“York must not have studied Australian folklore,” said Giordino.
“He quite obviously made up the name,” Maeve said righteously.
“According to his account,” Pitt continued, “York made good time during his passage of the southern Indian Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. He then took advantage of the Roaring Forties to carry him on a direct course across the Pacific for South America and the Strait of Magellan. He figured he was leading the race when his generator gave out and he lost all contact with the outside world.”
“That explains a lot of things,” said Giordino, staring over Pitt’s shoulder at the logbook. “Why he was sailing in this part of the sea and why he couldn’t send position coordinates for a rescue party. I checked his generator when we came on site. The two-cycle engine that provides its power is in sad shape. York tried to repair it and failed. I’ll give it a try, but I doubt if I can do any better.”
Pitt shrugged. “So much for borrowing York’s radio to call for help.”
“What does he write after being marooned?” demanded Maeve.
“Robinson Crusoe, he was not. He lost most of his food supplies when the yacht struck the rocks and capsized. When the boat was later washed up on shore after the storm, he recovered some canned goods, but they were soon gone. He tried to fish, but caught barely enough to stay alive, even with whatever rock crabs he could find and five or six birds he managed to snare. Eventually, his body functions began to give out. York lasted on this ugly pimple in the ocean for a hundred and thirty-six days. His final entry reads ‘Can no longer stand or move about. Too weak to do anything but lie here and die. How I wish I could see another sunrise over Falmouth Bay in my native Cornwall. But it is not to be. To whoever finds this log and the letters I’ve written separately to my wife and three daughters, please see they get them. I ask their forgiveness for the great mental suffering I know I must have caused them. My failure was not from fault so much as bad luck. My hand is too tired to write more. I pray I didn’t give up too soon.’”
“He needn’t have worried about being found soon after he died,” said Giordino. “Hard to believe he lay here for decades without a curious crew from a passing ship or a scientific party coming ashore to set up some kind of weather data gathering instruments.”
“The dangers of landing amid the breakers and the unfriendly rocks are enough to outweigh any curiosity, scientific or otherwise.”
Tears rolled down Maeve’s cheeks as she wept unashamedly. “His poor wife and children must have wondered all these years how he died.”
“York’s last land bearing was the beacon on the South East Cape of Tasmania.” Pitt stepped back into the hut and reappeared a minute later with an Admiralty chart showing the South Tasman Sea. He laid it flat on the ground and studied it for a few moments before he looked up. “I see why York called these rocks the Miseries,” said Pitt. “That’s how they’re labeled on the Admiralty chart.”
“How far off were your reckonings?” asked Giordino.
Pitt produced a pair of dividers he’d taken from the desk inside and measured off the approximate position he had calculated with his cross-staff. “I put us roughly 120 kilometers too far to the southwest.”
“Not half bad, considering you didn’t have an exact fix on the spot where Dorsett threw us off his yacht.”
“Yes,” Pitt admitted modestly, “I can live with that.”
“Where exactly are we?” asked Maeve, now down on her hands and knees, peering at the chart.
Pitt tapped his finger on a tiny black dot in the middle of a sea of blue. “There, that little speck approximately 965 kilometers southwest of Invercargill, New Zealand.”
“It seems so near when you look at it on a map,” said Maeve wistfully.
Giordino pulled off his wristwatch and rubbed the lens clean against his shirt. “Not near enough when you think that no one bothered to drop in on poor Rodney for almost forty years.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Pitt with an infectious grin. “Pretend you’ve pumped thirty-eight dollars in quarters into a slot machine in Las Vegas without a win. The law of averages is bound to catch up in the next two quarters.”
“A bad analogy,” said Giordino, the perennial killjoy.
“How so?”
Giordino looked pensively inside the hut. “Because there is no way we can come up with two quarters.”
