Cyclops (Dirk Pitt 8)

On opposite sides of the compass, covered over by a colony of sponges that turned vivid red under Pitt's light, were two postlike objects that rose from the deck and fanned out at the top. Curious, Pitt wiped the growth from the port one, revealing a glass face, through which he could barely make out the words AHEAD FULL, HALF, SLOW, DEAD SLOW, STOP, and FINISHED WITH ENGINES. It was the bridge telegraph to the engine room. He noted that the brass arrow was pointing to FULL. He floated over and cleaned the glass on the starboard telegraph. The pointer was locked on FINISHED

WITH ENGINES.

Jessie was about eight feet behind Pitt when she let out a garbled scream that lifted the hair on the nape of his neck. He spun around, half thinking she was being dragged away by a shark, but she was gesturing frantically at a pair of objects protruding from the silt.

Two human skulls, muck up to their nose openings, stared through empty eye sockets. They give Pitt the disconcerting feeling he was being watched. The bones of another crewman rested against the base of the helm, one skeletal arm still wedged between the spokes o

f the wheel. Pitt wondered if one of them might be the pitiful remains of Captain Worley.

There was nothing else to see, so Pitt led Jessie outside the wheelhouse and down a companionway to the crew and passenger quarters. At almost the same time, Gunn and Giordino disappeared down a hatch leading to a small cargo hold.

The layer of silt was shallow in this section of the ship, no more than an inch deep. The companionway led to a long passageway with small compartments off to the sides. Each one contained bunks, porcelain sinks, scattered personal effects, and the skeletal relics of their occupants. Pitt soon lost count of the dead. He paused and added air to his buoyancy compensator to keep his body balanced in a freefloating, horizontal position. The slightest touch from his fins would stir up large clouds of blinding silt.

Pitt tapped Jessie on the shoulder and shone his light into a small head with a bathtub and two toilets.

He made a questioning gesture. She grinned around her mouthpiece and made a comical but negative reply.

He accidentally struck his dive light against a steampipe running along the ceiling and momentarily knocked the switch into the Off position. The sudden realm of utter darkness was as total and stifling as if they were dropped into a coffin and the lid slammed shut. Pitt had no wish to remain surrounded by eternal black within the grave of the Cyclops, and he quickly flicked on the light again, exposing a brilliant yellow and red sponge colony that clung to the bulkheads of the passageway.

It soon became obvious they would find no evidence of the La Dorada statue here. They made their way back through the passageway of death and resurfaced on the forecastle deck. Giordino was waiting and motioned toward a hatch that was frozen half open. Pitt squeezed through, clanging his air tanks on the frame, and dropped down a badly eroded ladder.

He swam through what looked like a baggage cargo hold, twisting around the jumbled and decayed rubbish, heading toward the unearthly glow of Gunn's dive light. A pile of unhinged bones passed under him, the jaw of the skull gaping in what seemed in Pitt's imagination a ghastly scream of terror.

He found Gunn intently examining the rotting interior of a large shipping crate. The grisly skeletal remains of two men were wedged between the crate and a bulkhead.

For a brief instant Pitt's heart pounded with excitement and anticipation, his mind certain they had found the most priceless treasure of the sea. Then Gunn looked up, and Pitt saw the bitter disappointment reflected in his eyes.

The crate was empty.

A frustrating search of the cargo hold turned up a startling revelation. Lying in the dark shadows like a collapsed rubber doll was a deep-sea diving suit. The arms were outstretched, the feet encased in Frankenstein-style weighted boots. A tarnished brass diving helmet and breastplate covered the head and neck. Curled off to the side like a dead gray snake was the umbilical line that contained the air hose and lifeline cable. They were severed about six feet from the helmet couplings.

The layer of silt and slime on the diving outfit indicated it had lain there for many years. Pitt removed a knife strapped to his right calf and used it to pry loose the wing nut clamping the helmet's faceplate. It gave slowly at first and then loosened enough to be removed by his fingers. He pulled the faceplate open and aimed the beam of the dive light inside. Protected from the ravages of destructive sea life by the rubber suit and the helmet's safety valves, the head still retained hair and remnants of flesh.

Pitt and his party were not the first to have probed the gruesome secrets of the Cyclops. Someone else had already come and gone with the La Dorada treasure.

Pitt checked his old Doxa watch and calculated their decompression stops. He added an extra minute to each stop as a safety margin to eliminate the gas bubbles from their blood and tissues and prevent the agony of diver's bends.

After leaving the Cyclops, they had exchanged the nearly empty air cylinders for their reserve supply stashed beside the control car and began their slow rise to the surface. A few feet away, Gunn and Giordino added air to their buoyancy compensators to maintain the required depth while handling the cumbersome bundle.

Below them in the watery gloom, the Cyclops lay desolate and cursed to oblivion. Before another decade passed, her rusting walls would begin to collapse inward, and a century later the restless sea floor would cover her pitiful remains under a shroud of silt, leaving only a few pieces of coral-encrusted debris to mark her grave.

Above them, the surface was a turmoil of quicksilver. At the next decompression stop, they began to feel the crushing momentum from the mountainous swells and fought to hang in the void together. There was no thought of a stop at the twenty-foot level. Their air supply was almost exhausted and only death by drowning waited in the depths. They had no alternative but to surface and take their chances in the tempest above.

Jessie seemed composed and unshaken. Pitt realized that she didn't suspect the danger on the surface.

Her only thoughts were of seeing the sky again.

Pitt made one final check of the time and motioned upward with his thumb. They began to ascend as one, Jessie hanging on to Pitt's leg, Gunn and Giordino dragging the bundle. The light increased and when Pitt looked up he was surprised to see a whorl of foam only a few feet above his head.

He surfaced in a trough and was lifted by a vast sloping wall of green that carried him up and over the crest of a high wave as lightly as a bathtub toy. The wind shrieked in his ears and sea spray lashed his cheeks. He pulled up his mask and blinked his eyes. The sky to the east was filled with dark swirling clouds, dark as charcoal as they soared over the gray-green sea. The speed of the approaching storm was uncanny. It seemed to be leaping from one horizon to the next.

Jessie popped up beside him and stared through wide stricken eyes at the blackening overcast bearing down on them. She spit out her mouthpiece."What is it?"

"The hurricane," Pitt shouted over the wind. "It's coming faster than anyone thought."

"Oh, God!" she gasped.