felt perfectly stable, and there was almost no sense of movement.
“Going passive,” Otsuka said and started tapping pressure-sensitive switches.
In order to preserve precious electrical energy, interior and exterior lights were turned off and motors and computers were set at minimum draw during the descent. Inside, the only illumination was provided by the dozens of red, amber, blue, and green LEDs on the instrument panels. At 1200 feet, beyond the ability of the sun to penetrate the depths, the view through the portholes was of utter blackness.
Claustrophobic people did not go well with deep-diving submersibles.
There were three portholes. One was set in the hull directly forward, and the other two were at angles to port and starboard. Directly beneath them were three video monitors used for a variety of tasks, from mapping to sonar display to repeating the video images captured by robotic vehicles.
As Mayberry called off the 1000-foot marker, Brande saw that his view through the portholes was diminishing. Visibility was perhaps thirty feet and very dim. A school of tiny orange-and-blue-skinned fish passed the starboard porthole.
Since they had learned from experience that changing seats in the cramped quarters, so as to relieve each other’s responsibilities, was a difficult proposition, Brande and Dokey had redesigned the control panels in front of each controller seat, duplicating the controls for each position. The front edge of the horizontal panel had a cushioned lip on which the controller could rest his wrists, lessening the fatigue factor. Just beyond the lip were two joysticks and a set of slide switches used for manipulating power to the propulsion systems that provided upward, downward, sideways, and forward or reverse thrust. A master switch on each panel selected the submersible, a robot, or a robot’s manipulator arms as the controlled device from either controller position.
Kim Otsuka’s control panel was currently in charge of DepthFinder.
“Two thousand feet,” Mayberry said. “Twenty-one minutes elapsed.”
“I could increase the descent rate by a few more feet,” Otsuka said.
“We’re all right where we’re at,” Brande said. “No sense in pushing it.”
It was going to take them three hours to reach the planned depth of 17,500 feet. There was no way to overcome those physics.
“What have we got today?” Brande asked, squirming around in his seat to get the first of his sweaters on.
“I brought along the soundtrack for ‘The Mikado,’“ Otsuka said.
Mayberry issued and anguished groan. “I have my Garth Brooks tapes.”
Brande tried to settle himself comfortably in the canvas-covered seat and almost achieved it.
“What the hell,” he said. “Let’s start off with ‘The Mikado.’“
Mayberry groaned again.
Wilson Overton sat on the edge of his hotel bed, picked up the phone, and called the Greenpeace representative on his boat once again.
“Wilson,” Mark Jacobs said, “we’ve talked three times in the last two days. That’s more than in the last year.”
“I know, but I just had another thought, and I called the Earthquake Information Center in Colorado.”
“What did they say?”
“About the same thing Brande told you. There have been some disturbances on the seabed. Not earth-shaking, if you’ll forgive that pun. Barely touching one-point-oh on the Richter Scale. They gave me the coordinates.”
“And then?”
“And then I called Brande’s outfit in San Diego. I talked to Dr. Ingrid Roskens, who seems to enjoy working on Sundays. She said Brande was off on some diving expedition.”
“Brande didn’t mention that,” Jacobs said. “I didn’t think to ask him where he was when I talked to him.”
“And then I thought about those Navy guys. They use sonar for mapping, right?”
“That can be done.”
“But do they chase earthquakes with it?”
“I don’t know,” Jacobs said, “Maybe they want to see if there’s been any change in the seabed terrain as a result of the quake.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“That’s what I asked,” Overton said.
“You’re assuming that Brande’s going out there to do something for the Navy.”
“That’s the assumption. I’m reaching a little, I know. But for one thing, Mark, who gives a damn what the seabed looks like, either before or after an earthquake? Especially a tiny earthquake. For another, I ran over to the library and took a look at the Pacific maps. As far as I can tell with generalized maps, that part of the Pacific is largely unexplored. Why do it now, with winter coming on?”
“You think somebody’s worried about something?”
“What do you think?”
“If, and I do say if, Wilson, Brande’s on his way out there, then something’s funny.”
“Let’s go look,” Overton said.
“We’d probably find a wild goose.”
“My instincts don’t let me down often, Mark. I’ll pick up your fuel costs.”
Overton cringed when he said that. He hadn’t checked with Ned, and he might well end up diving into his savings account for the money.