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The remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, has become the workhorse of undersea exploration Controlled by htest spaces, and trans the operator to travel to the depths without leaving the dry comfort of the ship

The captain had chosen a medium-sized vehicle, about the size and shape of an old steamer trunk, that could operate at a depth of six thousand feet Six thrusters positioned the vehicle with pinpoint accuracy; it was equipped with twosah-resolution color video

A telescoping starboard boo the ROV off its cradle and lowered it into the sea Austin watched it sink under aits tether behind it, then stepped into the reo container on the main deck

The video feed through the ROV’s tether was connected to a console from which the remote’s es fro screen above the console The ROV’s heading and speed were displayed in co with elapsed time

Moving in a descending spiral, the ROV traveled in minutes the same distance it had taken the bathysphere hours The re them like leaves, as it corkscrewed into the sea

“Leveling out,” the pilot said

She put the re to land Its twin searchlights picked out brownish green botto in the current There was no sign of the Bathysphere 3

Austin said, “Start searching, in parallel passes, a hundred feet long”

The ROV cruised about twenty feet over the vegetation It finished its first hundred-foot pass, then traveled back with fifteen feet separating it fro five knots

Austin clenched and unclenched his fists, ilacially slow pace Other crew athered around the screen, but no one spoke except for the quick communication between Austin and the ROV pilot Austinhi atop the ROV

Five more minutes passed

The ROV’s methodical back-

and-forth movement was similar to that of a laer The picture trans reen

“Wait,” Austin said He had seen so “Go to the left”

With a jiggle of the joystick, the pilot pivoted the vehicle so that it was perpendicular to its original path The twin searchlights picked up mud splatter around the rim of a crater A mud-covered, domelike shape protruded from the center of the crater Now Austin sahy the B3 hadn’t surfaced; its flotation bags were buried deep in the mud He asked the pilot to blow mud away from the bathysphere The ROV’s thrusters kicked up a thick brown cloud that hardly made a dent in the heavy muck