CHAPTER TWELVE
December 19, 2012 AD – 2:31 PM,
Middle of the Atlantic Ocean
17:31 GMT
• • • • •
Marshall was walking away from him as Luke got up from where he had been sleeping and looked at his Tag Heuer chronograph. It had been a little under two hours since they entered the mysterious radiation shielded chamber in the bowels of his uncle’s boat. The entire Boudreaux family, including Lola the dog, had dozed off and were still sleeping. After he and Marshall had treated everyone from the little supplies in the first aid kit, Marshall informed Luke this was a decompression chamber. When Luke inquired about its hyperbaric capabilities, Marshall came back with a list of diving gases but ended with pure oxygen. Then Luke asked if the controls could be accessed from inside the room, and when he got the affirmative nod, he told his uncle to raise the oxygen and lower the ambient pressure to one-half atmosphere. This would help the burns on the kids and help everyone else for the radiation exposure they’d all received.
As the oxygen poured in and the air sifted out, everyone began to doze off to the vibration of the boat. It was still moving at over 170 knots in autopilot and jet-hydrofoil, but the ride was quite smooth. The high-frequency vibration helped put the sobs of the children to rest and soon everyone was sleeping on the fold-down cots in the walls. Marshall only dozed in and out of a light sleep. When the sound of the turbo jet engines died down, and the boat came out of hydrofoil, he snapped awake. He had programmed the guidance computer to get them at least twenty-five miles outside the wall of the magnetic hole according to the buoy data, and not to stop until they stayed twenty-five miles outside the border of the magnetic anomaly.
Now, as he and Luke quietly made their way to the door of the radiation shielded hyperbaric chamber, Marshall tried to mentally calculate how far they must have traveled cruising at emergency speed for over an hour and forty-five minutes. Before he finished, he keyed the panel and opened the valve to equalize the pressure. He pushed the heavy metal door open and stepped over the bulkhead. Then he locked the door against the wall to keep it open.
“No need to make the Boudreaux’s think we’re holding them hostage if they wake up,” he mumbled low to himself.
Then he and Luke quietly went up to the main cabin. As they stepped out of the stairwell and looked around, the cabin seemed okay from the inside, and all of the equipment was still on. The SOHO II was flashing red, but the alarm had long since been silenced. Marshall walked up to the main helm and punched in a few keys on the panel. Luke walked over and quickly checked his equipment rack, including the SOHO II receiver. They both looked at the main screen as Marshall punched up the GPS buoy data. Then they both stood there silently for several long beats as they took in what they were seeing. Luke broke the silence first.
“Fuck… Me…”
The whole screen was blinking red except for a small strip on the far left side, the western part of the map. This was where the flashing icon for the Moondance was located. All the buoys to the east of the boat were flashing red. The magnetic hole now covered the entire grid area on the screen.
Marshall quickly looked to see if the west wall of the anomaly was still moving, like it was when he looked at it during the storm. He punched up the target acquisition screen and then moved a pointer over with a touch sensitive portion of the main panel in front of him. Then he touched the outline of the west wall of the magnetic field and hit another key. The westward movement of the magnetic anomaly wall popped up beneath the pointer mark. He glanced over at Luke.
“The wall is moving northwest at 24 knots. That means it’s about an hour-and-a-half behind us.”
“Crap! That’s a thousand times faster than it’s been moving. And that’s a new heading… It changed direction.” Luke was starting to get antsy.
Marshall held his hand up to him before Luke could continue. Then he quickly punched the command to zoom out the map, in order to find the other edges of the anomaly. The entire hole previously fit inside the zoom setting he was just looking at. It didn’t any more. In fact, only the extreme left edge, the western edge of the anomaly, was visible. As the satellite map auto-zoomed the screen out to the needed level, he could see why. The entire Mid-Atlantic ocean was on the screen now.
“That’s not good,” Marshall mumbled to himself, as he watched the composite satellite and buoy data begin to overlay on the map of the ocean.
Luke had been overseeing multiple teams laying out buoys in the Atlantic twelve times a year for over five years; beginning not too long after that fateful first trip with his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Since then, he and his teams had covered almost thirty-two million square miles of open ocean. The buoys were not particularly close together. But they covered a huge swath of the Atlantic from the Caribbean into the South Atlantic, and they communicated with each other by shortwave radio and direct satellite transponders that could be detected from orbit. When combined with the on-board EM sensors, this system of buoys essentially created a gigantic live magnetometer field in the Atlantic. The buoy data could be picked up from satellite or by a ship inside the grid. Luke had originally intended this to serve as a means of warning ships in the area of the anomaly, but it eventually became more useful for tracking the movement of the magnetic hole. In fact, it had been Luke who discovered that the anomaly was moving faster than first believed and in a new direction, to the north and west. He continued to have teams lay out a grid of magnetic sensor buoys all the way from the South Atlantic into the Central Atlantic. And he was going to lay buoys into the Caribbean and North Atlantic next. He also had a wide corridor of buoys from the U.S. mainland out to the main buoy grid, which had been laid on each trip in and out from port. This allowed the field to be monitored by boat during the whole trip and would make it easier to expand the buoy field in the future.
