The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  "One-fifty."

  Marc delicately applied reverse thrust and the great ship glided to a stop.

  "Ninety-three feet. Zero headway. Depth, three hundred fourteen feet," Kim quietly said for the sake of the mission recorder.

  "Do you see it?" Kim asked.

  After a moment, Marc finally answered, "No."

  "I do," came Frank Sheppard's voice over the intercom.

  "You do?" Marc peered more intently at the cliff face. He still saw nothing.

  "I think so," Frank sounded less sure. "It's hard to see detail on this monitor back here...do you mind if I come up front for a better look?"

  "No. Come on up," Marc agreed. As an afterthought, he added, "You, too, Janese, if you'd like."

  "Thank you," she answered sardonically. He noticed on the monitor she'd already been out of her chair and following Frank.

  "Good thing I invited her," he thought to himself.

  Frank Sheppard strode eagerly all the way to the great acriliglass wall in front of Marc's console. He seemed to want to get even closer, as he leaned forward, squinting in the subdued light.

  "There," he said.

  They all tried to follow his pointing finger, but to no avail.

  "Where?" Marc asked, exasperated.

  "Right there. Look...just to the left of that little overhang. See, right there?"

  "Wait a minute," Kim said. "Here, Frank, take this." He handed Frank Sheppard what looked like the joystick handgrip off a video game. "I should have thought of this before," Kim gave a self-conscious laugh."

  "Yeah, so should I," Justin agreed.

  "What is this?" Sheppard asked, examining the gizmo in his hand.

  "It's a remote laser pointer," Kim explained. "See the trigger?" Frank found it and curled his index finger around it. "Just point it like a gun and pull the trigger. But," he hastened to add, "don't look directly into the beam. For obvious reasons."

  Frank pointed the device toward the mountain and pulled the trigger. An intensely bright, impossibly thin red beam of light instantly connected him with the mountain. He waved it around and laughed.

  "Hey, I like this gadget," he exclaimed enthusiastically.

  "I'll tell our marketing people," Marc smiled. "Now, show us sightless people what you can see that we can't."

  "Oh, yeah. Okay. Look right..." he pointed the laser..."there. And then," he slowly transcribed a counter-circle with the laser beam, "around here...to here!" He turned toward Justin. "You see it?"

  "Yeah...but barely. I think if I went away and came back, I wouldn't be able to find it again," Marc observed thoughtfully. "What I don't understand, Frank, is how you can see it."

  Frank Sheppard gave a self-conscious little bark that passed for a laugh. "I'm a submarine geologist," he explained. "I spend a lot of time staring at..." he nodded toward the cliff before them, "...terrain like that. Patterns in nature are rare. So, when there is an anomaly, it just kind of...jumps out at me."

  "Mm," said Justin. "Well, it didn't jump out at me."

  Janese Cramerton, standing behind Marc, leaned over his right shoulder for a better look.

  "Shalimar," he murmured involuntarily. She jumped slightly and looked at him strangely.

  "Excuse me?" she said, her long hair swaying gently with the motion of her head turning toward him.

  "Shalimar. You're wearing Shalimar," he said. She pulled back slightly.

  "Is that a problem?" she asked. "Do you have an allergy or something?"

  He smiled languidly. "A problem, yes. An allergy, no."

  She looked puzzled and briefly shook her head. "I don't understand."

  His smile widened. "I have a...rather strong reaction to Shalimar."

  "Then, you do have an allergy to it?"

  He sighed and said, "No."

  Her puzzled look deepened to a frown.

  "Then, what?"

  He held her eyes for a long moment, then looked away, still smiling.

  "It makes me want to bite you on the neck," he said.

  She jerked back a foot.

  "What?!"

  He looked back at her. His eyes moved slowly over each feature of her face.

  "If I were you, I'd move." His voice was strangely quiet.

  She did. Instinctively. Intuitively. And so quickly that there were barely suppressed chuckles behind her. But when she turned, Frank and Kim were carefully looking elsewhere. She moved away.

  "Let's get a closer look at this...thing," Marc said. "Kim, give me a fifty percent zoom on the camera. Frank, once we get a close-up overview, how about tracing the outline again while we follow it with an extreme close-up, for the record."

  They filmed what there was to film. But Justin still wasn't satisfied.

  "Does Yoko still say there's noise coming from inside that rock pile?"

  Kim clicked his mouse twice and the cyclical drone of machinery filled the room.

