Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

The silence in the dense green depths of the St. Lawrence River was broken by a strange whirring sound. Then a thin shaft of bright bluish light sliced into the cold water, slowly increasing in dimension until it became a large rectangle. A school of curious fish, attracted by the brilliant glow, swam toward it in languid circles, seemingly uncaring of the blurred shadows that wavered above them.

Inside the huge center well of the Ocean Venturer a team of engineers readied a remote-search vehicle that hung suspended by a cable--from a small crane. One man adjusted the light source units for the three cameras while another linked up the battery power supply.

The RSV was shaped like an elongated teardrop, only three feet long and ten inches in diameter, and showed no protrusions on its smooth titanium skin. Steering and propulsion were provided by a small hydrojet pump with variable thrusters.

Heidi stood on the edge of the well opening and peered at the fish below.

"A strange feeling," she said. "Looking at water inside a ship and wondering why, we not sinking."

"Because you're standing four feet above the surface," Rudi Gunn answered her with a grin. "So long as the river can't penetrate below the waterline, we stay afloat."

One of the engineers waved his hand. "It's buttoned up."

"No umbilical cable for electronic control?" asked Heidi.

"Baby responds by remote sound impulses up to three miles under water," explained Gunn briefly.

"You call it Baby?"

"That's because it's usually wet," Pitt laughed.

"Men and their juvenile humor," she said, shaking her head.

Pitt turned to the well. "Diver in," he ordered.

A man encased in a thermal diving suit adjusted his face mask and slipped over the side. He guided the RSV as it was lowered into the well and released it when they both had fallen below the Venturer's keel.

"Now let's move along to the control room and see what's down there," Pitt said.

A few minutes later they were watching three different viewing screens, mounted horizontally. On the opposite side of the room several technicians studied dials and noted instrument readings on clipboards.

Against another wall a bank of computers began recording the data transmissions.

A cheerful fat man with curly strawberry hair and freckles stippling his face grinned with a great flash of teeth as Pitt introduced him to Heidi.

"Doug Hoker, meet Heidi Milligan," Pitt said, dropping Heidi's naval rank. "Doug plays mother to Baby."

Hoker half rose out of his chair in front of a large console and shook her hand. "Always glad to have a beautiful audience."

She smiled at the compliment. "This is one opening I didn't want to miss."

Hoker turned back to his console and immediately became all business. "Passing eighty feet," he droned, his right hand on an aircraft control grip. "Water temperature thirty-four degrees."

"Circle Baby in from the stern," said Pitt.

"Acknowledged."

At 165 feet the river bottom appeared on the color video screens, a drab, washed-out brown, devoid of life except for an occasional crab and scattered bits of weed. Visibility under the RSV's high-intensity lights was little more than ten feet.

Gradually a dark shape began to grow from the top of the screen, slowly enlarging until its huge pintles could be clearly seen.

"Nice sense of direction," Pitt said to Hoker. "You laid it dead on the rudder."

"Something else coming up," Gunn announced. "The propeller, by the looks of it."

The four great bronze blades that once had driven the 14,000ton ship from Liverpool to Quebec on many crossings moved at a funereal pace past the camera eyes of the RSV.

"About twenty feet from tip to tip," Pitt judged. "Must weigh at least thirty tons."