The Sappho I wasn't built to compete with military submarines. She was functional. Scientific survey of the ocean bottom was her game, and her every square inch was utilized to accommodate a seven-man crew and two tons of oceanographic research instruments and equipment. The Sappho I would never fire a missile or cut through the sea at seventy knots, but then she could operate where no other submarine had ever dared to go 24,000 feet below the ocean's surface. Yet Giordino was never totally at ease. He checked the depth gauge, wincing at the reading of almost 12,500 feet. The pressure of the sea increases at the rate of fifteen pounds per square inch for every thirty feet. He winced again when his mental gymnastics gave him an approximate answer of nearly 6200 pounds per square inch, the pressure which at that moment was pushing against the red paint on the Sappho I's thick titanium skin.
"How about a cup of fresh sediment?"
Giordino looked up into the unsmiling face of Omar Woodson, the photographer on the mission. Woodson was carrying a steaming mug of coffee.
"The chief valve-and switch-pusher should have had his brew exactly five minutes ago," said Giordino.
"Sorry. Some idiot turned out the lights." Woodson handed him the mug. "Everything check out?"
"Okay across the board," Giordino answered. "I gave the aft battery section a rest. We'll juice off the center section for the next eighteen hours."
"Lucky we didn't drift into a rock outcropping when we shut down."
"Surely you jest." Giordino slid down in his seat, squinted his eyes and yawned with effortless finesse. "Sonar hasn't picked out anything larger than a baseball-size rock in the last six hours. The bottom here is as flat as my girl friend's stomach."
"You mean chest," Woodson said. "I've seen her picture." Woodson was smiling, which was rare for him.
"Nobody's perfect," Giordino conceded. "However, considering the fact her father is a wealthy liquor distributor, I can overlook her bad points-"
He broke off as Rudi Gunn, the commander of the mission, leaned into the pilot's compartment. He was short and thin, and his wide eyes, magnified by a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, peered intently over a large Roman nose, giving him the look of an undernourished owl about to strike. Yet his appearance was deceiving. Rudi Gunn was warm and kind. Every man who ever served under his command respected him enormously.
"You two at it again?" Gunn smiled tolerantly.
Woodson looked solemn. "The same old problem. He's getting horny for his girl again."
"After fifty-one days on this drifting closet, even his grandmother would forgive the gleam in his eye." Gunn leaned over Giordino and gazed through the viewport. For a few seconds only a dim blue filled his eyes, then gradually, just below the Sappho I, he could make out the reddish ooze of the top layer of bottom sediment. For a brief moment a bright red shrimp, barely over an inch long, floated across the beam of the light before it vanished into the darkness.
"Damned shame we can't get out and walk around," Gunn said as he stepped back. "No telling what we might find out there."
"Same thing you'd find in the middle of the Mojave Desert," Giordino grunted. "Absolutely zilch." He reached up and tapped a gauge. "Colder temperature though. I read a rousing thirty-four-point-eight degrees Fahrenheit."
"A great place to visit," Woodson said, "but you wouldn't want to spend your golden years there."
"Anything show on sonar?" Gunn asked.
Giordino nodded at a large green screen in the middle of the panel. The reflected pattern of the terrain was flat. "Nothing ahead or to the sides. The profile hasn't wavered for several hours."
Gunn wearily removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Okay, gentlemen, our mission is as good as ended. We'll give it another ten hours, then we surface." Almost as a reflex action, he looked up at the overhead panel. "Is Mother still with us?"
Giordino nodded. "Mother is hanging in there."
He needed only to glance at the fluctuating needle on the transducer instrument to know that the mother ship, a surface support tender, was continuously tracking the Sappho I on sonar.
"Make contact," Gunn said, "and signal Mother that we'll begin our ascent at oh-nine hundred hours. That should leave them plenty of time to load us aboard and take the Sappho I in tow before sunset."
"I've almost forgotten what a sunset looks like," Woodson murmured. "It's off to the beach to recapture a suntan and ogle all those gorgeous bikini-clad honeys for Papa Woodson. No more of these deep-sea funny farms for me."
"Thank God, the end is in sight," Giordino said. "Another week cooped up in this overgrown wiener and I'll start talking to the potted plants."
Woodson looked at him. "We don't have any potted plants."
"You get the picture."
Gunn smiled. "Everybody deserves a good rest. You men have put on a fine show. The data we've compiled should keep the lab boys busy for a long time."
Giordino turned to Gunn, gave him a long look, and spoke slowly "This has been one hell of a weird mission, Rudi."
"I don't get your meaning," Gunn said.
"A poorly cast drama is what I mean. Take a good look at your crew." He gestured to the four men working in the aft section of the submersible-Ben Drummer, a lanky Southerner with a deep Alabama drawl; Rick Spencer, a short, blond-haired Californian who whistled constantly through clenched teeth; Sam Merker, as cosmopolitan and citified as a Wall Street broker; and Henry Munk, a quiet, droopy-eyed wit who clearly wished he were anywhere but on the Sappho I "Those clowns aft, you, Woodson, and myself; we're all engineers, nuts-and-bolts mechanics. There isn't a Ph.D. in the lot."
