Ocean Black

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A ridge six hundred yards ahead effectively blocked the scan of the forward-looking radar. It looked like a solid granite wall on the water-fall display, like that of a prison, Otsuka thought.

She was perched on the edge of her seat, leaning forward against the back of Dokey’s and Brande’s seats. They were at 18,900 feet of depth and twenty-five feet off the bottom. Through the portholes, the seabed appeared forlornly beautiful, almost a Japanese rock garden in monochromatic grays. The floodlights made the rock sentinels stand out in stark poses of military attention. The silt swooped up against their bases on the north sides, pushed there by the strong current that flowed north to south.

She could tell that Dokey was fighting the current, leaning into it, by the position of the controller handle under his fingers. Occasionally, the submersible felt as if it were sliding to the left.

“Kim,” Brande said, “do me a favor. Check on the times of the detonations.”

“Time of day, Dane?”

“Please.”

She leaned back against the seat cushion and swiveled the keyboard mounted to the chair arm into place in front of her. With a few keyed commands, she linked into Emry’s mapping program, peering across Brande’s face at the display on the left monitor. The detonation locations were indicated on the map, with the coordinates printed alongside each. Emry had also stored the times in his database, though they were not shown on the display. She called up the file, losing the map for the time being.

After a quick search, she found the sub-file, then keyed in the command to display the time of detonation alongside each coordinate.

The map reappeared on the screen, and she pushed the keyboard out of the way and rested her elbow on Dokey’s seat as she studied the screen.

“We want to climb this ridge, Chief?” Dokey asked.

Brande was scanning the map, also. “We’re ninety-two miles from the last site, Okey. I’d have thought we’d run into a floor crawler by now.”

“Maybe on the other side of the ridge.”

“Let’s go over. I read it as three hundred and twenty feet high.”

Dokey eased the bow up with the joystick, and DepthFinder began to rise.

“Dane,” Otsuka said, “I don’t see a pattern, as far as time-of-day goes. There’s been a detonation almost every day, but they have taken place anywhere from four in the morning until nine-thirty at night.”

“I was afraid of that,” Brande said. “It doesn’t leave us a way to predict the future.”

“Just whenever they reached the site and got their charge buried,” Dokey said.

Otsuka felt her level of anxiety increasing. If they were in the right area, something devastating could happen at any moment.

Dokey had gone into a right turn, climbing along the face of the cliff which was now in the fringe of the floodlights and visible on their left. It appeared massive and strong. Both Brande and Dokey were leaning forward, close to the ports, to examine the rugged face.

Otsuka switched her attention to the sonar display. The top of the ridge was coming up. The crest was saw-toothed, with lots of depressions and rises. Her eyes were drawn to an especially strong return hidden in one gulley along the lip of the ridge. Automatically, she switched on the magnetometer.

“Dane! We’re showing a heavy magnetic field!”

Brande glanced at the readout. “Where?”

She reached between the seats and tapped a finger on the screen.

“Probably the floor crawler,” Dokey said.

“He’s protected himself well,” Brande said. “Gotten down in the rocks. Oh, shit! Dive, Okey!”

Dokey didn’t ask for reasons. He slapped the stick forward and ran the electric motors up to full power.

The submersible nosed over and headed for the bottom.

And they almost reached it before the concussion wave hit them.

And this time she heard it, a crescendo of deep-throated thunder that hit in one loud clap.

DepthFinder rolled over.

Otsuka was tossed out of her seat, hitting the overhead, bouncing into Dokey.

For some reasons, she recalled how idyllic and sun-filled her days at Stanford now seemed.

“Nuclear detonation,” Emry said calmly.

Thomas rose from her chair involuntarily. She rushed across the lab and leaned over Emry’s shoulder.

“Where, Larry.”

“Same coordinates.”

He didn’t have to say, “same as DepthFinder’s.”

Mayberry, at the next console, said, “We’ve lost the telemetry.”

