"Moving forward slowly," he said, adjusting the controls.  Behind him an ensign and a senior petty officer were monitoring instruments and preparing to deploy the manipulator arm, attached before they sailed, which carried a television camera and floodlights.  These gave them a slightly wider field of view than the navigation ports permitted.  The DSRV crept forward at one knot.  Visibility was under twenty yards, despite the million candles of illumination from the bow lights.

The sea floor at this point was a treacherous slope of alluvial silt dotted with boulders.  It appeared that the only thing that had prevented-the Alfa from sliding farther down was her sail, driven like a wedge into the bottom.

"Holy gawd!"  The petty officer saw it first.  There was a crack in the Alfa's hull—or was there?

"Reactor accident," Ames said, his voice detached and clinical.  "Something burned through the hull.  Lord, and that's titanium!  Burned right through, from the inside out.  There's another one, two burn-throughs.  This one's bigger, looks like a good yard across.  No mystery what killed her, guys.  That's two compartments open to the sea."  Ames looked over to the depth gauge:  1,880 feet.  "Getting all this on tape?"

"Aye, Skipper," the electrician first class answered.  "Crummy way to die.  Poor bastards."

"Yeah, depending on what they were up to."  Ames maneuvered the Avalon around the Alfa's bow, working the directional propeller carefully and adjusting trim to cruise down the other side, actually the top of the dead sub.  "See any evidence of a hull fracture?"

"No," the ensign answered, "just the two burn-throughs.  I wonder what went wrong?"

"A for-real China Syndrome.  It finally happened to somebody."  Ames shook his head.  If there was anything the navy preached about reactors, it was safety.  "Get the transducer against the hull.  We'll see if anybody's alive in there."

"Aye."  The electrician worked the waldo controls as Ames tried to keep the Avalon dead still.  Neither task was easy.  The DSRV was hovering, nearly resting on the sail.  If there were survivors, they had to be in the control room or forward.  There could be no life aft.

"Okay, I got contact."

All three men listened intently, hoping for something.  Their job was search and rescue, and as submariners themselves they took it seriously.

"Maybe they're asleep."  The ensign switched on the locater sonar.  The high-frequency waves resonated through both vessels.  It was a sound fit to wake the dead, but there was no response.  The air supply in the Politovskiy had run out a day before.

"That's that," Ames said quietly.  He maneuvered upward as the electrician rigged in the manipulator arm, looking for a spot to drop a sonar transponder.  They would be back again when the topside weather was better.  The navy would not pass up this chance to inspect an Alfa, and the Glomar Explorer was sitting unused somewhere on the West Coast.  Would she be activated?  Ames would not bet against that.