"The first men on the moon weren't intellectuals, either," Gunn countered. "It takes the nuts-and-bolts mechanics to perfect the equipment. You guys have proven the Sappho I; you've demonstrated her capabilities. Let the next ride go to the oceanographers. As for us, this mission will go down in the books as a great scientific achievement."
"I am not," Giordino declared pontifically, "cut out to be a hero."
"Neither am I, pal," Woodson added. "But you've got to admit it beats hell out of selling life insurance."
"The drama of it all escapes him," Gunn said. "Think of the stories you can tell your girl friends. Think of the enraptured looks on their pretty faces when you tell them how you unerringly piloted the greatest undersea probe of the century."
"Unerringly?" Giordino said. "Then suppose you tell me why I'm running this scientific marvel around in circles five hundred miles off our scheduled course?"
Gunn shrugged. "Orders."
Giordino stared at him. "We're supposed to be under the Labrador Sea. Instead, Admiral Sandecker changes our course at the last minute and makes us chase all over the abyssal plains below the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It doesn't make sense."
Gunn smiled a sphinx-like smile. For several moments none of the men spoke, but Gunn didn't require a concentrated dose of ESP to know the questions that were running through their minds. They were, he was certain, thinking what he was thinking. Like himself, they were three months back in time and two thousand miles in distance at the headquarters of the National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington, D.C., where Admiral James Sandecker, chief director of the agency, was describing the most incredible undersea operation of the decade.
"God damn," Admiral Sandecker had thundered. "I'd give up a year's salary if I could join you men."
A figure of speech, Giordino reflected. Next to Sandecker, Ebenezer Scrooge spent money like a drunken sailor. Giordino relaxed in a deep leather sofa and tuned into the admiral's briefing, while idly blowing smoke rings between puffs on a giant cigar, lifted from a box on Sandecker's immense desk when everyone's attention was focused on a wall map of the Atlantic Ocean.
"Well, there she is." Sandecker rapped the pointer loudly on the map for the second time. "The Lorelei Current. She's born off the western tip of Africa, follows the mid-Atlantic ridge north, then curves easterly between Baffin Island and Greenland, and then dies in the Labrador Sea."
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Giordino said "I don't hold a degree in oceanography, Admiral, but it would seem that the Lorelei converges with the Gulf Stream."
"Not hardly. The Gulf Stream is surface water. The Lorelei is the coldest, heaviest water in the world's oceans, averaging fourteen thousand feet in depth."
"Then the Lorelei crosses under the Gulf Stream," Spencer said softly. It was the first time in the briefing he had spoken.
"That seems reasonable." Sandecker paused, smiled benevolently, then continued "The ocean is basically made up of two layers-a surface or upper layer, heated by the sun and thoroughly churned by winds, and a cold, very dense layer consisting of intermediate, deep and bottom water. And the two never mix."
"Sounds very dull and forbidding," Munk said. "The mere fact that some character with a black sense of humor named the current after a Rhine nymph who lured sailors onto the rocks makes it the last place I'd want to visit."
A grim smile crawled slowly over Sandecker's griffin face. "Get used to the name, gentlemen, because deep in the Lorelei's gut is where we're going to spend fifty days. Where you're going to spend fifty days."
"Doing what?" Woodson asked defiantly.
"The Lorelei Current Drift Expedition is exactly what it sounds like. You men will descend in a deepwater submersible five hundred miles northwest of the coast of Dakar and begin a submerged cruise in the current. Your main job will be to monitor and test the sub and its equipment. If there are no malfunctions that would necessitate cutting short the mission, you should surface around the middle of September in the approximate center of the Labrador Sea."
Merker cleared his throat softly. "No submersible has stayed that long that deep."
"You want to back out, Sam?"
"Well . . . no."
"This is a volunteer expedition. Nobody is twisting your arm to go."
"Why us, Admiral?" Ben Drummer uncoiled his lean frame from the floor where he had been comfortably stretched. "Ah'm a marine engineer. Spencer here is an equipment engineer. And Merker is a systems expert. Ah can't see where we fit in."
"You're all professionals in your respective capacities. Woodson is also a photographer. The Sappho I will be carrying a number of photographic systems. Munk is the best instrument-component man in the agency. And, you'll all be under the command of Rudi Gunn, who has captained, at one time or another, every research ship in NUMA.
"That leaves me," Giordino said.
Sandecker glared at the cigar jutting from Giordino's mouth, recognized it as one from his private brand, and gave him a withering look that was completely ignored. "As assistant projects director for the agency, you'll be in overall charge of the mission. You can also make yourself useful by piloting the craft."
Giordino smiled devilishly and stared back. "My pilot's license authorizes me to fly airplanes not submarines."
