by John Hunt
“What does the inscription say?”
Joseph waved his hand toward the bell, sending Petur to look for himself. Petur moved to it and picked it up reverently, turning it about in his hands. Carefully engraved over one rounded half of the bell was the name “HMAV Bounty.” Underneath was the same date that was found on the ship’s lamp on the mountain peak.
He turned it over to read the inscription on the inside. Scratched into the bronze was a freehand carving consisting of words and numbers. The first he could make out was a name: Sarah Christian; a date: 24th November 1791; and the words, Christened on this date into the Lord.
“It looks like we were right about the child.”
“Yes. It was customary to inscribe the inside of bells with the names of children who were christened on the vessel.” Joseph nodded. “Keep reading.”
Petur had to rotate the bell in his hands several times as he read through a longer inscription, a corkscrewed engraving of specific instructions. He read them aloud, partly to make sure Onbacher corrected him if he had trouble with one of the more indiscernible words.
“If you know what you seek, follow it from where the lantern hides, 42’ 36” at twelve o’clock noon, and drop a plumb one fathom below the surface. It lies there. For eternity, but for you. Think no evil of me. F.C.’”
Joseph nodded his head. “Yep. That’s what it says, Petur. And it proves that the sphere is real.” And then he added dejectedly, “Or at least it was real, once.”
“What do you mean?”
Onbacher appeared a bit more animated as he began to explain. “These last few hours have been an emotional roller coaster. First the thrill of finding the inscription so legible under that thick corrosion, then the morose recognition that the directions seemed incomplete.”
Petur read the inscription again. “A little more than forty-two feet from where the lantern was found.”
“Yes, that’s how I was initially thinking too. I was planning an expedition up to the top of the mountain tomorrow with a long measuring tape and a shovel.”
Petur asked, “How much is a fathom?”
“Six feet. It’s usually used for water depth, but I think Christian is using it to indicate the depth the sphere is buried.”
“But forty-two feet in what direction? Twelve o’clock noon? Does that mean in the direction of the bow of the Bounty?”
“You mean like an airplane pilot might say?”
Petur shrugged, “Sure.”
Joseph smiled, something Petur felt refreshed to see. “They didn’t have airplanes back then, Petur.”
“So, I guess that’s not it, then. So, what direction? Heck, why don’t we just dig up a great big forty-foot-radius circle around that crevice where they found that lantern! It’ll be there somewhere.”
“I don’t think so,” Joseph replied. “I don’t think those numbers are supposed to be feet and inches. If it was, instead of writing forty-two feet and thirty-six inches, why not just say forty-five feet?”
Petur nodded, feeling foolish again. He looked at the inscription even more closely. “I have no idea what he is saying here.” A glint of recognition appeared in his eyes. “Wait. It’s not feet and inches, is it? Christian was an excellent navigator. Couldn’t that be distances on a map? It’s forty-two minutes. Forty-two minutes is forty-two sixtieths of a degree, isn’t it? That’s got to be it.”
Joseph was nodding his head. “I came up with that answer too. Each degree of a circle, or of longitude, is divided into sixty minutes, and each minute into sixty seconds. That’s right. But, it’s not the answer. Problem is twofold. First, look here.” He showed Petur a smaller-scale map of the Pacific, the Paradise Islands essentially only small black dots. A carefully drawn circle was inscribed on the chart, centered on Paradise 1. “Forty-two sixtieths of a degree is about seventy kilometers at this latitude. There is no landmass of any sort seventy kilometers from this island. Nothing. Not even a ledge, as far as I can tell. And if he meant that he dropped it overboard seventy kilometers away, it would take forever to find it, without knowing exactly where it was. Plus, what about the one fathom depth issue?”
“Christian sure left lousy directions.”
“He didn’t want anyone to find it. But he still had his mission for the British Admiralty, and is fulfilling it by providing these instructions. The information is there. I just had to read what the man wrote, that’s all.”
“Did he write something else in his journal somewhere? Better directions?”