“Nine days and counting—” declared Sandecker, gazing at the unshaven men and weary women seated around the table in his hideaway conference room. What was a few days previously a neat and immaculate gathering place for the admiral’s closest staff members, now resembled a war room under siege. Photos, nautical charts and hastily drawn illustrations were taped randomly to the teak-paneled walls; the turquoise carpet was littered with scraps of paper and the shipwreck conference table cluttered with coffee cups, notepads scribbled with calculations, a battery of telephones and an ashtray heaped with Sandecker’s cigar butts. He was the only one who smoked, and the air-conditioning was turned to the maximum setting to draw off the stench.
“Time is against us,” said Dr. Sanford Adgate Ames. “It is physically impossible to construct a reflector unit and deploy it before the deadline.”
The sound expert and his student staff in Arizona intermingled with Sandecker’s NUMA people in Washington as if they were sitting at the same table in the same room.
The reverse was also true. Sandecker’s experts appeared to be sitting amid the student staff in Ames’ work quarters. Through the technology of video holography, their voices and images were transmitted across the country by photonics, the transference of sound and light by fiber optics. By combining photonics with computer wizardry, time and space limitations disappeared.
“A valid deduction,” Sandecker agreed. “Unless we can utilize an existing reflector.”
Ames removed his blue-tinted bifocals and held them up to the light as he inspected the lenses for specks, Satisfied they were clean, he remounted them on his nose. “According to my calculations, we’re going to require a parabolic reflector the size of a baseball diamond or larger, with an air gap between the surfaces to reflect the sound energy. I can’t imagine who you can find to manufacture one in the short time before the time window closes.”
Sandecker looked across the table at a tired Rudi Gunn, who stared back through the thick lenses of his glasses, which magnified eyes reddened from lack of sleep. “Any ideas, Rudi?”
“I’ve run through every logical possibility,” Gunn answered. “Dr. Ames is right, it is out of the question to consider fabricating a reflector in time. Our only prospect is to find an existing one and transport it to Hawaii.”
“You’ll have to break it down, ship it in pieces and then put it back together,” said Hiram Yaeger, turning from a laptop computer that was linked to his data library on the tenth floor. “No known aircraft can carry some thing of such a large surface area through the air in one piece.”
“If one is shipped from somewhere within the United States, supposing it is found,” insisted Ames, “it would have to go by boat.”
“But what kind of ship is large enough to hold a thing that size?” asked Gunn of no one in particular.
“An oil supertanker or an aircraft carrier,” said Sandecker quietly, as if to himself.
Gunn picked up on the statement immediately. “An aircraft carrier’s flight deck is more than large enough to carry and deploy a reflector shield the size Doc Ames has proposed.”
“The speed of our latest nuclear carriers is still classified, but Pentagon leaks indicate they can cut the water at fifty knots. Ample time to make the crossing between San Francisco and Honolulu before the deadline.”
“Seventy-two hours,” said Gunn, “from departure to deployment at the site.”
Sandecker stared at a desk calendar with the previous dates crossed out. “That leaves exactly five days to find a reflector, get it to San Francisco and deploy it at the convergence zon
e.”
“A tight schedule, even if you had a reflector in hand,” said Ames steadily.
“How deep does it have to be rigged?” Yaeger asked Ames’ image.
Almost as if she were cued, a pretty woman in her mid-twenties handed Ames a pocket calculator. He punched a few numbers, rechecked his answer and then looked up. “Allowing for the overlapping convergence zones to meet and surface, you should place the center of the reflector at a depth of 170 meters.”
“Current is our number one problem,” said Gunn. “It’ll prove a nightmare trying to keep the reflector in place long enough to bounce the sound waves.”
“Put our best engineers on the problem,” ordered Sandecker. “They’ll have to design some kind of rigging system to keep the reflector stable.”
“How can we be sure that by refocusing the converging sound waves we can return them on a direct channel back to the source on Gladiator Island?” Yaeger asked Ames.
Ames impassively twisted the ends of the mustache that extended beyond his beard. “If the factors that propagated the original sound wave, such as salinity, water temperature and the sound speed, remain constant, the reflected energy should return to the source along its original path.”