The others in the lab abandoned what they were doing and hurried to gather around Emry’s console.

Without asking permission of anyone, Bull Kontas reached around Emry and picked up the microphone. He had been aboard for several hours, after transferring his six huge crates and the robot Gargantua from the Mickey Moose to the research vessel. His crewman was keeping the workboat in trail a few hundred yards behind the Orion.

Nobody had bothered telling Kontas that radio silence had been imposed, and no one was going to tell him now. He keyed the mike. “DepthFinder, this is Orion.”

Released the transmit button.

Dull undertone of static.

“Hey, Chief, come back to me, damn it!”

Nothing.

Kaylene Thomas collapsed onto her knees next to Emry’s chair.

“Could be anything,” Emry said. “Electromagnetic Pulse, EMP. Might have knocked out the electronics.”

“Goddamn,” she said.

“Take it easy, Kaylene,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Give us some time.”

She reached over and pressed an intercom button.

“Bridge,” Connie Alvarez-Sorenson said.

“Full speed, Connie. Heading two-two-five.”

“Full turns coming up,” she said.

Mayberry got out of his chair, got his hands under Thomas’s arms, and eased her up into the chair.

She couldn’t believe it had ended so abruptly.

She felt dead inside.

The missile cruiser had her engines at dead slow, the screws turning just enough to maintain her heading into the on-coming seas. Life aboard had been dead slow, also, for almost eight hours now, since they had located the research ship. Not much had changed in that time, including the fact that Mabry Harris had not yet received his requested briefing from CINCPAC relative to his mission.

During the night, they had received a message from Naval Intelligence that some twenty boats had departed Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, all on headings that would intersect his position. Several of the boats were painted in the Greenpeace scheme, and NI’s analysis was that Mark Jacobs had called them out.

The Arienne had moved away from the Orion after retrieving the passenger they had sent over earlier in the morning, but they were still matching the speed of the incongruous fleet. Mahan and Fletcher were a half-mile off to either side of the California. An old tugboat, obviously belonging to Marine Visions because of its color scheme, was stationed astern of the research ship.

The intercom buzzed and Commander George Quicken answered it while Harris continued his pacing of the bridge. He knew his back-and-forth journey was getting on the nerves of his subordinates.

Quicken turned to him, “Captain, we’ve detected a large explosion on the seabed.”

“Nature?”

“Unknown, sir.”

The petty officer on the helm interrupted, “Captain, the Orion is on the move.”

Harris spun around and saw that the vessel had indeed picked up speed. She was climbing a long swell, with the froth produced by her propellers spreading out behind her.

“Commander, we’ll want to stay with her. Notify our escorts.”

“Aye, aye, sir.

Harris took Quicken’s place at the intercom and buzzed the communications compartment.

“Sir?”

“Priority message to CINCPAC. Explosion of undetermined origin on seafloor — get the coordinates from the Combat Information Center. Orion apparently enroute to position, Task Force 36 following. Paragraph two. Submersible still not recovered and may be involved in explosion. Paragraph three. No further contacts with addition vessels. Paragraph four. Urgently request response to message, eleven-dash-nineteen. Get that right off, please.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The deck of the bridge tilted slightly as the cruiser got underway. Harris crossed to stand next to Quicken.

“What do you make of it, George?”

“I hate working in the dark, sir. Obviously, whatever is taking place is at extreme depth, or the powers-that-be would have sent a submarine to play guard dog. I’m assuming that we were sent originally to watch over the Orion, but that she’s now in disfavor.”

“Bit of a see-saw, George?”

“I’ve tried to never question my orders,” Quicken said, “but sometimes I think naughty thoughts about politicians and admirals.”

“You and me both,” Harris told him. “How strong was this event?”

“It was quite impressive, Captain. It would take a hell of a load of conventional weapons to produce the shock wave we picked up.”

