Ultra Deep

by William H. Lovejoy

“What we thought would work for us,” she clarified.

  The subsection of programming related to the pressure sensors — almost a thousand lines long — started to appear on the screen. Each line helped to tell the computer what to do when a sensor or other input, like digital impulses from the hand controllers, relayed information — what solenoids to move, and how far to move them.

  To protect vital components, the computer also instructed Gargantua to shut down his arm-and-hand movements when he received conflicting instructions. And Gargantua had shut himself down on the first day of testing.

  “You just mentioned the problem, Okey.”

  “Of course I did. I’m right on top of this baby.”

  Otsuka kept scrolling and kept quiet.

  “What problem?” he finally asked.

  “As operator of the remote controls, you like to see your readouts in something familiar, right?”

  “Right,” he agreed, and after a second, added, “Oh, damn! Foot-pounds.”

  “You’ve got it, big boy.”

  “I’m reading foot-pounds, but Gargantua wants the metric equivalent.”

  “We programmed all other movements in metric.”

  “Damn, again.”

  “See what your fantasies got you?” she asked.

  *

  0700 HOURS LOCAL, 32° 35' NORTH, 134° 54' WEST

  “It must be the Orion,” Dawn Lengren said. She had gone right to the radar set after climbing out of the big bunk in the master’s stateroom. She was wearing fresh, though not ironed, cut-off jeans and a T-shirt with the black OCEANS FREE logo. The shirt was wrinkled pretty badly.

  “Let’s hope so. We’ve been following the same blip for almost twelve hours,” Aaron told her.

  Donny Edgeworth, who was taking his turn at the helm, said, “I haven’t been able to close on it. They haven’t changed heading or speed once.”

  None of the six people aboard the Queen of Liberty were top-notch navigators, but with the Magnavox satnav set identifying their position for them, it was difficult to get too far lost. One or the other of them had been drawing lines and making marks on the chart down in the salon, using the information provided by the satellite navigation system, and the courses of both the Liberty and the ship they were pursuing were obviously headed for, at the minimum, the Hawaiian Islands. On paper, anyway.

  The sun was low on the eastern horizon, lighting up the space under the canvas canopy erected over the flying bridge. Aaron thought it was going to get hot by noon. He could taste the aroma of bacon frying below. Julie Mecom was cooking this morning, and she always burned the bacon.

  The Arienne was still with them, now a quarter-mile away on the starboard side. Aaron went to the half-height bulkhead at the side of the bridge and pulled a pair of binoculars from a clip. He focused them on the Greenpeace boat. It was a sixty-eight-foot Bertram, a few years old, but in terrific shape. She took the seas smoothly, and her white hull, with the green lettering, gleamed under the morning sun. Aaron wished he had the same resources that Greenpeace had. Contributions had dwindled to the point where it was difficult to provision and fuel the two Oceans Free boats, much less think about newer vessels.

  There were two people on the Arienneʼs flying bridge, and another five gathered around a table on the stern deck, eating breakfast. Sun glints sparkled off glasses and silverware.

  Mark Jacobs was holding court. He was a dark-skinned man, as much a result of his growing up in the south of France as from a deep-sea tan. His teeth were very white. Aaron had heard that he had attended the Sorbonne, studying international law, but he did not know for certain. He was probably close to forty years old, and he had been chasing around the Pacific for Greenpeace for at least ten years.

  Aaron pushed the binoculars back in the clip and went forward to slap Dawn lightly on the buttocks.

  “Let me sit there for a while.”

  She gave him a grimace in response and moved from in front of the cushioned passenger seat. Aaron sat down and picked up the microphone for the VHF set. The readout on the face of the set displayed channel 16, the emergency channel, which they had been monitoring, but which had been mostly inactive. He pressed the keypad and watched the readout until it read 22, the channel that he knew Arienne monitored.

  Pulling the microphone close to his lips, Aaron said, “Arienne, this is Liberty.”

  Someone answered the call right away, then went to get Jacobs.

