The Ghost from the Grand Banks (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) Read online

  “Sorry about that—we’d been negotiating with Dupont and Thiokol and Union Carbide and half a dozen others—didn’t want to talk until we were certain of our supplier.”

  “Of what?”

  “Hydrazine. Rocket monopropellant. So I wasn’t economizing too greatly with the truth.”

  “Hydrazine? Now where— Of course! That’s how Cussler brought her up, in Raise the Titanic!”

  “Yes, and it’s quite a good idea—it decomposes into pure nitrogen and hydrogen, plus lots of heat. But Cussler didn’t have to cope with Bluepeace. They got wind of what we were doing—wish I knew how—and claim that hydrazine is a dangerous poison, and some is bound to be spilled, however carefully we handle it, and so on and so forth.”

  “Is it a poison?”

  “Well, I’d hate to drink it. Smells like concentrated ammonia, and probably tastes worse.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Fight, of course. And think of alternatives. Parky will be laughing his head off.”

  28.

  MOLE

  The three-man deep-sea submersible Marvin had been intended as the successor of the famous Alvin, which had played such a key role in the first exploration of the wreck. Alvin, however, showed no intention of retiring, though almost every one of its original components had long since been replaced.

  Marvin was also much more comfortable than its progenitor, and had greater reserves of power. No longer was it necessary to spend a boring two and a half hours in free-fall to the seabed; with the help of its motors, Marvin could reach the Titanic in less than an hour. And in an emergency, by jettisoning all external equipment, the titanium sphere holding the crew could get back to the surface in minutes—an incompressible air bubble ascending from the depths.

  For Bradley, this was a double first. He had never yet seen the Titanic with his own eyes, and though he had handled Marvin on test and training runs down to a few hundred meters, he had never taken it right down to the bottom. Needless to say, he was carefully watched by the submersible’s usual pilot, who was doing his best not to be a backseat driver.

  “Altitude two hundred meters. Wreck bearing one two zero.”

  Altitude! That was a word that sounded strangely in a diver’s ear. But here inside Marvin’s life-support sphere, depth was almost irrelevant. What really concerned Bradley was his elevation above the seabed, and keeping enough clearance to avoid obstacles. He felt that he was piloting not a submarine but a low-flying aircraft—one searching for landmarks in a thick fog….

  “Searching,” however, was hardly the right word, for he knew exactly where his target was. The brilliant echo on the sonar display was dead ahead, and now only a hundred meters away. In a moment the TV camera would pick it up, but Bradley wanted to use his own eyes. He was not a child of the video age, to whom nothing was quite real until it had appeared on a screen.

  And there was the knife edge of the prow, looming up in the glare of Marvin’s lights. Bradley cut the motor, and let his little craft drift slowly toward the converging cliffs of steel.

  Now he was separated from the Titanic by only a few centimeters of adamantine crystal, bearing a pressure that it was not wise to dwell upon. He was confronting the ghost that had haunted the Atlantic sea lanes for almost a century; it still seemed to be driving ahead under its own power, as if on a voyage that, even now, had only just begun.

  The enormous anchor, half hidden by its drapery of weeds, was still patiently waiting to be lowered. It almost dwarfed Marvin, and its dangling tons of mass appeared so ominous that Bradley gave it a wide berth as he cruised slowly down the line of portholes, staring blankly into nothingness like the empty eye sockets of a skull.

  He had almost forgotten the purpose of his mission, when the voice from the world above jolted him back to reality.

  “Explorer to Marvin. We’re waiting.”

  “Sorry—just admiring the view. She is impressive—cameras don’t do her justice. You’ve got to see her for yourself.”

  This was an old argument, which as far as Bradley was concerned had been settled long ago. Though robots and their electronic sensors were invaluable—indeed, absolutely essential—both for reconnaissance and actual operations, they could never give the whole picture. “Telepresence” was marvelous, but it could sometimes be a dangerous illusion. You might believe you were experiencing a hundred percent of some remote reality but it was only ninety-five percent—and that remaining five percent could be vital: men had died because there was still no good way of transmitting those warning signals that only the sense of smell could detect. Although he had seen thousands of stills and videos of the wreck, only now did Bradley feel that he was beginning to understand it.

