Polar Shift by Clive Cussler

the sonar tow fish flew at the speed of light along an armored fiber-optic cable hundreds of feet long. The thick cable snaked onto the deck of the turquoise-hulled ship plowing a foamy wake through the ocean about two hundred miles east of the mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S.
    The cable terminated in the survey control center on the ship’s main deck. Austin sat in front of a glowing screen, analyzing the side-scan sonar images. A revolutionary undersea exploration tool invented by the late Dr. Harold Edgerton, side-scan allowed the quick survey of vast areas of ocean bottom.
    A dark vertical line running from the top to the bottom of the screen showed the path of the survey ship. Broad color bands to either side of the line represented the port and starboard areas being probed by the side-scan sonar. Navigational data and time were displayed on the right side of the screen.
    Austin stared at the screen, his face bathed in its amber light, alert to every visual nuance. It was a tiring job, and he had been at it for two hours. He had glanced away from the screen and was rubbing his eyes when Zavala and Adler stepped through the door. Zavala was carrying a thermos of coffee and three mugs that he had picked up in the mess hall.
    â€œCoffee break,” he said. He poured the mugs full and handed them around.
    The hot coffee burned Austin’s lips, but it gave him a welcome wake-up lift. “Thanks for the caffeine pick-me-up,” he said. “I was getting bleary-eyed.”
    â€œI can take the next shift,” Zavala volunteered.
    â€œThanks. I’ll put the scan on autopilot for now, and show you and the professor what we’ve been doing.”
    Austin set the sonar monitor to buzz if it picked up an object larger than fifty feet in size, and the three men gathered around a chart table.
    â€œWe’re running a medium-range search to cover the most ground possible without distorting the results,” Austin said. “The ocean depth here is about five hundred feet. We’ve marked out twelve-mile squares along the assumed course of the missing ship.” He drew his finger along the perimeter of a rectangle marked in grease pencil on a transparent overlay. “The survey ship follows imaginary parallel lines in each square like someone mowing a lawn. We’re about halfway through this square. If we don’t locate the ship in this spread, we’ll continue to probe a series of overlapping squares.”
    â€œAnything interesting turn up?” Zavala said.
    Austin made a face. “No mermaids, if that’s what you mean. Lots of flat ooze with hard sediment mixed in here and there, boulders, dips and depressions, school fish and sea clutter. No sign of our ship—or any ship, for that matter.”
    Adler shook his head in frustration. “You wouldn’t think it would be so damned difficult with all these electronic gizmos to find a vessel that’s longer than two football fields put together.”
    â€œIt’s a big ocean. But if any ship can find the Belle , it’s the Throckmorton ,” Austin said in reassurance.
    â€œKurt’s right. The instrumentation on this ship can tell you the color of a tube worm’s eyes at a thousand fathoms,” Zavala added.
    Adler chuckled. “Deep-ocean biology isn’t my area of expertise, but I wasn’t aware those remarkable creatures had eyes.”
    â€œJoe is exaggerating, but only a little bit,” Austin said with a smile. “The stuff available on the Throckmorton makes a strong case for those who argue that humans can explore the deep ocean without getting their feet wet. Instead of being crammed into a submersible vehicle, here we are sipping coffee while the side-scan fish does all the work for us.”
    â€œAnd what do you think, Kurt?”
    Austin pondered the question. “There is no doubt that someone like Joe can build an underwater robot vehicle that can be programmed to do