A Game of Titans

A GAME OF TITANS

A Techno-Thriller Novel

By Gary Alan Ruse

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2020 by Gary Alan Ruse

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This novel was originally published in its American hardcover edition by Prentice-Hall of Englewood Cliffs, NJ in 1976, and in a British paperback edition by Sphere Books. The rights were reverted to the author in the 1980’s. All rights for the written content and the new cover art are reserved by the author.

Author’s Note: Computer systems and communication devices have changed greatly since this book first came out, but I have kept the descriptions of them the same as in the original first edition since that is how they really were at the time at the height of the Cold War.

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For my family, for just about everything....

and for the love of my life, my wife, Helen!

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As with my previous novel, Houndstooth, a considerable amount of background research in a wide variety of subjects was necessary in the preparation of this book. In that regard, I have been most fortunate to have the assistance of many people around the country and, in fact, the world. I wish to take this opportunity to thank them.

Francis Morse, Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Boston University, was kind enough to answer a great many questions about airships, both in correspondence and in a personal interview in Boston. More than a mere airship enthusiast, Professor Morse was active in developing plans for nuclear powered airships. Some of the descriptions of the USAF Grand Eagle are based upon information furnished by Professor Morse concerning his Boston Airship design.

Carole Farrar of the Staff Secretary’s Office, National Security Council, Washington, D.C., supplied some very helpful information concerning the operations of the NSC.

Marie Shroff and Neil Walter were courteous and extremely helpful with information regarding background and policy matters when I visited the office of the New Zealand Consulate General in New York. Michael F. Chilton, Information Officer, New Zealand Embassy, Washington, D.C., also provided an abundant amount of information, as did J. G. Thomson and C. M. Kingston of the City of Wellington Public Relations Office, Wellington, New Zealand. I wish to thank them all for the time they took from their busy schedules.

At Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, Capt. Robert C. White, CBPO, 31st Combat Support Group, explained the command structure and personnel requirements likely to be encountered in an airship of the Grand Eagle class.

Anna C. Urband, Assistant Head, Media Services Branch, Office of Information, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C., provided information and materials concerning the Soviet Navy and the aircraft carrier Kiev.

In London, Capt. John E. Moore, Editor, Jane s Fighting Ships, also assisted with information on the Soviet carrier Kiev, and Eugene M. Kolesnik, Editor, Jane’s Yearbooks, granted permission to reprint the line drawings of the Kiev that appear in this book. I am grateful to these gentlemen for their help.

I must thank June Landsperg at Royal Tours in Coral Gables, Florida, and the staff of the Pacific Area Travel Association in San Francisco, California, for their assistance in obtaining information on Tongareva (also called Penrhyn by its British discoverers) and the other Cook Islands.

I owe a special thanks to Dr. Stephen Mallon of the University of Miami’s School of Medicine Cardiology Department for invaluable help in the area of genetic heart disorders and their treatment, and also to Dr. Jacob Kline of the University’s. Biomedical Engineering Department for advice on the problems inherent in creating an artificial heart; Also, Lt. Frank Davis, in charge of Rescue Shift 3 at the Coral Gables Fire Department, helped with information on portable defibrillator units.

R. B. Morrisey, Manager, Public Relations and Communications at Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego, California, furnished a good deal of helpful material on remotely piloted vehicles and their potential uses. Dick Tipton of the News Bureau at Bell Helicopter Company in Fort Worth, Texas, supplied helpful information on the Bell UH-1N twin-turbine helicopter. And John F. Pearson, Science Editor, Popular Mechanics, aided me in locating a number of useful articles on airships.

In San Francisco, a number of people helped with much-needed information: Hollis Gray, University of California Medical Center; Dr. James Duncan, School of Natural Science, and Sheila McClear, Office of Public Affairs, San Francisco State University; and the staffs of the Chamber of Commerce of Greater San Francisco and the America Automobile Association Travel Desk.

In New York, Ann Whyte of Pan American World Airways Public Relations provided a considerable amount of material on Wake Island and its background that would have been otherwise unobtainable.

Bill Byers of Eastern Airlines’ Flight Training Center in Miami provided information on emergency water-landing procedures. Jim McIntyre of Trans World Airlines and Mrs. Lee of Philippine Airlines assisted with information on Pacific passenger flights. And Bill Myers, Boeing Company Airplane Division, gave advice concerning passenger/cargo craft.