  He was reluctant to tear himself away, and realized how frustrated Robert Ballard must have been when he had only seconds for his first sighting of the wreck. Then he actuated the bow thrusters, swung Marvin away from the towering metal cliff, and headed toward his real target.

  The Mole was resting on a cradle about twenty meters from Titanic, pointing downward at a forty-five-degree angle. It looked rather like a spaceship headed in the wrong direction, and there had been many deplorable ethnic jokes about launchpads built by the engineers of certain small European countries.

  The conical drilling head was already deeply buried in the sediment, and a few meters of the broad metal tape that was the Mole’s “payload” lay stretched out on the seabed behind it. Bradley moved Marvin into position to get a good view, and switched the video recorders to high speed.

  “We’re ready,” he reported to topside. “Start the countdown.”

  “We’re holding at T minus ten seconds. Inertial guidance running… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… liftoff! Sorry—I mean, dig in!”

  The drill had started to spin, and almost at once the Mole was hidden by clouds of silt. However, Bradley could see that it was disappearing with surprising speed; in only a matter of seconds it had vanished into the seabed.

  “You’ve cleared the tower,” he reported, keeping the spirit of the occasion. “Can’t see anything—the launchpad’s hidden by smoke. Well, mud….

  “Now it’s settling. The Mole’s vanished. Just a little crater, slowly filling in. We’ll head around the other side to meet it.”

  “Take your time. Quickest estimate is thirty minutes. Longest is fifty. Quite a few bets riding on this baby.”

  And quite a few million dollars as well, thought Bradley, as he piloted Marvin toward Titanic’s prow. If the Mole gets stuck before it can complete its mission, Parky and company will have to go back to the drawing board.

  He was waiting on the port side when the Mole resurfaced after forty-five minutes. It was not attempting any speed records; its maiden voyage had been a complete success.

  Now the first of the planned thirty belts, each capable of lifting a thousand tons, had been safely emplaced. When the operation had been completed, Titanic could be lifted off the ocean floor, like a melon in a string bag.

  That was the theory, and it seemed to be working. Florida was still a long way off, but now it had come just a little closer.

  29.

  SARCOPHAGUS

  “We’ve found it!”

  Roy Emerson had never seen Rupert Parkinson in so exuberant a mood; it was positively un-English.

  “Where?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Ninety-nine—well, ninety-five percent. Just where I expected. There was an unoccupied suite—wasn’t ready in time for the voyage. On the same deck as G.G. and only a few yards away. Both doors are jammed so we’ll have to cut our way in. The ROV’s going down now to have a crack at it. You should have been here.”

  Perhaps, thought Emerson. But this is a family affair, and he would feel an interloper. Besides, it might be a false alarm—like most rumors of sunken treasure.

  “How long before you get inside?”

  “Shouldn’t take more than an hour—it’s fairly thin s
teel, and we’ll be through it in no time.”

  “Well, good luck. Keep me in the picture.”

  Roy Emerson went back to what he pretended was work. He felt guilty when he was not inventing something, which was now most of the time. Trying to reduce the electronic chaos of his data banks by rearranging and reclassifying did give the illusion of useful employment.

  And so he missed all the excitement.

  The little group in Rupert’s suite aboard Glomar Explorer was so intent upon the monitor screen that their drinks were virtually ignored—no great hardship, because according to long tradition on such vessels, they were nonalcoholic.

  A record number of Parkinsons—almost a quorum, someone had pointed out—had assembled for this occasion. Though few shared Rupert’s confidence, it had been a good excuse to visit the scene of operations. Only George had been here before; William, Arnold, and Gloria were all newcomers. The rest of the group watching ROV 3 gliding silently across Titanic’s deck were ship’s officers and senior engineers, recruited from half a dozen ocean-oriented firms.

