Sandecker suddenly looked wolfish. 'Sir, I have a question.'
'Go ahead.'
'May I respectfully ask just what in hell this is all about?'
It was the President's turn to look wolfish. 'You may well ask, Admiral, but all I'm going to tell you is that the scheme is crazy,' he said with an ill-boding look in his eyes. 'The craziest scheme ever hatched by a president of the United States.
The silence in the dense green depths of the St. Lawrence River was broken by a strange whirring sound. Then a thin shaft of bright bluish light sliced into the cold water, slowly increasing in dimension until it became a large rectangle. A school of curious fish, attracted by the brilliant glow, swam toward it in languid circles, seemingly uncaring of the blurred shadows that wavered above them.
Inside the huge center well of the Ocean Venturer a team of engineers readied a remote-search vehicle that hung suspended by a cable-from a small crane. One man adjusted the light source units for the three cameras while another linked up the battery power supply.
The RSV was shaped like an elongated teardrop, only three feet long and ten inches in diameter, and showed no protrusions on its smooth titanium skin. Steering and propulsion were provided by a small hydrojet pump with variable thrusters.
Heidi stood on the edge of the well opening and peered at the fish below.
'A strange feeling,' she said. 'Looking at water inside a ship and wondering why, we not sinking.'
'Because you're standing four feet above the surface,' Rudi Gunn answered her with a grin. 'So long as the river can't penetrate below the waterline, we stay afloat.'
One of the engineers waved his hand. 'It's buttoned up.'
'No umbilical cable for electronic control?' asked Heidi.
'Baby responds by remote sound impulses up to three miles under water,' explained Gunn briefly.
'You call it Baby?'
'That's because it's usually wet,' Pitt laughed.
'Men and their juvenile humor,' she said, shaking her head.
Pitt turned to the well. 'Diver in,' he ordered.
A man encased in a thermal diving suit adjusted his face mask and slipped over the side. He guided the RSV as it was lowered into the well and released it when they both had fallen below the Venturer's keel.
'Now let's move along to the control room and see what's down there,' Pitt said.
A few minutes later they were watching three different viewing screens, mounted horizontally. On the opposite side of the room several technicians studied dials and noted instrument readings on clipboards. Against another wall a bank of computers began recording the data transmissions.
A cheerful fat man with curly strawberry hair and freckles stippling his face grinned with a great flash of teeth as Pitt introduced him to Heidi.
'Doug Hoker, meet Heidi Milligan,' Pitt said, dropping Heidi's naval rank. 'Doug plays mother to Baby.'
Hoker half rose out of his chair in front of a large console and shook her hand. 'Always glad to have a beautiful audience.'
She smiled at the compliment. 'This is one opening I didn't want to miss.'
Hoker turned back to his console and immediately became all business. 'Passing eighty feet,' he droned, his right hand on an aircraft control grip. 'Water temperature thirty-four degrees.'
'Circle Baby in from the stern,' said Pitt.
'Acknowledged.'
At 165 feet the river bottom appeared on the color video screens, a drab, washed-out brown, devoid of life except for an occasional crab and scattered bits of weed. Visibility under the RSV's high-intensity lights was little more than ten feet.
Gradually a dark shape began to grow from the top of the screen, slowly enlarging until its huge pintles could be clearly seen.
'Nice sense of direction,' Pitt said to Hoker. 'You laid it dead on the rudder.'
'Something else coming up,' Gunn announced. 'The propeller, by the looks of it.'
The four great bronze blades that once had driven the 14,000ton ship from Liverpool to Quebec on many crossings moved at a funereal pace past the camera eyes of the RSV.
'About twenty feet from tip to tip,' Pitt judged. 'Must weigh at least thirty tons.'
'The Empress was a twin-screw vessel,' said Heidi softly. 'The one on the port side was salvaged in nineteen hundred and sixty-eight.
Pitt turned to Hoker. 'Come up fifty feet and travel forward along the starboard boat deck.'
Deep beneath their feet the little sub obeyed its impulse commands and swam over the stern railing, narrowly missing the staff that had once flown the ensign of the Empress' home port.
'The aft mast is down,' Pitt said in a monotone. 'The rigging appears to be gone.'
Then the boat deck came into view. A few of the davits hung empty, but some still held steel lifeboats frozen for eternity in their chocks. The ventilators stood in silent agony, their buff colored paint long flaked away, but the two funnels had vanished, fallen decades before into the silt.
No one spoke for a few minutes. It was as though they could somehow reach into the past and sense the hundreds of frightened men, women and children milling the decks in confusion, helplessly feeling the ship sink beneath them with terrible swiftness.
Heidi's heart began to pound against her breast. There was a morbid aura about the scene. Seaweed, clinging to the rust eaten hulk, swayed eerily to and fro with the current. She shivered involuntarily and clasped her hands together to keep them from trembling. Finally Pitt broke the silence. 'Take it inside.' Hoker took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the nape of his neck.
'The two upper decks have collapsed,' he murmured as if conversing in a church. 'We can't penetrate.'
Pitt spread the ship's interior drawings on a chart table and traced a line with his finger. 'Drop down to the lower promenade deck. The first-class lobby entrance should be clear.'
'Is Baby actually going to enter the ship?' Heidi asked.
'That's what it was designed for,' replied Pitt.
'All those people dead in there. Somehow it almost seems sacrilegious.'
'Men have been diving on the Empress for half a century,' Gunn said gently, as though talking to a child. 'The,museum at Rimouski is filled with artifacts taken from inside the wreck. Besides, it's imperative to see what we'll be up against when we begin cutting through-'
'I have penetration,' Hoker interrupted.
'Take it slow,' Pitt acknowledged. 'The wooden ceilings have probably fallen and clogged the passageways.'
For the next few seconds only the floating particles in the water showed on the monitors. Then the RSV's light source fell on a fan-shaped stairway. The curled lines of the banisters were still evident, held erect by sagging support columns. The Persian carpeting that had once graced the lower landing had long since rotted away, as had the chairs and sofas. 'I think I can negotiate the aft passageway,' said Hoker. 'Make entry,' Pitt instructed tersely.
The stateroom doorways marched by the cameras in wraithlike procession as the RSV threaded its way through the fallen rubble. After thirty feet the passageway looked clear and they made an inspection of a cabin. The luxurious comfort for which the ill-fated ship was famous had deteriorated into pitiful scraps. The spacious bunk- style beds and ornate dressers had long ago surrendered to the ravages of the callous waters.
The journey into time passed with agonizing slowness. It took nearly two hours for the RSV to break into a lounge area. 'Where are we?' asked Gunn.
Pitt consulted the drawings again. 'We should be coming on the entrance of the main dining saloon.'
'Yes, there it is,' Heidi pointed excitedly. 'The large doorway to the right of the screen.'
Pitt looked at Gunn. 'It's worth checking out. According to the plans, Shields' cabin lies on the deck directly below.'
The lights of the RSV played over the huge room, casting phantom shadows beyond the columns that supported the remains of the sculptured ceilings above the dining alcoves. Only the oval mirrors on the walls, their glass coated with decades of slime, bore mute testimony to the opulent decor that had once enhanced the