“No. In fact, what you read about the globe is the only mention of the sphere. He never says anything about what it does. And I think that is the key. He doesn’t tell you what the sphere does!”
Petur looked one more time, and read aloud in a stilted and carefully enunciated manner, “‘If you know what you seek, follow it from where the lantern hides, 42’ 36” at twelve o’clock noon, and drop a plumb one fathom below the surface. It lies there. For eternity, but for you. Think no evil of me. F.C.’ What on earth is he saying, Joseph? We know what we seek…”
Joseph interrupted. “Exactly. We do know what we seek! But Fletcher would think that only the Admiralty could possibly know, since only they knew about Captain Cook’s discovery, and only they knew about the mission on which he and Bligh had been sent. You see, that’s the key. The fact that we’re seeking the sphere contains the answer to where it’s located.”
Considering for a moment, Petur rubbed his chin. “The sphere is some sort of strange device — alien, ancient, who knows what, which seems to be able to defy gravity. What direction would it go in if we got it spinning the way the Maoris did?”
“Same way that it went when young John Carver witnessed the ceremony. It gradually drifted up and to the west.”
“Why did it do that?”
“Well, actually it didn’t. What really happened was that Earth’s rotation pulled the surface down and away, while the sphere simply kept going on in the direction it had been going when it started spinning. The net effect is the appearance of the sphere drifting to the west and upward.”
Petur nodded, trying to picture the geometry in his head, unsuccessfully. “So, ‘follow the sphere’ means, ‘go west.’ Due west, I presume?”
“Due west is correct.”
Petur pulled the chart over to him and looked closely. “Then, forty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds due west.” He found the point on Joseph’s seventy-kilometer circle due west from the observatory on Paradise 1 — the place where the lantern had been found. Sticking his finger on it hard, he said, “Right here. It’s got to be right here.”
“There’s nothing there!”
“Maybe there is something there. Maybe it’s just never been found and charted. Maybe there is a suboceanic ridge or volcano.”
“Could be, but I doubt it. There is a better explanation for where the sphere was buried.”
“Don’t keep me waiting, Joseph!”
“You won’t like it.”
Petur frowned in concern. “Why?”
Joseph stretched and said, “You have it right. Forty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds. But it’s not measurements on a chart. He really meant minutes and seconds. Time. Time is the key.”
It became clear in an instant, Petur once again ashamed that he could have missed it “And just how far would the sphere travel in forty-two minutes and thirty-six seconds?” Petur asked.
Joseph held up a stack of papers in one hand and a calculator in the other. “It took me two hours to figure out. The answer is that it would move about five kilometers west.”
“Five kilometers.” Petur picked up the local chart of the islands. The line starting at the observatory and drawn due west had meaning. He looked at the scale, then looked back at the line. Of the several X marks drawn on that line, there was one penciled in more heavily than the rest. Petur looked at that mark, then back at the scale.
“Oh, Joseph. I’m so sorry.”
The X that marked the location fiv
e kilometers due west of the observatory — the place where Fletcher Christian must have buried the chest with the sphere — lay precisely in the center of a small island labeled “Paradise 5.”
60. Look Up
IT WAS FIVE minutes before 2:00 a.m. Petur placed his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder. “Joseph. You need to come with me. Everyone has gathered at the Guest House at my request. I have to go.”
Joseph shook his head. “I think I need to stay here, Petur. I have put too much of myself into this search. Too much hope. I need some time now to deal with it.”
“Yes, I imagine you do. And you will have that time. But not now. Now, you must come with me. Trust me. This is one announcement that you will not want to miss.”
Joseph sat still for a moment, looking at the small chart in his hands. Then, in one movement, he put it down on the table and stood up. It seemed to have taken every ounce of the man’s will to accomplish that simple feat, but once done, he seemed to gather energy. “We had better hurry then, hadn’t we?” he said as he led Petur out the door.
