Some of the faces shifted. Eyes looked away.
“There are many theories about what happens in the so-called Devil’s Triangle. I’m sure Professor Hardy is well aware of most of them. But what isn’t so well known is that there appears to be more than one Devil’s Triangle.”
He spun the globe around and drew another red oblong: “Here—off the coast of Japan. Two hundred fifty miles south of Honshu, between latitude thirty to forty degrees north, and centered around one hundred forty to one hundred fifty degrees east longitude.” He paused to let this little bombshell have its effect. Roy- bell and Stigwood were staring at the red circle, agog. Frank added quietly, “Gentlemen, the Candlefish went down in this very area in 1944.”
There was some mumbling. Byrnes looked at Frank, his eyes reflecting displeasure. He was not the sort of man who appreciated this brand of science fiction.
Neither did Hardy. He sat with arms folded across his chest under his beard, impassively eyeing the charts spread on the table.
Cassidy fidgeted with his machinist’s bandanna.
“According to the original reports, she sank in the Ramapo Depth at about latitude thirty degrees north and longitude one hundred forty-six degrees east. That’s smack in the middle of this particular... shall we say, anomaly?” He moved the globe aside and eyed his captive audience. He picked up his coffee and sipped it.
“Let’s go back to the original Devil’s Triangle, the one off the coast of Florida, the most popular one. To be a bit more exact, it isn’t a triangle at all—it’s more in the shape of an oblong sphere, a football with rounded ends—and it’s doubtful that the Devil is much involved. Roughly, it is bordered at three points: Bermuda, central Florida, Puerto Rico. It extends from thirty to forty degrees north latitude, and fifty-five to eighty-five degrees west longitude. It sits right over the Sargasso Sea, another of history’s more unpleasant mythical centers. The Sargasso Sea is a surface of ocean literally matted with seaweed. For a few centuries during the early explorations to the Americas, the Sargasso was rumored to have caught and tangled dozens of ships, ensnaring them until the crews would desert or die or the boats would rot and sink. And considering that most of the monster legends grew out of this strange section of sea, it’s very possible that what sailors took to be sea serpents were no more than long strands of seaweed pushed up and curling in the moonlight—or perhaps they were fish, eels, or squid, caught in a surface patch while trying to feed. There certainly are some reasonable explanations for such bizarre events. But legends have a way of perpetuating themselves, and the superstitions of early sailors have undoubtedly contributed to the aura of myth surrounding this... triangle today.”
From the faces around him, Frank knew he had found the right approach: Temper the bizarre with the real, feed the fantasies with documented evidence.
“Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in a magazine article he wrote in 1964, documenting the more infamous incidents that have occurred over the last hundred years in this area. John Wallace Spencer has written a book titled Limbo of the Lost, a list and description of all the major known vanishings that have occurred in the triangle.
“Of course, we have to realize that some of the things that have happened here can occur over land as well. Planes have disappeared over our own United States, over dry land, without a trace. Nevertheless, there does not seem to be a pattern for those incidents. They never seem to occur twice in the same place.
“The triangle is different. Every strange thing that could happen to a ship or a plane has happened here. The most famous single incident took place on December 5, 1945, when five U.S. Navy Avengers, IBM torpedo bombers, took off from Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida. They were on patrol, each with three-man crews. The day was perfect: sunny with no clouds. They were on a two-hour flight out over the Atlantic, and they had been airborne only an hour and a half when they radioed back—” Frank picked up a folder and read from a report: “ ‘We seem to be off course... we cannot see land... Can’t be sure just where we are... We seem to be lost... Even the ocean doesn’t look right...’”
He put down the folder and carried on without it. “Air-to-ground chatter continued for another hour, and all of it amounted to the same thing. The pilots were confused and panicky. The air, the ocean—nothing was familiar. And then they simply disappeared. A rescue plane was scrambled, a Martin Mariner Flying Boat, and it took off toward the last known position of the TBMs. Within fifteen minutes the Martin Mariner and its crew of thirteen had also disappeared. Nothing was ever found of any of the planes, despite an immediate massive sea and air search, in which, thankfully, no more planes were lost. But this is not the first nor the last mysterious occurrence. I have here a list of ships and planes that have disappeared over the last hundred years.”
Frank pulled copies from his folder and passed them around. It was a detailed list, compiled from many different sources, and accounting for a vast number of missing planes and ships that had purportedly sunk, disappeared, or turned up adrift without crews.
Frank watched Hardy glance at it quickly, then turn it over in front of him. Cassidy stood staring at it, a tight frown stretching his features. Byrnes had a hand to his mouth, covering it so that no one could see his skeptical expression.
Frank resumed. “As you see, there have been many different types of incidents, and that emphasizes the strangest fact of all concerning the triangle: It would seem to be responsible for a lot of apparently unrelated phenomena. What ties all of them together is the fact that so many unusual disasters have occurred in the same area.”
He then produced another list and passed it around. It wasn’t quite so well-detailed as the first one, and he explained that was due to lack of proper investigation on the part of authorities. But it was still a substantial collection of dates and facts about a great number of similar disasters that had occurred off the coast of Japan.
