Dragon - Cussler Clive. Страница 14

“I speak for all of us,” said Plunkett sincerely, “when I say, thank you for saving our lives.”

“Al and I are only too happy we reached you in time.”

“Your accent tells me you’re American,” said Stacy.

Pitt locked onto her eyes and gave her a devastating stare. “Yes, we’re all from the States.”

Stacy seemed to fear Pitt, as a deer fears a mountain lion, yet she was oddly attracted to him. “You’re the man I saw in the strange submersible before I passed out.”

“A DSMV,” Pitt corrected her. “Stands for Deep Sea Mining Vehicle. Everyone calls it Big John. Its purpose is to excavate geological samples from the seabed.”

“This is an American mining venture?” asked Plunkett incredulously.

Pitt nodded. “A highly classified suboceanic test mining and survey project, financed by the United States government. Eight years from the initial design through construction to start-up.”

“What do you call it?”

“There’s a fancy code word, but we affectionately refer to the place as ‘Soggy Acres.’ “

“How can it be kept a secret?” asked Salazar. “You must have a support fleet on the surface that can be easily detected by passing vessels or satellites.”

“Our little habitat is fully self-sustaining. A high-tech life-support system that draws oxygen from the sea and enables us to work under pressure equal to the air at sea level, a desalination unit for fresh drinking water, heat from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, some food from mussels, clams, shrimp, and crabs that survive around the vents, and we bathe under ultraviolet light and antiseptic showers to prevent bacteria growth. What supplies or equipment replacement parts we can’t provide on our own are dropped into the sea from the air and retrieved underwater. If it becomes necessary to transfer personnel, one of our submersibles rises to the surface where it is met by a jet-powered flying boat.”

Plunkett simply nodded. He was a man living a dream.

“You must have a unique method of communicating with the outside world,” said Salazar.

“A surface relay buoy tethered by cable. We transmit and receive via satellite. Nothing fancy but most efficient.”

“How long have you been down here?”

“We haven’t seen the sun in a little over four months.”

Plunkett stared into his coffee cup in wonder. “I had no idea your technology had developed to where you can tackle a research station this deep.”

“You might say we’re a pioneer expedition,” said Pitt proudly. “We have several projects going at the same time. Besides testing equipment, our engineers and scientists analyze the sea life, geology, and minerals on the seabed and file computerized reports of their findings. Actual dredging and mining operations come in future stages.”

“How many people in your crew?”

Pitt took a swallow of coffee before answering. “Not many. Twelve men and two women.”

“I see your women have traditional duties,” Stacy said sourly, nodding at a pretty redheaded lady in her late twenties who was dicing vegetables in the galley.

“Sarah volunteered. She also oversees our computer records, working two jobs, as do most of us.”

“I suppose the other woman doubles as your maid and equipment mechanic.”

“You’re close,” Pitt said, giving her a caustic smile. “Jill really does help out as a marine equipment engineer. She’s also our resident biologist. And if I were you, I wouldn’t lecture her on female rights on the bottom of the sea. She took first in a Miss Colorado bodybuilding competition and can bench press two hundred pounds.”

Salazar pushed his chair from the table and stretched out his feet. “I’ll wager your military is involved with the project.”

“You won’t find any uniformed rank down here,” Pitt sidestepped. “We’re all strictly scientific bureaucrats.”

“One thing I’d like you to explain,” said Plunkett, “is how you knew we were in trouble and where to find us.”

“Al and I were retracing our tracks from an earlier sample collection survey, searching for a gold-detection sensor that had somehow fallen off the Big John, when we came within range of your underwater phone.”

“We picked up your distress calls, faint as they were, and homed in to your position,” Giordino finished.

“Once we found your submersible,” Pitt continued, “Al and I couldn’t very well transport you from your vessel to our vehicle or you’d have been crushed into munchkins by the water pressure. Our only hope was to use the Big John’s manipulator arms to plug an oxygen line to your exterior emergency connector. Luckily, your adapter and ours mated perfectly.”

“Then we used both manipulator arms to lock onto your lift hooks,” Giordino came in, using his hands for effect, “and carried your sub back to our equipment chamber, entering through our pressure airlock.”

“You saved Old Gert?” inquired Plunkett, quickly becoming cheerful.

“She’s sitting in the chamber,” said Giordino.

“How soon can we be returned to our support ship?” Salazar demanded rather than asked.

“Not for some time, I’m afraid,” said Pitt.

“We’ve got to let our support crew know we’re alive,” Stacy protested. “Surely you can contact them?”

Pitt exchanged a taut look with Giordino. “On our way to rescue you, we passed a badly damaged ship that had recently fallen to the bottom.”

“No, not the Invincible,” Stacy murmured, unbelieving.

“She was badly broken up, as though she suffered from a heavy explosion,” replied Giordino. “I doubt there were any survivors.”

“Two other ships were nearby when we started our dive,” Plunkett pleaded. “She must have been one of them.”

“I can’t say,” Pitt admitted. “Something happened up there. Some kind of immense turbulence. We’ve had no time to investigate and don’t have any hard answers.”

“Surely you felt the same shock wave that damaged our submersible.”

“This facility sits in a protected valley off the fracture zone, thirty kilometers away from where we found you and the sunken ship. What was left of any shock wave passed over us. All we experienced was a mild rush of current and a sediment storm as the bottom was stirred into what is known on dry land as a blizzard condition.”

Stacy gave Pitt an angry look indeed. “Do you intend to keep us prisoners?”

“Not exactly the word I had in mind. But since this is a highly classified project I must ask you to accept our hospitality a bit longer.”

“What do you call ‘a bit longer’?” Salazar asked warily.

Pitt gave the small Mexican a sardonic stare. “We’re not scheduled to return topside for another sixty days.”

There was silence. Plunkett looked from Salazar to Stacy to Pitt. “Bloody hell!” he snapped bitterly. “You can’t hold us here two months.”

“My wife,” groaned Salazar. “She’ll think I’m dead.”

“I have a daughter,” said Stacy, quickly subdued.

“Bear with me,” Pitt said quietly. “I realize I seem like a heartless tyrant, but your presence has put me in a difficult position. When we have a better grip on what happened on the surface, and I talk with my superiors, we might work something out.”

Pitt paused as he spotted Keith Harris, the project’s seismologist, standing in the doorway nodding for Pitt to talk outside the room.

Pitt excused himself and approached Harris. He immediately saw the look of concern in Harris’ eyes.

“Problem?” he asked tersely.

Harris spoke through a great gray beard that matched his hair. “That disturbance has triggered a growing number of shocks in the seabed. So far, most all are small and shallow. We can’t actually feel them yet. But their intensity and strength are growing.”

“How do you read it?”

“We’re sitting on a fault that’s unstable as hell,” Harris went on. “It’s also volcanic. Crustal strain energy is being released at a rate I’ve never experienced. I’m afraid we could be looking at a major earthquake of a six-point-five magnitude.”