Raise the Titanic dp-4

by Clive Cussler

  "I'm glad you asked me that." Dana laughed. "Seriously, I apologize for the old cliche, but your question, sir, is the cue for a brief slide presentation that should help explain many of the mysteries regarding the project." She turned to the wings of the stage. "Lights, please."

  The lighting dimmed and the first slide marched onto a wide screen above and behind the lectern.

  "We begin with a composite of over eighty photographs pieced together to show the Titanic as she rests on the sea floor. Fortunately, she's sitting upright with a light list to port which conveniently puts the hundred-yard-long gash she received from the iceberg in an accessible position to seal."

  "How is it possible to seal an opening that size at that enormous depth?"

  The next slide came on and showed a man holding what looked like a large blob of liquid plastic.

  "In answer to that question," Dana said, "this is Dr. Amos Stannford demonstrating a substance he developed called `Wetsteel.' As the name suggests, Wetsteel, though pliable in air, hardens to the rigidity of steel ninety seconds after coming in contact with water, and it can bond itself to a metal object as though it were welded."

  This last statement was followed by a wave of murmurs throughout the room.

  "Ball-shaped aluminum tanks, ten feet in diameter, that contain Wetsteel have been dropped at strategic spots around the vessel," Dana continued. "They are designed so that a submersible can attach itself to the tank, not unlike the docking procedure of a shuttle rocket with a space laboratory, and then proceed to the working area where the crew can aim and expel the Wetsteel from a specially designed nozzle."

  "How is the Wetsteel pumped from the tank?"

  "To illustrate with another comparison, the great pressure at that depth compresses the aluminum tank much like a tube of toothpaste, squeezing the sealant through the nozzle and into the opening to be covered."

  She signaled for a new slide.

  "Now here we see a cut-away drawing of the sea, depicting the supply tenders on the surface and the submersibles clustered around the wreck on the bottom. There are four manned underwater vehicles involved in the salvage operation. The Sappho I, which you may recall was the craft used on the Lorelei Current Drift Expedition, is currently engaged in patching the damage caused by the iceberg along the starboard side of the hull and also the bow, where it was shattered by the Titanic's boilers. The Sappho II, a newer and more advanced sister ship, is sealing the smaller openings, such as the air vents and portholes. The Navy's submersible, the Sea Slug, has the job of cutting away unnecessary debris, including the masts, rigging, and the aft funnel which fell across the After Boat Deck. And finally, the Deep Fathom, a submersible belonging to the Uranus Oil Corporation, is installing pressure relief valves on the Titanic's hull and superstructure."

  "Could you please explain the purpose of the valves, Dr. Seagram?"

  "Certainly," Dana replied. "When the hulk begins its journey to the surface, the air that has been pumped into her interior will begin to expand as the pressure of the sea lessens against her exterior. Unless this inside pressure is continuously bled, the Titanic could conceivably blow herself to pieces. The valves, of course, are there to prevent this disastrous occurrence."

  "Then NUMA intends to use compressed air to lift the derelict?"

  "Yes, the support tender, Capricorn, has two compressor units capable of displacing the water in the Titanic's hull with enough air to raise her."

  "Dr. Seagram?" came another disembodied voice, "I represent Science Today, and I happen to know that the water pressure where the Titanic lies is upwards of six thousand pounds per square inch. I also know that the largest available air compressor can only put out four thousand pounds. How do you intend to overcome this differential?"

  "The main unit on board the Capricorn pumps the air from the surface through a reinforced pipe to the secondary pump, which is stationed amidships of the wreck. In appearance, this secondary pump looks like a radial aircraft engine with a series of pistons spreading from a central hub. Again, we utilized the sea's great abyssal pressures to activate the pump, which is also assisted by electricity and the air pressure coming from above. I am sorry I can't give you an in-depth description, but I am a marine archaeologist, not a marine engineer. However, Admiral Sandecker will be available later in the day to answer your technical questions in greater detail."

  "What about suction?" the voice of Science Today persisted. "After sitting imbedded in the silt all these years, won't the Titanic be fairly well glued to the bottom?"