  A minute later, Jacobs said, “Yes, Curtis?”

  They had been on a first-name basis since the time Aaron had been a member of Greenpeace, until two years before.

  “I’m glad you’re coming along with us on this,” Aaron told him.

  “I do not know that our presence will mean much, after the fact,” the Greenpeace leader said. “We prefer to make our point before it is necessary.”

  “You think that it’s a lost cause, Mark?”

  “I do not have all of the facts available, of course, but the prognosis is not good. In those waters, a successful recovery is not likely to be achieved. Not with the time available.”

  “Time? What time?”

  “It was on the news this morning. On the CNN station. Someone in the Pentagon leaked the information that the reactor will become supercritical on September tenth.”

  Aaron was shocked. Until just then, the whole episode had seemed rather academic, another problem to debate with the powers-that-be. He had not thought that the damned thing would actually blow up.

  For lack of anything better to say, Aaron said, “Maybe that’s what Mother Nature intends for us.”

  “That is stupid, Curtis. Very stupid.” Jacobs cut off his transmission.

  Donny Edgeworth, who had overheard the conversation, fidgeted with the wheel, causing the cruiser to dip left and right. “Maybe we ought to turn back, Curtis.”

  “And let Jacobs steal the show? No way, Donny.”

  *

  1325 HOURS LOCAL, 32° 29' NORTH, 139° 12' WEST

  Almost everyone was back in the laboratory, debugging computer programs, calibrating instruments, and running systems checks for the nth time. In the wardroom, it was relatively peaceful.

  Connie Alvarez-Sorenson, a dusky and beautiful miniature with a vocabulary that could match any seaman’s, was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and talking to Frank Vogl, the Orion’s chief and only engineer. It was he who kept the research vessel’s mechanical systems and diesel engines running flawlessly.

  Thomas had taken a table out of the mainstream, spread her paperwork and vinyl folders and notebooks over it, and fortified herself with a mug and an insulated pot of coffee.

  The ship was encountering long swells. It rose and fell almost imperceptibly. It was a lulling movement, encouraging a nap, rather than administrative tasks.

  The stack of paper was horrendous, even though some of it was organized into binders. Thomas would have preferred working on one of the computer terminals in the laboratory, but she needed data stored on the minicomputer in San Diego, and Kim was using the dedicated satellite channel for communications with the mini.

  She had gone through all of the binders, which contained primarily the contracts entered into between MVU and private companies, the federal government and universities. She had filled the better part of a legal-sized yellow pad with her notes. Except for some details, she thought she was ready for action.

  Brande came through the door, went on into the galley, and when he came back with a roast beef sandwich obscenely leaking ketchup, and a mug of coffee, she said, “Dane.”

  He grinned at her. “My grandma…”

  “I know. Sit down a minute, will you? You’ve been on the go all day.”

  He plopped in the chair on her right. “Did you sleep all right? Your eyes look a little droopy.”

  Whenever had he noticed her eyes before?

  “Ingrid snores,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  “No”

  “I kept waking up.”


  “You want a different roommate?”

  “I’ll survive. Look, I’ve got some things we need to talk about.” She pulled her notepad close and leafed through the yellow pages, looking for the items she had starred as priorities.

  “Shoot.” He took a bite out of his sandwich.

  “First…”

  “What did you decide about George Dawson’s project?” he interrupted.

  Thomas sighed. “I sent Jim Word a telex, telling him to put another ten days into it.”

  Brande smiled. “Wonderful. You’re going to work out better than I thought.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I was teasing you. I’ve had faith from Day One.”

  “This is only Day Two,” she said.

  “And you’re doing well.”

  “Dawson gets no more than ten days.”

  “All right.”

  “Some people you and I both know have put ten years into looking for one wreck.”

  “I know.”

  “Ten days.”

  “I agree.”

  “Okay.” She tapped her forefinger under the first star on her notepad. “Did you know we’ve got people working for us without a contract? In fact, I find only seventeen personnel contracts.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s just kind of how it worked out over time.”