And opposite the date December 11, 1944, was the notation: “USS Candlefish, American submarine lost on wartime patrol. No satisfactory explanation. One survivor.”
“We are headed for this area because we want to see what physical and natural phenomena are indigenous to it, and what interaction this submarine might have with them. We don’t know how the Candlefish got back after thirty years; we want to” find out It would seem that she hit some sort of physical hole in space—disappeared just like the five TBMs. Maybe it’s some sort of time warp: She got caught in it and reappeared in 1974.”
Byrnes groaned aloud
“All right,” said Frank, “I’m sure no one wants to believe anything like that. I’m not asking you to. We are sailing to Latitude Thirty to find some evidence of what really did happen to the Candlefish. At the moment, our theories don’t matter. Maybe these areas act like air pockets in which hot and cold currents collide and interact, creating violent electrical disturbances. Maybe there are similar forces clashing beneath the sea, creating underwater storms, whirlpools, whatever it takes to suck a plane out of the sky or pluck a ship off the ocean surface. Who knows what could happen under such circumstances?
“We don’t know how this relates to the Candlefish, but it’s part of our job to find out. And if the physical characteristics of latitude thirty degrees off the coast of Japan are the same as those of latitude thirty degrees south of Bermuda, then we can report back to the Navy for a fact that there are two Devil’s Triangles!”
Frank paused to pour himself more coffee. He was sweating. He almost did not hear Hardy’s gravelly tones. “There are two. In fact, there are ten.”
Frank froze, the cup halfway to his lips.
Hardy scratched at his beard and eyed the officers around the table. “Is that steward still here?”
“More coffee?” asked Byrnes, and signaled the steward standing in the corridor. He stuck his head in, and Hardy touched his sleeve.
“Would you go to the galley? Get me a large butcher knife and all the skewers you can find.”
“Go ahead,” said Byrfres, and sat back to survey Hardy with growing suspicion.
Hardy was studying Frank’s globe. Finally he looked up. “Let’s go over some of the points you’ve raised, Commander Frank. I will admit the scientific elements interest me more than the mythical aspects of this business. But then, I have been directly, involved in scientific projects closely related to some of the explanations you have so neatly given us. I have to say I don’t care much for your methods; they’re so damned obvious. You want to excite us, frighten us, and impress us. And in the end, what do you really think you’re going to accomplish?”
Frank’s eyes widened. He could see his own humiliation rippling around the compartment. He opened his mouth.
“I would rather you didn’t answer,” Hardy cut in immediately. “I may have some startling facts of my own to present in this matter, and you may find some of them in direct support of your purpose. I’ll ask that you hear me out.”
Frank sat down. “Go ahead,” he muttered.
“Thank you.” Hardy smiled and stood up. He scratched his beard again, smoothing it down over his open collar while staring at the table full of charts.
“The point you made about legends perpetuating themselves. I hate to be nasty about it, but you are yourself a contributor to that irresponsibility. It is very difficult to talk of the things that go on in the Devil’s Triangle without sounding like the worst sort of crackpot, even if you do your best to dress it up with scientific explanations. But I should like to point out certain factors common to the so-called Bermuda Triangle and the Japanese area and... all the others.”
He picked up Frank’s list and waved it. “First of all, if this business is ever going to be investigated in a thoroughly scientific manner, we have got to differentiate between outright vanishings and more natural disasters such as sinkings, wreckings, piracy, founderings, etc. To do the investigating, a project will have to be created on a Federal level. People will have to collect the records of international navies and air forces, of commercial shipping lines and air carriers, and of maritime insurance agencies. These records, once assembled and examined, may eliminate half of what appears on this list. As for the rest, we might be able to find common circumstances in all of them, leading us to one or another satisfactory explanation. The word ‘satisfactory’ is tricky. I don’t mean satisfactory in the sense that we can all rest easy...”
Frank sat back and relit his pipe, his initial shock and displeasure fading as he began to sense Hardy’s drift
“I mean that we may confirm once and for all that, yes, these disappearances are due to natural phenomena, or unnatural phenomena—that they are due to extraterrestrial kidnapping, or a colossal time warp, or a very large hungry fish.”
That drew a laugh from Roybell, and ripples of it went around the table.
Hardy smiled. “If we could pinpoint to our satisfaction that it is all due to one or another of these utterly fantastic explanations, then we should. And live with it.”
Hardy leaned back against the bulkhead and looked down at the table as he spoke. “Let’s go back to what I call my involvement. During the late 1960s, I was connected with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. We were a large team of oceanographers brought together to set up experiments dealing with deep-water ocean storms. My specialty was electromagnetic forces in what we have come to call deep-water eddies. Our concern was to find out how the ocean deeps move—what drives them. We know what moves the surface of the ocean: atmospheric conditions, winds, storms, etc. But the ocean’s surface is a relatively impotent force in comparison to the energy created in the great deeps. We found abundant evidence that the lower layers of ocean move in directions opposite to the surface, and at first glance they seem to be driven by temperature differences. As Commander Frank brought up briefly, in some ocean areas currents of vastly different temperatures meet, collide, or interact. Let’s say, a freezing polar current meets a warm tropical flow. They don’t simply blend and change temperature, as when your half-full cup of hot coffee is suddenly filled with cold water. When these vast movements of ocean meet, they do so as layers sliding over each other, each one carried by the force of millions of tons of moving water. What occurs is a deep-ocean storm, much like an atmospheric storm, a disruption in the even flow of energy. A sizable electromagnetic reaction takes place. Just how powerful it is, we have not yet been able to measure. Nor how far-ranging are its effects—that too is still a mystery.
