Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris

by Brenton Barwick

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Volcano

  Joseph tried to swim backwards while keeping his blunt spear between himself and the sharks.

  Several sharks turned toward Joseph and, seeming to perceive his fear, swam toward him. Joseph jabbed at them with the blunt end of his spear. The sharks approached, as if testing for vulnerabilities, and then turned suddenly away and swam in circles around him, only to return to test him further.

  Sharianna pushed the button and sped toward him. “Joseph, look!”

  Joseph looked to see Sharianna speeding through the water like a torpedo.

  “Fling your wrist back like Spiderman and a button will flip out that makes the suit power you through the water.”

  Joseph followed her instructions. When he saw a gap in the circle of sharks around him he went shooting toward the beach. Sharianna met him about halfway to the shore.

  Mom and Dad also followed Sharianna’s instructions and came speeding toward them. Dad was still holding his spear and he turned to face the sharks, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where did they go?” asked Mom.

  In fact, they could not see any fish at all; the reef seemed strangely devoid of all life.

  Suddenly, they noticed a strange undulation in the sand beginning from the shoreline and progressing underneath them and quickly going out to sea, accompanied by a strange, muffled rumbling sound. The sand puffed up a few inches as the vibration moved through the seafloor.

  “It’s an earthquake!” announced Joseph. Then, remembering that volcanoes and earthquakes often go together, he exclaimed: “The volcano…”

  They turned and looked up through the water in the direction of the volcano but the shaking of the lagoon floor had stirred up some of the sediment from the bottom and their view was cloudy. They quickly swam to the surface and looked toward the mountain to see a thin cloud of black smoke belching from its flat top.

  “Oh, no,” cried Mom.

  “No wonder there were no people here,” groaned Sharianna.

  “We’d better get back to the robot,” declared Dad, as he turned out toward the ocean and, using their newfound method of propulsion, headed in the direction of the robot. Dad looked down into the cloudy water to see the bottom but he could only see a few yards down. As they approached the place where he thought they had left the robot, he looked down but could not even see the reef.

  “Wait here,” he directed.

  “We’ll all come,” Mom countered.

  “Okay,” but stick together, I don’t want to get separated, the vision is limited down there,” he cautioned, as they ducked beneath the surface.

  Sharianna couldn’t believe how much their underwater paradise had changed. “Do you think the fish are okay?” she asked, with genuine concern.

  “Yeah, it seems that they could sense the earthquake coming and they all swam out to deeper water,” replied Dad.

  When the reef came into view, Dad turned toward the ocean to find the edge of the drop-off. “Can everyone see me?” asked Dad as he swam out in front.

  “Yes.”

  When he reached the edge of the cliff, he looked both ways.

  “Where is it?” queried Sharianna.

  “Joseph, you go with Mom, that way. Sharianna and I will look in the other direction. Stay at the edge of the cliff, we can use it as a reference so we don’t get lost.”

  Sharianna knew it was only a few minutes, but it seemed like a long time as she peered through the murky water that only a little while ago was as clear as crystal. Each moment she expected to see the robot rising like a welcome monolith from the edge of the cliff.

  “This is the easy way to swim, huh Mom?” Joseph said, as they sped effortlessly along the edge of the precipice.

  “Sure is.”

  Sharianna thought it was weird to be able to hear them so perfectly, knowing that they were quite a ways away and going in the opposite direction.

  Suddenly, she saw a dark mass in front of them. “There it is,” she declared. Almost instantly, she realized her mistake.

  “No, it’s the lava flow,” observed Dad, with obvious disap-pointment. “How far have you guys gone?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems like a long way,” Mom replied, trying to disguise her apprehension.

  “Wait there, till we catch up to you,” directed Dad.

  They turned around and Dad increased his speed as his apprehension mounted. Suddenly he stopped. A piece of the reef seemed missing. He turned around and hovered over the spot. The whole edge of the drop-off was expectedly uneven and broken, but the transition from coral to bare rock was a natural one all across the reef. Here, the coral stopped abruptly. As he looked closer, he noticed that the coral at the edge of the barren hole was broken. Suddenly, he felt sick as he realized that the rock the robot had been standing on had been right there.

  Sharianna also saw the broken coral, and the worried look on Dad’s face. “It fell off the edge, didn’t it?” she questioned.

  “What do you mean, it fell off?” demanded Mom, from her distant position.

  “I think the rock it was standing on broke away from the cliff during the earthquake,” reported Dad.

