The wreck was heeled over at a twenty-degree angle and her stern section blanketed in brown rust. The rudder was canted in the full starboard position and two barnacle-encrusted blades of the propeller protruded from the black sand. The letters of her name and borne port were too obscured to read.

Pitt, Giordino, Dover, the two EPA scientists and one of the Catawba's junior officers all were garbed in white encapsulating suits to protect them from the plumes of deadly spray. They communicated by tiny transmitters inside their protective headgear.

Attached to their waist belts were intricate filter systems designed to refine clean, breathable air.

The sea around them was carpeted with dead fish of every species.

A pair of whales rolled lifelessly back and forth with the tine, united in rotting decay with porpoises, sea lions and spotted seals.

Birds by the thousands floated amin the morbin debris. Nothing that had lived in the area had escaped.

Dover expertly threaded the launch between the threatening offshore barrier of projecting rock, the remnant of an ancient coastline. He slowed, waiting for a momentary lull in the surf, bining his time while carefully eyeing the depth. Then as a wave slammed onto the shore and its backwash spilled against the next one coming in, he aimed the bow at the small spit of sand formed around the base of the wreck and pushed the throttle forward. Like a horse bracing for the next hurdle at the Grand National, the launch rose up on the wave crest and rode it through the swirling foam until the keel dropped and scraped onto the spit.

"A neat bit of handiwork," Pitt complimented him.

"All in the timing," Dover said, a grin visible behind his helmet's face mask. "Of course, it helps if you land at low tine."

They tilted back their heads and stared up at the wreck towering above them. The faded name on the stern could be deciphered now. It read Pilottown.

"Almost a pity," Dover said reverently, "to write finish to an enigma."

"The sooner the better," Pitt said, his tone grim as he considered the mass death inside.

Within five minutes the equipment was unloaded, the launch securely moored to the Pilottown's rudder, and the men laboriously climbing the steep slope on the port side of the stern. Pitt took the lead, followed by Giordino and the rest as Dover brought up the rear.

The incline was not made up of Solid rock but rather a combination of cinder ash and mud with the consistency of loose gravel.

Their boots struggled to find a foothold, but mostly they slin back two steps for every three they gained. The dust from the ash rose and clung to their suits, coating them a dark gray. Soon the sweat was seeping through their pores and the increasingly heavy rasp of their breathing became more audible over the earphones inside their helmets.