I am again indebted to the reference staffs of the following libraries: the Miami Public Library’s Main Branch and Coral Gables Branch and the Otto G. Richter Library of the University of Miami.

Michael W. Bowley, DuPont Global Product Manager, and Michael Dougherty, Chief Pilot - Goodyear Airship Operations, also provided extremely helpful information.

A special acknowledgement to Don Preston, the editor at Prentice-Hall on this book and on Houndsooth, not only for his skillful work and gentlemanly approach, but also for creating the term Technological Suspense Thriller for Houndstooth, a term later shortened to Techno-thriller, as the genre came to be known almost a decade later.

And a special thanks to the members of my family who assisted with more than moral support during the year it took to write this one: my mother, who did final typing; my father, whose knowledge of World War II tactics has helped me more than once; my grandmother, a lover of books and main proofreader here at home.

Again, to those people who furnished information, I extend my sincere thanks and my apologies for any errors I may have committed while including that information in the framework of this book.

G.A.R., Miami, Florida

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All characters in this novel are fictional, including those who are identified by office or calling, such as military personnel, government officials, etc. Any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental.

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A GAME OF TITANS

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CHAPTER ONE

At first it was only a speck on the horizon, scarcely noticeable in the Pacific Ocean’s vast panorama of sea and sky. Then, as it drew nearer, the scream of its rapid descent became audible, building in intensity until it rose above the steady sounds of wind and wave.

The Trans-Pacific DC-8 jet aircraft should not have been in that remote and isolated part of the South Pacific. Its sudden presence there now was alien and unexpected.

Still losing altitude, it roared on toward Tongareva, a low coral atoll of the Cook Island group. Surrounded by seemingly endless miles of ocean, the island was the only visible point of land that broke the water’s seething surface. Its vast central lagoon shone pale emerald within the narrow strip of sand and palms that framed it, sparkling like an enormous gem. There amid the Pacific’s blue waters, Tongareva seemed to draw the approaching aircraft like a magnet.

First to see the jet were tuna fishermen a few miles from shore. In outrigger canoes little different from those of Captain Cook’s day, with patched sails billowing in the breeze, the fishermen of Tongareva soon forgot about the importance of their morning’s catch. Passing no more than thirty feet above their heads, the DC-8 hurtled along its shallow trajectory, rapidly closing the gap between itself and the shore.

Its flaps were down, exerting braking force to slow its onward rush, and little more than a mile from land the craft began to jettison the fuel from its wing cells. The highly flammable kerosene became a mist that mingled with the ocean’s own salty spray.

Emptying the wing fuel cells would give the jet greater buoyancy in the water, but if the pilot’s intention was to ditch offshore of Tongareva, then he had dangerously underestimated the plane’s forward momentum.

Even as it skimmed the water, the jet was still moving at nearly 150 knots. The sleek fuselage skipped, like a stone thrown flat across a pond, then came down again to meet the water’s surface. Its right wing digging into the crest of a wave, the plane began to skew a few degrees off center, plowing through the wave peaks at an angle. Then, close to shore, rock-hard coral formations less than a foot beneath the surf, caught the leading edge of the jet’s nose. The plane shuddered under the sudden, violent impact, and the sharp edge of the coral head tore a raw gash along its gleaming underbelly. The wings wrenched away as the plane bounded off the reef’s protruding coral for one last brief moment of flight.

Even now the jet was beginning to break up, fragmenting into sections that careened at varying speeds toward the beach. In another second they had impacted, with part of the plane’s shattered fuselage plowing across the sand at a narrow strip of Tongareva’s northern shore.

If people were screaming within the still sliding section of the plane, their sound could not be heard above the horrid, grinding squall of metal against sand and rock.

The sound of the crash might easily have been heard a mile away. And it was heard, with awful clarity, in a stone and timber building located less than one-fourth that distance from the impact site. Had the jet been flying a fraction of a degree more to the east, the remote medical research center would have been obliterated in the disaster.

Within that building, Carla Jennings tensed suddenly as the awful sound grated on her nerves. The glass slide she had just removed from her microscope popped from her grasp, nicking her thumb in the process, and shattered into sharp fragments on the wooden floor below.