  "She will indeed." Dana gestured for the lights. They came on and she stood blinking in the glare for a few moments until she could distinguish her inquirer. He was a middle-aged man, with long brown hair and large wire rimmed glasses.

  "When it is calculated that the ship has enough air to lift her mass toward the surface, the air pipe will be disconnected from the hull and converted to inject an electrolyte chemical, processed by the Myers-Lentz Company, into the sediment surrounding the Titanic's keel. The resulting reaction will cause the molecules in the sediment to break down and form a cushion of bubbles that will erase the static friction and allow the great hulk to wrest herself free from the suction."

  Another man raised his hand.

  "If the operation is successful and the Titanic begins floating toward the surface, isn't there a good chance she could capsize? Two and a half miles is a long way for an unbalanced object of forty-five thousand tons to remain upright."

  "You're right. There is the possibility she might capsize, but we plan to leave enough water in her lower holds to act as ballast and offset this problem."

  A young, mannish-looking woman rose and waved her hand.

  "Dr. Seagram! I am Connie Sanchez of Female Eminence Weekly, and my readers would be interested in learning what defense mechanisms you have personally developed for competing on a day-to-day basis in a profession dominated by egotistic male pigheads."

  The audience of reporters greeted the question with uneasy silence. God, Dana thought to herself, it had to come sooner or later. She stepped alongside the lectern and leaned on it in a negligent, almost sexy attitude.

  "My reply, Ms. Sanchez, is strictly off the record."

  "Then you're copping out," said Connie Sanchez with a superior grin.

  Dana ignored the jab. "First, I find that a defense mechanism is hardly necessary. My masculine colleagues respect my intelligence enough to accept my opinions. I don't have to go bra-less or spread my legs to get their attention. Second, I prefer standing on my own home ground and competing with members of my own sex, not a strange stance when you consider the fact that out of five hundred and forty scientists on the staff of NUMA, a hundred and fourteen are women. And third, Ms. Sanchez, the only pigheads it's been my misfortune to meet during my life have not been men, but rather the female of the species."

  For several moments, a stunned silence gripped the room. Then, suddenly, shattering the embarrassed quiet, a voice burst from the audience. "Atta girl, Doc," yelled the little white-haired lady from the Chicago Daily. "That's putting her down."

  A sea of applause rippled and then roared, sweeping the auditorium in a storm of approval. The battle-hardened Washington correspondents offered her their respect with a standing ovation.

  Connie Sanchez sat in her seat and stared coldly in flushed anger. Dana saw Connie's lips form the word "bitch" and she returned a smug, derisive kind of smile that only women do so well. Adulation, Dana thought, how sweet it is.

  40

  Since early morning the wind had blown steadily out of the northeast. By later afternoon it had increased to a gale of thirty-five knots, which in turn threw up mountainous seas that pitched the salvage ships about like paper cups in a dishwasher. The tempest carried with it a numbing cold borne of the barren wastes above the Arctic Circle. The men dared not venture out onto the icy decks. It was no secret that the greatest barrier against keeping warm was the wind. A man could feel much colder and more mise
rable at twenty degrees above zero Fahrenheit with a thirty-five-knot wind than at twenty degrees below zero with no wind. The wind steals the body heat as quickly as it can be manufactured-a nasty situation known as chill factor.

  Joel Farquar, the Capricorn's weatherman, on loan from the Federal Meteorological Services Administration, seemed unconcerned with the storm snapping outside the operations room as he studied the instrumentation that tied into the National Weather Satellites and provided four space pictures of the North Atlantic every twenty-four hours.

  "What does your prognosticating little mind see for our future?" Pitt asked, bracing his body against the roll.

  "She'll start easing in another hour," Farquar replied "By sunrise tomorrow the wind should be down to ten knots."

  Farquar didn't look up when he spoke. He was a studious, little red-faced man with utterly no sense of humor and no trace of friendly warmth. Yet, he was respected by every man on the salvage operation because of his total dedication to the job, and the fact that his predictions were uncannily accurate.