  “Oral contracts.”

  “Yes. Some people just happened to be available when previous projects were completed or petered out, and I encouraged them to stay on.”

  “That has to change. The company needs something more solid, and our employees are entitled to know what the conditions of employment are. Medical and life insurance and retirement benefits, all of it.”

  “The payroll service takes care of those details,” he told her. “Do you know how much we’re paying that service?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Do you know what medical and dental plans we offer?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “We need a personnel officer.”

  “Personnel officers cost money, Rae. You don’t like to spend money”

  “It might be cheaper than the service. Do you realize we don’t have any secretaries?”

  “Well, everyone does their own typing and telephoning. That’s a savings, isn’t it?”

  Thomas shook her head. “You’ve got all of this stuck away in your mind somewhere, don’t you?”

  “More or less.”

  “We put a lot of dollars into professional expertise. How much of their expensive time is being devoted to routine clerical duties?”

  “That’s a point,” Brande admitted. “I’ve already been thinking about the things I can do, now that you’ve lifted this load off me.”

  “And that’s another thing. I’m going to have to give up Harbor One.”

  “Do you want to?” he asked.

  That was one of the tough questions. When she thought about how much of herself she had put into the development, how much she loved seeing it come to life, she waffled.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I almost promoted Andy Colgate to Harbor One director. Then I remembered that it’s your decision.”

  He was grinning again.

  “You’re enjoying the hell out of this,” she accused.

  “I am.ˮ

  She set her mouth in what she hoped was a grim line and went to the next starred item. “The workboats.”

  “I’m glad you reminded me. We need to up the budget a little there. Those guys don’t have enough to eat.”

  She ignored that statement and said, “Now that the heavy transport requirements are over for Harbor One and Ocean Deep, we don’t need all three boats. The Mighty Moose is the oldest, and I think we should sell it.”

  “Bull Kontas is over seventy years old, Rae. Where’s he going to find another job?”

  “Oh, shit!”

  *

  1145 HOURS LOCAL, 26° 16' NORTH, 178° 16' EAST

  Cmdr. Alfred Taylor stood on the bridge, within the sail of the Los Angeles, as she cruised on the surface at twenty knots. He drank in the cool briny air, which tasted tainted and fresh at the same time, a refreshing change from the manufactured atmosphere of the submarine.

  The sea washed over the bow of the sub, miniature rainbows reflected in the white spume.

  On his right, steaming on a parallel course a hundred yards away was the Philadelphia. Every once in a while, her captain and her executive officer would look over at Taylor and Garrison and grin. The grins were a little strained.

  They were moving on the surface at reduced speed in order to give the Kane a chance to catch up with them. Their sister submarine, the Houston, had checked in by radio, but she was forty miles to the north and would rendezvous with the research ship later.

  “We’re going to have some heavy weather in a couple days,” Garrison said.

  “Intuition, Neil?”

  “Met report. It won’t bother us, but it might play havoc with any surface ships.”

  “Especially with research vessels deploying submersibles, you mean?”

  “Especially those,” Garrison said.

  Six minutes later, Garrison swung his binoculars astern, then steadied them with his elbows on the coaming of the sail. “We’ve got a ship bow-up on the horizon, Skipper.”

  “Kane’s doing pretty well for an old lady,” Taylor said.

  “I’ll have the dinghy put over,” Garrison said.

  Forty minutes after that, Taylor left his boat and was transferred to the Kane by a sailor manning the fifty-horsepower outboard Johnson.

  He and Cmdr. H.E. Elliot of the Philadelphia met with the research vessel’s captain in the wardroom, accepting mugs of hot coffee.

  Capt. John Cartwright was almost sixty years old. His hair was struggling to hang onto an umber tint, but the gray was creeping in from his temples. With his aristocratic nose, straight-set lips and high forehead, he had a classical appearance.

  Cartwright tossed his uniform cap at a sideboard. “Sit, gentlemen.”