She turned toward the sound, then froze in stunned silence as her mind sought to identify it. Behind her, Carla’s assistant, Mary Akaru, uttered a string of words in the Maori language—a beseechment to the old gods for protection from the unknown. Almost as an afterthought, and with no sense of inconsistency, a short Christian prayer flowed from her lips.

In the next moment both were at the window, looking anxiously out at the wreckage. Carla Jennings was the first to recognize it.

Good Lord— Honor tinged her words. "It’s a plane."

Mary Akaru seemed reluctant to accept the fact. No aeroplane’s been here in years... nothing that big since the war...

Carla hesitated only a second longer, then bolted toward the door. Come on! There may be survivors. She paused at the doorway long enough to grab up the fire extinguisher, kept there since the time the gasoline generator ruptured a fuel line and caught fire. Then she jumped down the three steps to the ground and started running.

Mary Akaru followed, somewhat more slowly. At forty years, with her heavyset build and stocky legs typical of some Polynesian women, she was not fast on her feet. She had barely reached the edge of the stand of palms surrounding the research building when the abrupt crack of an explosion came from the edge of the beach.

Carla Jennings had covered more than half the distance to the wreckage when the explosion came, and even though it was far to her right, she could feel some of its concussive energy. Startled, she looked for the source of the sound. There, at the edge of the beach, one of the wings torn from the aircraft lay shredded and smoking. What had caused it to blow up, Carla could not guess. She felt a cold wave of fear. The plane itself might be on the verge of exploding into flames.

She paused, then ran on as the first faint cries and moans reached her from the ruptured jet. It was difficult to tell what kind of aircraft it had been. The entire cockpit section of the plane was standing in knee-deep water at the edge of the shore, tilted at an odd angle. Fragments of torn metal and mechanical systems littered the entire breadth of the island’s narrow north shore, extending from the ocean side to the green waters of the central lagoon. The rear third of the plane was resting on dry land, more or less intact, at the end of a shallow trench dug by its own skid. The cries were coming from there.

As she ran, Carla glanced off to her left. In the lagoon, perhaps three hundred feet from water’s edge, bubbles were breaking the surface in a tumultuous rush. Part of the wreckage had gone into the water, apparently. If it were part of the passenger section, there would be precious little time for survivors to free themselves and reach the surface. But for the moment there was nothing she could do to help them.

As Carla reached the main fuselage, she was nearly overwhelmed by the devastation around her. Besides the ragged wreckage of the once sleek aircraft, there was the human destruction as well. It was horribly apparent that many of the passengers had been killed upon impact. Perhaps a dozen or more seats had been wrenched free of their mountings, with people still strapped in them—some alive, some dead.

Carla fought back the growing urge to look away—to run in the opposite direction and escape the horror. She had to do what she could to help. She was, after all, a doctor, and medical school had prepared her for the prospect of direct contact with death and injury. Or so she had thought....

Forget how many were dead, she told herself. There were an equal number alive. They needed her. They needed her now, with all her wits about her, and with all the skill and quickness she could muster.

Amazingly, several people were already on their feet, stumbling about in a dazed condition among the fragments of wreckage. There was movement within the still intact section of fuselage as well, and Carla saw two women in stewardess uniforms working their way forward from the back. She started toward them, then halted as a cry for help came from her right.

One of the dislodged seats was on its side more than a dozen feet away. An elderly woman passenger was strapped into it, trying unsuccessfully to free herself. Only a few feet away from her a small puddle of jet fuel had dripped from an engine wrenched free of its wing. The fuel had started to flame.

Please help me! The woman waved feebly with one hand, still struggling to release the jammed seat belt that held her. "The fire! Don’t let me burn!"

Carla raced to her side, then triggered the extinguisher, smothering the flames that threatened to spread. When she was satisfied that the danger of fire was momentarily past, she turned her attention to the woman. With some effort, she released the seat belt and helped the elderly passenger from her seat. Quickly examining her, she determined that the woman’s injuries were relatively minor, but that she was almost in a state of shock.

She knew she was going to have to move the woman away from the area, and all the others as well. She looked for Mary Akaru, and saw that her Polynesian assistant had finally reached the crash site but was standing in stunned horror, both hands covering her mouth.