Luke and Marshall were suddenly both thinking it was a fortunate thing Luke had thought ahead. Because as they watched the satellite image clear up quickly then redraw the buoy data, they were more than a little shocked at what they saw.
The magnetic hole had previously covered a quarter of a million square miles; over five-hundred miles wide in all directions.
But it was much larger, now. It was gigantic compared to what it was.
It appeared to Luke that it had grown at least 500 percent, more likely around 520 percent. It was at least a thousand miles wide now.
Marshall quickly began punching in the commands to measure the area inside the anomaly compared to the last recorded size from the logs. Before he could finish, Luke walked up next to him.
“It’s about five-hundred and twenty percent larger.”
Before Marshall could answer, the screen in front of him confirmed what his genius nephew had just informed him. It read, ‘520.19 percent increase in size.’ It really pissed Marshall off when Luke did that.
“Don’t get cocky. The real question… is it still growing?”
They both watched the screen for a few more moments in silence. The computer highlighted border of the magnetic hole did not appear to be moving substantially. It appeared the size was staying close to the same for now.
Marshall turned and looked at Luke. “How long was the storm?”
“About an hour, according to SOHO II. And I guess I don’t need to tell you how intense it was. It was a giant X-class storm. The readings were almost off the chart.” Luke was starting to look nervous, again. Then he thought of something. “Call up the buoy data set.”
Marshall punched the keys on the panel. The main screen started to pop up numbers below each buoy marker. The first number in the list was the only number Luke was interested in. That was the percentage of the magnetic field that each buoy measured at the ocean surface. The real-time numbers were for detected magnetic field and usually ranged from 65% to 100%, depending on whether the buoys were inside, outside, or on the edges of the anomaly. Luke and Marshall both had the same response at the same time.
&n
bsp; “Fuck Me…”
All the buoy markers inside the anomaly read 0% magnetic field detected.
Luke was dumbfounded. The area known as the Atlantic Anomaly was not truly a hole in the magnetic field, only an area of weakened strength in the Earth’s natural magnetic field lines. But now it was an actual hole. Luke couldn’t access the satellite data to see what was happening with the rest of the magnetic field, but he reasoned the field lines had cleaved apart and were missing in this area of the ocean. Now, the anomaly was not only larger after the hour long beating it just took from the massive solar storm, but the meager protection that Luke had been trying to convince people was over this part of the Atlantic was now entirely gone. The surface of the ocean under this area in the Earth’s magnetosphere had no protection from the Sun’s rays or any other type of cosmic radiation. It was essentially wide open to outer space. Only the atmosphere separated the surface of the planet from the harsh radioactive space of our solar system. And according to the numbers on the screen, the hole had radically changed direction, speed and heading. He didn’t need the target acquisition software to see that this new course was on a direct path for the U.S. Mainland. Luke looked hard at his uncle.
“I need to contact NASA. I need to tell them what’s happening.”
Marshall turned around and punched a couple of key-spots on the virtual keyboard console, again. A diagnostic warning window popped up on the main screen. Several individual warning lines were flashing in the notification box. He hit another couple of keys and a diagram popped up next to the first one. This window had an icon flow schematic of key systems. The communication system icon was flashing red. Marshall selected the flashing key-spot on the console in front of him and a new diagram of various communication systems slid into view on the main screen in front of the helm. The specialized antenna for the buoy system was shielded and still working. But all of the long-range radio communication antenna symbols were flashing red, meaning they were out of commission.
He quickly checked and saw that GPS and guidance radar were still up, but Marshall realized the situation was not good as far as getting any messages out. He quickly glanced at the nervous look his nephew had on his face and made a command decision that he needed to lighten the mood before this got out of hand. He slowly rotated his Captain’s chair around toward Luke and put his calm face on.
“Bad news my young Jedi friend. It seems the Emperor has used his dark-force to destroy all our antennae, which were outside, of course. Unless you can telepathically reach someone… or perhaps yell really loudly… we’re screwed as far as communicating with anybody. Other than our guests.” Then he gave his nephew an ear to ear grin with teeth.
Luke didn’t bite. He quickly got a distracted look, then turned back to Marshall. He was suddenly Doctor Luke Tomkin, PhD.
