Dragon - Cussler Clive - Страница 24

“It wasn’t built to last forever,” Sandecker consoled him. “The results more than paid for the loss.”

Without being asked, DeLuca enlarged the display until the fuzzy image of the DSMV could just be seen struggling up the side of a steep slope. “This is as sharp as I can bring her in.”

“That’s just fine,” Sandecker complimented him.

Looking at the tiny speck against the infinite desolation, it was impossible for any of them to believe there were two living, breathing men inside it. The moving projection seemed so real, they had to fight to keep from reaching out and touching it.

Their thoughts varied to the extreme. DeLuca imagined he was an astronaut peering down at life on an alien planet, while Morton was reminded of watching a truck on a highway from an aircraft flying at thirty thousand feet. Sandecker and Giordino both visualized their friend struggling against a hostile atmosphere to stay alive.

“Can’t you rescue them with your submersible?” queried Morton.

Giordino clutched the rail around the display table until his knuckles went ivory. “We can rendezvous, but neither craft has an air lock to transfer them from one to the other under tons of water pressure. If they attempted to leave Big John at that depth, they’d be squashed to a third their size.”

“What about hoisting them to the surface with a cable?”

“I don’t know of a ship equipped to carry six kilometers of cable thick enough to support its own weight and that of the DSMV.”

“The Glomar Explorer could do it,” said Sandecker. “But she’s on an oil drilling job off Argentina. Impossible for her to cut off operations, re-equip, and get here inside of four weeks.”

Morton began to understand the urgency and the frustration. “I’m sorry there is nothing my crew and I can do.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Sandecker sighed heavily. “I appreciate that.”

They all stood silent for the next full minute, their eyes focused on the image of the miniature vehicle as it crept across the display like a bug climbing the side of a culvert.

“I wonder where he’s headed,” murmured DeLuca.

“What was that?” asked Sandecker as if he had suddenly awakened.

“Since I’ve been tracking him, he’s been traveling in a set direction. He’ll go into a series of switchbacks when the slope steepens, but after it flattens out again he always returns to his original course.”

Sandecker, staring at DeLuca, suddenly knew. “Dirk’s heading for high ground. Lord, I almost wrote him off without considering his intentions.”

“Plot an approximate course destination,” Morton ordered DeLuca.

DeLuca programmed his navigational computer with the data, then eyed the monitor, waiting for the compass projection. The numbers flashed almost instantly.

“Your man, Admiral, is on a course bearing three-three-four.”

“Three-three-four,” Morton repeated firmly. “Nothing ahead but dead ground.”

Giordino looked at DeLuca. “Please enlarge the sector ahead of the DSMV.”

DeLuca nodded and broadened the display area in the direction Giordino requested. “Looks pretty much the same except for a few seamounts.”

“Dirk is making for Conrow Guyot,” Giordino said flatly.

“Guyot?” asked DeLuca.

“A seamount with a smooth summit,” Sandecker explained. “A submarine volcanic mountain whose top was leveled by wave action as it slowly sank beneath the surface.”

“What’s the depth of the summit?” Giordino questioned DeLuca.

The young navigation officer pulled a chart from a cabinet under the table and spread it across the transparent top. “Conrow Guyot,” he read aloud. “Depth three hundred and ten meters.”

“How far from the DSMV?” This from Morton.

DeLuca checked the distance with a pair of dividers against a scale at the bottom of the chart. “Approximately ninety-six kilometers.”

“At eight kilometers per hour,” Giordino calculated, “then doubling the distance to allow for uneven terrain and detours around ravines, with luck they should reach the top of Conrow around this time tomorrow.”

Morton’s eyes turned skeptical. “Climbing the guyot may bring them closer to the surface, but they’ll still be three hundred meters or nearly a thousand feet short. How does this guy—?”

“His name is Dirk Pitt,” Giordino helped him.

“Okay, Pitt. How does he expect to make it topside—swim?”

“Not from that depth,” said Sandecker promptly. “Big John is pressurized to one atmosphere, the same as we’re standing in at sea level. The outside water pressure down there is thirty-three times heavier. Even if we could supply them with high-tech dive gear and a helium-oxygen gas mixture for deep-water breathing, their chances are nil.”

“If the sudden increase in pressure as they left Big John didn’t kill them,” Giordino added, “decompression sickness on the way to the surface would.”

“So what does Pitt have up his sleeve?” Morton persisted.

Giordino’s eyes seemed to peer at something beyond the r head. “I don’t have the answer, but I suspect we’d better t of one damn quick.”

16

THE STERILE GRAY expanse gave way to a forest of oddly sculptured vents protruding from the seafloor. They rose like distorted chimneys and spouted hot-365 Celsius-clouds of black steam that was quickly smothered by the cold ocean.

“Black smokers,” announced Plunkett, identifying them under the probing lights of Big John.

“They’ll be surrounded by communities of sea creatures,” Pitt said without removing his eyes from the navigational display on his control monitor. “We charted over a dozen of them during our mining surveys.”

“You’d better swing clear. I’d hate to see this brute run over them.”

Pitt smiled and took manual control, turning the DSMV to avoid the strange colony of exotic sea life that thrived without sunlight. It was like a lush oasis in the desert, covering nearly a square kilometer of seafloor. The wide tracks of the intruding monster skirted the spewing vents and the entwining thickets of giant tube worms that gently leaned with the current as though they were marsh reeds swaying under a breeze.

Plunkett gazed in awe at the hollow stalks as the worms inside poked their delicate pink and burgundy plumes into the black water. “Some of them must be a good three meters in length!” he exclaimed.

Also scattered around the vents and the tube worms were huge white mussels and clams of varieties Plunkett had never seen before. Lemon-colored creatures that looked like puff balls and were related to jellyfish mingled with spiny white crabs and bluish shrimp. None of them required photosynthesis to survive. They were nourished by bacteria that converted the hydrogen sulfide and oxygen overflow from the vents into organic nutrients. If the sun was suddenly snuffed out, these creatures in their pitch-black environment would continue to exist while all other life forms above them became extinct.

He tried to etch the image of the different vent inhabitants in his brain as they disappeared into the silt cloud trailing behind, but he couldn’t concentrate. Sealed tight in the lonely cabin of the mining vehicle, Plunkett experienced a tremendous wave of emotion as he stared into the alien world. No stranger to the abyssal deep, he suddenly felt as isolated as an astronaut lost beyond the galaxy.

Pitt took only a few glimpses of the incredible scene outside. He had no time for distractions. His eyes and reflexes depended on his reaction to the dangers shown on the monitor. Twice he almost lost Big John in gaping fissures, stopping at the brink of one with less than a meter to spare. The rugged terrain often proved as impassable as a Hawaiian lava bed, and he had to rapidly program the computer to chart the least treacherous detour.

He had to be especially careful of landslide zones and canyon rims that could not support the vehicle. Once he was forced to circle a small but active volcano whose molten lava poured through a long crack and down the slope before turning solid under the frigid water. He steered around scarred pits and tall cones and across wide craters, every type of texture and contour one would expect to find on Mars.