She shouted Mary’s name, then looked around. One of the passengers was standing nearby. The man seemed dazed, almost uncomprehending of what was going on around him, but Carla managed to make him understand that he was to help her move the elderly woman out of the area of danger.

As they started to move away with the injured passenger, Mary Akaru took her place in transporting the woman, freeing Carla to return to help the others. As she did, a man dressed in the conservative clothing of a minister came limping toward her. His forehead was bleeding from a gash, and there was a trace of blood on his trousers, about knee level on the leg he was favoring.

Carla extended a hand to help him balance. Are you all right?

Yes, I think so, he said. Nothing serious—just a few scrapes. Look—there are others that weren’t hurt badly. We can help move those that are injured. We should do it soon. There’s not much fuel on the ground, but there’s a lot of flammable stuff here just the same.

Carla nodded, vaguely surprised by his familiarity with planes. See if you can organize the others. Do what you can. I’ll go check the injuries in the rear of the jet.

She hurried toward the gaping end of the rear fuselage. The nearly intact fragment of the jet was resting at a thirty-degree angle, which was going to make it more difficult for the survivors to get out, especially those with more serious injuries.

There was one benefit at least. In its slide across the narrow beach, the fragmented compartment had pushed up a considerable amount of sand at its leading edge, and the pile reached up past the lower luggage compartment almost level with the passenger deck. Carla scrambled up the sandy incline and entered the craft.

Most all the people she encountered in the first few rows were injured. All had abrasions and contusions. Some were in shock, and several had broken limbs. That much she could tell with hasty examinations. She could not even guess at the number and extent of internal injuries.

Carla saw the two stewardesses again, still working their way forward, helping free the passengers from their seats as they went. Carla wanted to reach them, but a seat broken free of the flooring blocked the aisle. She bent to examine the motionless, strapped-in passenger, striving to keep her balance on the sloping floor.

The man had no pulse. Judging from the marks and the odd angle of his head, he had been slammed against the metal framework of the seat across the aisle when his own seat had wrenched loose. His neck was broken.

Another passenger was coming forward. His carefully styled hair was partly disheveled, and the denim leisure suit he wore bore stains from his bloodied nose. But he seemed to have no serious injuries.

Carla looked up at him. Help me get this seat upright. We have to get the aisle cleared.

The young man ignored her, trying to scramble over the fallen seat and its dead occupant. In his eyes was something bordering on panic.

Carla got to her feet, grabbed him by the arms, and shook him. "I said help me get this seat up!"

He turned and looked at her wildly, then broke free of her grip, shoving her backward against an injured passenger. Do it yourself! he shouted as he lunged out of the plane and down the mound of sand.

Carla regained her balance and began to struggle with the unmanageable weight of the seat. She was getting nowhere until one of the stewardesses—the younger of the two, a blonde in her early twenties, only a few years younger than Carla— joined her. The two of them together were able to lift the seat and its occupant upright, finally clearing the aisle.

Carla’s eyes met those of the young stewardess. Thanks.

The blonde girl looked apprehensively at the man in the seat. Is he dead? she asked softly.

Yes. And I’m afraid there are a lot more outside. The passengers sitting near the point where the compartment broke up didn’t have much of a chance. Now let’s get these people out of here and clear—

Carla had looked away for a moment, and upon looking back she saw that the young stewardess was very close to collapse. Her face was milk-white, almost drained of blood.

Can you manage? Carla asked her.

Yes… yes, I’ll be all right. She took a deep breath and brushed some of the tumbled golden hair away from her eyes. Some of her color seemed to return, but only a little.

Let’s start, then.

The process of removing the passengers from the wreckage began, carefully, but with an urgency that allowed no wasted moments. All survivors capable of walking on their own were directed out of the immediate area, and those who were fit enough to help carry out the injured were set to that task. There were only six, including the two stewardesses, but with Carla and Mary Akaru’s aid they were able to remove at least four of the injured passengers on each trip.

It was a difficult and painful journey for many, but the ever present danger of fire and explosion hurried them on, forcing the immediate evacuation of the crash site with time only to apply tourniquets to the most severe bleeding cases.

As they carried the last of the passengers out of immediate danger, Carla noticed that one of the men helping to carry an injured woman was struggling more with each step. He appeared to be in his late fifties, with graying hair and beard, and the few words he had spoken so far had been tinged with an accent Carla had not been able to pin down precisely. He had not sustained any serious injuries that she could detect, but it now seemed that the effort of the last three trips back to the plane were wearing him down enormously. Carla moved quickly to his side.

