"You're a wonderful human being, Byron," Pitt said with a sarcastic

smile. "I don't care what the rest of the navy says about you."

"You ever try Peanut butter with arsenic?" Knight threw at him over his

shoulder.

Giordino watched intently as the arc of the formation spread and

widened. "Diameter almost two kilometers."

"Interior is smooth sediment," said Pitt. "No breakup of the floor."

"Must have been one gigantic volcano."

"Not a volcano."

Giordino faced Pitt, a curious look in his eyes. "You have another name

for a submerged pockmark?"

"How about meteor impact?"

Giordino looked skeptical. "A meteor crater this deep on the sea

bottom?"

"Probably struck thousands, maybe millions of years ago, at a time when

the sea level was lower."

"What led you up that street?"

"Three clues," Pitt explained. "First, we have a well defined rim

without a prominent outer upsiope. Second, the subbottom profiler

indicates a bowl-shaped cross section. And third" he paused, pointing

at a stylus that was making furious sweeps across a roll of graph paper.

"The magnetometer is having a spasm. There's enough iron down there to

build a fleet of battleships."

Suddenly Giordino stiffened. "We have a target!"

"Where?"

"Two hundred meters to starboard, lying perpendicular on the crater's

slope. Pretty vague reading. The object is partly obscured by the

geology."

Pitt snatched the phone and rang the bridge. "We've had a malfunction

in the equipment. Continue our heading to the end of the run. If we

can make the repair in time, come around and repeat the track."

"Will do, sir," replied the watch officer.

"You should have sold snake oil," said Giordino, smiling.

"No telling the size of Soviet ears."

"Anything from the video cameras?"

Pitt glanced at the monitors. "Just out of range. They should pick it

up on the next pass."

The initial sonar image that appeared on the recording paper looked like

a brown smudge against the lighter geology of the crater's wall. Then

it slipped past the sidescan's viewing window and disappeared into a

computer that enhanced the detail. The finished picture came out on a

special large high-resolution color video monitor. The smudge had

become a well defined shape.

Using a joystick, Pitt moved a pair of crosshairs to the center of the

image and clicked the button to expand the image.

The computer churned away for a few seconds, and then a new, larger,

even more detailed image appeared on the screen. A rectangle

automatically appeared around the target and showed the dimensions. At

the same time another machine reproduced the color image on a sheet of

glossy paper.

commander Knight came rushing back into the compartment. After days of

tedium, cruising back and forth as though mowing a vast lawn, staring

for hours on end at the video display and sidescan readings, he was

galvanized, anticipation written in every line of his face.

"I was given your message about a malfunction. You have a target?"

Neither Pitt nor Giordino answered. They smiled like prospectors