looked as if he were assembled out of spare bulldozer parts. His hair was dark and curly, an inheritance from Italian ancestry, and if he had worn a bandanna and an earring he could have moonlighted as an organ-grinder. Dry- humored, steadfast and reliable as the tides, Giordino was Pitts insurance policy against Murphy's Law.
His concentration never flickered while Pitt, feet extended as bumpers, came to an abrupt stop against the console beside him.
Pitt watched the computer-enhanced sonograph as the ridge of a crater slowly rose to a crest and then made a steep descent into the interior void.
'She's dropping fast,' said Giordino.
Pitt glanced at the echo sounder. 'Down from 140 to 180 meters. '
'Hardly any slope to the outer rim.'
'Two hundred and still falling.'
'Weird formation for a volcano,' said Giordino. 'No sign of lava rock.'
A tall, florid-faced man with thick graying brown hair that struggled to escape from a baseball cap tilted toward the back of his head, opened the door and leaned in the compartment.
'You night owls in the mood for food or drink?'
'Peanut-butter sandwich and a cup of black coffee sounds good,' Pitt replied without turning. 'Leveling out at 220 meters. '
'A couple of doughnuts with milk,' Giordino answered.
Navy Commander Byron Knight, skipper of the survey vessel, nodded.
Besides Pitt and Giordino, he was the only man with access to the electronics compartment. It was off limits to the rest of the officers and crew.
'I'll have your orders rustled up from the galley.'
'You're a wonderful human being, Byron,' Pitt said with a sarcastic smile. 'I don't care what the rest of the navy says about you.'
'You ever try Peanut butter with arsenic?' Knight threw at him over his shoulder.
Giordino watched intently as the arc of the formation spread and widened. 'Diameter almost two kilometers.'
'Interior is smooth sediment,' said Pitt. 'No breakup of the floor.'
'Must have been one gigantic volcano.'
'Not a volcano.'
Giordino faced Pitt, a curious look in his eyes. 'You have another name for a submerged pockmark?'
'How about meteor impact?'
Giordino looked skeptical. 'A meteor crater this deep on the sea bottom?'
'Probably struck thousands, maybe millions of years ago, at a time when the sea level was lower.'
'What led you up that street?'
'Three clues,' Pitt explained. 'First, we have a well defined rim without a prominent outer upsiope. Second, the subbottom profiler indicates a bowl-shaped cross section. And third' he paused, pointing at a stylus that was making furious sweeps across a roll of graph paper.
'The magnetometer is having a spasm. There's enough iron down there to build a fleet of battleships.'
Suddenly Giordino stiffened. 'We have a target!'
'Where?'
'Two hundred meters to starboard, lying perpendicular on the crater's slope. Pretty vague reading. The object is partly obscured by the geology.'
Pitt snatched the phone and rang the bridge. 'We've had a malfunction in the equipment. Continue our heading to the end of the run. If we can make the repair in time, come around and repeat the track.'
'Will do, sir,' replied the watch officer.
'You should have sold snake oil,' said Giordino, smiling.
'No telling the size of Soviet ears.'
'Anything from the video cameras?'
Pitt glanced at the monitors. 'Just out of range. They should pick it up on the next pass.'
The initial sonar image that appeared on the recording paper looked like a brown smudge against the lighter geology of the crater's wall. Then it slipped past the sidescan's viewing window and disappeared into a computer that enhanced the detail. The finished picture came out on a special large high-resolution color video monitor. The smudge had become a well defined shape.
Using a joystick, Pitt moved a pair of crosshairs to the center of the image and clicked the button to expand the image.
The computer churned away for a few seconds, and then a new, larger, even more detailed image appeared on the screen. A rectangle automatically appeared around the target and showed the dimensions. At the same time another machine reproduced the color image on a sheet of glossy paper.
commander Knight came rushing back into the compartment. After days of tedium, cruising back and forth as though mowing a vast lawn, staring for hours on end at the video display and sidescan readings, he was galvanized, anticipation written in every line of his face.
'I was given your message about a malfunction. You have a target?'