  “Have you noticed,” somebody whispered, “how the weeds have grown? Must be due to our lights—she wasn’t like this when we started ops—bridge looks like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon….”

  There was very little other comment, still less any conversation, as ROV 3 dropped down into the yawning cavity of the grand staircase. A century ago, elegant ladies and their sleek escorts had strolled up and down the thick-piled carpet, never dreaming of their fate—or imagining that in little more than two years the guns of August would put an end to the gilded Edwardian Age they so perfectly epitomized.

  ROV 3 turned into the main starboard corridor on the promenade deck, past the rows of first-class staterooms. It was moving very slowly in these confined quarters, and the TV image was now limited to freeze-frame black and white, with a new picture every two seconds.

  All data and control signals were now being relayed over an ultrasonic link through a repeater placed on the deck. From time to time there were annoying holdups, when the screen went blank and the only indication of ROV 3’s continued existence was a high-pitched whistle. Some obstacle was absorbing the carrier wave, causing a momentary break in the connection. There would be a brief interval of electronic “handshaking” and error correction; then the picture would return and ROV 3’s pilot, four kilometers above, could resume progress. These interruptions did nothing to lessen the suspense; it had been several minutes before anyone in Parkinson’s suite had said a word.

  There was a universal sigh of relief as the robot came to rest outside a plain, unmarked door, its white paint blindingly brilliant in ROV 3’s floodlights. The decorators might have left only yesterday; apart from a few flakes that had peeled away, almost all the paint was still intact.

  Now ROV 3 began the tricky but essential task of anchoring itself to the job—a procedure just as important underwater as in space. First it blasted two explosive bolts through the door, and clamped itself on to them, so it was rigidly attached to the working area.

  The glare of the oxy-arc thermal lance flooded the corridor, making ROV 3’s own lights seem feeble in comparison. The thin metal of the door offered no resistance as the incandescent knife—favorite tool of generations of safecrackers—sliced through it. In less than five minutes, a circle almost a meter wide had been carved out, and fell slowly forward, knocking up a small cloud of silt as it hit the floor.

  ROV 3 unclamped itself, and rose a few centimeters so it could peer into the hole. The image flickered, then stabilized as the automatic exposure adjusted to the new situation.

  Almost at once, Rupert Parkinson gave a hoot of delight.

  “There they are!” he cried. “Just as I said—one… two… three-four-five… swing the camera over to the right—six… seven—a little higher… My God—what’s that?”

  No one ever remembered who screamed first.

  30.

  PIETÀ

  Jason Bradley had seen something like this before, in a space movie whose name he couldn’t recall. There had been a dead astronaut cradled in mechanical arms, being carried toward the stars…. But this robot pietà was rising from the Atlantic depths, toward the circling inflatable boats waiting to receive it.

  “That’s the last one,” said Parkinson somberly. “The girl. We still don’t know her name.”

  Just like those Russian sailors, thought Bradley, who had been laid out on this very same deck, more than thirty years ago. He could not avoid it; the silly cliché flashed into his mind: “This is where I came in.”

  And, like many of the sailors brought up in Operation JENNIFER, these dead also appeared to be only sleeping. That was the most amazing—indeed, uncanny—aspect of the whole matter, which had seized the imagination of the world. After all the trouble we went to, explaining why there couldn’t possibly be even a scrap of bone….

  “I’m surprised,” he said to Parkinson, “that you were able to identify any of them, after all these years.”

  “Contemporary newspapers—family albums—even poor Irish immigrants usually had at least one photo taken during their lifetime. Especially when they were leaving home forever. I don’t think there’s an attic in Ireland the media haven’t ransacked in the last couple of days.”

  ROV 3 had handed over its burden to the rubber-suited divers circling in their inflatables. They lifted it carefully—tenderly—into the cradle suspended over the side from one of Explorer’s cranes. It was obviously very light; one man was able to handle it easily.

