Polar Shift by Clive Cussler Page A

everything but bring you your newspaper and slippers.”
    A brilliant mechanic as well as engineer, Zavala had designed and directed the construction of numerous underwater vehicles, manned and unmanned, for NUMA.
    â€œFunny you should mention that,” Joe said. “I’m working on a design that will do all that and mix a damned good margarita too.”
    â€œJoe makes my point.” Austin gestured at the screens lining the walls of the survey center. “But what’s missing in the comfortable confines of this room is the hunger for the one quality that will keep the human race from atrophying like an unused limb. Adventure .”
    Adler smiled with pleasure at having made the right decision in going to NUMA for help. Austin and Zavala were obviously sharp-minded scientists, knowledgeable in arcane areas of ocean research. But with their athletic bearing, quick humor and good-natured camaraderie the two NUMA men seemed like throwbacks. They were more like eighteenth-century swashbucklers than the seagoing academics he was used to, with their fussy intensity and taciturn personalities. He lifted his coffee mug in a toast.
    â€œHere’s to adventure,” he said.
    The others raised their mugs. “Maybe it’s time we had a wave scientist on the Special Assignments Team,” Austin said.
    An urgent buzzing from the sonar monitor cut short Adler’s laughter.
    Austin set his coffee aside and stepped over to the sonar screen. He watched the display for a few seconds. His lips widened in a smile and he turned to the professor. “You said earlier that you’d like to assess the damage to the Southern Belle before you tell us about the theories you’ve been toying with.”
    â€œYes, that’s right,” Adler said. “I’m hopeful that I can learn why the Belle went down.”
    Austin swiveled the screen so that the professor could see the spectral image of a ship lying on the ocean bottom five hundred feet below.
    â€œYou’re about to get your chance.”

    T HE SEA had wasted no time taking over ownership of the
    Southern Belle.
    The ship caught in the powerful spotlights of the remote-operated vehicle was no longer the magnificent vessel that had once plowed across the ocean like a moving island. Its blue hull was covered with a greenish gray growth that gave the ship a shaggy-dog appearance, as if it had grown fur. Microscopic organisms had taken up residence in the seaweed, attracting schools of fish that nuzzled for food in the nooks and crannies of what had become a huge incubator for marine life.
    The ROPOS ROV had been launched from the Throckmorton’ s A-frame stern soon after Austin had notified the bridge that the sonar scan had picked up the ship’s image. The vehicle was around six feet long, three feet wide and high, and shaped like a seagoing refrigerator. Despite its boxy shape, the ROV’s design had gone far beyond the “dope on a rope” function of the earlier remote vehicles. It was a moving ocean laboratory capable of a variety of scientific functions.
    The ROV carried two video cameras, twin manipulators, sampling tools, sonar and digital data channels. The vehicle was attached to the ship by a fiber-optic tether that provided communication and the transmission of live video and other data. Driven by a forty-horsepower electric motor, the ROV had rapidly descended the nearly five hundred feet to where the ship lay on the bottom in an upright position.
    Joe Zavala sat at the control console piloting the boxy undersea robot with a joystick. Zavala was an experienced pilot who had logged hundreds of hours in helicopters, small jet and turboprop aircraft, but controlling a moving object hundreds of feet away required the deft hand of a teenage video game addict on the controls.
    Keeping an eye on the video picture in front of him, Zavala guided the ROV as if he were sitting inside it. He used a firm yet gentle hand on