past the direct glare reflected the light for several feet above and below the area around the viewport. Turning his face so as not to fog the thick Plexiglas, Giordino expelled a heavy sigh and then leaned back against the soft padding of the pilot's chair. It was nearly a full minute before he bent over the control console and began bringing the silent craft to life again. He studied the rows of dials until the wavering needles were calibrated to his satisfaction, and he scanned the circuit lights, making certain they all blinked out their green message of safe operation before he re-engaged the electrical systems of the Sappho I.
He swung the chair and gazed idly down the center passageway toward the stern. It might have been the newest and largest research submersible in the world to the National Underwater and Marine Agency, but, to Al Giordino, the first time he set eyes on it, the general design looked like a giant cigar on an ice skate.
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
