From his position in front of the DSMV, all Sandecker could see was a yawning black hole in the cargo deck. A thousand meters below, the sea was sprinkled in silver from the moon. He would have preferred a daylight drop with no wind and a flat sea, but he felt lucky there was no typhoon.
"Twenty seconds and counting." The pilot began the countdown.
Pitt gave a brief wave through the transparent bow of the great vehicle. If he was concerned, no trace of it showed on his face. Giordino still beat on the door of the toilet in a rage of frustration, but the sounds were drowned by the wind howling through the cargo bay.
"Five, four, three, two, one, drop!"
The forward ends of the big rails were raised suddenly by hydraulic pumps, and Big Ben slid backward and through the opening into the darkness in a movement lasting only three seconds.
Sandecker and the crewmen were temporarily stunned at seeing the thirty-ton behemoth disappear so smoothly out of sight. They cautiously moved to the edge of the deck and gazed behind and below.
The great mass of the DSMV could just be seen in the moonlight, hurtling toward the sea like a meteor from space.
The multiple chute system automatically derigged, the night air tugging fiercely as three huge canopies streamed into the dark sky. Then they filled and burst open, and the monster vehicle slowed its express-train descent and began drifting at greatly reduced speed toward the waves.
Pitt looked up at the reassuring spectacle and began to breathe more easily. First hurdle behind, he thought. Now all the DSMV had to do was strike the sea on an even keel and fall through 320 meters of water without mishap before landing on the seafloor in one piece, right side up. This part of the operation, he reflected, was entirely beyond his control. He could do nothing but sit back and enjoy the ride with a small degree of trepidation.
He looked upward and easily distinguished the C-5 Galaxy under t
he light from the moon as it slowly circled the DSMV. He wondered if Sandecker had released Giordino from the toilet. He could well imagine his friend turning the air blue with choice expletives.
God, how long ago was it when he and the N U MA team set up housekeeping in Soggy Acres?
Three months, four? It seemed an eternity. And yet the disaster that destroyed the deepsea station seemed like yesterday.
He stared up at the parachutes again and wondered if they would provide the necessary drag through water as they did in air.
The engineers who dreamed up this insane mission must have thought so. But they were thousands of miles from where Pitt was sitting, and all they relied on were a lot of formulas and physical laws governing the fall of heavy objects. There were no experiments with models or a full-scale test drop. It was win in one quick gamble or lose at Pitt's expense if they miscalculated.
Judging distance above water is extremely difficult by day and almost impossible at night, but Pitt caught the moonlit sparkle of spray tossed from the wave crests by the light breeze. Impact was less than fifteen seconds away, he judged. He reclined his seat and settled into the extra padding some thoughtful soul had provided. He gave a final wave at the circling aircraft, stupidly he realized. They were too far away to make him out in the darkness. The pilot was maintaining a safe distance to keep Pitt's canopies free of turbulence from the plane.
The sudden jarring impact was followed by a great splash as the DSMV struck in the trough between two swells. The vehicle carved a sizable crater in the sea, throwing up a circular wall of water in a blazing display of phosphorescence. Then it sank out of view and the sea closed over Big Ben as if healing a giant pockmark.
The blow was not as bad as Pitt had expected. He and Big Ben had survived the parachute drop without a bruise or a fracture. He returned his seat to the upright position and immediately began a check of all his power systems, considerably happy to see green lights sweep across the instrument console while the computer monitor reported no malfunctions. Next he switched on the exterior lights and swiveled them upward. Two of the parachutes had remained flared, but the third was twisted and tangled in its own shroud lines.
Pitt quickly turned his attention to the computer screen as he punched the appropriate keys to monitor his descent. The numbers traveled across the screen and flashed a warning. The DSMV was dropping into the black void at sixty-one meters per minute. The maximum descent speed had been calculated at forty-two. Big Ben was falling nineteen meters a minute too fast.
"Too busy to talk?" Sandecker's voice came slurred through Pitt's earphones.
"I have a small problem," Pitt replied.
"The parachutes?" Sandecker asked, fearful of the answer.
"One of the chutes tangled and I've lost drag."
"What's your descent speed?"
"Sixty-one."
"Not good."
"Tell me about it."
"The event was considered. Your landing site was selected because the terrain is flat and layered with soft sediment. Despite your excessive rate of descent, impact will be less than what you encountered on the water surface."
"I'm not worried about impact," Pitt said, warily eyeballing the TV monitor whose camera was aimed below the rapidly sinking DSMV. "But I am worried about a thirty-ton machine burying itself in ten meters of ooze. Without a scoop Big Ben can't dig its way out of the muck like Big John."