Pitt completed the checklist and turned to Giordino, who sat in the seat to his right.

    "Shall we make a dive?"

    Giordino flashed a toothy smile. "Yes, let's."

    "How about it, Rudi?"

    Gunn looked up from his prone position behind the lower viewports and nodded. "Ready when you are."

    Pitt spoke into a microphone and watched the small television screen above the control panel as it showed the Modoc's derrick lift the Sea Slug from her deck cradle and gently swing her over the side and into the water. As soon as a diver had disconnected the lift cable, Pitt cracked the ballast valve and the submersible began to sink slowly under the rolling, deep-troughed waves.

    "Life-support timer on," Giordino announced. "An hour to the bottom, ten hours for the search, two hours for surfacing, leaving us a reserve of five hours just in case.

    "We'll use the reserve time for the search," Pitt said.

    Giordino knew well the facts of the situation. If the unthinkable happened, an accident at twelve thousand feet, there would be no hope of rescue. A quick death would be the only prayer against the appalling suffering of slow asphyxiation. He found himself actually amused at wishing he was back on board the Sappho I, enjoying the uncramped comfort of open space and the security of her eight-week life-support system. He sat back and watched the water darken as the Sea Slug buried her hull in the depths, his thoughts drifting to the enigmatic man who was piloting the craft.

    Giordino went back with Pitt to their high-school days, when they had built and raced hot rods together down the lonely farm roads behind Newport Beach, California. He knew Pitt better than any man alive; any woman, for that matter. Pitt possessed, in a sense, two separate inner identities, neither directly related to the other. There was the congenial Dirk Pitt, who rarely deviated from the middle of the road, and was humorous, unpretentious, and radiated an easygoing friendliness with everyone he met. Then there was the other Dirk Pitt, the coldly efficient machine who seldom made a mistake and who often withdrew into himself, remote and aloof. If there was a key that would unlock the door between the two, Giordino had yet to discover it.

    Giordino turned his attention back to the depth gauge. Its needle indicated twelve hundred feet. Soon they passed the two-thousand-foot mark and entered a world of perpetual night. From this point downward, as far as the human eye was concerned, there was only pure blackness. Giordino pushed a switch and, the outside lights burst on and sliced a reassuring path through the darkness.

    "What do you think our chances are of finding her on the first try?" he asked.

    "If the computer data Admiral Sandecker sent us holds true, the Titanic should lie somewhere within a hundred-and-ten-degree arc, thirteen hundred yards southeast of the spot where you reclaimed the cornet."

    "Oh, great," Giordino mumbled sarcastically. "That narrows it down from looking for a toenail in the sands of Coney Island to searching for an albino boll weevil in a cotton field."

    "There he goes again," Gunn said, "offering his negative thought for the day."

    "Maybe if we ignore him," Pitt laughed, "he'll go away."

    Giordino grimaced and motioned into the watery void.

    "Oh sure, just drop me off at the next corner"

    "We'll find the old girl," Pitt said resolutely. He pointed - illuminated clock on the control panel. "Let's see, it's oh-six-forty now. I predict we'll be over the Titanic's decks before lunch, say about eleven-forty."

    Giordino gave Pitt a sideways look. "The great soothsayer has spoken."

    "A little optimism never hurts," Gunn said. He adjusted the exterior camera housings and triggered the strobe. It flashed blindingly for an instant like a shaft of lightning, reflecting millions of planktonic creatures that hung in the water.

    Ten thousand feet and forty minutes later, Pitt reported to the Modoc, giving the depth and the water temperature thirty-five degrees. The three men watched fascinated as a small angler fish, ugly in its stubby appearance, slowly swept past the viewpoints; the tiny luminous bulb that protruded from the top of its head glowed like a lonely beacon.

    At 12,375 feet the sea floor came into view, moving up to meet the Sea Slug as though she were standing still. Pitt turned on the propulsion motors and adjusted the altitude angle, gently stopping the Sea Slug's descent and turning her on a level course across the bleak red clay that carpeted the ocean floor.

    Gradually, the ominous silence was broken by the rhythmic hum that came from the Sea Slug's electric motors. At first, Pitt had difficulty distinguishing rises and gradual drops on the bottom; there was nothing to indicate a three-dimensional scale. His eyes saw only a flatness that stretched beyond the reach of the lights.

    There was no life to be seen. And yet, evidence proved otherwise. Scattering tracks from the depth's habitants meandered and zig-zagged in every direction through the sediment. One might have guessed that they were made only recently, but the sea can be misleading. The footprints from deep-dwelling sea spiders, sea cucumbers, or starfish might have been made several minutes ago or hundreds of years past, because the microscopic animal and plant remains that comprise the deep-ocean ooze filters down from above at the rate of only one or two centimeters every thousand years.

    "There's a lovely creature," Giordino said pointing.

    Pitt's eye followed Giordino's finger and picked out a strange blue-black animal that seemed a cross between a squid and an octopus. It had eight tentacles linked together like the webbed foot of a duck, and it stared back at the Sea Slug through two large globular eyes that formed nearly a third of its body.

    "A vampire squid," Gunn informed them.

    "Ask her if she's got relatives in Transylvania?" Giordino grinned.

    "You know," Pitt said, "that thing out there sort of reminds me of your girl friend."

    Gunn jumped in. "You mean the one with no boobs?"

    "You've seen her?"

    "Rave on, envious rabble," Giordino grumbled. "She's mad about me and her father keeps me floating in quality booze."

    "Some quality," Pitt snorted. "Old Cesspool Bourbon, Attila the Hun Gin, Tijuana Vodka. Who the hell ever heard of those labels?"

    Throughout the next few hours, the wit and the sarcasm bounced off the walls of the Sea Slug. Actually, it was put on; a defense mechanism to relieve the gnawing pangs of monotony. Unlike romanticized fiction, wreck-hunting in the depths can be a grueling and tedious job. Add to that the aggravated discomfort of the cramped quarters, the high humidity and chilling temperatures inside the submersible, and you have the ingredients for provoking an accident through human error that could prove both costly and fatal.

    Pitt's hands stayed rock-steady as they handled the controls, guiding the Sea Slug a scant four feet above the bottom. Giordino's concentration was nailed to the life support systems, while Gunn kept his eyes skinned on the sonar and magnetometer. The long hours of planning were over. It was now a case of patience and persistence, mixed with that peculiar blend of eternal optimism and love of the unknown shared by all treasure seekers.

    "Looks like a pile of rocks up ahead," Pitt said.

    Giordino stared up through the viewports. "They're just sitting there in the ooze. I wonder where they came from."