Ultra Deep (21 page)

“Nah. Consider it done.”

By the time she had both terminals up and had keyed her access codes into number four, connecting with the San Diego machine, Dokey was back, carrying a twelve-inch-square circuit board that was jammed with components. Without asking her what to do, he selected an adaptor from several different types stored in a drawer and plugged it into the board. Another adaptor cord connected the board to the programming terminal.

“I know what you’re after, Kim,” he said, pulling up a chair to sit next to her.

“Tell me,” she said as she tapped keys, accessed the board, and began to display the instructions stored in one of the circuit board’s chips.

“We programmed this thing the same way we programmed
Atlas
. That is, we thought in human terms when we wanted a certain hand movement. And it worked.”

“So what’s different with Gargantua?” she asked.

The long lines of programming instructions scrolled down the screen as she looked for the specific lines she wanted.

“Pressure sensors,” Dokey said. “Gargantua’s pincers have sensors to tell us, by digital readout, how many foot-pounds of pressure he’s applying when he grasps something. For humans, that’s an automatic signal to the brain. For Gargantua, we gave him what we thought would work.”

“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
Arienne
ʼs 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.”