“Speaking of our guests. I should check them again, now that everything is calmer. I need a little bit of info about how the kids got burned. If they caught a big enough dose, I’ll have to treat them for the radiation. How long until we can get into a port somewhere?”
Marshall didn’t need the navigation computer for this one.
“We’re over twenty-six-hundred miles from Florida. At max cruising speed, we can’t get to land anywhere until late tonight at the earliest, and that would be the Antilles. We’ll hit the Bahamas next, but it’ll be the middle of the night. Washington may not be awake or in the office. If I head straight into Miami without any stops, I can get us there by early in the morning. Besides, if the kids need medical treatment, it’ll be easier in the states.”
Luke nodded his head as he absorbed this data and started for the stairs down below.
“I better go get the kids into the infirmary—” Then he suddenly stopped and turned back to Marshall. “I guess it’s a darn lucky thing you just happen to have an infirmary on board this fishing boat, right?”
“Always be prepared.” Marshall just smiled and crossed his arms. “I was a Boy Scout. Remember?”
Luke stepped back toward his uncle and stopped in the middle of the room. He turned his head and looked out the back of the boat, then from side to side. And then he looked up at the ceiling and quickly down to the floor. He bit the inside of his lip for just a second, as his eyes looked off into the distance for a moment. Then he smiled innocently at his uncle.
“Marshall, why did we drop out of jet hydrofoil? Did we run out of jet fuel?”
He waited for the answer like an attorney. He already knew the answer.
His uncle didn’t catch it in time.
“No. We have plenty of jet fuel. I programmed the Navigational computer to stop—”
Luke interrupted him.
“We do, huh? ‘Cuz, I just calculated how much three-dimensional space this vessel occupies. And I also recall the number of stops we made to fuel-up on the way out here. Which would be zero. I figured you had extra tanks put in to carry the fuel. But I’ve seen almost all of the ship, except for the actual engine room. And you would’ve had to use enough jet fuel to account for about half of the fuel-usable cubic meters in the entire boat, just now, getting us here at full throttle.”
Marshall was starting to get uncomfortable. His nephew was way too smart. But he just listened as Luke went on.
“Interestingly, the average yacht this size burns fuel at a rate that would take almost exactly the same amount of space as I just calculated you have aboard, to make the total round trip without refueling… which is just barely enough to make it by my calculations. And if you can take us straight back into Miami with no stops, then that means all the fuel on board is diesel for the engines, not fuel for the jets. Am I right, so far?”
Marshall didn’t answer. He didn’t smile either. Luke pushed on, anyway.
“So as you can see, my dear but mysterious uncle, either there is barely enough diesel fuel for us to make it back to Miami… and you’re out of jet fuel… or, as you say, you have plenty of jet fuel and there’s not enough engine diesel to make it back. So, which is it?”
Marshall really hated his nephew’s big brain, sometimes. Now, he was the one who reached for a straw. “You don’t know what rate the jets burn the fuel—”
Luke interrupted him before he finished. “Yeah, I do. That jet engine is the same size as the GE turbo model number 61-2-78—”
Marshall interrupted this time.
“How do you know this? Wait, let me guess. You read a book on jet engines once, right? And now you can quote the entire maintenance manual to me, right?” The sarcasm was overflowing from Marshall.
“Always be prepared. Isn’t that what you said?” Luke smiled and crossed his arms. “Even if I didn’t have the engine catalog memorized, the size of the boat would have given it away. The necessary horsepower to push the tonnage of a vessel this size at over one-hundred-and-seventy knots is approxi—”
He didn’t get to finish, again.
“Fine… You know what the fuel burn is. But you’re wrong about the fuel capacity on board.”
Luke just kept smiling with his arms crossed. “No… I’m not. And you know I’m not.”
Luke knew his uncle well. Marshall’s father, Luke’s grandfather, used to restore antique Model-T Fords. One day, he let Luke stand next to him as he was disassembling a motor from his latest project car. Luke was not yet five years old at the time. As Luke’s grandfather spent the next two hours taking off each part and carefully putting them on the ground next to the now empty engine block, Luke never took his eyes off of him or the engine. Grandpa Tomkin had never seen any of his other grandchildren pay attention like that. He asked little Luke if he knew how all those parts went back together. Luke shook his head up and down. Grandpa Tomkin had sensed something before from Luke, so he decided to see if the child really did watch him take the engine apart. There were a couple of hundred individual pieces to the assembled engine that were now spread out around the engine block. He asked the four-year-old to show him how to put the parts on the
floor back into the empty motor block.