  "The best laid plans . . ." Pitt murmured idly to himself. "Another day lost. That's four times in one week we've had to cast off and buoy the air line."

  God can make a storm," Farquar said indifferently. He nodded toward the two banks of television monitors that covered the forward bulkhead of the Capricorn's operations room. "At least they're not bothered by it all."

  Pitt looked at the screens which showed the submersibles calmly working on the wreck twelve thousand feet below the relentless sea. Their independence from the surface was the saving grace of the project. With the exception of the Sea Slug, which only had a downtime of eighteen hours and was now securely tied on the Modoc's deck, the other three submersibles could be scheduled to stay down on the Titanic for five days at a stretch before they returned to the surface to change crews. He turned to Al Giordino, who was bent over a large chart table.

  "What's the disposition of the surface ships?"

  Giordino pointed at the tiny two-inch models scattered about the chart. "The Capricorn is holding her usual position in the center. The Modoc is dead ahead, and the Bomberger is trailing three miles astern."

  Pitt stared at the model of the Bomberger. She was a new vessel, constructed especially for deep-water salvage. "Tell her captain to close up to within one mile."

  Giordino nodded toward the bald radio operator, who was moored securely to the slanting deck in front of his equipment. "You heard the man, Curly. Tell the Bomberger to come up to one mile astern."

  "How about the supply ships?" Pitt asked.

  "No problem there. This weather is duck soup to big ten-tonners the likes of these two. The Alhambra is in position to port, and the Monterey Park is right where she's supposed to be to starboard."

  Pitt nodded at a small red model. "I see our Russian friends are still with us."

  "The Mikhail Kurkov?" Giordino said. He picked up a blue replica of a warship and placed it next to the red model. "Yeah, but she can't be enjoying the game. The Juneau, that Navy guided-missile cruiser, hangs on like glue."

  "And the wreck buoy's signal unit?"

  "Serenely beeping away eighty feet beneath the uproar," Giordino announced. "Only twelve hundred yards, give or take a hair, bearing zero-five-nine, southwest that is."

  "Thank God we haven't been blown off the homestead," Pitt sighed.

  "Relax." Giordino grinned reassuringly. "You act like a mother with a daughter out on a date after midnight every time there's a little breeze."

  "The mother-hen complex becomes worse the closer we get," Pitt admitted. "Ten more days, Al. If we can get ten calm days, we can wrap it up."

  "That's up to the weather oracle." Giordino turned to Farquar. "What about it, O Great Seer of Meteorological Wisdom?"

  "Twelve hours' advance notice is all you'll get out of me," Farquar grunted, without looking up. "This is the North Atlantic. She's the most unpredictable of any ocean in the world. Hardly one day is ever the same. Now, if your precious Titanic had gone down in the Indian Ocean, I could give you your ten day prediction with an eighty percent chance of accuracy."

  "Excuses, excuses," Giordino replied. "I bet when you make love to a woman, you tell her going in that there's a forty-per-cent chance she'll enjoy it."

  "Forty per cent is better than nothing," Farquar said casually.

  Pitt caught a gesture by the sonar operator and moved over to him. "What have you got?"

  "A strange pinging noise over the amplifier," the sonar man replied. He was a pale-faced man, about the size and shape of a gorilla. "I've picked it up off and on during the last two months. Strange sort of sound, kind of like somebody was sending messages."

  "Make anything of it?"

  "No, Sir. I had Curly listen to it, but he said it was pure gibberish."

  "Most likely a loose object on the wreck that's being rattled about by the current."

  "Or maybe it's a ghost," the sonar man said.

  "You don't believe in them, but you're afraid of them, is that it?"

  "Fifteen hundred souls went down with the Titanic," the sonar man said. "It's not unlikely that at least one came back to haunt the ship."

  "The only spirits I'm interested in," Giordino said from the chart table, "are the kind you drink . . . ."

  "The interior cabin camera of Sappho II just blacked out." This from the sandy-haired man seated at the TV monitors.

  Pitt was immediately behind him, staring at the blackened monitor. "Is the problem at this end?"

