6

The pilot summoned the other submersible and positioned it fifty yards away, across the field of wreckage.  With the four lamps throwing a twenty-thousand-watt pool of light, they could see nearly the entire site.

The pilot grinned at Webber and said "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, what is it?"

"How the hell do I know?" Webber snapped.  "Look, I'm freezing, I'm tired, I have to hit the head.  Do me a favor and stop—"

"It's a submarine."

"It is?" Webber said, and pressed his face to the porthole.  "How do you know?"

"Look there."  The pilot pointed.  "That's a diving plane.  And there.  That's gotta be a snorkel tube."

"You mean a nuke?"

"No, I don't think so; I'm pretty sure not.  It looks to be steel.  See how it's oxidizing — real slow, because there's almost no oxygen down here.  But it is oxidizing — and it's small and the wiring's shitty, old-fashioned.  I'd say we're talking World War Two."

"World War Two?"

"Yeah,  but let's try to get closer."  The pilot spoke into his microphone, and, on cue, the two submersibles began to crawl toward each other at a speed barely above idle, skimming the bottom just high enough to avoid roiling the silt.

Webber's film counters told him he had eighty-six frames left, so he shot sparingly.  He tried to imagine the wreck whole, but the destruction was so complete that he couldn't see how anyone could identify individual sections of the ship.

"Where are we on the thing?" he asked.

"Looks to me like the stern," the pilot said.  "She's lying on her starboard side.  Those pipes there should be the after torpedo tubes."

They passed one of the submarine's deck guns, and because it actually looked like something, Webber shot a couple of frames of it.

They came to a gaping wound in the side of the ship and saw on the silt a few feet away a pair of shoes looking as if they were waiting for feet to step into them.

"Where's the guy who wore them?" Webber asked as he shot the shoes from different angles.  "Where's the body?"

"Worms would've eaten him," the pilot said.  "Crabs, too."

"Bones and all?  Worms eat bones?"

"No, but the sea does.  Deep, cold salt water dissolves bones... it's a chemical thing.  The sea seeks out calcium.  I used to want to be buried at sea, but not now, not anymore.  I don't like the thought of being lunch for creepy crawlies."

They saw a few more recognizable items as they crept toward the bow:  pots from the galley, the frame of a bunk, a radio.  Webber shot them all.  He was readjusting one of his cameras when, at the edge of his field of vision, he saw what looked like a letter of the alphabet painted on a steel plate.  "What's that?" he said, pointing.

The pilot turned the submersible around and moved it slowly forward.  Looking through his porthole, he said suddenly, "Bingo!  We just identified the boat."

"We did?"

"The kind, anyway.  That's a U painted on one of the conning-tower plates.  It's a U-boat."

"A U-boat?  You mean she's German?"

"She was.  But what she was doing this far south in the middle of nowhere, the Lord only knows."

Webber shot pictures of the U from several angles as the pilot nudged the submersible on toward the bow of the submarine.

When they reached the forward deck area, the pilot disengaged the motor and let the submersible hover.  "There's what sank her," he said, focusing the lights on an enormous hole in the deck.  "She imploded."

The deck plates were bent inward, their edges curled as if struck by a giant hammer.

As Webber shot a picture, he felt sweat running down his sides; he imagined the moment, half a century before, when the men on this boat suddenly knew they were going to die.  He could imagine the roar of rushing water, the screams, the confusion, the panic, the pressure, the suffocation, the agony.  "Christ..." he said.

The pilot put the motor in gear, and the submersible inched forward.  Its lights reached into the hole, illuminating a skein of wires, a tangle of pipes, a...

"Hey!" Webber shouted.

"What?"

"There's something in there.  Something big.  It looks... I don't know..."

The pilot maneuvered the submersible above the hole, tilted the bow down and, using the claws on the ends of the artificial arms, tore away the wires and pushed aside the pipes.  He angled the lights into a single five-thousand-watt beam and shone it straight down into the hole.  "I'll be damned..."

"It looks like a box," Webber said as he watched the lights dance over the greenish-yellow surface of a perfect rectangle.  "A chest."

"Yeah, or a coffin."  The pilot paused, reconsidering.  "No.  Too big for a coffin."

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.  They just stared at the box — wondering, imagining.

At last, Webber said, "We ought to bring it up."

"Yeah."  The bastard's gotta be eight feet long.  I bet it weighs a ton.  I can't lift it with this boat."

"How about both boats together?"

"No, we can't lift a thousand pounds apiece, and I'm just guessing.  It could be a lot more than that.  We couldn't..."  He stopped.  "Just a sec.  I think they've got five miles of cable in the hold of that ship up there.  If they can weight an end of it and send it down, and if we can get a sling around the box, maybe... there's a chance..."  He pushed a button and spoke into his microphone.

*          *          *          *          *

It took the two submersibles nearly an hour to retrieve the weighted cable sent down from the mother ship and to secure the box in a wire sling.  By the time they gave the ship the order to begin lifting, they were pushing the limits of their air supply.  And so, as soon as they made sure that the box was free of the submarine's hull and was rising steadily, they shed ballast and began their own ascent.

Webber felt exhausted and elated and challenged, impatient to get to the surface, open the box and see what was inside.

"You know something weird?" he said as he watched the depth gauge record their meter-by-meter progress up toward daylight.

"This whole thing's weird," the pilot said.  "You thinking of something in particular?"

"That wreckage.  All of it was covered by silt.  Everything had a gray film on it... except the box.  It was clean.  That's probably why I saw it.  It stood out."

The pilot shrugged.  "Does silt stick to bronze?  Beats me."