For the next twenty-three and a half minutes, the still toddling mechanical savant told his Grandfather how each and every part on the floor went back into the engine in the reverse order they were taken off. And he did not make a single mistake. After Luke finished showing him where every single part went, Grandpa Tomkin promptly got up and took his amazing grandson by the arm. They walked slowly down the hill from his workshop to the farmhouse where Luke’s grandfather lived. He and his grandson went into the kitchen where his Grandmother had made fresh oatmeal cookies. Luke took one. He smiled a devilish grin at her, and then he took another. Luke ran up and gave his Grandma a kiss on the cheek, and then he ran off to play.
Grandpa Tomkin walked over to the special cabinet he had in the corner of the formal dining room; the one only used for holidays. He opened the cabinet and reached into the back corner. When he pulled his hand out, it held a bottle of Jack Daniels. He used his other hand to retrieve a shot glass from the same back corner. Then he returned to the kitchen table and sat down. He slowly poured the glass full and shot the firewater down. Then he poured another.
Luke’s grandfather told everyone about the incident. This was a man who knew all about engineers. He was the largest water well driller in all of Memphis, Tennessee and the surrounding three state area until municipal water put his company out of business. He knew his youngest grandson was different in a remarkable way.
So Marshall knew Luke was telling the truth when he said he just calculated it in his head. And he also knew that Luke’s calculation was correct. But Luke decided to let him off the hook.
“Don’t bother.” He laughed as he turned to head downstairs again. “I don’t wanna know.” Then he made one more stop at the doorway to below deck. “Hey, did you keep the shark we caught yesterday?”
Marshall was happy to change subjects. “Yeah, why?”
“I need the liver. What about the list of supplies I told you to have in the infirmary for me? I never asked when I got on board. Did you remember to bring them?”
“Yes, my impertinent evil twin. I remembered. But whaddya need that stuff for, now?” Marshall was more than a little curious. He never knew what his nephew was thinking up.
“I call it the radiation shake, my specialty. It’ll help all of us recover from the radiation dose we took a little while ago. I’ll go get the family up and moved into the infirmary. Then I’ll whip up my herbal remedy for a radiation bath.” He turned and started down the stairs.
Marshall gave a little sigh of relief that Luke dropped the line of questioning about the fuel on board. That was a conversation he could not have right now, especially with guests on the ship.
Just then, Luke stuck his head back around the stairway wall. “And then you can tell me about how you actually power this boat of yours. Right, Uncle Marshall?” Then he gave him that look, again.
Marshall didn’t buy it.
“Look Rain Man… why don’t you go and help those poor children and stop trying to… to…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence without cursing. Finally, Marshall just pointed his hand downstairs and kept pointing. Luke shook his head then slipped back into the corridor and disappeared.
Marshall heard Luke chuckle to himself as his genius nephew headed down below.
“This is gonna be a long trip back to port,” Marshall muttered out loud to himself. “A very long trip back.”
He reached up onto the dash panel and fired up the multi-props. Then he engaged the navigation system and the boat slowly headed off to the west, again. It picked up speed quickly and then jumped into hydrofoil. After a few more minutes, the speedometer got to 125 knots and stayed there.
Marshall turned on the audible alarm for anti-collision sonar. This system watched for underwater debris or objects. It was always deployed on small sonar pods extended from the hydrofoil blades in the front of the boat. The resolution went down as the speed went up, which was not helpful. It was more critical to detect objects and debris in the water at high speed than at low speed. This was reason the boat was only meant go into emergency jet hydrofoil for short periods. If the hydrofoil blades on the Moondance impacted a piece of debris while traveling at high speed, the result would be catastrophic. Below 125 knots, the system was statistically foolproof. Any object larger than about six inches was detected and avoided automatically.
Marshall visibly relaxed after the collision alarm was fully engaged. He’d be able to stay relaxed now, unlike the last two hours inside the radiation shielded hyperbaric chamber. Marshall didn’t want to think about it, again. At 170 knots, the ability of the anti-collision detection system was drastically reduced. Even after the rescue of the Boudreaux family, he couldn’t relax down below. Because he knew how dangerous it had been to put the boat into emergency jet-hydrofoil and then go below.
He had entrusted the lives of everyone aboard to the perfect computer calculations of an experimental safety system; one that could not make a mistake. But Marshall knew all computers could make mistakes. He knew this from personal experience; because computers were programmed by humans, and all humans made mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. Marshall knew this, too. And the consequences of those mistakes were something he knew about most of all. Like the consequences of a mistake in the collision avoidance system while the boat traveled in jet-hydrofoil at over 170 knots.
That would have been a terrible mistake.
Because that mistake would have caused everyone on board to be violently spread across the surface of the Atlantic ocean in little bitty pieces.
That was why Marshall couldn’t really sleep when he was waiting out the storm in the radiation-shielded chamber below deck.
Marshall shook his head to get the thought out of his mind as he turned and started for downstairs to help Luke with the Boudreaux family.