  With a common, unspoken impulse both Parkinson and Bradley moved away from the rail; they had seen enough of this sad ritual. During the past forty-eight hours, five men and one woman had been brought out of the tomb in which they had been lying for almost a century—apparently beyond the reach of time.

  When they were together in Parkinson’s suite, Bradley handed over a small computer module. “It’s all there,” he said. “The ISA lab’s been working overtime. There are still some puzzling details, but the general picture seems clear.

  “I don’t know if you ever heard the story about Alvin—in the early days of its career, it was lost in deep water. The crew just managed to scramble out—leaving their lunch behind.

  “When the sub was salvaged a couple of years later, the crew’s lunch was exactly as they’d left it. That was the first hint that in cold water, with low oxygen content, organic decay can be vanishingly slow.

  “And they’ve recovered bodies from wrecks in the Great Lakes that look absolutely fresh after decades—you can still see the expressions of surprise on the sailors’ faces!

  “So,” continued Bradley, “the first requirement is that the corpse be in a sealed environment, where marine organisms can’t get at it. That’s what happened here; these people were trapped when they tried to find a way out—poor devils, they must have been lost in first-class territory! They’d broken the lock on the other door of the suite—but couldn’t open the other before the water reached them….

  “But there’s more to it than cold, stagnant water—and this is the really fascinating part of the story. Have you ever heard of bog people?”

  “No,” said Parkinson.

  “Neither had I, until yesterday. But from time to time Danish archaeologists keep finding almost perfectly preserved corpses—victims of sacrifices, apparently—more than a thousand years old. Every wrinkle, every hair intact—they look like incredibly detailed sculptures. The reason? They were buried in peat bogs, and the tannin protected them from decay. Remember the boots and shoes found scattered around the wreck—all the leather untouched?”

  Parkinson was no fool, though he sometimes pretended to be a character out of P. G. Wodehouse; it took him only seconds to make the connection.

  “Tannin? But how? Of course—the tea chests!”

  “Exactly; several of them had been breached by the impact. But our chemists say tannin may be only part of the story. The ship had been newly painted, of cour
se—so the water samples we’ve analyzed show considerable amounts of arsenic and lead. A mighty unhealthy environment for any bacteria.”

  “I’m sure that’s the answer,” said Parkinson. “What an extraordinary twist of fate! That tea did a lot better than anyone ever imagined—or could imagine…. And I’m afraid G.G. has brought us some very bad luck. Just when things were going smoothly.”

  Bradley knew exactly what he meant. To the old charge of desecrating a historic shrine had now been added that of grave robbing. And, by a strange paradox, an apparently fresh grave at that.

  The long-forgotten Thomas Conlin, Patrick Dooley, Martin Gallagher, and their three as-yet-still-anonymous companions had transformed the whole situation.

  It was a paradox which, surely, would delight any true Irishman. With the discovery of her dead, Titanic had suddenly come alive.

  31.

  A MATTER OF MEGAWATTS

  “We have the answer,” said a tired but triumphant Kato.

  “I wonder if it matters now,” answered Donald Craig.

  “Oh, all that hysteria isn’t going to last. Our P.R. boys are already hard at work—and so are Parky’s. We’ve had a couple of summit meetings to plan a joint strategy. We may even turn it to our mutual advantage.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “Obvious! Thanks to our—Well, Parky’s—careful exploring, these poor folk will at last get a Christian burial, back in their own country. The Irish will love it. Don’t tell anyone, but we’re already talking to the Pope.”

  Donald found Kato’s flippant approach more than a little offensive. It would certainly upset Edith, who seemed fascinated by the lovely child-woman the world had named Colleen.

  “You’d better be careful. Some of them may be Protestant.”

  “Not likely. They all boarded in the deep south, didn’t they?”

  “Yes—at Queenstown. You won’t find it on the map, though—a name like that wasn’t popular after Independence. Now it’s called Cobh.”