The roads were darkened, but the stars were still bright. Petur swore quietly to himself, recognizing how diminished his night vision had become simply by staying in Joseph’s well-lit office. He could shoot himself! If he didn’t have good vision in fifteen minutes, he might miss the whole thing. And that would be a terrible shame.
The two men were walking rather briskly down the road, Joseph’s shorter legs and older body struggling to keep pace. Petur slowed his walk a bit, but kept pressing on. The Guest House was further on, and people would be impatient.
“Can you give me a hint? I mean, about what you plan to announce?”
“It’s just a few minutes more. Then you’ll know.”
In three minutes, the two men were walking up to the waiting group, who had now all gathered on the grass in front on the verandah. Petur was perspiring slightly, despite the cool night. He looked at Joseph. Though the effort had been greater for him, the older man did not seem to be sweating. Petur wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“About time you arrived!” Sophia was unconsciously, or perhaps consciously, imitating the tones their mother had used in their childhood. It relaxed him. The light here was enough to be seen, but not more. He glanced at the stars above, still close enough to touch. He fixed his gaze on a smaller star in the eastern sky, waiting to see how rapidly his eyes were accommodating to the darkness. Well, they would have to do.
His people gathered around him now. The crowd was not big, but it consisted of the most important people, save one. Sophia and Elisa were standing with Jeff Baddori slightly ahead and to the right. Otto Wagner, speaking softly in German, stood by Heinrich Poll and one of the German engineers. Dr. Standall was now chatting with Isaac. Joseph had joined them. Jack Gaimey was there also.
“Hey, Jack Gaimey. How’s your plane?”
The big man smiled broadly, “I’m working on it. It will fly again. And now, what’ve you done with my island?”
“That’s exactly why I invited you all here. But first I want to thank you all for sticking this out. It’s not been easy, I know. But, we have done well today.” Petur had everyone’s attention. He looked at his watch, the fluorescing dial indicating that it was already three minutes past two. “Today was a truly historic moment. Not just because of our success keeping our sovereignty, but for a much bigger reason.” He paused to look around a bit. Nobody, except Isaac, had a clue what was coming soon.
“I must apologize to you all for the trick we played on Governor Marcos and his gang. The laser setup in the observatory couldn’t have hurt a flea. It had no role in what happened to Paradise 5, either. We just made it look like it did.”
Joseph interrupted. “Who is we?”
Petur replied quickly. He had little time. “Professor Harrigan and I. Unfortunately, Evan cannot be with us tonight, although I hope he is out of surgery and recovered enough to be awake right now. Professor Harrigan is the man truly responsible for the most significant event of the day.
“What happened to Paradise 5 was caused by equipment placed on the island itself. Unfortunately, had I revealed the true nature of the device, Juan Marcos might not have immediately thought it a weapon at all. And we needed to have him think it was a weapon. Something that he would be able to use as an excuse to save face when he left our islands without having accomplished his mission. What men hate most is losing respect. This was too dangerous a situation. I did not want to lose our lives, and the whole Island, to the whims of a delicate ego. So we gave him a way out. That laser setup was supposed to be the way out for him: a terrible weapon against which even Mexico’s mightiest warship could not fight.”
He wiped more sweat off his forehead. “And now the news.” He took a small breath. “Paradise 5 was not destroyed today. In fact, nothing at all happened to it. Nothing at all.”
Nobody said anything for a moment. They looked at each other in bewilderment. Only Isaac sat still, looking at Petur with a knowing expression and the hint of a proud smile. Petur let everyone think about it for a moment, wondering who would ask the next question. It turned out to be his sister.
“What, Petur? Is it invisible out there? I don’t think so. There was a giant explosion out there. There had to be!”
“Not an explosion, my knowledgeable physicist sister. Perhaps an implosion is a better description.”
“The effect is the same, dear brother. The island is gone. I looked a dozen times.”
Petur responded, “It all depends on the way you look.”
Sophia replied, a bit exasperated. “We all were looking in the right place.”