  They both found cushioned chairs around the green felt-covered table.

  “If I were adamant about military protocol and courtesy,” Cartwright said, Iʼd have been a commodore some time ago. Iʼm not. Iʼm more interested in what I can find in the ocean depths, and so are the people I work with. So, if you find us less than formal, and care about it, you’re out of luck.”

  Taylor grinned at him. “It won’t bother me, sir.”

  “John.”

  “Al.”

  “And I was christened Huckleberry,” Elliot said.

  “You’re shitting me,” Cartwright said.

  “No. It’s got to be Huck.”

  “All right, Al and Huck, we’ve got work to do. I’ve had a few dozen messages from CINCPAC, apparently put together by a bunch of experts looking over the admiral’s shoulder. And I have a strongly recommended course of action to follow. Tell me what you think of it.”

  Cartwright spread a large chart on the table. Drawn on it was a grid of lines.

  Taylor took one look, compared it to the mental picture he had of the pattern he and Garrison had worked out, and said, “Not much.”

  “Me, either,” Elliot said. “My exec and I made some preliminary plans that don’t match that at all.”

  Cartwright rolled the chart and tossed it to one side. “Scratch that, then.”

  He unrolled a fresh chart and Taylor and Elliot helped flatten it with ashtrays and coffee mugs.

  “Okay,” Cartwright said. “First. You know the Russians are already on the scene?”

  “News to me,” Taylor said.

  “Their first sub got there last night. SSN named the Winter Storm, commanded by Captain Mikhail Gurevenich. He’s a capable man. A short time later, the Tashkent showed up. It’s also an SSN, and the boss man is Boris Verhenski. His dossier, according to Navy Intelligence, says he’s been a fast mover through the ranks and he’s ambitious. One of our recon planes got photos of th
e two subs meeting on the surface.” Cartwright told them about the eminent arrivals of the rocket cruisers Kirov, and Kynda, and the patrol ship Olʼyantsev.

  “That’s them,” Elliot said. “Are we us?”

  “Yes, except for the Bronstein and the Antelope which are already in place. They’re trying to be policemen without the authority to police. We’ve also got a private research vessel on the way, the Orion, but it’s a few days out. I doubt that they’re going to be here in time for much search activity. It’d be nice if we could point them in the right direction.”

  Cartwright outlined the problems posed by the maverick surface vessels already in the region.

  “That’s what we’ve got to work within, Al and Huck. What are your thoughts?”

  “How about Navy submersibles?”

  “They flew one out of England, but during the stopover in San Diego, discovered some sort of problem. They’re working on it.”

  “Are we getting any reports from the CIS subs?” Taylor asked.

  “None. CINCPAC says Washington is working toward some kind of cooperation, but nothing is forthcoming as yet”

  “Fuck ’em, then,” Elliot said. “Both the Russians and the experts at Pearl. Let’s do it ourselves.”

  “Let’s,” Cartwright said.

  “I’ll do the drawing,” Taylor said, picking up a sharpened pencil and a straightedge. “I got a ‘C’ in drafting.”

  “That’s better than I got,” Cartwright told him.

  *

  1112 HOURS LOCAL, 40° 18' NORTH, 145° 47' EAST

  “Captain Gurevenich wishes to speak to you, Comrade General,” Leonid Talebov said.

  “Gurevenich?”

  “He is commander of the Winter Storm. Both he and the Tashkent commander are on the frequency.”

  Oberstev walked across the bridge and took the microphone from Captain Talebov. The tall naval captain towered over him, and he turned to look forward. He had an unobstructed view of the bow and the seas ahead of the Timofey Olʼyantsev. The ocean was a beautiful aquamarine, as fine as the gem. The sun was gaining on its zenith, shining brightly, but he knew the air outside the bridge was chilled. In the view to his left, the overcast skies seemed to be gaining on them.

  “This is General Oberstev.”

  “Comrade General, I am Captain Gurevenich. Captain Verhenski is on the channel, also.”