The admiral stiffened ever so slightly. "You'll just have to trust my judgment, won't you?" Sandecker said coldly. "Besides, what matters most is that you're the best crew I've got on hand at the moment. You all worked together on the Beaufort Sea Expedition. You are men with heavy experience and records of ability and ingenuity. You can operate every instrument, every piece of oceanographic equipment yet invented-we'll let the scientists analyze the data you bring back-and, as I mentioned, naturally you're all volunteers."
"Naturally," Giordino echoed, his face deadpan.
Sandecker went back behind his desk. "You will assemble and begin procedure training at our Key West port facility the day after tomorrow. The Pelholme Aircraft Company has already run extensive diving tests on the submersible, so you need only concern yourselves with familiarization of the equipment and instruction on the experiments you'll conduct during the expedition."
Spencer whistled through his teeth. "An aircraft company? Holy God, what do they know about designing a deep-sea submersible?"
"For your peace of mind," Sandecker said patiently, "Pelholme turned its aerospace technology toward the sea ten years ago. Since then, they've constructed four underwater environmental laboratories and two extremely successful submersibles for the Navy."
"They'd best have built this one good," Merker said. "I'd be most distressed to find that it leaked at fourteen thousand feet."
"Scared shitless, you mean," Giordino mumbled.
Munk rubbed his eyes, then stared at the floor, as though he saw the bottom of the sea in the carpet. When he spoke, his words came very slowly "Is this trip really necessary, Admiral?"
Sandecker nodded solemnly. "It is. Oceanographers need a picture of the structure of the Lorelei's flow pattern to improve their knowledge of deep-ocean circulation. Believe me, this mission is as important as the first manned orbit around the earth. Besides testing the world's most advanced submersible, you'll be visually recording and mapping an area never before seen by man. Forget your doubts. The Sappho I has every safety feature built into her hull that science can devise. You have my personal guarantee of a safe and comfortable voyage."
That's easy for him to say, Giordino thought idly. He won't be there.
24
Henry Munk shifted his muscular frame to a different position on a long vinyl pad, stifled a yawn, and continued to stare out the Sappho I's aft viewport. The flat, unending sediment was about as interesting as a book without printed pages, but Munk took delight in the knowledge that every tiny mound, every rock or occasional denizen of the deep that passed beneath the thick plexiglas had never before been seen by man. It was a small but satisfying reward for the long, boring hours he'd spent scanning an array of detection instruments mounted on both sides above the pad.
Reluctantly, he forced his eyes from the viewport and focused them on the instruments the S-T-SV-D sensor had been operating constantly during the mission, measuring the outside salinity, temperature, sound velocity, and depth pressure on a magnetic tape; the sub-bottom profiler that acoustically determined the depth of the top sediments and provided indications of the underlying structure of the sea floor's surface; the gravimeter that ticked off the gravity readings every quarter mile; the current sensor that kept its sensitive eye on the speed of the Lorelei Current and direction; and the magnetometer, a sensor for measuring and recording the bottom's magnetic field, including any deviations caused by localized metal deposits.
Munk almost missed it. The movement of the stylus on the magnetometer's graph was so slight, barely a tiny millimeter of a squibble, that he would have missed it completely if his eyes hadn't locked on the recording mark at exactly the right moment. Quickly, he threw his face against the viewport and peered at the sea floor. Then he turned and yelled at Giordino, who sat at the pilot's console only ten feet away. "All stop!"
Giordino spun around and stared aft. All he could see were Munk's legs; the rest of him was buried among the instruments. "What do you read?"
"We just passed over something that's metallic. Back her up for a closer look."
"Easing her back," Giordino said loudly so Munk could hear.
He engaged the two motors mounted on each side of the hull amidships, and set them at half-speed in reverse. For ten seconds, the Sappho I caught in the two-knot force of the current hung suspended, reluctant to move on her own. Then she began to forge backward very slowly against the relentless flow. Gunn and the others crowded around Munk's instrument tunnel.
"Make out anything?" Gunn asked.
"Not sure," Munk answered. "There's something sticking up from the sediment about twenty yards astern. I can only see a vague shape under the stern lights."
Everyone waited.
It seemed an eternity before Munk spoke again "Okay, I've got it."
Gunn turned to Woodson. "Activate the two stereo bottom cameras and strobes. We should have this on film."
Woodson nodded and moved off toward his equipment.
"Can you describe it?" Spencer asked.
"It looks like a funnel sticking upright in the ooze." Munk's voice came through the instrument tunnel disembodied, but e
ven the reverberated tone could not disguise the excitement behind it.
Gunn's expression went skeptical. "Funnel?"
Drummer leaned over Gunn's shoulder. "What kind of funnel?"
"A funnel with a hollow cone tapering to a point that you pour stuff through, you dumb rebel," Munk replied irritably. "It's passing under the starboard hull now. Tell Giordino to hold the boat stationary the second it appears under the bow viewports."
Gunn stepped over to Giordino. "Can you hold our position?"
"I'll give it a go, but if the current starts swinging us broadside, I won't be able to keep precise control and we'll lose visual contact with whatever that thing is out there."