He took a deep breath to enjoy the scent of the ocean, but even this far out at sea, the odor of sulfur was discernible in the air. He slid his phone from his front pocket and dialed the number for his friend and a recording told him to leave a message. “Hey, Alex. It’s Okana. I need information about a seismic disturbance, so give me a call.”
He slid the phone back into his pocket and stared out across the water. The sun was slowly descending over the horizon, creating a light show of orange, yellow, and purple on the bottom of the clouds. When he turned and walked across the deck, a knot formed in his stomach at the magnitude of what they discovered. Whatever was under the ice had been down there for a very long time and the degree of engineering needed to create such a powerful device was not even possible yet. At least not on this planet.
* * *
Chapter 8
TUESDAY, 8:00 AM, MOUNT BAKER, THE CABIN:
Alex walked out of the bedroom and down the short hallway to the living area of the cabin. The interior was nicely done in horizontal white pine boards, with a thick matching mantel above the gas log fireplace. He followed the aroma of fresh coffee into the kitchen and saw Wesley sitting at the small oval table, intently studying something on his laptop computer, in front of the bay window. The spacious kitchen was also done in white pine for the walls and cabinets.
Wesley glanced up when Alex walked in. “The cups are in the cabinet above the coffee, Alex.”
Alex walked to the coffee maker on the granite counter and filled a white ceramic mug, then sat at the table. “What’s going on?”
“I just found this on the internet. FEMA is setting up operations in Anacortes, near the ferry dock and the marina. They’re having logistical problems getting rescue workers and emergency supplies to the islands. The only way to get there is by boat or aircraft.”
“Why is this happening, Wesley? A natural seismic event would not be so precise where it caused the damage.”
“According to the USGS website, they didn’t notice the needle jump off the paper.”
Alex sipped his coffee and stared through the window. “I’ll call the USGS representative in Seattle and let her know about the jump. She’s the one who asked for my help.”
“Would that be Sharon Aniston?”
“That’s right. Do you know her?”
“She was the only one who believed my warning about Saint Helens.”
Alex stood and felt his empty pocket. “I must have left my cellphone in the car.”
When Alex stepped outside, the cool morning air was laden with the aroma of evergreens. This is a paradise compared to the lowlands, he thought. He looked through the car window, saw the phone on the passenger seat, and opened the door to get it. When he slammed the door closed, three beautiful Canadian geese floating on the lake began honking as he walked into the cabin.
The instant he sat down, the phone beeped and he entered a code to play the voice message. He stared out the window and sipped his coffee while he listened. The message was from his friend in California and he heard the urgency in Okana’s voice. Did the disturbance reached that far south? He wondered.
He entered the number and Okana answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, buddy. I got your message. What’s going on?”
“It’s been a long time, Alex. Did you hear of any unusual seismic activity in the Pacific Northwest yesterday?”
“Yes, twice. The first one did severe damage to Victoria, Canada, and the second one hit the San Juan Islands. Why do you ask?”
“I think I know what caused it.”
Alex turned on the speaker and set the phone on the table. “I’m with a friend. Did it originate in California?”
“Not that I’m aware of. What happened on the mainland?”
“I wasn’t here, but I’ve been told they didn’t register like major earthquakes. We’re still trying to figure out what could have caused them. Where are you?”
“I’m on research vessel, sixty-miles off the coast of Vancouver Island. We were searching for methane hydride and found some on the ocean floor. During our test, we activated something deep in a fissure, under the methane, and it created a tsunami on the ocean floor. The object appears to be some kind of metal reflecting the signal back to the ultrasound unit.”
Alex and Wesley looked at each other. “It wasn’t a tsunami that caused the destruction,” Alex told Okana. “It was a seismic event.” The line was silent for a moment. “Okana?”
“I’m here, Alex. We had no idea that happened.”
“Whatever you do, don’t activate that thing again.”
“Now that I know what it did, I’ll make sure we don’t. My boss has a drilling rig on its way to meet us. We think that’s the only way to determine what’s at the bottom of that crack.”
“Would you have room for me on the ship?”
“I think so. I’ll check with my boss and call you back.”
“Thanks. I look forward to seeing you again.”
Alex turned off the phone and looked across the table at Wesley. “Do you remember Sonja from the conference in Iceland?”
Wesley grinned. “The sexy blond woman? Of course.”
“She called me yesterday about a sudden increase in the size of the Polar Ice Sheet above Canada. It happened at the same time as the seismic activity down here. I don’t see how they could be connected, but nothing about this makes any sense anyway.”
“I agree. At least your friend on the ship knows what’s causing the seismic activity. I’m glad it’s not in the hands of some crackpot terrorist.” He noticed Alex grin. “Or should I be worried?”
“I trust my friend, but I don’t know the other people on that ship.” His phone rang, and he recognized Okana’s number and answered. “Should I rent a boat to meet you?”
“A boat? Where are you?”
“On Mount Baker, in Washington.”
“I thought you were in Montana. Hang on a second.”
Alex could hear voices in the background.
“My boss wants to know where to send the helicopter.”
