Page 44 (1/2)

"I am not," Giordino declared pontifically, "cut out to be a hero"

"Neither aot to ad life insurance"

"The drama of it all escapes hiirl friends Think of the enraptured looks on their pretty faces when you tell thereatest undersea probe of the century"

"Unerringly?" Giordino said "Then suppose you tellthis scientific marvel around in circles five hundred miles off our scheduled course?"

Gunn shrugged "Orders"

Giordino stared at him "We're supposed to be under the Labrador Sea Instead, Ades our course at the last minute and makes us chase all over the abyssal plains below the Grand Banks of Newfoundland It doesn't make sense"

Gunn smiled a sphinx-like smile For several moments none of the men spoke, but Gunn didn't require a concentrated dose of ESP to know the questions that were running through theirwhat he was thinking Like himself, they were three months back in time and two thousand miles in distance at the headquarters of the National Underwater and Marine Agency in Washington, DC, where Adency, was describing the most incredible undersea operation of the decade

"God daive up a year's salary if I could join you men"

A figure of speech, Giordino reflected Next to Sandecker, Ebenezer Scrooge spent money like a drunken sailor Giordino relaxed in a deep leather sofa and tuned into the ads between puffs on a giant cigar, lifted from a box on Sandecker's immense desk when everyone's attention was focused on a wall map of the Atlantic Ocean

"Well, there she is" Sandecker rapped the pointer loudly on the map for the second time "The Lorelei Current She's born off the western tip of Africa, follows the e north, then curves easterly between Baffin Island and Greenland, and then dies in the Labrador Sea"

/>

Giordino said "I don't hold a degree in oceanography, Ades with the Gulf Stream"

"Not hardly The Gulf Stream is surface water The Lorelei is the coldest, heaviest water in the world's oceans, averaging fourteen thousand feet in depth"

"Then the Lorelei crosses under the Gulf Strea he had spoken

"That seems reasonable" Sandecker paused, smiled benevolently, then continued "The ocean is basically made up of two layers-a surface or upper layer, heated by the sun and thoroughly churned by winds, and a cold, very dense layer consisting of intermediate, deep and bottom water And the two never mix"