Here—let me help. You’ve carried enough.

The bearded man started to protest, then suddenly changed his mind and allowed Carla to take over, nodding reluctantly. His features were damp with perspiration, more so than they should have been even in the warm and humid climate of Tongareva. Carla made a mental note to examine him more carefully as soon as there was a free moment.

That moment came sooner than expected. She scarcely had a chance to lower the woman she was helping carry to the ground when she saw the bearded man stumble. He dropped to his knees, then crumpled to one side, clutching his chest. His face contorted with pain and he let out a wheezing gasp.

Carla guessed what was wrong even as she rushed toward him. The outward signs were all those of a heart attack, and she silently cursed herself for letting the man help with the injured. Yet there was no way of knowing that he had a heart condition.

As she reached his side, the man fumbled in his pocket with one hand. She saw him withdraw a small bottle containing pills and quickly helped him remove the cap. The man brought one of the pills up to his mouth with a great deal of effort and put it beneath his tongue.

Carla helped him into a more comfortable position, his back and shoulders raised, propped against a fragment of one of the dislodged seats. She loosened his tie and collar and noted that he seemed to relax somewhat, though his breathing was still irregular.

The capsules remaining in the bottle looked like nitroglycerine, but it was hard to be certain. The label was no help at all. The language was unknown to Carla, although it appeared to be Slavic.

She checked his pulse continuously, as well as his breathing and his color. After several long minutes his condition finally seemed to stabilize. Carla had to hope he would manage unattended for a little while at least. There were so many other things to be done.

At that moment, the throaty roar of an outboard motor caught Carla’s attention. Looking to the south, she could see a small boat approaching from the lagoon side of the shore. It was running at full throttle and barely managed to slow down in time to avoid beaching itself on the shore.

Scrambling from the boat, James Akaru—the husband of Carla’s assistant—rushed up the beach to the area where the survivors had gathered. His look of concern lessened somewhat when he saw his wife standing by Carla’s side. James Akaru was slightly older than his wife’s forty years, but his hair showed little gray, and his build was leanly muscular. His features had a tough and weathered look, but his face was clearly one that had smiled often and easily. He was not smiling now.

I was diving for shell, he said simply. I saw the crash. Bad… very bad. I feared it had hit your building.

We were lucky it missed us, Carla told him. Did you say you saw the actual crash?

Yes. I saw it coming in low, and then hit.

Did part of the plane go into the lagoon? I saw bubbles coming up.

I think so. There was a splash, James replied. Hard to tell though, at the distance I was.

Reawakened concern showed on Carla’s features. Could you go down for a look? If there’s anyone down there, they may have drowned by now, but still—

James nodded and quickly turned back for his boat. Over his shoulder he said, I’ll look, ma’am. But drowning’s the least of their worries.

The young blonde stewardess was approaching, and she was near enough to hear his parting words. She watched him push his boat out into the lagoon, climb in, and start it away toward the point where the wreckage had sunk.

What did he mean by that? she asked.

Carla glanced around at the stewardess, then returned her troubled gaze to the man in the boat. The lagoon is not completely enclosed, she replied grimly. There are three openings to the sea—they let in thousands of tropical fish. They also let in sharks. The lagoon is full of them.

The stewardess was aghast. "And he’s going down there?"

Mary Akaru stood solemnly watching her husband’s boat move out. James dives in the lagoon four, maybe five times each week, Miss, for the mother-of-pearl shell. He says the sharks they will not attack him, if his faith is strong and his prayers are said well.

Her face was firm and expressionless, and it was hard to tell if her own faith in his safety was as strong as it seemed. She fell silent after that—a silence the others did not break for a long moment.

It was then that the other stewardess pressed forward into the group. She was older than Carla, and her light brown hair was tied back in a severe bun.

What about the rest of the flight crew? she asked anxiously, in an accent that was decidedly Australian. Are they… down there, too?

Carla inhaled sharply in pained realization. "Oh, God—I didn’t think to check the cockpit!"

She whirled around and started off on a dead run toward the opposite beach. The two stewardesses followed close behind her, as did the man in minister’s garb.