  "Is there a primary source?" Marc asked.

  Kim asked Yoko. Five seconds later a graph appeared on Marc's monitor. The sounds emanating from the mountain were gridded by geographical zone graded by intensity. The graph looked like a bulls eye.

  "So, whatever's there is behind that..."

  "...door," finished Frank.

  They all looked at him. He shrugged.

  "It has to be a door. It's the only logical explanation," he said.

  "A door to what?" asked Janese Cramerton.

  "Exactly," replied Frank Sheppard.

  There was silence for a moment.

  "It can't be a door," Marc said.

  "Why not?" Janese asked.

  "It's too big." They all looked back at the ‘door’. "Try to put it in perspective with the mountain. It would have to be really big...too big to be a door."

  "Let's see," Kim said. He ran through a series of commands on his keyboard. "We know from sonar how far away we are from it in feet, so we just freeze-frame the video, grid it to scale..." a grid of tiny squares appeared on the monitor, superimposed over the video, "...and read the squares. They're in three foot intervals."

  Simultaneously, everybody was counting squares.

  "Twenty-seven...no, almost twenty-seven," Janese announced. Heads nodded in agreement. Frank The Engineer had to recount before he agreed. "So, that's...what..." she said, mentally calculating.

  "A little less than eighty feet," Frank finished.

  "Eighty feet?" Marc responded. "There's no way a door's gonna be eighty feet across. Huh uh. No way."

  They all stared at the un-door. It didn't go away.

  "Well, what then?" Kim wondered. They all stared some more.

  "What about the seams?" Frank asked. So, they all stared at Frank.

  "What ‘seams’, Frank?" Justin asked irritably.

  "Well..." Frank shrugged and glanced at the others, "...there are four seams on it. Well...maybe only two, really, bisecting each other." Blank looks. He turned to gesture toward the mountain. Then, remembering, he snatched up the laser pointer and ‘drew’ two lines on the disputed circle: a vertical line, then a horizontal line.

  "A plus sign," Janese interpreted.

  Frank turned to her. "Yeah. That's exactly what it is," he agreed. Everyone pondered that in silence.

  "The question," Marc Justin slowly thought aloud, "is not what it is, but why it is." Another silence.

  "Wanta take a look?" Kim asked his boss.

  Justin pursed his lips in thought. He nodded. "Yeah. I think I do."

  "I thought you might," Kim smiled.

  Marc unstrapped and spun his chair around. "Take over here, if you would. I'm going over." Kim slipped into the pilot's command chair and locked in. He couldn't help but remember the last time he'd sat here. He glanced at the Number Three monitor. Wojecki slumped sullenly in his chair, securely tied and gagged, watching the proceedings. Kim was surprised that the acid in the unintelligible words Wojecki directed at Marc when he passed through on his way to the dive sphere didn't dissolve the duct tape over his mo
uth.

  He switched on the dive room monitor so they could watch as Marc boarded and deployed the SQUID through the illuminated pool in the middle of the deck. Then he switched to the camera mounted below the Command sphere, swiveled it aft, focused the ranging crosshairs on the SQUID, and put it in continuous tracking mode. As the SQUID exited the VIKING, the camera followed its progress toward the mysterious anomaly in the side of the mountain that loomed before them. As it left the relative safety of its mother ship and crossed the hundred-odd feet to the seamount, the overwhelming presence of the seamount reminded Kim how small and vulnerable the little submersible was.

  "Systems check," Kim prodded his boss.

  "No problems. The board is green," Justin responded.

  "Roger that."

  There was a flare of brilliant light in the distance as Marc turned on the minisub's high-intensity floods. He had gravitated to the dead-center of the huge disc like an arrow to a bulls-eye. From the perspective of the observers in the VIKING, the twelve-foot long SQUID served to emphasize just how big the object was that they were examining.

  "Talk to me," Kim reminded him.

  "Okay," Marc's voice over the radio was clear and deliberate. "From twenty-five feet out, the object looks just like the rest of the cliff...marine growth, rough textured, random contours. Moving in closer."

  They heard the click and whine of the SQUID's servos and turbine as it maneuvered. The glare of its lights shrunk from thirty to ten feet in diameter as the minisub closed the distance. The sub was now a dark silhouette in the middle of a circle of brightness. The circle was precisely in the middle of the much larger one they were investigating.

