The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  Turning from the spectacle, Marc Justin's lean form padded quietly back to the table, his bare feet sinking deeply into the lush bedroom carpet. Bronzed skin gleamed dully in the light cast by the mercury-vapor lamps outside. The muscles of his back rippled like golden wheat in a prairie breeze as he crossed the room.

  He jabbed a button labeled "Intercom".

  "Kim," he called and waited with a knowing half-smile on his face. There was no answer.

  "Oh, Kiiiim," he singsonged. The only answer was a pained groan.

  "Roll out, ol' buddy," Marc chided. "Our favorite uncle just whistled."

  The reply was strained through a pillow.

  "Sorry, I didn't get that. Try me with English," Marc goaded, knowing full-well that his U. S. born Okinawan-American protégé/co-pilot spoke nothing but English.

  Kim yelled back, "I said I'm due three days off so I didn't get in bed until two a.m. and any 'uncle' of mine who'd drag me out of bed at four-dark-thirty in the morning is no kin of mine! Besides, I’ve got a date tomorrow night. Tonight. Whatever day it is, I’ve got a DATE!"

  "Kim, m’ boy, ya' know what it sounds like t' me?" Marc asked in a mock-sympathetic voice.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know."

  They said it together in perfect sync.

  "It sounds like a personal problem to me."

  Then Justin added “You alone?”

  “Yeah. She stayed on the beach.”

  “Good thing.”

  “Yeah. You say so.”

  "Okay. We’re outta here in 30." Marc chuckled to himself as he switched off the intercom, leaving his friend grumbling to himself. It was an old game between them: lead each other to the edge of sympathy and jerk the rug out. Kept them from going squishy around the edges.

  He picked up the telephone and pushed a button inscribed JOCE DIRECT. A few seconds later the phone rang in his office on the surface seven miles away. The switchboard there automatically call-forwarded to the after-hours supervisor who answered after only two rings.

  "Justin Expeditions." Marcus Justin recognized the voice of his Vehicle Maintenance chief, Benjamin Cramer.

  "Benji, Marc."

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Justin!" He sounded surprised. "You're up mighty early. Nothing wrong, I hope?"

  "You guessed it, Ben. How soon can you have the Viking ready?"

  A very short, shocked silence followed. Then Cramer burst out "Ready?! Are you kidding, Mr. Justin? She's not due to go out for three days yet! We’ve barely got started!"

  Marc smiled to himself. Ben Cramer's brutal honesty was a quality of which he approved. Nobody ever had to wonder what Ben was thinking. The close liaison between himself and the people who maintained his ship assured that each person in his maintenance crew felt a personal responsibility and took pride in his work...which kept him and his clients alive.

  "I'm sorry, Ben. You know I don't like to rush you but we don't have any choice. We've been tapped for a rescue mission and we've gotta scat.”

  Ben Cramer sighed. "When do you have to have her?" he asked resignedly.

  "I need her at one this morning," Marc replied.

  "It's already five this morning!" Cramer shouted.

  "Riiight," Marc grinned. "Just run a down-and-dirty hull integrity and reactor check and put 'er on a leash at the dock. I'll be over in a little while. Oh, and load up some chow. We might be out three, four days."

  He hung up the phone and padded quietly into the bathroom to relieve himself. Going back by way of the bedside table he turned the outside floodlights off and the room lights on, then as an afterthought, tapped a stud labeled "BED". The indirect lighting revealed a room lavishly carpeted in very deep-piled neon blue. A round bed was suspended a foot above the lush carpet by four gleaming metal poles protruding from the ceiling. There was a barely audible hiss as the bed telescoped upwards, out of the way and flush into the ceiling. The few pieces of furniture in the sparsely furnished room were of stressed pecan. A reclining captain's chair of black velour trimmed with pecan panels was permanently affixed to the floor. It was swiveled around facing the "wall," outside of which were the spotlights he had just turned off. He liked to sit quietly in the darkened room and watch his "pets" dart to and fro in the glare of the outside lights. It was almost as good as rain on a tin roof. A well-equipped draftsman's table hung from the wall on the other side of the room. Though not a professional draftsman, Marc Justin was nevertheless an accomplished inventor. A man of multiple interests, he enjoyed converting ideas into practical workable form…had in fact accumulated his wealth by inventing a small device the size of a dinner plate that converted sea water to breathable air. When linked to a tiny nuclear powered compressor it made SCUBA tanks and tethered hard hat diving obsolete. Popular demand for his patented "Marc One Lung" made Marcus Justin an instant millionaire. And his adaptation of a similar, though larger, version to military submarines and Man-in-the-Sea projects turned the millions into billions, with countries lining up to buy from him.