Splashing through the shallow water past the edge of the beach, they reached the torn nose section of the shattered fuselage in less than a minute. Sitting at a slight angle in almost three feet of water, the cockpit was like the severed head of a gigantic snake. Around the gaping end, raw and twisted shreds of metal stuck out like bizarre knife points, razor-sharp and menacing. The waters of the Pacific lapped silently against the open end of the fuselage, dangerously concealing some of the lower sharp points.

It was difficult to climb up to the level of the deck, but Carla found a few safe handholds and pulled herself into the remains of the craft. The jet had fragmented only a few feet from the end of the cockpit section. The door that had separated the compartments was open, torn half off its hinges.

Carla entered, half hopeful, half fearful of what she would find. Early morning sunlight poured into the compartment through the shattered front glass. Tattered shreds of the crystallized safety glass hung like icy lace within the framework. Otherwise, the interior of the cockpit was oddly intact.

There were only two men within the compartment. 0ne had apparently been thrown completely out of his seat and was sprawled face down on the flooring. Carla bent to check for signs of life. Judging from the position of the empty seat, the man was the copilot. He had several broken limbs, and more than a few areas of blood marred the trim uniform he wore.

But that mattered little now. The man was dead.

Carla checked the pilot next, finding similar injuries. And his fate had been no better than that of his second officer. She turned, eyes downcast, heading for the door and the open

Expectant eyes searched hers eagerly as she appeared again and started the climb down to the shallow water. The older stewardess seemed to sense the answer even before she asked—

The crew—?

Carla shook her head. Both dead.

Both? the young blonde asked oddly.

Yes, both the pilot and copilot.

But, what about the navigator?

Carla frowned, realizing that there should indeed been a third man. There were only the two—no one else.

The blonde gazed out toward the ocean beyond the reef. He must have been thrown out, when the plane broke up. . . She shook her head slowly, and the full weight of the disaster finally seemed to come down upon her fragile shoulders. For the first time, tears began to run down her pale cheeks, and the first trickle quickly became a torrent that would not stop easily or soon.

Roughly eight hundred feet away, within the clear waters of the lagoon, James Akaru kicked strongly away from the surface of the water and the safety of a boat that was now only a floating shadow above him. His lungs held the only air he would have for the remainder of the dive. He wore only his swim trunks and a pair of goggles with lenses no larger than half-dollars. His hands were straight out before him, the right one holding a well-cared-for diver’s knife.

There on the lagoon’s bottom, a little ahead and beneath him, the last main fragment of the DC-8 rested, an open-ended cylinder of metal that shimmered in the changing pattern of light. Small tropical fish were already beginning to explore the dark cave that was suddenly a new part of the lagoon floor. And the fish were not alone.

Thirty or more black-tipped sharks swam in lazy, deceptively unconcerned patterns about the wreckage, probing a few feet nearer with each turning pass. James Akaru swam on, confident but wary.

At most, he had only a few minutes beneath the surface of the sparkling lagoon. His lungs had been expanded and strengthened by many dives, but there was still a limit to any man’s endurance underwater.

Still conscious of the positions of the sharks, he swam to the open end of the fuselage and peered inside. It was hard to make out detail in the dark interior. Entering the flooded compartment, he paused briefly to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There were a dozen or more large bubbles of air still clinging to the ceiling of the compartment, and his passage broke them into quivering globules.

In a moment he could see well enough to discern forms. It was clear that there were no passengers here, dead or otherwise. There were only a dozen or more boxy shapes, some extremely large, others quite small. All were held down by straps and mounting clamps barely visible in the sunken gloom. But no people.

Turning, James Akaru swam out of the fuselage and began his ascent to the surface thirty feet overhead. As he made his way up, he saw that the less dangerous black-tipped sharks had been joined by their brothers, the dreaded papera—the black sharks. The deadly inhabitants of the lagoon were actually more gray than black, but there was no quibbling about their ravenous appetites. Their danger was enough to test even a strong man’s faith. James continued his ascent, more carefully now, and yet more quickly.

When he finally reached his boat and returned to shore, he found Carla bent over the bearded man, checking his pulse. As he approached them, the others crowded around.

No people down there, he told them, his breathing slowing to normal. "Only crates—cargo of some kind. Lots of