Treasure

"You call that an incentive?" Pitt said dryly. He was grateful to the Captain for trying to take his mind off what they might find. "I may make a beeline for Africa rather than come back here."

"You'll need an extra truckload of oxygen," said Stewart.

Gu

He tried to keep his instructions businesslike, but compassion crept into his voice. "I'll be monitoring your audio locator beacon and communications. Soon as you see bottom, make a

three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep until your sonar picks out the wreck. Then give me your heading. I expect you to keep me informed every step of the way."

Pitt shook Gu

Gu

"I've got to see for myself."

"Good luck," Gu

Pitt and Giordino settled into the side-by-side, aircraftstyle armchairs. The engineers swung the top half of the sphere closed against the watertight O-ring and tightened the clamps.

Giordino began going through the predive checklist. "Power?"

"Power on," affirmed Pitt.

"Raho?"

"Are we coming in, Rudi?"

Loud and clear," Gu

"Oxygen "Twenty-one-point-five percent."

When they finished, Giordino said, "Ready when you are, Sounder."

"You're cleared for takeoff, Deep Rover," Stewart replied in his usual ironic tone. "Bring back a lobster for di

Two divers stood by in full gear as the platform was slowly lowered into the sea. The water surged around the Deep Rover and soon enveloped the sphere. Pitt looked up into the shimmering lights of the moon pool and saw the wavering figures leaning over the balconies. The entire company of oceanographers and crew turned out for the dive, hovering around Gu

When they were fully submerged, the divers moved in and unhitched the submersible from its cradle. One of them held up a hand and gave an

"Okay" sign. Pitt smiled and answered with a "Thumbs up," and then pointed ahead.

The handgrips on the end of the amirests guided the manipulators, while the armrests themselves controlled the four sters. Pitt took a Deep breath and controled the rover as if he were a helicopter pilot. A slight pressure on his elbows and she rose off the cradle. Then he pushed his arms forward and the horizontal stablizers eased her ahead.

Pitt moved the little craft off the platform about thirty meters and stopped to assess his compass bearing. Then he engaged the vertical thrusters and began the descent.

Down, down the Deep Rover fell through the dimensionless void, the darkening water burying her in its depths. The vibrant blue-green of the surface soon turned to a soft gray. A small, one-meter blue shark swam effortlessly toward the sub,

circled once and, finding nothing inviting, continued its lonely journey into the fluid haze.

They felt no sense of movement. The only sound came from the soft crackle of the radio and the pinging of the locator beacon. The water became a curtain of black surrounding their small circle of light.

"Passing four hundred meters," Pitt reported as caln-Ay as a pilot a

"Four hundred meters," Gu

Ordinarily the wit and the sarcasm would have bounced off the interior of the submersible to pass the time, but this trip Pitt and Giordino were strangely silent. Seldom during the descent did their conversation run more than a few words.

"There's a real sweetheart," said Giordino, pointing.

Pitt saw it at the same time. One of the ugliest of the deep's resident citizens. Long, eel-shaped body, outlined by luminescence like a neon sign. The frozen, gaping jaws were never fully closed, kept apart by long, jagged teeth that were used more for entrapping prey than for chewing them. One eye gleamed nastily while a tube that was attached to a luniinated beard dangled from its lower jaw to lure the next meal.

"How'd you like to stick your arm in that thing?" asked Pitt. Before Giordino could answer, Gu

"A dragonfish," Pitt replied.

"He wants a description," said Giordino.

"Tell him we'll draw a picture when we come home," Pitt grunted.

"I'll pass the word."

"Passing eight hundred meters," Pitt reported.

"Mind you don't smack the bottom," Gu

"We'll keep an eye peeled. Neither of us is keen on making a one-way trip."

"Never hurts to have a worrywart on your side. How's your oxygen?"

"On the money."

"You should be getting close."

Pitt slowed the Deep Rover's descent with a light touch of the sliding armrest. Giordino peered downward, his eyes watchful for a sign of rocks. Pitt could have sworn his friend never blinked in the next eight minutes it took for the seabed to gradually materialize below.

"We're down," Giordino a

Pitt applied extra power to the vertical sters, bringing the submersible to a hovering stop three meters above the gray silt. Due to the water pressure, the weight of the craft had increased during the descent. Pitt turned one of the ballast tank valves, keeping an eye on the pressure gauge, and filled it with just enough air to achieve neutral buoyancy.

"Making our sweep," he notified Gu

"The wreck should bear approximately one one zero degrees," Gu

"Affirmative, I read you," said Pitt. "We have a sonar target two hundred twenty meters, bearing one one two degrees."

"I copy, Deep Rover."

Pitt turned to Giordino. "Well, let us see what we shall see.

He increased the power on the horizontal thrusters and executed a sweeping bank, studying the barren seascape ahead as Giordino kept him on track by reading off the compass heading.

"Come left a couple of points. Too much. Okay, you've got it. Keep her straight."

There was not a flicker of emotion in Pitts eyes. His face was strangely still. He wondered with a growing fear what he might find.

He recalled the haunting story of a diver salvaging a ferry that had sunk after a collision. The diver was working the wreck at one-hundred meters when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He swung around and was confronted by the body of a beautiful girl who was staring at him through sightless eyes, one arm extended and touching him as if asking to take her hand. The diver had nightmares for years afterward.

Pitt had seen bodies before, frozen as the crew of the Serapis; bloated and grotesque as the crew of the Presidential yacht Eagle; decayed and half-dissolved in sunken airplanes off Iceland and a lake in the Colorado rockies. He could still close his eyes and visualize them all.

He hoped to God he wouldn't see his father as a floating corpse. He shut his eyes for a few moments and almost ran the Deep Rover into the bottom. Pitt wanted to remember the Senator as alive and vibrant-not as a ghostly thing in the sea or a ridiculously made up stiff in a casket.