“You see, that’s the problem. You were all looking in the right place.” He paused. “But not at the right time.” He looked again at his watch. Seven minutes more. He hoped his watch was not off. It rarely was.
“Professor Harrigan has been working for more than two decades to accomplish this. Few people really knew what he pursued. He never received any attention in scientific circles. But that’s going to change. Since joining the Island Project, he made the final discoveries he needed. And he’s soon going to be a very well-known scientist, perhaps the best-known scientist in the whole world. He had his laboratory built deep in the volcanic rock of this island so that the dense stone could take the energy out of the particles. He was seeking to make them more detectable, more harnessable. It worked, for he was able to make an amazing discovery. He was able to detect this particle, characterize it, and then create it. He could explain all this much better than I. In fact, he will no doubt regale you with the details in a few days. For now you have to make do with me.”
Sophia, a theoretical physicist herself, was impatient. “You said a moment ago that nothing happened to Paradise 5. What do you mean by that? What has Harrigan done, Petur?”
“Nothing has happened to Paradise 5. Nothing whatsoever. However, a lot has happened to us. I’ll explain. Evan Harrigan put together twenty years of research and his recent spectacular finding, and invented a device which, for lack of a better phrase, manipulates time.”
The silence was intense. At this moment, the usual gentle breeze chose to rest. Not a leaf rustled, and no animals spoke. People were breathing; beyond that, nothing was audible.
Joseph interrupted the silence. The cautious hope in his voice could not be hidden. “So, Paradise 5 has not been destroyed?”
Petur said, “No. It has not been destroyed. In fact, as I said, nothing has happened to it. And in about three minutes, you will once again see Paradise 5.”
Several turned and ran up the steps of the verandah, so they could see over the trees to look out over the bay. Petur grasped Joseph by the shoulder and shook his head slowly. Isaac and Sophia stayed down on the grass with Petur. Since Petur did not say anything, Sophia thought she had better.
“Umm. I don’t think you all need to be up there,” Sophia called calmly to those who had gone up to the verandah. “You’ll be able to see i
t fine from down here.”
Petur looked at his sister, proudly. She had figured it out.
Dr. Standall replied from up above on the verandah. “You are taller than me, young lady. I cannot see the water from down there at all.”
“You don’t need to see the water, Thomas.”
Petur chimed in. “I would like you all to look in the sky to the east.” He pointed upward, over the low trees that served to delineate the bounds of the jungle forest beyond. “You see that brightest star there?” He tried to give better guidance. “Directly above that tallest tree, about a hand’s breadth higher.” He looked at his watch. There was little time left. “It’s the top-right corner of that upside-down triangle of stars there. Do you see what I’m talking about?”
Several people acknowledged him affirmatively.
“Does anyone not see what I am pointing to?”
There was no response.
“Good. Now, look about a finger’s breadth to the right of that star. Do you see anything there?”
Isaac chimed in first. “Not a thing. Just space.”
Petur continued. “Just space. Remember, I told you that nothing whatsoever has happened to Paradise 5. What has happened is that fifteen hours has passed for the rest of the universe. Harrigan figured out a way to freeze time. Not move through it. But freeze it completely. He put a machine on Paradise 5 that froze time for it for fifteen hours. That island has not moved an inch since then. But the Earth has. The earth has rotated and moved along its orbit around the sun. Earth has left Paradise 5 behind! So watch closely there, just to the right of the bright star. That’s where the Earth was, fifteen hours ago.”
Everyone stared at the spot in the sky. One and all slowly moved back down the staircase to join Petur and Sophia and Isaac on the lawn. Elisa moved in close to Petur. She reached and found his hand. They held on tightly.
And then, like a giant firework exploding in the sky, the night was alight in a spray of multicolored fire originating from the point at which they had all been staring. It was bright enough that Petur had to shield his eyes. Streaks of white, blue, and red light shot in all directions, filling a quarter of the sky. Within thirty seconds, again just like a firework, the colors were gone. But, unlike a firework, something remained.