At 12,375 feet the sea floor came into view, moving up to meet the Sea Slug as though she were standing still. Pitt turned on the propulsion motors and adjusted the altitude angle, gently stopping the Sea Slug's descent and turning her on a level course across the bleak red clay that carpeted the ocean floor.
Gradually, the ominous silence was broken by the rhythmic hum that came from the Sea Slug's electric motors. At first, Pitt had difficulty distinguishing rises and gradual drops on the bottom; there was nothing to indicate a three-dimensional scale. His eyes saw only a flatness that stretched beyond the reach of the lights.
There was no life to be seen. And yet, evidence proved otherwise. Scattering tracks from the depth's habitants meandered and zig-zagged in every direction through the sediment. One might have guessed that they were made only recently, but the sea can be misleading. The footprints from deep-dwelling sea spiders, sea cucumbers, or starfish might have been made several minutes ago or hundreds of years past, because the microscopic animal and plant remains that comprise the deep-ocean ooze filters down from above at the rate of only one or two centimeters every thousand years.
"There's a lovely creature," Giordino said pointing.
Pitt's eye followed Giordino's finger and picked out a strange blue-black animal that seemed a cross between a squid and an octopus. It had eight tentacles linked together like the webbed foot of a duck, and it stared back at the Sea Slug through two large globular eyes that formed nearly a third of its body.
"A vampire squid," Gunn informed them.
"Ask her if she's got relatives in Transylvania?" Giordino grinned.
"You know," Pitt said, "that thing out there sort of reminds me of your girl friend."
Gunn jumped in. "You mean the one with no boobs?"
"You've seen her?"
"Rave on, envious rabble," Giordino grumbled. "She's mad about me and her father keeps me floating in quality booze."
"Some quality," Pitt snorted. "Old Cesspool Bourbon, Attila the Hun Gin, Tijuana Vodka. Who the hell ever heard of those labels?"
Throughout the next few hours, the wit and the sarcasm bounced off the walls of the Sea Slug. Actually, it was put on; a defense mechanism to relieve the gnawing pangs of monotony. Unlike romanticized fiction, wreck-hunting in the depths can be a grueling and tedious job. Add to that the aggravated discomfort of the cramped quarters, the high humidity and chilling temperatures inside the submersible, and you have the ingredients for provoking an accident through human error that could prove both costly and fatal.
Pitt's hands stayed rock-steady as they handled the controls, guiding the Sea Slug a scant four feet above the bottom. Giordino's concentration was nailed to the life support systems, while Gunn kept his eyes skinned on the sonar and magnetometer. The long hours of planning were over. It was now a case of patience and persistence, mixed with that peculiar blend of eternal optimism and love of the unknown shared by all treasure seekers.
"Looks like a pile of rocks up ahead," Pitt said.
Giordino stared up through the viewports. "They're just sitting there in the ooze. I wonder where they came from."
"Perhaps ballast thrown overboard from an old windjammer."
"More likely came from icebergs," Gunn said. "Many rocks and bits of debris are carried over the sea and then dropped to the floor when the icebergs melt-" Gunn broke off in the middle of his lecture. "Hold on . . . I'm getting a strong response on the sonar. Now the magnetometer is picking it up, too."
"Where away?" Pitt asked.
"On a heading of one-three-seven."
"One-three-seven it is," Pitt repeated. He swept the Sea Slug into a graceful bank, as though she was an airplane, and headed on the new course. Giordino peered intently over Gunn's shoulder at the green circles of light on the sonarscope. ''A small dot of pulsating brightness indicated a solid object three hundred yards beyond their range of vision.
"Don't get your hopes up," Gunn said quietly. "The target reads too small for a ship."
"What do you make of it?"
"Hard to say. No more than twenty or twenty-five feet in length, about two stories high. Might be anything . . . ."
"Or it might be one of the Titanic's boilers," Pitt cut in. "The sea floor should be littered with them."
"You move to the head of the class," Gunn said, excitement creeping into his tone. "I have an identical reading, bearing one-one-five. And here comes another at one-six-zero. The last has an indicated length of approximately seventy feet."
"Sounds like one of her smokestacks," Pitt said.
"Lord!" Gunn murmured hoarsely. "It's beginning to read like a junkyard down here."
Suddenly, in the gloom at the outer edge of the blackness, a rounded object became visible, haloed in the eerie light like an immense tombstone. Soon the three pairs of eyes inside the submersible could distinguish the furnace gratings of the great boiler, and then the row upon row of rivets along the iron seams and the torn, jagged tentacles of what was left of its steam tubing.
"How would you like to have been a stoker in those days and fed that baby?" Giordino muttered.