"Sonar has a strange contact. I'd like them to make a pass over it." Gunn looked at him. "Think our callers might be back?"
"The reading is doubtful," Pitt shrugged. "But then, you never know."
As soon as he dropped over the side of the barge, Foss Gly swam straight to the bottom. Dragging an extra set of air tanks with him wasn't the easiest of chores, but he would need them for the return trip and the necessary decompression stops before he could resurface. He leveled off and hugged the riverbed, kicking his flippers with a lazy rhythm. He had a long way to go and much to do.
He had traveled only fifty meters when he heard a sustained droning coming from somewhere in the black void. He froze, listening.
The acoustics of the water scattered the sound and there was no way his ears could accurately detect the direction of the source. Then his eyes distinguished a dim yellow glow that grew and expanded above and to his right. There was no uncertainty in his mind. The Ocean Venturer's manned submersible was homing in on him.
There was no place to hide on the flat and barren riverbed, no rock formations, no forest of kelp to shield him. Once the submersible high-intensity beam picked him out, he would become as conspicuous as an escaping convict flattened against a prison wall under the harsh glare of a spotlight.
He dropped the spare air tanks and pressed his body into the silt, imagining the crew's faces pressed against the viewing ports, eyes trying to pierce the unending darkness. He held his breath so no telltale air bubbles would issue from his regulator.
The craft passed behind him and moved on. Gly inhaled a great breath, but didn't congratulate himself.
He knew the crew would double back and keep looking.
Then he realized why he'd been missed. The silt had billowed up and clouded his figure. He lashed out with his fins and watched with relief as the submersible's light became lost in a great swirl of sediment. He grabbed up handfuls and waved the ooze about him. Within seconds he was totally cloaked. He switched on his diving light, but the floating muck reflected its ray. If he was blind, so were the men inside the submersible.
He groped around until his hands touched the spare air tanks. He checked his luminous wrist compass for the direction of the Empress and started to swim, stirring up the bottom in his wake.
"Klinger reporting in from the Sappho," said Gunn.
Pitt stepped back from the monitors. "Let me talk to him."
Gunn pulled off the headset and held it out. Pitt adjusted it to his head and spoke into the tiny microphone.
"Klinger, this is Pitt. What did you find?"
"Some sort of disturbance on the riverbed," Klinger's voice came back.
"Could you make out the cause?"
"Negative," Klinger repeated. "Whatever it was must have sunk in the silt."
Pitt looked over at the side-scan sonar. "Any contacts?"
The operator shook his head. "Except for a cloudlike smudge this side of the sub, the chart reads clear."
"Shall we return and give a hand with the salvage?" asked Klinger.
Pitt subsided into momentary silence. Oddly, Klinger's query annoyed him. Deep down inside he felt that an indefinable something was being overlooked.
Cold logic dictated that the human mind was far less infallible than machines. If the instruments detected nothing, then chances were, nothing was there to detect. Against his own nagging doubts, Pitt acknowledged Klinger's request.
"Klinger."
"Go ahead."
"Come on back, but take it slow and run a zigzag course."
"Understood. We'll keep a sharp eye. Sappho out."
Pitt handed the communications link back to Gunn. "How's it going?"
"Beautifully," replied Gunn. "See for yourself."
The clearing of the gallery was proceeding at a furious rate, or as furiously as was possible under the glue like hindrance of deepwater pressure. The team of divers from the saturation chamber sliced away at the smaller pieces of scrap, working with acetylene torches and hydraulic cutters. Two of them propped up the teetering bulkheads with aluminum support pillars to prevent a cave-in.