  He’d taken ten days off and had a float plane drop him onto the driftwood-strewn shore of a remote Alaskan lake. He fished, ate, hiked and sat up late watching embers swirl into the night sky from a crackling campfire. Finally he asked himself the question: "what now?" His decision to use his new-found wealth to finance construction of a nuclear submarine, with himself as self-taught charter pilot, was typical of his love of adventure and a reflection of his fascination with the sea and its unexplored mysteries.

  A 34 year old bachelor, he shared an eight-room, two-story glass house under the sea seven miles off Miami Beach with his young Okinawan-American assistant, Kim Matsumoto. It was here, 200 feet down in the clear tropical seas, that the Secretary of the Navy's pre-dawn telephone call had aroused him from a deep sleep into what might become a waking nightmare.

  Chapter 3

  Marcus Justin's undersea home was designed by (who else?) Marcus Justin. It's underwater location 6.4 miles south of Miami Harbor and 4.8 miles off Key Biscayne satisfied his love of the sea, and buffered him against scam artists who prey on the wealthy. The fact that that he was just a half-mile north of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary assured him of a wealth of exotic critters hanging out in his “front yard”.

  The "house" was structurally simple but conceptually innovative. Four thirty-foot wide distortion-free acriliglass spheres were clustered together like a four-leaf clover and held in place by a skeletal framework of precast titanium. A 1964 experiment had proved that glass spheres actually became stronger the deeper into the ocean they went, theoretically capable of descending to any known depth in the world ocean without fear of crushing. Justin's ship as well as his house was built on the same premise.

  As the leaves of a four-leafed clover are attached to a central stem, the huge glass spheres were similarly attached to a central "stem"...a 345 foot long fiberglass pole, looking for all the world like a giant fishing rod. Woven of parallel helical strands, it tapered from one foot wide at its top to ten feet wide at its base. Anchored inextricably 50 feet deep into the sea floor, it rose from the depths until at last it broke the surface, 270 feet above, and then protruded another 25 feet above the sea's surface. It was capped by a navigational strobe, radar reflector, satellite transceiver and security pod, including two-way digital television. Its slender neck had the local fishermen calling it Nessie, though Loch Ness was a long way from Miami. Electromagnetic-induction motors were mounted on expandable arms which rode on powered vices along toothed tracks on the support pole. The pod of spheres could power dive like an express elevator to the 270 foot depth in less than thirty seconds.

  This depth assured a refuge from seasonal hurricanes and allowed a hasty and fully automated retreat in case of imminent collision with a stray surface craft or terrorist attack. The flexibility of the support shaft allowed the entire structure to gently sway in a strong current or even in a tsunami or earthquake. Instead of overturning or smashing the undersea home, it would safely ride out the surge. Insid
e each of the four spheres was a cube-shaped structure of reinforced acriliglass. So, the overall design was a cluster of cubes within spheres. Each cube was twenty feet across. A horizontal partition midway the cube served as floor for the top half of the cube and ceiling for the bottom half, resulting in an upstairs and a downstairs room per sphere, each room twenty feet across and ten feet high. An un-partitioned cube, the great room, was one large twenty-by-twenty foot room with a twenty-foot ceiling which soothed even the most claustrophobic visitor. In fact, all of the seven rooms in the undersea home were larger than those of most land-based homes.

  Power was supplied from a self-contained nuclear source in a shielded compartment outside and below the house. Two bedrooms, a combination office/library, and a judoka were on the "upstairs" level. Holder of the rank of Sandan, or 3rd degree black belt, Kim had introduced his friend and employer to the sport. In a little less than a year and a half of intensive training, Justin had achieved the level of Ikkyre, 3rd degree brown belt.