Sandecker turned to Yaeger. “How many people are on Gladiator Island?”
Yaeger consulted his computer. “The intelligence reports from satellite photos suggest a population of around 650 people, mostly miners.”
“Slave labor imported from China,” muttered Gunn.
“If not kill, won’t we injure every living thing on the island?” Sandecker asked Ames.
Another of Ames’ students unhesitantly passed a sheet of paper into the acoustics expert’s hands. He scanned it for a moment before looking up. “If our analysis is close to the mark, the overlapping convergence zones from the four separated mining operations scattered throughout the Pacific will drop to an energy factor of twenty-eight percent when they strike Gladiator Island, not enough to maim or cause harm to human or animal.”
“Can you estimate the physical reaction?”
“Headaches and vertigo along with mild nausea should be the only discomforts.”
“A moot point if we can’t set a reflector on site before the convergence,” Gunn said, staring at a chart on the wall.
Sandecker drummed his fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Which puts us back in the starter’s gate before the race.”
A woman in her forties, fashionably dressed in a conservative blue suit, stared contemplatively at one of the admiral’s paintings, the one illustrating the famous World War II aircraft carrier Enterprise during the battle for Midway. Her name was Molly Faraday, and she was a former analyst with the National Security Agency who had jumped over to NUMA at Sandecker’s urging, to be his intelligence agency coordinator. With soft toffee-colored hair and brown eyes, Molly was all class. Her gaze swiveled from the painting to Sandecker and fixed him with a somber look.
“I think I might have the solution to our problems,” she said in a quiet monotone.
The admiral nodded. “You have the floor, Molly.”
“As of yesterday,” she lectured, “the Navy’s aircraft carrier Roosevelt was docked at Pearl Harbor, taking on supplies and making repairs to one of her flight-deck elevators before joining the Tenth Fleet off Indonesia.”
Gunn looked at her curiously. “You know that for certain?”
Molly smiled sweetly. “I keep my toes dipped in the offices of the Joint Chiefs.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Sandecker. “But without a reflector, I fail to see how a carrier at Pearl Harbor can solve our dilemma.”
“The carrier is a side bonus,” explained Molly. “My primary thought was a recollection of an assignment at a satellite information collection center on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.”
“I didn’t know Lanai had a satellite facility,” said Yaeger. “My wife and I honeymooned on Lanai and drove all over the island without seeing a satellite downlink facility.”
“The buildings and parabolic reflector are inside the extinct Palawai volcano. Neither the natives, who always wondered what was going on in there, nor the tourists could ever get close enough to check it out.”
“Besides tuning in on passing satellites,” asked Ames, “what was its purpose?”
“Passing Soviet satellites,” Molly corrected him. “Fortunately, the former Soviet military chiefs had a fetish for guiding their spy satellites over the military bases on the Hawaiian Islands after they orbited the U.S. mainland. Our job was to penetrate their transponders with powerful microwave signals and foul up their intelligence photos. From what the CIA was able to gather, the Russians never did figure out why their satellite reconnaissance photos always came back blurred and out of focus. About the time the Communist government disintegrated, newer space communications facilities made the Palawai facility redundant. Because of its immense size, the antenna was later utilized to transmit and receive signals from deep-space probes. Now I understand that its dated technology has made the facility’s equipment obsolete, and the site, though still guarded, is pretty much abandoned.”
Yaeger jumped right to the heart of the matter. “How large is the parabolic reflector?”
Molly buried her head in her hands a moment before looking up. “I seem to recall that it was eighty meters in diameter.”
“More than the surface area we require,” said Ames. “Do you think the NSA will let us borrow it?” asked Sandecker.
“They’d probably pay you to carry it away.”
“You’ll have to dismantle it and airlift the pieces to’ Pearl Harbor,” said Ames, “providing you can borrow the carrier Roosevelt to reassemble and lower it on the convergence area.”
Sandecker looked squarely at Molly. “I’ll use my powers of persuasion with the Navy Department if you’d work on the National Security Agency end.”
