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She sat heavily in the ooze with a slight list to port, her forecastle set on a southerly course, as if she were still pathetically struggling to reach out and touch the waters of a port she had never known The lights frohostlike superstructure, casting long spectral shadows across her long teak decks Her portholes, so the broad expanse of her sides She presented an almost one; the forward three were nonexistent, two probably having been carried away by her dive to the bottom, while number four lay fallen across the After Boat Deck And, except for the scattered strands of rusty, disconnected funnel rigging that snaked over the railings, her Boat Deck showed only a few hulking air vents standing silent guard above the vacant Welin davits that had once held the great liner's lifeboats

There was a morbid beauty about her Thesaloons and staterooht-hearted and laughing passengers They could visualize her libraries stacked with books, her sars, and hear the tiers walked her decks, the wealthy, the fa dress, woowns, nannies with children clutching favorite toys, the Astons, the Guggenheims, and the Strauses in first class; the yrants, the Irish farmers and their families, the carpenters, the bakers, the dresses of Sweden, Russia, and Greece in steerage Then there were the almost nine hundred crew members, from the ship's officers to the caterers, the stewards, the lift boys, and the engineroom men

Great opulence lay in the darkness beyond the doors and portholes What would the swi pool, the squash court, and the Turkish baths look like? Was there a rotten re in the reception roorand staircase, or the crystal chandeliers in the elegant Cafe Parisien, or the delicately ornate ceiling above the first-class dining saloon? Would, perhaps, the bones of Captain Edward J Se? What mysteries were there to be discovered within this once colossal floating palace if and when she ever greeted the sun again?

The strobe light on the submersible's cameras seemed to flash endlessly as the tiny intruder circled the ie eyes and a heavy ar total unconcern for the exploding beaht

After what seelued to the viewports, rose over the first-class lounge roof, hovered for a few nal capsule Its low frequency iuideline for future dives to the wreck Then the subhts blinked out, and she melted back into the darkness from whence she had come

Except for the few sparks of ed to adapt to survival in the black, bitter-cold environment, the Titanic was alone once more But soon other submersibles would co on her steel skin again, as she had so reat slipways of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding firm in Belfast

Then, just perhaps, she would make her first port after all

THE TITANIC

May 1988

37

In a measured and precise i Antonov lit his pipe and surveyed the other any conference table

To his right sat Adence, and his aide, Captain Prevlov Opposite then Secrets Department of the KGB, and Vasily Tilevitch, Marshal of the Soviet Union and chief director of Soviet Security

Antonov caht to the point "Well now, it seems the Americans are determined to raise the Titanic to the surface" He studied the papers sitting before hi "An extensive effort by the look of it Two supply ships, three tenders, four deep-sea submersibles" He looked up at Admiral Sloyuk and Prevlov "Do we have an observer in the area?"

Prevlov nodded "The oceanographic research vessel Mikhail Kurkov, under the coe perimeter"

"I know Parotkin personally," Sloyuk added "He is a good seaman"