  "No, Sir. All circuits here and on the buoy's relay panel are operable. The problem must be on the Sappho II. It just seemed like somebody hung a cloth over the camera lens."

  Pitt swung to face the radio operator. "Curly, contact Sappho II and ask them to check their cabin TV camera."

  Giordino picked up a clipboard and checked the crew schedule. "Omar Woodson is in command of the Sappho II this shift."

  Curly pressed the transmit switch. "Sappho II, hello Sappho II, this is Capricorn. Please reply." Then he leaned forward, pressing his headset tighter to his ears. "The contact is weak, sir. Lots of interference. The words are very broken. I can't make them out."

  "Turn on the speaker," Pitt ordered.

  A voice rattled into the operations room, muffled behind a wave of static.

  "Something is jamming the transmission," said Curly. "The relay unit on the air-line buoy should be picking them up loud and clear."

  "Give your volume everything it's got. Maybe we can make some sense out of Woodson's reply."

  "Sappho II, could you repeat please. We cannot read you. Over."

  As soon as Curly turned up the speaker, the explosion of ear-splitting crackle made everyone jump.

  "------corn. We ------- ----ou ----lear. ----ver."

  Pitt grabbed the microphone. "Omar, this is Pitt. Your cabin TV camera is out. Can you repair? We will await your reply. Over."

  Every eye in the operations room locked on the speaker as though it were alive. Five interminable minutes dragged by while they patiently waited for Woodson's report. Then Woodson's fragmented voice hammered through the loudspeaker again.

  "Hen----- Munk ------- ------est per-----on ------ sur---------."

  Giordino twisted his face, puzzled. "Something about Henry Munk. The rest is too garbled to comprehend."

  "They're back on monitor." Not every eye had been aimed at the speaker. The young man at the TV monitors had never taken his off Sappho II's screen. "The crew looks like they're grouped around someone lying on the deck."

  Like spectators at a tennis match, every head turned in unison to the TV monitor. Figures were moving to and fro in front of the camera, while in the background three men could be seen bent over a body stretched grotesquely on the submersible's narrow cabin deck.

  "Omar, listen to me," Pitt snapped into the microphone. "We do not understand your transmissions. You are back on TV monitor. I repeat, you are back on TV monitor. Write your message and hold it up to
the camera. Over."

  They watched one of the figures detach itself from the rest and lean over a table for a few moments writing and then approach the TV camera. It was Woodson. He held up a scrap of paper whose rough printing read, "Henry Munk dead. Request permission to surface."

  "Good God!" Giordino's expression was one of pure astonishment. "Henry Munk dead? It can't be true."

  "Omar Woodson isn't noted for playing games," Pitt said grimly. He began to transmit again. "Negative, Omar. You cannot surface. There is a thirty-five-knot gale up here. The sea is turbulent. I repeat, you cannot surface."

  Woodson nodded that he understood. Then he wrote something else, looking over his shoulder furtively every so often. The note said "I suspect Munk murdered!"

  Even Farquar's usually inscrutable face had gone pale. "You'll have to let them surface now," he whispered.

  "I will do what I have to do." Pitt shook his head decisively. "My feelings will have to look elsewhere. There are five men still alive and breathing inside Sappho II. I won't risk bringing them up only to lose them all under a thirty-foot wave. No, gentlemen, we will just have to sit it out until sunrise to see what there is to see inside the Sappho II."

  41

  Pitt had the Capricorn home in on the signal-relay buoy as soon as the wind dropped to twenty knots. Once again they connected the air line running from the ship's compressor to the Titanic and then waited for the Sappho IIs emergence from the deep. The eastern sky was beginning to brighten when final preparations were made to receive the submersible. Divers made ready to drop in position around the Sappho II and secure safety lines to prevent her from capsizing in the heavy seas; the winches and cables were set to haul her from the water and into the open stern of the Capricorn; down in the galley the cook began making an urn of coffee and a hearty breakfast to greet the crew of the submersible when they arrived. When all was in readiness, the scientists and engineers stood quietly shivering in the early morning cold, wondering about Henry Munk's death.