  "Well, how about that," Marc commented. "Somebody pat Frank on the back. There's a one-inch wide crack running from the center outward in four directions...an eighty-foot plus sign." There was a pause, then the muted whine of electric motors.

  "I'm using the arm to sample some of the vegetation...it's...hard to get hold of it, for some...well, no wonder! The 'veggies' aren't 'veggies' after all. This stuff is plastic. It's camo!"

  "It's what?" Frank Sheppard exclaimed.

  "It's camouflage! Hold one..."

  They could see the SQUID leave its centered position and move to the upper edge of the great disc. Its cone of light rippled as it moved across the uneven surface.

  "Uh huh. That makes sense," Justin said, more to himself than anyone else.

  "What have you got?" Kim encouraged his boss to verbalize for the sake of documentation.

  "Unless I'm misunderstanding what I'm seeing, I've got a self-slicing pizza."

  "A what?" they all chorused.

  "Well, I'm no engineer, but it looks to me like this is what we thought it was...a door. It's like a giant pizza, cut into four pieces. And each piece is attached to the cliff face behind it by a single strut. So...I'm guessing here...each quarter swivels away from the center, toward the outside, which gets it out of the way, and exposes what must be an opening behind it that's seventy or eighty feet across. Each panel stands out from the cliff face about...oh, three feet, I guess. For clearance, probably, when the panels move."

  "Can you see behind the panels?," Kim asked.

  "...No...I can't...quite get in close enough. Nope, I'd have to lean the glass into the wall, and I don't think I want to do that."

  "No, I don't think you want to do that, either," Kim admonished. "Okay, what do we do now?"

  They could see the sub back off from the rock face and hover.

  "Tell you what," Justin said. "I'm gonna run back over and pick up a ‘flea’. There's enough room behind the door for it to sneak past. We'll run it in as far as it'll go and see what's there."

  "A what?" Janese Cramerton asked. "What did he say?"

  "A ‘flea’," Kim explained. "It's a little robot camera we use for getting into tight places. It'll let us take a look at..."

  "STAY WHERE YOU ARE."

  A booming bass voice burst like shrapnel all around them. There was a moment of suspended animation.

  "IF YOU ATTEMPT TO MOVE EITHER VESSEL, SOMEONE WILL DIE."

  Kim searched the water around them. He could see no source for the voice.

  "What's going on?" he asked Marc Justin softly.

  "I don't know. Just hold tight a minute," Justin warned.

  "GOOD ADVICE, CAPTAIN. ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT YOU'VE JUST DESTROYED TWO OF MY VERY EXPENSIVE TOYS."

  Justin strained to see another minisub anywhere but the sea was empty as far as he could see. It was obvious that whoever it was, he had the hardware and expertise to monitor the VIKING'S radio frequencies.

  "Who is this?" he demanded.

  "IT ISN'T WHO I AM THAT MATTERS, CAPTAIN. IT'S WHAT I HAVE."

  Jamaican? South African? Justin couldn't quite place the dialect. But he recognized a threat when he heard one. He slowly pivoted the SQUID on its axis to face the great bulk of the VIKING hovering on station thirty yards away.

  "VIKING, stand by full emergency reverse, on my command," he ordered.

  "BAD IDEA, CAPTAIN. YOUR SHIP MAY GET AWAY, BUT YOU WILL DIE WHEN YOUR LITTLE SUBMARINE IS FORCED AGAINST THE CLIFF WALL BY THE BACKWASH. AND WHEN YOU DIE, SO WILL YOUR FRIEND, DOCTOR LAYTON."

  Marcus Justin sat motionless for a long moment. Seething, he hated himself for failing to see a way out of this. Tight-lipped, he nudged the SQUID into a slow one-eighty and again faced the cliff.

  "What do you want?" he said carefully.

  "WHY, CAPTAIN. I WANT TO INVITE YOU AND YOUR CREW TO A GRAND OPENING."

  There was a 'chunk' and the whine of electric motors somewhere and the four giant slices of 'pizza' split open and separated exactly as he had thought they would. A huge, dark cavern was revealed behind the door. Suddenly, the cave lit up. From his hovering position directly in front of it, the line of blue lights receding into the depths of the vast tunnel reminded Marc of the landing lights of a night approach to an airstrip.

  "You want me to take my ship in there?!" he demanded incredulously.

  "PLEASE."

  "You're crazy."

  "SOME HAVE SAID. NEVERTHELESS, YOU WILL DO IT."

