The Titanic Enigma Read Online Free PDF Page B

did you?’ Lou commented dryly as the four of them buckled up.
    Behind the main cabin was the airlock. Through a pair of doors lay a tiny changing room where the crew could don the LMC suits before leaving the sub. Once the integrity of the suits had been
triple-checked, the submariners could enter the airlock, and from there emerge onto the ocean floor via a short ladder that extended from the side of the sub. When they were first shown how it all
worked, Lou and Kate couldn’t get over how similar it seemed to the famous
Apollo
lunar modules. And, as the commander had reminded them, the environment 12,600 feet down on the
ocean floor was every bit as inhospitable as the lunar surface.
    Final checks complete, the main door of the sub was closed and locked from the inside. Commander Milford told the bridge of the
Armstrong
they were ready. The ship’s hold began to
fill with water, the pressure was equalized and the outer door of the
Armstrong
began to slide open. They all felt
JV1
move forward, and they were in open water directly beneath
the ship.
    Lou and Kate had been on countless dives, but neither of them had gone deeper than a few hundred feet. This was going to be an entirely new experience and one any marine archaeologist would give
their eye teeth to have. Little more than twenty-four hours ago, the very concept of actually walking around the
Titanic
would have been complete fantasy to them. They could still barely
believe they were here now.
    Milford kept an open-mic link with the ops control room of the
Armstrong
, sharing constantly updated telemetry figures and receiving instructions to alter course where necessary. Lou
and Kate sat in silence, mulling over the task ahead of them.
    Lou glanced at Kate, the outline of her features dark against the background of illuminated control panels and swathes of neon. He knew he could never grow tired of that profile. When they were
splitting up as a couple there had been times when a part of him had wished he had never applied for the job with Kate’s team. But then he had realized that it was better to have her as a
friend than not have a relationship with her at all. In fact, for him that friendship was the most precious thing in the world.
    On the screens they could all see the colours change very quickly, shifting from light blue to an inky, bubbling black. By the time they reached a depth of 300 feet, sunlight had been completely
absorbed. The only source of illumination came from
JV1
’s powerful lights. At the depth of the
Titanic,
they knew the water would be absolutely black, blacker than
interstellar space. To cope with this, the
JVs
were equipped with four 100-million candlepower lamps, which in tests piloted by Milford had been capable of lighting up large portions of
the wreck.
    In this region and for many miles around, the ocean was totally devoid of all life; everything had been wiped out by the radiation still leaking from the ship.
    They quickly reached a comfortable cruising speed of twenty-five knots, and at 6,000 feet, they began to slow. Derham scanned the seabed with deep-ocean sonar. Images appeared on the monitors
– a poorly defined shape about 6,500 feet beneath them. Milford pulled back the speed a little more and manoeuvred the sub to descend towards a point on the ocean floor about fifty yards
north of the ship’s bow. The final thousand feet of the descent used the inertia of the sub, and as they approached the wreck Milford applied a quick burst from a set of retro jets that
slowed the machine so it could be brought down with minimum disruption.
    It really is just like bringing the lunar module in close to the landing site at the Sea of Tranquillity,
Kate found herself thinking as she watched the image change on one of the
monitors.
    Two hundred feet above the ocean floor Derham slowly brought up the lights, and on the screens the outline of the century-old shipwreck began to appear as though a mist was slipping away