Traudl-Maus hugged the young girl and tried to comfort her. Between sobs, she complained of being hungry and cold. They had no heat when the rathskeller was closed. The bar and restaurant operation generated heat, and the building owner had modified the exhaust ductwork to attach it to the building’s air-ventilation system. The oil furnaces hadn’t worked in over a year. The oil was a valuable commodity to the military of the Third Reich.
Traudl-Maus got Ella, Horst, and two more young children settled in the living room around the candle. She had a calming effect on the kids and eventually convinced them to join her in singing some children’s songs.
As she watched them begin to relax and enjoy each other’s company, she remembered the task at hand. She needed to hurry in order to get to Frau Mohr’s farm. She promised the children she’d return, although she wasn’t sure that was a promise she could keep. She never knew if she would return from the forest.
But return she did. Several hours later, with a hen firmly secured in one grain sack and two loaves of freshly baked bread in the other, she slipped into the apartment building where Ella lived. She prayed the entire return trip that the sisters had been returned to their children. However, when Ella answered the door, her eyes sunken from exhaustion, Traudl-Maus knew they would probably never return.
Then she did something that might get her scolded by her mother, but it was worth the risk.
“Everyone? How would you like to join my family for dinner tomorrow? We don’t have much, except a chicken and two loaves of bread.” She held up the grain sacks for them to see.
“We have potatoes and peas,” offered Ella.
“Good. Good. My mother will make us all kartoffelpuffer.” Potato pancakes were a staple of German households during the war.
“At your house?” asked Horst. He hung his head in sadness. Tears streamed down his face. “But wir Juden.” We are Jews.
Traudl-Maus reached out to the young boy and lifted his tear-soaked chin with her hand. “Nein, Horst. You are all Germans. Just like me.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
One Hundred Seventy Miles off the North Coast of Puerto Rico
The Puerto Rico Trench
Depth: 18,700 feet
Fathoms: 3,120
The Deepsea Challenger 7
North Atlantic Ocean
The first human-occupied vehicle, or HOV, to reach the deepest parts of the planet was known as the Deepsea Challenger, built in Sydney, Australia, for Woods Hole. It gained world recognition for its second dive into the Mariana Trench when famed producer James Cameron piloted it to the deepest spot in the planet’s oceans on a solo mission. It was the culmination of years of technological preparation and single-handedly resulted in an explosion of funding in ocean science.
Over the next two decades, the Deepsea Challenger program advanced to larger, more technologically advanced exploration vessels. The original vehicle measured twenty-four feet and was made up of three sections.
The beam was made of a new innovation, syntactic foam, the only flotation material capable of withstanding the crushing pressures of the deep ocean. A personnel sphere was contained below the beam. This part of the submersible was surrounded by three-inch-thick steel and thick observation glass with numerous strain gauges attached, providing the operator a series of warning indicators when the HOV was under extraordinary pressure. Finally, the Deepsea Challenger was equipped with a section dedicated to harvesting sea life and surface materials for study. The two booms could work together to gather the items to study and place them safely within the sub without breaching the personnel compartment.
With the success of the first Deepsea Challenger mission, excitement grew and many millions of dollars were invested in improving the HOV’s capabilities. As a result, the next generation of manned submersibles had been built and placed into service, including the Deepsea Challenger 7, or DSC-7, being operated by a crew from the Sea Searcher 1.
The DSC-7 had several major modifications. For one, it had increased in size to over thirty feet. Its shape and design allowed for additional compartments, including a much larger bank of lithium-ion battery packs. The two hundred eighty batteries, each the size of a loaf of bread, quadrupled the power of the HOV and allowed the crew to remain below the surface for a longer period of time.
The other significant design change was the addition of a pressurized air-lock compartment, allowing divers to undertake the deepest exploration of the planet in history outside of an HOV.
The atmospheric diving system, developed in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, was technologically remarkable. Prior to the turn of the century, the most advanced deep-water dive suit allowed for a mission to two thousand feet. Using space technology and forged alloys created by NASA, an underwater exosuit was designed that revolutionized deep-sea exploration.
The teardrop-shaped helmet enabled the divers to have an extensive field of vision, especially down to their boots when walking on the ocean floor. The exosuit had its own self-contained life-support system that included two separate oxygen tanks providing up to fifty hours of recirculated air filtered by carbon dioxide scrubbers. Thrusters were installed at the feet and sides of the suit, providing the occupant maximum maneuverability.
However, for the exploratory diver, its best feature was the exosuit’s hands. The left hand resembled a V-shaped jaw, enabling the diver to grab bulky items. The right hand, or parallel jaw, was known as the five-pronged pretender that mimicked a human hand.
As much as Captain Toby wanted to be aboard the DSC-7 that day, his job was to feed information to the journalists who’d be selling the importance of his work to the world. Every research scientist knows the importance of raising money to keep their projects ongoing. The success of this discovery would ensure funding for his work at Woods Hole for many years.
Despite the complex technology associated with the DSC-7, its operation was remarkably simple. Descend. Monitor your gauges. Ascend following established protocols. It’s what
