A thousand-foot Kevlar-jacketed tether connected the Benthos Stingray ROV to the ship. The tether transmitted Gunn's commands to the operating system and relayed the video picture back to the screen. The Argo carried larger and more powerful ROVs, but after hearing the NR-1 story, the captain had thought they would need a smaller vehicle that could be maneuvered into tight spaces. The vehicle was the size and shape of a large suitcase. Although the ROV was relatively small, it carried video and digital cameras and a manipulator arm.

Moving the joystick with a skilled hand, Gunn angled the ROV into a long dive. The vehicle used the navigational net established for the UUV to find its way directly to the target. Color faded from the water, as each descending fathom took the ROV farther from the dappled surface light. Gunn switched on the twin 150-watt quartz halogen lights, but even their powerful beams were swallowed by the thickening gloom.

The ROV smoothly descended to three hundred feet, then leveled out a few yards above the ocean floor. The vehicle bucked a slight bottom current that kept its speed under a knot as it moved forward above the black mud. Then the bottom dropped away and the ROV soared over the lip of the undersea canyon so suddenly that everyone in the room felt a slight wave of queasiness. Gunn nosed the ROV downward, keeping the vehicle parallel to the sharp slope.

The ROV's side-scan sonar painted the target on a separate monitor until it was close enough for visual inspection. Gunn goosed the vertical thrusters, and the vehicle rose slowly above the vessel.

The ship lay at an angle on the sloping side of the canyon, the bottom section of hull embedded in mud. The ROV descended several yards and moved alongside the hulk at main-deck level, past a row of portholes, including some that were still open. Barnacles covered most of the ship and heightened its spectral aspect. Reddish patches of antifouling paint peeked out here and there. The wooden wheelhouse had disintegrated and the decks had rotted away. The lifeboat davits were empty, and wire shrouds hung with seaweed. A pile of rusty debris was all that remained of the collapsed funnel.

The ship was a metal cadaver, useless except for the schools of fish that nosed through passageways where humans had once walked. To Austin, who watched the screen with an expression of fascination on his bronzed features, this sad and lifeless hunk of rusty metal was a living thing. Although there were no hands to close the hatches forced open by the pressure of escaping air, Austin could almost hear the creak of the booms and the throbbing engine as the ship plowed through the seas. In his mind's eye, he pictured the helmsman standing with feet braced on a wooden grating, hands on the wheel while crewmen went about their business on deck or fought the inevitable boredom of shipboard life.