“What we were looking for in. our project was the answer to a question: What makes weather in the seas? What exactly are the undersea forces that are similar to atmospheric forces? Where do these undersea storms take place? The major test area, explored by the research ship Glomar Challenger, was directly over the Bermuda Triangle. The second project center was to have been in the Ramapo Depth off the coast of Japan. I was to have headed it, and we had built a new deep-submergence vessel, the Neptune 4000. Unfortunately, that project was blown. But I think I know the answers we would have received, because if you know anything about science at all, you know that a scientist conducts his business in a manner quite similar to a military court-martial. He designs his experiment around all the known factors leading to a certain unavoidable conclusion. He must be convinced of the outcome before he commits to the project. I was convinced that by testing the currents in the Latitude Thirty area from a submersible, I might be able to prove that what gripped the Candlefish on the night of December 11, 1944, was a thoroughly natural phenomenon, the nature of which we simply knew nothing about up to that time.”
“Just a minute,” said Frank. “What happened with the Bermuda Triangle experiment?”
“Well, it never really was a Triangle experiment, per se,” admitted Hardy. “It was a strictly limited research program into deep-water eddies.”
“So the results were inconclusive?”
“Not at all. We proved the existence of eddies. You have to understand the tremendous pressures and forces at work in an eddy. A deep-ocean storm uses and dispels more energy than an electrical thunderstorm, and it lasts more than a hundred times longer. A hurricane that starts this week off the coast of Florida may burn itself out within a month. An eddy might last for years! And the movement, compared to an atmospheric storm, is incredibly slow.”
He waved a hand in the air to indicate the gentle sweep of an undersea storm. “It may seem to inch along, but it is the most relentless force on the face of the earth, backed up by the weight of an entire ocean.”
He stopped for a moment, and the tension in the room subsided.
Frank said quietly, “Your tools are here.”
Hardy turned around. The steward was standing in the doorway, clutching a large butcher knife and a handful of skewers. His eyes were wide open. How long had he been standing there? Hardy thanked him and placed all the kitchen implements on the table. Cassidy leaned over his shoulder to examine what had arrived. Roybell sat back in the vinyl sofa and folded his arms over his chest.
“All right,” Hardy said, “what we are coming round to is the fact that in both of these areas”—he tapped the two circled spots on the globe—”and in most of the others I will point out, we have some of the strongest ocean forces in the world. In both areas we have known evidence of colliding surface currents, and now, thanks to the Glomar research, every indication of ongoing underwater eddies as well. Here, off Florida, and off Japan, we have hot surface currents streaming up out of the tropics and colder waters coming down from the polar and subpolar areas. They meet on the surface and they swirl”—he made a swirling motion with his hands—”clockwise. And right here in these two most legendary areas, the swirls make their tightest spiraling turns. For these are geographical areas of extreme temperature variation, centers of hurricanes, whirlpools, oceanic and atmospheric disturbances. And undersea eddies.”
Hardy stopped for a moment to suck th
e rest of the coffee from his cup. He pulled the globe closer and picked up the red felt marker that Frank had used. “Commander Frank has done twenty percent of the work on this globe. Now, let’s see if we can do the rest. So far, we have two distinct mystery areas. From this point on, let’s refer to them as geomagnetic anomalies. For short—GMA.”
There seemed to be no objection, so Hardy continued, “GMA number one is the original... the Bermuda Triangle.” He lettered a “l” inside the center of the oblong circle off the coast of Florida. “We’re going to call Japan our GMA number four.”
“Why four?” asked Frank.
“Because there are more than two, as I said, and we will pinpoint them clockwise around the globe. Meanwhile, we may notice some immediate similarities between GMA-1 and GMA-4. For instance, both of them lie based on the same latitude: thirty degrees north. Both are oblong blobs tilted at—oh, I’d say forty-five degrees to the right. And both lie just off a continental shelf—to the right of a continent, to be precise. And if you will study your sea charts, I think you will find that both GMAs are centers of swirling currents. In fact, using that as a basis, let’s look for our next GMA.”
Hardy leaned over the charts and appeared to be sniffing around, but Frank was well aware that the old man was planning every word he uttered.
“Ah!” Hardy barked. “Here we are. The northern Pacific, northwest of the Hawaiian Islands... This would be right over the Murray Fracture Zone, another area of extreme temperature variation. In fact, this appears to be where the northern Pacific currents are swept around against themselves by the subarctic currents flowing south. Again we have a GMA based on latitude thirty degrees north, from about one hundred sixty to one hundred forty degrees west longitude. We’ll call this GMA number five.”
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