Dragon

“I’m betting that weird disturbance is behind his surprise visit.”

Pitt nodded and smiled. “Then we have nothing to lose by raising the curtain for our guests.”

“Nothing,” Giordino agreed. “Once the admiral gets the story, he’ll order them kept here under guard until we wrap up the project anyway.”

Pitt began walking toward a circular doorway with Giordino at his side. Sixty years in the past, the domed chamber might have been an architect’s vision of a futuristic aircraft hangar, but this structure covered no aircraft from rain, snow, or summer sun. Its carbon and ceramic reinforced plastic walls housed deep-water craft 5,400 meters beneath the sea. Besides Old Gert, the leveled floor held an immense tractorlike vehicle with an upper body housing shaped similar to a cigar. Two smaller submersibles sat side-by-side, resembling stubby nuclear submarines whose bows and sterns had been reattached after their center sections were removed. Several men and one woman were busily servicing the vehicles.

Pitt led the way through a narrow circular tunnel that looked like an ordinary drain pipe and passed through two compartments with domed ceilings. There were no right angles or sharp corners anywhere. All interior surfaces were rounded to structurally resist the massive outside water pressure.

They entered a confined and spartan dining compartment. The one long table and its surrounding chairs were formed from aluminum, and the galley wasn’t much larger than the kitchen on an overnight passenger train. Two NUMA crewmen stood on each side of the doorway keeping a tight eye on their unwelcome guests.

Plunkett, Salazar, and Stacy were huddled at the opposite end of the table in muffled conversation when Pitt and Giordino entered. Their voices stopped abruptly, and they looked up suspiciously at the two strangers.

So he could talk with them at their own level, Pitt planted himself solidly in a nearby chair and glanced swiftly from face to face as if he was an inspector of police examining a lineup.

Then he said politely, “How do you do. My name is Dirk Pitt. I head up the project you’ve stumbled upon.”

“Thank God!” Plunkett boomed. “At last, somebody who can speak.”

“And English at that,” added Salazar.

Pitt gestured at Giordino. “Mr. Albert Giordino, chief mover and doer around here. He’ll be glad to conduct a grand tour, assign quarters, and help you with any needs in the way of clothing, toothbrushes, and whatever.”

Introductions and handshakes were traded across the table. Giordino ordered up a round of coffee, and the three visitors from Old Gert finally began to relax.

“I speak for all of us,” said Plunkett sincerely, “when I say, thank you for saving our lives.”

“Al and I are only too happy we reached you in time.”

“Your accent tells me you’re American,” said Stacy.

Pitt locked onto her eyes and gave her a devastating stare. “Yes, we’re all from the States.”

Stacy seemed to fear Pitt, as a deer fears a mountain lion, yet she was oddly attracted to him. “You’re the man I saw in the strange submersible before I passed out.”

“A DSMV,” Pitt corrected her. “Stands for Deep Sea Mining Vehicle. Everyone calls it Big John. Its purpose is to excavate geological samples from the seabed.”

“This is an American mining venture?” asked Plunkett incredulously.

Pitt nodded. “A highly classified suboceanic test mining and survey project, financed by the United States government. Eight years from the initial design through construction to start-up.”

“What do you call it?”

“There’s a fancy code word, but we affectionately refer to the place as ‘Soggy Acres.’ “

“How can it be kept a secret?” asked Salazar. “You must have a support fleet on the surface that can be easily detected by passing vessels or satellites.”

“Our little habitat is fully self-sustaining. A high-tech life-support system that draws oxygen from the sea and enables us to work under pressure equal to the air at sea level, a desalination unit for fresh drinking water, heat from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, some food from mussels, clams, shrimp, and crabs that survive around the vents, and we bathe under ultraviolet light and antiseptic showers to prevent bacteria growth. What supplies or equipment replacement parts we can’t provide on our own are dropped into the sea from the air and retrieved underwater. If it becomes necessary to transfer personnel, one of our submersibles rises to the surface where it is met by a jet-powered flying boat.”

Plunkett simply nodded. He was a man living a dream.

“You must have a unique method of communicating with the outside world,” said Salazar.

“A surface relay buoy tethered by cable. We transmit and receive via satellite. Nothing fancy but most efficient.”

“How long have you been down here?”

“We haven’t seen the sun in a little over four months.”

Plunkett stared into his coffee cup in wonder. “I had no idea your technology had developed to where you can tackle a research station this deep.”

“You might say we’re a pioneer expedition,” said Pitt proudly. “We have several projects going at the same time. Besides testing equipment, our engineers and scientists analyze the sea life, geology, and minerals on the seabed and file computerized reports of their findings. Actual dredging and mining operations come in future stages.”

“How many people in your crew?”

Pitt took a swallow of coffee before answering. “Not many. Twelve men and two women.”

“I see your women have traditional duties,” Stacy said sourly, nodding at a pretty redheaded lady in her late twenties who was dicing vegetables in the galley.

“Sarah volunteered. She also oversees our computer records, working two jobs, as do most of us.”

“I suppose the other woman doubles as your maid and equipment mechanic.”

“You’re close,” Pitt said, giving her a caustic smile. “Jill really does help out as a marine equipment engineer. She’s also our resident biologist. And if I were you, I wouldn’t lecture her on female rights on the bottom of the sea. She took first in a Miss Colorado bodybuilding competition and can bench press two hundred pounds.”

Salazar pushed his chair from the table and stretched out his feet. “I’ll wager your military is involved with the project.”

“You won’t find any uniformed rank down here,” Pitt sidestepped. “We’re all strictly scientific bureaucrats.”

“One thing I’d like you to explain,” said Plunkett, “is how you knew we were in trouble and where to find us.”

“Al and I were retracing our tracks from an earlier sample collection survey, searching for a gold-detection sensor that had somehow fallen off the Big John, when we came within range of your underwater phone.”

“We picked up your distress calls, faint as they were, and homed in to your position,” Giordino finished.

“Once we found your submersible,” Pitt continued, “Al and I couldn’t very well transport you from your vessel to our vehicle or you’d have been crushed into munchkins by the water pressure. Our only hope was to use the Big John’s manipulator arms to plug an oxygen line to your exterior emergency connector. Luckily, your adapter and ours mated perfectly.”

“Then we used both manipulator arms to lock onto your lift hooks,” Giordino came in, using his hands for effect, “and carried your sub back to our equipment chamber, entering through our pressure airlock.”

“You saved Old Gert?” inquired Plunkett, quickly becoming cheerful.

“She’s sitting in the chamber,” said Giordino.

“How soon can we be returned to our support ship?” Salazar demanded rather than asked.

“Not for some time, I’m afraid,” said Pitt.

“We’ve got to let our support crew know we’re alive,” Stacy protested. “Surely you can contact them?”

Pitt exchanged a taut look with Giordino. “On our way to rescue you, we passed a badly damaged ship that had recently fallen to the bottom.”

“No, not the Invincible,” Stacy murmured, unbelieving.

“She was badly broken up, as though she suffered from a heavy explosion,” replied Giordino. “I doubt there were any survivors.”

“Two other ships were nearby when we started our dive,” Plunkett pleaded. “She must have been one of them.”