“You don’t suppose Research and Development is conducting some secret weapons program? Perhaps out of sync with one treaty or another?”

“I really don’t know, sir. Do you really think this could be nuclear?”

“Possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Quicken said.

“And accidents happen. That submersible could be vapor right now, drifting to the surface.”

Paul Deride had stayed close to the control center for the last several hours, awaiting word on the test hole. Penny had gone to the deck above, to take a nap. She said these things were routine by now.

They weren’t routine for him, though. This was the first project on which they had used nuclear mining techniques, and he had never been present during an operational blast. That was Penny’s job.

Dorsey, on board FC-9, had reported a successful detonation at three minutes after nine. He was now making a circuit of the area prior to collecting samples, and he had said it would take some time because he was in rough terrain, at the top of a mesa. To get to the bottom, he had to drive some sixteen miles over torturous seabed.

Deride tried to imagine what the seafloor looked like over there, but had difficulty doing so. Their equipment was not capable of transmitting video from the subs or floor crawlers to the sea station. Because he so detested being subsurface, he had never taken an intense interest in what it looked like, beyond the fifty or so feet surrounding the habitat since it was visible on the overhead video camera. Penny was the one who loved this kind of high-technology, high-risk exploration and really reveled in it. He was content to give the orders and let others take care of the tasks.

“AG-4, Dorsey,” the transponder blurted over the speaker system.

Bert Conroy was monitoring the console, and Deride grabbed a castered chair and slid it across the carpeted deck to sit down next to him.

“AG-4,” Conroy said. “What you got, Jim?”

“That submersible? I can’t see it, but I’ve got it on the sonar.”

“What’s the condition? Can you tell?”

“Not from my image. She’s about three hundred feet above the ridge, drifting slowly upward. I don’t detect any noise, either from motors or the interior. You want to bring Sydney in to look her over?”

Conroy looked to his boss.

Deride said, “Let’s get on about our business. Right now, that means collect the samples.”

Camden’s injunction was no longer necessary, and that was all right with Deride. Cheaper, that way.

Brande said, “I think I’m going to bill Hampstead for the cost of all our replacement electronics.”

“Why not send a nicely overstated statement to Deride?” Dokey asked.

“He won’t be able to write the check when I’m done with him, Okey.”

“Valid argument.”

Brande was shaken, but was trying not to give it away. He was disoriented, frightened, and totally aware of the unwelcome silence of the capsule. The air was stale, dry, and it tasted funny.

He reached back in the darkness, found Otsuka’s hands clutching her knees, and squeezed them lightly. She was shivering almost uncontrollably.

“We’re doing all right, Kim,” he said.

“Of course,” she said. It came out squeaky. Her teeth were chattering.

“Are you hurt?”

“B-bruises. Everywhere.”

“Okey?”

“Most of my pieces are in the right place, Chief. By my watch, if I remember the time, and if the damned thing’s working, I was blacked out for at least twenty minutes.”

“Same here.”

“I think we went completely upside down,” Dokey said. “Like a big bowling ball. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to turn this hummer over.”

“It is my firm belief,” Brande said, “that the detonation took place on top of the ridge. We were pretty well protected from the direct blast.”

“How much is pretty well?” Dokey asked.

“Good question.”

It was completely black inside the pressure hull. They had no instrument panel lights, and the exterior floodlights had also been extinguished. The monitor screens were dark. When he had first come to, Brande had been first of all surprised that he was breathing, then amazed that he was sitting more or less upright in his seat.

“Any idea where we are, Okey?”

“I think we’re on ascent, but the rest is a blank. You ready to try the systems?”

“Let’s do. I wish we had a flashlight.”

“J-just a minute,” Otsuka said.

He heard her fumbling around with her clothing, and then a small stab of light erupted from the back seat.

“Wonderful, Kim.”

She handed him the small penlight, and he slowly worked its beam around the interior. There was no obvious damage. Bits of mud and dust from the flooring could be found lodged in odd places. The wrappers from their box lunches were spread around, also.