“Pick me up at the Mount Vernon airport, so I can drop off my rental car. What time?”
“Is an hour okay?”
Alex hesitated, wondering if he should stop at his father’s ranch first to explain what was going on to his nephew and niece. No, not yet, he decided. “An hour is fine. See you on the ship.”
Alex turned off the phone and slid it into his front pocket as he stood to get his bag. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“What about Sharon Aniston?”
“That’s right. It was your discovery. Would you mind calling her for me?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Alex retrieved his bag and Wesley followed him out to the car. “I’ll call you once I know what’s going on.” They shook hands and Alex climbed in and drove away.
*
Alex drove down the mountain, to the small Mount Vernon airport, and parked in front of the main building. He grabbed his small suitcase from the trunk and walked inside to the ticketing and rental area of the small air terminal, and handed the keys and the rental agreement to a young woman standing behind the counter.
A slender black man set a magazine down, stood from a chair in the waiting area, and moved over to the counter. “Are you Alex Cave?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Carl Gregory, your pilot.”
Alex shook his hand. “Are you a commercial pilot?”
“No, I work for Mike Tanner, on the Discovery.”
Alex signed a piece of paper for the car rental girl and grabbed his suitcase. “Ready when you are.”
Carl held the door open, and Alex walked with him to a white helicopter with DISCOVERY painted in light blue letters on the side. When Carl took his suitcase and set it in a storage compartment, Alex climbed into the co-pilot’s seat, closed the door, and then put on the headset.
Carl climbed in, started the engine, and contacted flight con
trol for clearance to take off. When he received approval, he took the helicopter into the air and headed west, to meet up with the Mystic.
“Could you take me over the San Juan islands and Victoria so I can see the damage? A few of my friends live on Orcas Island.”
“No problem. It’s on our way.
Five minutes later, Carl dropped to a lower altitude and Alex stared out the window at the destruction to the islands. A large resort on Orcas Island lay in ruin. Its hotel accommodations, built onto the steep hillside above the resort, were now a pile of rubble clogging the harbor. Bodies were being stacked on what remained of the docks and pleasure boats had been tossed onto the shore like toys. On another island, million dollar mansions were now rubble in the cold water at the bottom of steep hillsides and smaller resorts had collapsed buildings and torn up docking facilities.
Victoria was no longer the beautiful city he had visited years ago, and would probably never be the same again. Whatever is at the bottom of the fault line must be very powerful, he thought.
Thirty minutes later, they approached a beautiful white ship, alone on the vast Pacific Ocean. “Is that the Discovery?”
“No, that’s the Mystic, Mike’s personal research ship. Isn’t she a beauty? The Discovery will join her later this morning.”
Alex admired the Mystic’s graceful design and recognized it from a boating magazine. It was a tri-hull, designed and built by a company in Australia. When it was underway, the center hull was held above the water by the two outside pontoons. The front ends of the pontoons were curved vertical wedges, designed to slice through the waves instead of going over them. The bow swept up and back over tinted viewing windows on the main deck, and continued up to the bridge. Large tinted windows ran along both sides of the main deck, with smaller windows for the lower deck spaced evenly along the sides of the ship, six-feet above the water line and the pontoons.
They approached from the stern and he saw a large white post for the hoist mounted in the center of the deck, three-feet forward of the back edge of the ship. On the left side of the deck, tucked inside the protective exterior wall, a fifteen-foot white submarine was cradled in blue curved steel support brackets. On the right side, another set of brackets held a sixteen-foot, white fiberglass motorboat with a blue canvas top. In each outside wall, closed hatches for getting on and off the ship were just forward of the support brackets for the sub and motorboat.
Straight ahead was the main body of the ship, with windowed double doors in the rear bulkhead. Above the doors was a viewing deck behind the bridge. It continued around the two sides to form a three-hundred sixty degree, U-shaped lookout deck spanning the width of the ship.
As they made the final approach, the white post of the hoist magically dropped down, flush with the deck. Carl gently set the helicopter down on the stern between the sub and the motorboat and left the engine running.
“You’re not staying?” Alex asked.
“No, I’m going back to Discovery. That’s where I work. Good luck, Mister Cave.”
“Thanks for the ride.”
Alex climbed out and grabbed his bag. Okana stepped out from the double doors and smiled as Alex walked over. Okana motioned Alex through the doors, and once they were safely out of the way from the down wash of the rotor blades, the helicopter took off and soared back toward the mainland.
Alex dropped his bag and gave his friend a quick hug, and then stepped back and smiled. “It’s great to see you again, Okana.”
Alex heard a noise outside and turned around to the door windows to watch the white post rise up from the deck. “That’s a neat trick.”
“I know. It pushes a sealed rubber sock under the ship. We only lower it for the helicopter. We don’t leave it down when we’re underway, because it creates too much drag. Let’s go meet the rest of the crew. We have coffee waiting, and we’ll show you what we’ve discovered.”
“Sounds good.”
Alex grabbed his bag and followed Okana into the lounge. He set his bag down to shake hands as Okana introduced him to Mike Tanner, Joshua Mason, and Lisa Harding.