“I’ll get on it immediately,” Molly assured him.
A balding man with rimless glasses, sitting near the end of the table, raised a hand.
Sandecker nodded at him and smiled. “You’ve been pretty quiet, Charlie. Something must be stirring around in your brain.”
Dr. Charlie Bakewell, NUMA’s chief undersea geologist, removed a wad of gum from his mouth and neatly wrapped it in paper before dropping it in a wastebasket. He nodded at the image of Dr. Ames in the holograph. “As I understand this thing, Dr. Ames, the sound energy alone can’t destroy human tissue, but enhanced by the resonance coming from the rock chamber which is under assault by the acoustic mining equipment, its frequency is reduced so that it can propagate over vast distances. When it overlaps in a single ocean region, the sound is intense enough to damage human tissue.”
“You’re essentially correct,” admitted Ames.
“So if you reflect the overlapping convergence zones back through the ocean, won’t some energy reflect from Gladiator Island?”
Ames nodded. “Quite true. As long as the energy force strikes the submerged level of the island without surfacing and is scattered in diverse directions, any prospect of carnage is dramatically decreased.”
“It’s the moment of impact against the island that concerns me,” said Bakewell conversationally. “I’ve reviewed the geological surveys on Gladiator Island by geologists hired by Dorsett Consolidated Mining nearly fifty years ago. The volcanoes on the opposite ends of the island are not extinct but dormant. They have been dormant for less than seven hundred years. No human was present during the last eruption, but scientific analysis of the lava rock dates it some time in the middle of the twelfth century. The ensuing years have been followed by alternating periods of passivity and minor seismic disturbances.”
“What is your point, Charlie?” asked Sandecker.
“My point, Admiral, is that if a catastrophic force of acoustical energy slams into the base of Gladiator Island it just might set off a seismic disaster.”
“An eruption?” asked Gunn.
Bakewe
ll merely nodded.
“What in your estimation are the odds of this happening?” inquired Sandecker.
“There is no way of absolutely predicting any level of seismic or volcanic activity, but I know a qualified vulcanologist who will give you a bet of one in five.”
“One chance of eruption out of five,” Ames said, his holographic image gazing at Sandecker. “I am afraid, Admiral, that Dr. Bakewell’s theory puts our project into the category of unacceptable risk.”
Sandecker did not hesitate a second with his reply. “Sorry, Dr. Ames, but the lives of a million or more residents of Honolulu, along with tens of thousands of tourists and military personnel stationed at bases around Oahu, take priority over 650 miners.”
“Can’t we warn Dorsett Consolidated management to evacuate the island?” said Yaeger.
“We have to try,” Sandecker said firmly. “But knowing Arthur Dorsett, he’ll simply shrug off any warning off as a hollow threat.”
“Suppose the acoustic energy is deflected elsewhere?” suggested Bakewell.
Ames looked doubtful. “Once the intensity deviates from its original path, you run the risk of it retaining its full energy and striking Yokohama, Shanghai, Manila, Sydney or Auckland, or some other heavily populated coastal city.”
There was a brief silence as everyone in the room turned to face Sandecker, including Ames, who was sitting at a desk thirty-two hundred kilometers to the west. Abstractedly, Sandecker toyed with an unlit cigar. What most did not know was that his mind wasn’t on the possible destruction of Gladiator Island. His mind was saddened and angered at the same time over the abandonment of his best friends in a raging sea by Arthur Dorsett. In the end, hate won out over any humane consideration.
He stared at the image of Sanford Ames. “Compute your calculations, Doc, for aiming the reflector at Gladiator Island. If we don’t stop Dorsett Consolidated, and stop them in the shortest time possible, no one else will.”
Arthur Dorsett’s private elevator in the jewelry trade center rose noiselessly. The only evidence of ascent was the progression of blinking floor levels over the doors. When the car eased to a gentle stop at the penthouse suite, Gabe Strouser stepped out into an entryway that led to the open courtyard where Dorsett stood waiting to greet him.
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