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.

He could have sworn he felt the grating shudder as if the engines looming above him were starting up.

Pitt shook his head to purge the phantoms in his mind and methodically began searching the sides of the hull, crawling between pumps and asbestos-covered pipes that led into the darkness and nowhere. He fell down a lander into six feet of greasy water.

He struggled back up, out of the seeming clutches of the dead and evil and-@ugly bilge, his suit now black with oil. Out of breath, he hung there a minute, making a conscious effort to relax.

It was then he noticed an object dimly outlined in the farthest reach of the light beam. A corroded aluminum canister about the size of a five-gallon gas can was wired to a beam welded on the inner hull plates. Pitt had set explosives on marine salvage projects and he quickly recognized the detonator unit attached to the bottom of the canister. An electrical wire trailed upward through the grating to the deck above.

Sweat was pouring from his body but he was shivering from the cold. He left the explosive charge where he found it and climbed back up the lander. Then he began inspecting the engines and boilers.

There were no markings anywhere, no manufacturer's name, no inspector's stamped date. Wherever there had been a metal in tag it was removed. Wherever there had been letters or numbers stamped into the metal, they were filed away. After probing endless nooks and crannies around the machinery, he got lucky when he felt a small protrusion through his gloved hand. It was a small metal plate partially hidden by grease under one of the boilers.

He rubbed away the grime and aimed the light on the indented surface. It read:

PRESSURE 220 psi.