  Downstairs, the kitchen was directly beneath Marcus Justin's bedroom, while the adjoining dining room was beneath Kim's bedroom. The living room below the library contained the only air lock entrance from the outside. The double air lock protruding slightly into the room was designed to couple with the Airlock Rescue Coupling Device standardized by the World Oceans Council. And, since the development of a submarine rescue vehicle by the Navy, it was now required by law on all U. S. submarines or manned undersea stations, military or civilian. The occasional lucky guest in Marc's unique home quickly came to consider the air lock a mild surprise in contrast to the rest of the fascinating home designed by their host.

  The remaining room, located beneath the exercise room, never failed to startle even the most jaded of his guests, for it contained a swimming pool. And the idea of a swimming pool beneath the ocean inevitably caused the uninitiated, at the very least, a mild shock. It was there because Marc enjoyed a salt water swim to help him wake up.

  However, the pool was only used when the house was topside, at a depth of 30 feet or less, to avoid the inconvenience of decompression. Because its "floor" was merely an open hole in the bottom of the sphere, the room was always automatically pressurized to the corresponding pressure of the sea outside at whatever depth the house rested. When fully submerged the pool room would be pressurized to eight-plus atmospheres and unusable. A heavy-duty air lock replaced the usual open door leading from the room. Also in the room were a fresh-water shower and several patio lounges with attached sunlamps. Like the airlock in the living room, it was impossible for both doors of the airlock to be opened at once, thereby eliminating flooding of the adjoining rooms.

  Having turned on the room lights, Marcus Justin crossed to the tracked bedroom door. As he approached it, focused motion detectors automatically opened it, briskly and quietly. Passing through, the door closed just as quietly behind him. In front of him and to his right as he stepped through the door was a very short hallway with a closed door at the end of it, beyond which was the library. To his left a stairway led downstairs to the living room. Reaching the stairs in two brisk strides, he stepped onto the top step, stopped and gripped the railing. Instantly, the "stairs" began moving, carrying him downstairs at twice the speed he could have walked it. When he reached the bottom and stepped off, the stairs stopped moving. Half of the house being upstairs necessitated a lot of stair-climbing. And because of the unusual floor-plan of the house, instead of one central staircase there were four, one in each intrasphere passageway. Two-way, weight-sensitive escalators made quick and easy work of stair ‘climbing’.

  Marc palmed the wall switch as he entered the living room. A warm glow of indirect light spread through the room. This room, like the others, was twenty feet square. The decor was in tastefully balanced gold and white with a gold carpet deep enough to disappear into. In the middle of the left wall as Marc came downstairs was the air lock entrance to the swimming pool. To his right, in the far corner of the wall, the air lock that allowed entrance to and exit from the entire house protruded slightly into the room, flanked on each side by the lush green foliage of tropical plants. One feature in particular made this room radically different from all the others. In the middle of the room was a circular "conversation pit," sunk into the floor, twelve feet across and 4 1/2 feet deep. Surrounding the pit was a foot-high brass rail which gleamed dully in the indirect light. Within the pit, a white leather sofa, trimmed in pecan, entirely encircled the wall except for two open "accessways" directly opposite each other on either side of the pit. Inclined ramps spiraling from floor level to the recessed pit floor gave access to the pit through these "doorways" on each side. Two 65 inch OLED television screens, doubling as surface monitors, plus a surround-sound Bose system graced the pit walls, so placed that, regardless of where one sat, there was an unobstructed view. A see-through holographic fireplace perched atop a low pedestal in the middle of the pit. Sitting in the pit was to wrap oneself in a blanket of intimacy and, if alone, of impregnable tranquility.

