” ‘Minnie the Mermaid?’ ” Giordino blurted.
DeLuca nodded. “At first, but now it sounds like John Philip Sousa marches.”
Morton’s eyes narrowed. “How could you possibly know?”
“Dirk,” Giordino said definitely. “He’s still alive.”
“Let’s hope so,” Sandecker said with mounting joy. He stared at DeLuca. “Can you still hear the music?”
“Yes, sir. Once we obtained a fix, we were able to track the source.
“It’s moving?”
“About five kilometers per hour across the bottom.”
“He and Plunkett must have survived the earthquake and escaped in Big John,” Giordino concluded.
“Have you attempted contact?” asked Sandecker of Morton.
“We’ve tried, but our systems are not designed to transmit in water deeper than a thousand meters.”
“We can contact them with the underwater phone in the submersible,” said Giordino.
“Unless…” Sandecker hesitated. He glanced at Morton. “Could you hear them if they were trying to contact a surface vessel, Commander?”
“If we can hear their music, we could hear their voice transmissions. Might be garbled and distorted, but I think our computers could piece together a coherent message.”
“Any such sounds received?”
“None,” replied Morton.
“Their phone system must be damaged,” Sandecker speculated.
“Then why are they able to transmit music?”
“An emergency amplifying system locator in case the vehicle had a breakdown,” answered Giordino. “A rescue vehicle could home in on the sound. But it wasn’t built for voice transmission or reception.”
Morton stirred in slow anger. He did not like losing control of a situation on board his own command. “May I ask who these people are in Big John, as you call it, and how they came to be traipsing over the bottom of the Pacific Ocean?”
Sandecker gave a negligent wave of his hand. “Sorry, Commander, a classified project.” He turned his attention back to DeLuca. “You say they’re on the move.”
“Yes, sir.” DeLuca pressed a series of buttons and the display recessed in the table revealed a section of the sea bottom in a three-dimensional holograph. To the men crowded around the table, it felt as though they were looking down into a submerged Grand Canyon from the top of an aquarium. The detail was enhanced by advanced computer and sonar digital mapping that showed the images in muted color heavy on blues and greens.
The Mendocino fracture zone dwarfed the famous tourist sight of northern Arizona, its steep escarpments averaging 3,000 meters high. The uneven rims along the great crack in the earth’s submarine surface were serrated with hundreds of ridges, giving it the appearance of a huge gash through a series of sand ripples.
“The latest underwater visual technology,” Morton offered proudly. “The
“Code-named The Great Karnak,” Sandecker said loftily. “Knows all, sees all. Our NUMA engineers helped develop it.”
Morton’s face, now curiously red and sullen, looked abjectly defeated in the game of one-upmanship. But he took control and made a brave comeback. “Lieutenant, show the admiral his toy in action.”
DeLuca took a short wandlike probe and traced a light beam across the floor of the display. “Your underwater vehicle emerged at this point in a small canyon just off the main fracture zone and is now traveling in a zigzag pattern up the slopes toward the top of the fracture zone’s edge.”
Giordino stared somberly at the flattened area where the mining project once stood. “Not much left of Soggy Acres,” he said sadly.
“It wasn’t built to last forever,” Sandecker consoled him. “The results more than paid for the loss.”
Without being asked, DeLuca enlarged the display until the fuzzy image of the DSMV could just be seen struggling up the side of a steep slope. “This is as sharp as I can bring her in.”
“That’s just fine,” Sandecker complimented him.
Looking at the tiny speck against the infinite desolation, it was impossible for any of them to believe there were two living, breathing men inside it. The moving projection seemed so real, they had to fight to keep from reaching out and touching it.
Their thoughts varied to the extreme. DeLuca imagined he was an astronaut peering down at life on an alien planet, while Morton was reminded of watching a truck on a highway from an aircraft flying at thirty thousand feet. Sandecker and Giordino both visualized their friend struggling against a hostile atmosphere to stay alive.
“Can’t you rescue them with your submersible?” queried Morton.
Giordino clutched the rail around the display table until his knuckles went ivory. “We can rendezvous, but neither craft has an air lock to transfer them from one to the other under tons of water pressure. If they attempted to leave Big John at that depth, they’d be squashed to a third their size.”
“What about hoisting them to the surface with a cable?”
“I don’t know of a ship equipped to carry six kilometers of cable thick enough to support its own weight and that of the DSMV.”
“The
Morton began to understand the urgency and the frustration. “I’m sorry there is nothing my crew and I can do.”
“Thank you, Commander.” Sandecker sighed heavily. “I appreciate that.”
They all stood silent for the next full minute, their eyes focused on the image of the miniature vehicle as it crept across the display like a bug climbing the side of a culvert.
“I wonder where he’s headed,” murmured DeLuca.
“What was that?” asked Sandecker as if he had suddenly awakened.
“Since I’ve been tracking him, he’s been traveling in a set direction. He’ll go into a series of switchbacks when the slope steepens, but after it flattens out again he always returns to his original course.”
Sandecker, staring at DeLuca, suddenly knew. “Dirk’s heading for high ground. Lord, I almost wrote him off without considering his intentions.”
“Plot an approximate course destination,” Morton ordered DeLuca.
DeLuca programmed his navigational computer with the data, then eyed the monitor, waiting for the compass projection. The numbers flashed almost instantly.
“Your man, Admiral, is on a course bearing three-three-four.”
“Three-three-four,” Morton repeated firmly. “Nothing ahead but dead ground.”
Giordino looked at DeLuca. “Please enlarge the sector ahead of the DSMV.”
DeLuca nodded and broadened the display area in the direction Giordino requested. “Looks pretty much the same except for a few seamounts.”
“Dirk is making for Conrow Guyot,” Giordino said flatly.
“Guyot?” asked DeLuca.
“A seamount with a smooth summit,” Sandecker explained. “A submarine volcanic mountain whose top was leveled by wave action as it slowly sank beneath the surface.”
“What’s the depth of the summit?” Giordino questioned DeLuca.
The young navigation officer pulled a chart from a cabinet under the table and spread it across the transparent top. “Conrow Guyot,” he read aloud. “Depth three hundred and ten meters.”
“How far from the DSMV?” This from Morton.
DeLuca checked the distance with a pair of dividers against a scale at the bottom of the chart. “Approximately ninety-six kilometers.”
“At eight kilometers per hour,” Giordino calculated, “then doubling the distance to allow for uneven terrain and detours around ravines, with luck they should reach the top of Conrow around this time tomorrow.”
Morton’s eyes turned skeptical. “Climbing the guyot may bring them closer to the surface, but they’ll still be three hundred meters or nearly a thousand feet short. How does this guy—?”
“His name is Dirk Pitt,” Giordino helped him.
“Okay, Pitt. How does he expect to make it topside—swim?”