“We did turn turtle,” he said.

“At least this turtle found her legs again,” Dokey said.

“All right,” he said, “environmental systems first.”

He turned halfway around in his seat and held the light beam on the circuit breaker panels for the life support systems at the rear of the hull, near Otsuka’s legs. All of the breakers had blown.

“Go ahead, Kim. Oxygen, first.”

She tried the switch tentatively. It held in the closed position, and the gauge above it immediately blinked itself to life.

“We have oxygen flow,” Brande said.

“In that case, I’m going to take my first deep breath,” Dokey told them.

“Lithium hydroxide blower, Kim.”

She closed the switch, and the minor hum of the motor sounded blissfully in his ears.

“Let’s open up the emergency oxygen bottle for awhile, until the main system stabilizes,” Brande told her.

She reached under her seat, and under the guiding light of the penlight, found the valve for the backup oxygen bottle. Watching the gauge at the top of the bottle, she twisted the valve a half-turn.

Twisting back into his seat, he trained the light on the center control pedestal.

“I think the weights are next.”

“I think you’re right,” Dokey said. He reset the circuit breaker on the weight monitoring readout. It blinked, then showed them one “LOCKED,” and one “CLEAR,” indication.

“We lost one weight when we did our somersault, Chief.”

“Let’s lose the other.”

Dokey thumbed the switch for the portside weight, and a green light immediately flared, and the digital readout changed to “CLEAR.”

“Weight dropped. We’re on the rise.”

Brande couldn’t feel the movement, but he had to trust history. In the past, when they dropped weights, they went up. If nothing major had altered their buoyancy configuration, it had to work the same way again.

Panel by panel, they slowly went through each system of the submersible. It took them half-an-hour, and when they were done, they had recovered only about twenty per cent of the operating systems. Some light was coming from the panel dials and readouts now. None of the Loudspeaker components — data or voice — would come up. Sonar, video, and altimeter transponders were inoperative. They had no idea of their position, longitudinally, latitudinally, or relative to the ocean surface.

“I think we got a dose of EMP, Okey.”

“You’re right. Those systems that have elaborate electronics in the circuit are the ones we’ve lost.”

“The rad… radiometer reading is dropping,” Otsuka said.

Brande looked up at the gauge.

“Do you remember how high it went, Kim?”

“No. I looked, but it was too dark.”

“Well, it’s low enough to shed this damned hood,” Dokey said.

Brande ripped the Velcro closure and shrugged his way out of his hood. The freedom of movement helped immensely, and the cold air of the interior seemed to spark his energy. He hadn’t realized how his confined body heat had warmed his face.

“I wish we could see the exterior, to see if there’s any physical damage,” Dokey said.

“Try Atlas.”

The robot was still in her sheath, but wouldn’t respond to inputs from Dokey’s controls.

“So much for that. How’s the atmosphere, Kim?”

“Coming back to normal,” she said, the edge of fear somewhat lower in the tone of her voice. “I’m going to shut down the emergency supply now.”

“Fine.” Brande knew she wanted to conserve it in case they lost the main source again. He didn’t blame her.

“The others will be worried about us,” she said.

“I know, dear. We’ll just have to surprise them when we pop out.”

“We can’t give them a locator beacon, Dane. It’s not working either.”

“I’ll bet Mel’s already pinpointed us,” Dokey said. “Trust to fate, Dokey, and Mel Sorenson, honey.”

“All right.”

Both of the chronometers on the panel were working again, but Brande didn’t know how far they had risen from the seabed. He figured they had at least a couple hours to wait, and probably more.

“Anyone for three-handed bridge?” he asked.

“No cards,” Otsuka said.

“I wish I’d saved my apple from lunch,” Dokey said.

After some debate, Dokey got them playing a verbal trivia game which lasted for forty minutes, until the lithium hydroxide blower shut down.