Lisa felt her heart rate increase as she shook Alex’s hand. When Okana said he was an old friend and a geology teacher, she had imagined a frumpy old bald man with horn-rimmed glasses, not the tall, good-looking man who just shook her hand.
Okana indicated the table. “Let’s take a seat and we’ll show you the recordings.”
Alex sat at the corner of table and poured coffee from the thermos. Okana, Mike, and Lisa sat around him at the table, and Joshua sat at a desk near a window.
Okana unrolled a map and pointed to the area beneath the ship. “This is the location where we found the methane.”
Alex studied the map for a moment, and then looked around at the group. “That’s the Cascadia fault line. It starts north of Vancouver Island and follows the coastline down, to northern California.”
Lisa looked over at Joshua. “Play the recording, please.”
Joshua nodded and pressed play, and across the room, the television screen showed the video recording from the rover. After a few moments of darkness, the slab of methane hydride was illuminated by the sub’s brilliant lights.
Alex turned to look at Lisa. “I thought methane hydride was white.”
“You’re right, but that’s not pure methane. It’s a mixture of chemical compounds found in our atmosphere. They shouldn’t even be down there.”
Alex looked back to the television as the picture from the rover was circling the slab, and then the lens focused on the black material.
“Pause that, Josh.” In her excitement, Lisa reached over and put her hand on Alex’s forearm. “Something happened between the formation of the methane and that black material. After what happened yesterday, I didn’t want to send the rover down to get a sample until we learn what’s at the bottom of the ice. Please continue, Josh.”
The picture from the Rover tilted down above the methane, and they could see the discolorations creating a spiraled green band, getting smaller towards the middle. The rover stopped, and the view from the camera was magnified until the rover was on the surface of the methane. Three seconds later, the picture suddenly changed to blinding blue light for a fraction of a second, and then the picture showed silt billowing up from the seafloor, casting everything in dirty gray darkness.
Okana looked over at Alex. “That’s when Mike and I were tossed around in the sub. The view from the camera doesn’t do it justice, Alex. What Mike and I saw from inside the sub was a translucent neon blue light, shooting up through the water from the crack in the sea floor. A pressure wave slammed into the sub at the same time, and I lost control. Our first mate saw a neon blue circle of light on the surface, near the ship. He wondered what it would look like at night. I wondered what it would look like from outer space.”
Lisa realized her hand was still holding Alex’s arm and she quickly pulled it away. When he turned and smiled, her heart began to race. She gave him a quick, embarrassed smile, and then looked back at the television. “Ah, could you put on the picture from the ultrasound please?”
The television showed several still pictures of the dark cylindrical object, deep beneath the ice.
“That’s the best picture I have,” Lisa told him. “The only way to get a better look is to drill and send an optical cable down into the ice.”
Alex looked at the faces around the table. “I hope all of you realize the magnitude of what you’ve discovered. Whatever it is also disturbed the Mount Baker and Rainer volcanos. We’re worried that, besides the destruction it’s already caused, if these events continue, there could be a major eruption.” Alex decided not to mention the incident at the polar ice cap, leaned back in his chair, and looked over at Okana. “You mentioned that you know what caused this to happen.”
“It happened when we fired our experimental ultrasound system. I’m sure that’s what triggered whatever happened.”
“So you used it twice and this happened
each time?”
Mike spoke for the first time. “No, that was the only time we did the experiment, right Lisa?”
“That’s right.”
Alex wondered what was going on. “We had two events yesterday. The first was around nine AM, the other about five PM.”
Okana grinned and shook his head. “You’re right, Alex. We did do it twice. At nine yesterday morning we got our first detection of the methane from the ultrasound unit, here on the ship.”
Alex noticed Lisa’s puzzled expression. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not really sure. We used a very powerful, wide beam frequency of our new ultrasound to locate the methane, but I didn’t think the sound waves were strong enough to penetrate the methane and reach what’s at the bottom of the ice.”
Now Alex wondered if there was a connection with the polar ice cap. “Could the sound waves from your ultrasound reach the Arctic?”
Lisa wondered where this was leading. “Sure. It’s the same way whales communicate. With the power our new transducer puts out, the sound waves could have reached the arctic.”
Alex leaned back and sighed deeply. “Yesterday, I received a call from my friend at the CHARS station near the Arctic Ocean. It seems the water south of the polar ice sheet was suddenly frozen into transparent ice that rose out of the ocean. I’m not sure what to make of all this. At least you stopped using the ultrasound, so we won’t have another seismic event.”
“The ice under the black material is transparent, too, Alex.” Lisa told him. “The only thing left is my idea to drill down through the methane. Once we find out what that thing is at the bottom of the crack, we’ll have a better idea what’s happening.”
Mike stood from the table. “I say we should do it. If we don’t use the ultrasound, we shouldn’t have any problems.”
Alex glanced around and everyone was staring at him for a yes or no. He nodded up at Mike. “You’ve got my vote. I’d like to know what’s down there.”
The Alex Cave Series. Books 1, 2, & 3.: Box set Page 34