  "What's in there?"

  "YOU WILL SEE."

  "I don't think so."

  "COME, COME, CAPTAIN. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF DAMAGING YOUR PRECIOUS SHIP. I HAVE TOO MUCH RESPECT FOR SUCH A MARVELOUS MACHINE. THE PASSAGEWAY IS QUITE LARGE AND SAFE. NOW...PLEASE DO AS YOU ARE TOLD."

  "Yeah? How do I know you've got Bill Layton?" Marc stalled, desperately looking for a way out.

  "I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT ASK," The Voice said, smirking. There was a silence of five seconds.

  "MARC? MARC, I'M SORRY I GOT YOU INVOLVED IN THIS." A cold fist grabbed Justin's guts and squeezed. There was no denying Bill's voice. Usually brimming with enthusiasm, he instead sounded...what?...tired...depressed.

  "Bill, are you alright? What's going on?"

  "YEAH, WE'RE OKAY. SO FAR. THIS NUT'S GOT US BY THE SHORT 'N CURLIES, THAT'S ALL. HE WANTS ME TO TELL YOU TO COOPERATE, SO...I'M TELLIN' YOU...RUN! FORGET US! GET OUT OF..."

  There was a sharp splat! of something hard meeting flesh and a grunt, something obviously struck the microphone, and a quick succession of angry, unintelligible commands.

  "Bill! What is it?! Bill..." For several moments there was silence.

  "YOUR FRIEND IS A STUBBORN AND FOOLISH OLD MAN, CAPTAIN."

  "What have you done to Bill?" Marc Justin demanded through clenched teeth, trying to overcome his anger and frustration.

  "HE WILL HAVE A HEADACHE, BUT HE IS STILL ALIVE. SO FAR. WHETHER HE STAYS ALIVE DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON YOU. IF YOU ARE AS FOOLISH AS HE, THEN YOU WILL ALL BE DEAD. IT'S UP TO YOU."

  Justin sat very still. A Miami cop had once told him the most important thing a cop should remember is...‘never surrender your weapon’. Then he thought about the Florida State Policeman who'd made a ‘routine’ traffic stop. Somebody behind the smoked glass in the back seat had cut him almost in half with a shotgun at
close range. He and the people behind him in the VIKING, and Bill Layton for that matter, were at a definite disadvantage. A nut behind the smoked glass was watching them. And he had no way of knowing what his actions would cost them. Cooperation would take them deeper into the spider's web. But it would at least buy a little more time. He made a decision.

  "Whaddaya want?"

  "AH, GOOD. MY CONFIDENCE IN YOU IS RESTORED, CAPTAIN. WHAT I ‘WANT’ IS FOR YOU TO PROCEED INTO THE TUNNEL, WITH YOUR SHIP FOLLOWING."

  "I can't do that. My co-pilot isn't experienced enough to navigate the VIKING through such close quarters as that! I'll have to pilot her in."

  "I THINK NOT. BEING BACK IN COMMAND MIGHT GIVE YOU A FALSE SENSE OF HOPE AND TEMPT YOU TO DO SOMETHING FOOLISH. WE WILL ALL HAVE TO TRUST YOUR CO-PILOT."

  "No!"

  "YES. AND WE WILL NOT DISCUSS IT FURTHER. YOU WILL PROCEED. AND, YOU WILL DO IT NOW."

  Justin took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

  "Kim."

  "Yes, boss."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think it's a big ship and a small hole."

  "Yeah. There can't be more than a five or six foot clearance on either side of her. Can you use the AutoPilot?

  "No way. Won't work. The sonar returns would bounce around too much in close confines for the AutoPilot to lock on."

  Justin sighed again.

  "Then you'll have to bring her in manually. You can use the SQUID as a reference for size. I'll try to keep her dead-center and scout for you."

  Marc heard an answering sigh.

  "Okay, boss, if you say so. But I don't like it!"

  "I know what you mean. Let me know when you're ready."

  "I'll never be ready. But I'll follow your lead."

  "Tell you what...bring her in safely and I'll see you get a promotion to Chief Co-pilot."

  "Thanks a rot," Kim clowned.

  Marc Justin squirmed in his seat. He could feel his pulse racing and acid slosh into his stomach.

  "Alright," he advised tensely. "Let's do it."

  Chapter 24

  Marcus Justin took the little SQUID a hundred feet into the cavernous opening and turned around to face the approaching VIKING.