The divers had wasted no time in getting dressed anew for the dive and were on deck and ready to enter Max again—this time with the certainty that they were on their way to dive the Titanic! Excitement was fast filling the submersible as much as body mass, and while in single file to climb into the sub, Ingles asked Bowman, “Where in hell’ve you been, man? You never came back to the cabin.”
“Keep it to yourself, heh? Gambio and me, we figured it could be our last chance at a little play before we all die.”
“What’re you talking about—all die?”
“There’s some weird shit happening around here or haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed… you bet.”
“Just watch your back, man—and mine, too while you’re at it; I’ll do the same for you.”
“We ought to be safe below.”
“I’m countin’ on that but aren’t you worried what we might come back to aboard Scorpio, man? I mean… who knows what’s gonna go on while we’re gone?”
“Scorpio a ghost ship? It’s crossed my mind, yeah, but as long as we stay in contact with the surface, we keep informed, right?”
“Sure… sure, partner, if you say so.”
Once all the divers had taken a seat inside the submersible, they began to relax somewhat, when suddenly, they could feel the crew working the heavy machinery around and above them going to work—the metallic pinging and vibrations of being connected to the crane, lifted up, swung over the side, and the gentle touchdown on the surface, the release from the crane, and now the shaking little room telling them they were bobbing in the North Atlantic close on to Scorpio’s outer hull.
Swigart, over the communications link announced, “9:32PM all systems are a go—copilot Dave Ingles, pilot Lou Swigart and the full dive team en route to Titanic.”
David was both pleased and surprised to be settling in as copilot in the twenty-four foot rectangular pressure cooker of a sub, which from all sides resembled a thing fathered by a Chinook helicopter and an elongated flying saucer. Hemmed in on all sides by instrument panels, necessary overhead pipes and conduits that threatened to crown David if not careful, he realized that sitting strapped in was the most comfortable a man might get inside MAX. After the sub leveled-off and went to stationary hovering, then a man might stand, stretch, and work out any bodily kinks, but for now any such movement was not a good idea. The trip down should not be any longer than a trolley ride from 42nd to 52nd Avenue, New York given Max’s propulsion system, speed, and maneuverability. Mad Max put Bob Ballard’s then amazing Alvin to shame.
Swigart had trained on MHD propulsion as had each diver in the event that any one of them needed to pilot Max, but for now it was Lou’s baby—under his control. “Hit the lithium-hydroxide blower for me, will you, Dave?”
Ingles did as requested, opening the blower that would keep their oxygen free of carbon dioxide as already the sub was becoming stuffy as carbon dioxide levels rose. Each phase of the operation was carefully monitored from Scorpio’s control room as well.
Swigart immediately dove below the surface by a simple means of opening initial ballasts intakes as in any sub. This brought her nose with her huge cross-styled front-viewing window facing sharply downward—at dive attitude. Lou then opened the throttle that brought in the seawater not for ballast but for propulsion, thanks to applied spinoff uses of military technologies. In this case the USN’s having developed a compact, self-regulating nuclear reactor. The unit was size of a typical coffin.
Max’s maneuvering thrusters, both in the two towers and along both sides, were a variation of magnetic bearing technology coupled with the principles behind maglev train propulsion or gauss cannons, which cycle magnets—magnetic field generating devices such as coils—in order with the proper timing so that acceleration was induced. This meant that a computer could reverse the cycling of the magnets or coils, thereby reversing the motion of the thruster blade, and tightening or loosening the timing to increase or decrease the speed of rotation, thereby providing a throttle control so that it wasn’t an off/on proposition.
And if that were not enough, all this generation of magnetic fields made the use of magnetic anomaly detection systems difficult if not impossible. However, Scorpio above was outfitted with a unique sonar imaging system and Max had a holotank remote terminal via a little understood device called the Big Sister or CIS which was still undergoing trials or rather experimentation by the US Army, a patented application formally called Combat Information System. In actual use, the CIS system allowed for a distributed network of sensors to have their data correlated and retransmitted back to units on the field of battle, giving commanders greater awareness of the tactical environment than their own onboard sensors can provide. This device and method promised to be indispensable to research and exploration such as the Titanic expedition was now in the thick of. Woods Hole wanted it to work, and probably wanted this more than anything else to come out of Scorpio’s salvage operation. The biological specimens they spoke of, the testing of liquid air paks, the findings of deeper than deep water exploration on human beings, artifacts lifted from Titanic—all of it was, for Woods Hole, a front to mesmerize the public and keep their minds off this new technology. It was a modus operandi no longer limited to military research.
David, Swigart, and some of the others found it all incredibly exciting and fascinating. Basically all the information that the sensors onboard Scorpio IV, and all the sensor devices it could deploy, were beamed down to a receiver installed in Max. All topside displays returned on various screens and through holographic projectors. So all that had to be onboard the sub itself was a transmitter to specify what data might be desired, and how the user might wish it displayed. A receiver and projectors and/or screens alone truly reduced the space, power, and weight required to make use of such a technology, which made it feasible and realistic.
All the old technology based on the same principle as sponge divers grabbing rocks to sink to the bottom no longer applied—nor did turbine-powered shafts linked to a rudder.
With Max, there were no spinning, noisy turbines, but rather intake sponsons—a term only an engineer might know. These devices took up room on each side of the sub where they sucked in seawater at its forward open ‘torpedo’ hatches and flushed the same amount of water per square gallon out the rear hatches. This created a more powerful and maneuverable forward dynamic than any previous small subs or large had ever enjoyed. The system was known as The Caterpillar—and was as quiet as its namesake and undetectable on sonar unless its captain wanted it to be.
This system made Max as silent as a living creature and just as fast and maneuverable under water. It could travel at remarkable speed over untold nautical miles, leaving not so much as a mist and no cavitations. The only cavitations or air bubbles came as a result of the sub’s bodylines, but even this only at her highest speed, and at this speed it was gone before detected. In other words, no sonar invented could detect or track it if its pilot wished it so. And even then it would have to be the most sensitive state-of-the-art sonar.