"Suits me." The Brit stands up, unfolding like a stick insect inside his badly fitting gray suit. His cheek twitches but his expression stays frozen. "After you."

They leave the office and Cooper locks the door behind him. The Hughes GMDI ship may be enormous — it's bigger than a Marine Corps assault carrier, larger than an Iowa-class battleship — but its companionways and corridors are a cramped, gray maze, punctuated by color-coded pipes and ducts conveniently located at shin-scraping and head-banging height. It doesn't roll in the swells but it rocks, weirdly, held solidly on station by the SKS thrusters (a new technology that accounts for a goodly chunk of the cost of the ship).

Down six flights of steps there's another passage and a bulkhead: then Cooper sees the dogged-back hatch leading out into the moon pool at the level of the fifty-foot catwalk. As usual it takes his breath away. The moon pool is just under 200 feet long and 75 feet wide, a stillness of black water surrounded by the gantries and cranes required for servicing the barge. The giant docking legs are fully extended below the waterline at either end of the pool. The drill string pierces the heart of the chamber like a black steel spear tying it to the ocean floor. The automatic roughneck and the string handling systems have fallen silent, the deafening clatter and roar of the drill system shut down now that the grab has reached its target. Soon, if all goes well, the derrick above them will begin hauling up the string, laboriously unbolting the hundreds of pipe segments and stacking them on the deck of the ship, until finally Clementine — also known as the HMB-1 "mining barge" — rumbles to the surface of the pool in a flurry of cold water, clutching its treasure beneath it. But for now the moon pool is a peaceful haven, its surface marred only by shallow, oily ripples.