"Mighty peculiar," muttered Dover.

"My thought too," Pitt said. "She's been systematically stripped."

"Scavengers must have boarded and carried away everything during the years she was adrift."

"Scavengers leave a mess," Pitt disagreed. "Whoever was behind this job had a fetish for neatness."

It was an eerie trip. Their shadows flitted on the dark walls of the alleyways and followed alongside the silent and abandoned machinery. Pitt felt a longing to see the sky again.

"Incredible," mumbled Dover, still awed by what they'd found, or rather not found. "They even removed all the valves and gauges."If I was a gambling man," said Pitt thoughtfully, "I'd bet we've stumbled on an insurance scam."

"Wouldn't be the first ship that was posted missing for a Lloyd's of London payday," Dover said.

"You told me the crew claimed they abandoned the Pilottown in a storm. They abandoned her all right, but they left nothing but a barren, worthless shell."

"Easy enough to check out," said Dover. "Two ways to scuttle a ship at sea. Open the sea cocks and let her flood, or blow out the bottom with explosive charges."

"How would you do it?"

"Flooding through the sea cocks could take twenty-four hours or more. Time enough for a passing ship to investigate. I opt for the charges. Quick and dirty; put her on the seafloor in a matter of minutes."

"Something must have prevented the explosives from detonating."

"It's only a theory."

"Next question," Pitt persisted. "Where would you lay them?"

"Cargo holds, engine room, most any place against the hull plates so long as it was below the waterline."

"No sign of charges in the after holds," said Pitt. "That leaves the engine room and the forward cargo holds."

"We've come this far," Dover said. "We might as well finish the job."

"Faster if we split up. I'll search the engine room. You know your way around the ship better than I do-"

"The forward cargo holds it is," Dover said, anticipating him.

The big Coast Guardsman started up a companionway, whistling the Notre Dame fight song under his breath. His bearlike gait and hulking build, silhouetted by the wavering flashlight in his hand, grew smaller and finally faded.

Pitt began probing around the maze of steam pipes leading from the obsolete old steam reciprocating engines and boilers. The walkway gratings over the machinery were nearly eaten through by rust, and he treaded lightly. The engine room seemed to come alive in his imagination-creaks and moans, murmurings drifting out of the ventilators, whispering sounds.

He found a pair of sea cocks. Their handwheels were frozen in the closed position.

So much for the sea-cock theory, he thought.

An icy chill crept up the back of Pitts neck and spread throughout his body, and he realized the batteries operating the heater in his suit were nearly drained. He switched off the light for a moment. The pure blackness nearly smothered him. He flicked it on again and quickly swept the beam around as if he expected to see a specter of the crew reaching out for him. Only there were no specters. Nothing except the dank metal walls and the worn machinery.