  Turning directly to his left as he entered the living room, Marc Justin padded silently across the deep carpet to the corner of the room. Looking through and beyond the thick glass wall he saw that the illuminated depth gauge outside the central support column, or the "pole," as it was known to Kim and himself, indicated 250 feet. Mounted into the wall before him was a six-inch chromed inset. Marc punched in -20 and tapped the ENTER button. As he did so, a needle-thin laser beam stabbed from the box to its counterpart mounted outside on the massive arm which extended from the sphere to the "pole." The arm-mounted sensor in turn released the brakes holding the house at the proper depth and, with an almost imperceptible shiver, the entire house began to rise quickly from the depths toward the surface of the sea, just now being bathed in the first light of dawn. Marc left the device to automatically shut itself off at the prescribed depth and went down into the "pit." Going to the nearest TV screen, he flicked on a dial marked "Monitor." The screen transformed into the weak light of first dawn, showing that the surface of the sea above was calm. He manipulated a tiny “joy stick”, swiveling the camera on top of the "pole". The only visible clouds lay low on the distant horizon. Sliding back a panel to the left of the TV screen, he noted that the radar screen concealed behind it revealed only one surface craft 2 1/2 miles distant and fairly small, on an east-south-east course which would take it away from his area. Most likely a charter fisherman, bound for the Gulf Stream.

  He switched off the set and left the pit. Moving over to the airlock entrance to the swimming pool he glanced at a digital gauge inside the airlock. It indicated a depth of negative 60 feet and rising. He watched the numbers rapidly count down. The room in which he stood was gradually growing lighter as he approached the surface. In a few seconds he felt a minute jolt as the brakes automatically locked at -20 feet. Marc gripped a small heavy wheel on the door and gave it an easy spin. Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him and again spun the wheel until the door locked shut. On the other wall was a two-foot diameter wheel. The outside edge of the wheel was numbered 1 through 270. He turned the wheel and as he did so, a loud hissing noise filled the small booth as pressurized air was fed into the airlock. He continued turning the wheel until the arrow at the top pointed at 6. Then he gripped his nose with two fingers and, holding his breath, blew against his closed nostrils to equalize his ears with the mounting pressure. He turned the wheel slowly to 15 and equalized again, and again, finally, at 20. The pressure inside the airlock was now equal to the pressure in both the other half of the airlock and the room in which the swimming pool was located. He spun the wheel on the airlock door and stepped through into the second airlock chamber, closing that door behind him. As he did so, a loud hiss issued from the first chamber as the air pressure was bled from it, returning the pressure to normal and clearing it for use again by anyone who might wish to enter the pool area from the living room. He then turned to the third, and final door, spun it open, and stepped onto the coo
l tile floor surrounding the swimming pool. He walked to the edge of the pool and lazily fell in with a large, noisy splash.

  Chapter 4

  Marc punched a coded series of buttons on the exterior airlock door that simultaneously armed a security system and prevented the door from being opened again until the same code plus one digit, secret and randomly chosen, was punched in again. Then he stepped back into the "Surrey," closed the water-tight door and tapped a button beside the door. A subdued explosion sounded outside the sub as the air pressure sealing the small submarine to the airlock was blown into the surrounding water. Beside the button, a green light replaced a red one, indicating that the sub was free of the airlock...the house’s "umbilical cord".

  Turning from the door, he quickly ducked through the plush passenger compartment with its four swiveling recliner seats and, stooping slightly, passed through the open doorway into the cockpit, taking the starboard seat. Using the side thrusters, Kim had already eased the small craft a few feet away from the house. As soon as Marc snapped his safety harness in place Kim glanced over at him. Marc nodded and settled back in his seat. Kim touched the GPS keyboard on the dash, scrolled through MENU to GOVCUT, tapped GOTO, eased the throttle forward and floored the left rudder pedal. The small but powerful electric turbine jet pump in the rear of the craft that provided the vectored thrust to propel the submarine shoved the two men deeper in their seats. Marc caught a fleeting last glimpse of his house as the little craft wheeled around and the Global Positioning Satellite arrow pointed toward the entrance to Miami Harbor, 6.4 miles to the north-north-west. Kim jammed the T-bar throttle all the way and the sub leaped forward as the pump gulped in massive quantities of water and rammed them out the rear thruster nozzle with tremendous force. In seconds they were cutting through the clear water at fifty knots and Marc filled Kim in on the purpose of their coming mission as they "commuted" to the office. The early morning rays of the sun were just beginning to highlight the Fowey Rock Light that stood off Soldier Key three miles south of them.