  “Oh no!” came Mom’s agonized cry.

  “Percy!” cried Joseph.

  “I’m sure he’s okay – come back toward us and we’ll figure something out,” comforted Dad reassuringly, but he knew the drop off was hundreds of feet deep. Unless the robot landed on a shelf or otherwise got hung up on the face of the cliff he knew there was no way he was going to be able to reach it.

  “Stay here and wait for Mom,” he instructed Sharianna. “I’m going to go down to find the robot.”

  “Be careful,” cautioned Mom.

  “Yes, be careful, Daddy,” added Sharianna.

  As he descended along the face of the cliff, the water turned from cloudy to dark, as the light from the surface dimmed. He continued slowly to descend through the darkness in the hopes that the lights on the robot were still on. He reached out and felt the wall of the cliff. Here and there, he banged into a protrusion jutting out from the face of the cliff. The first time it knocked the air out of him and he began to panic, feeling like he would suffocate. When Sophia heard his groan she asked him if he was okay, but he didn’t respond until he got some air back in his lungs. She was about to leave the kids and go search for him when he finally responded. Now, he was being more careful, but as he went deeper, the water pressure on his body continued to increase. The helmet part of the spacesuit seemed to be holding, but the rest of it was stretchy and flexible and didn’t seem to resist the pressure of the water.

  Finally, when the pressure became so great that he could hardly expand his lungs, he began to retreat with great disappointment from the depths. As he ascended, he suddenly stopped. A strange tightness in his chest was accompanied by an unfamiliar feeling of panic as he remembered hearing about the bends. In his mind’s eye he imagined the nitrogen in his bloodstream suddenly expanding from the change in pressure, as he got closer to the surface and forming small bubbles in his bloodstream and flowing to his heart and brain. He realized that the result would be severe pain and damage, or death.

  He didn’t want to alarm his family, so he simply said, “I’ll search around some more, don’t worry I’ll be a little while.” He slowly ascended in a long zigzag pattern along the face of the cliff so that his body could adjust to the changes in pressure. Finally, the darkness began to dissipate. He sighed with relief but knew that the danger was still menacingly present, so he continued his slow, indirect ascent, all the while searching the cliff for any sign of the robot. His heart sank as he thought about poor Percy, who was trapped in the robot.

  “Where are you now?” asked Mom, who was anxiously waiting on the edge of the precipice.

  “Still searching,” he replied.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours he reached the top of the cliff and pee
red through the cloudy water to the left and the right but could not see his family.

  “Maybe you should go back to the beach and wait for me there,” he suggested, as he swam the last few feet toward the surface to look around and get his bearings.

  Suddenly, as his head pierced the surface, he heard a loud noise, like a bomb going off. Almost simultaneously, he felt another percussion move through the water.

  “I don’t think that is a good idea,” countered Sophia, sound-ing very stressed.

  He looked toward the island, expecting to see the lagoon, but instead looked upon an unfamiliar shore. A giant cloud of smoke and gas belched forth from the throat of the volcano and billowed its way high into the afternoon sky. An ominous red glow emanated from the top of the mountain as searing hot magma poured over the rim. Lush, green trees strangely burst into flame as the burning river of death slowly meandered down the slope.

  Off to his left, Thomas noticed another ancient lava flow. Immediately, he realized that it was the same flow that bordered their lagoon – he was on the other side of it.

  “I am on the other side of the ancient lava flow,” he tried to say calmly. “Swim over to the tip of it, where it goes over the drop off and I’ll meet you there.”

  Thomas quickly made his way to the end of the breakwater created by the old lava flow. He was very impressed by the suit’s capability to propel him through the water so quickly. He felt like a body surfer who didn’t need a wave to surf. He continued to rack his brains for a way to save Percy.

  His heart leaped when he saw his family skimming across the surface toward him.

  “Daddy!” exclaimed Sharianna with relief, as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “We’re so glad you are safe. We were very worried,” sighed Mom.

  “Did you see any sign of the robot and Percy?” asked Joseph.

  Thomas shook his head sadly. A tear welled up in Joseph’s eye and rolled down his cheek, quickly followed by another.

  Sharianna sobbed.

  Hot ash began to fall around them like large snowflakes.

  “I think we had better get away from the island,” admonished Dad.

  Dad turned toward the open ocean, “Follow me,” he directed, as he sped away from the island. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what to do next. He thought of their situation – in the middle of the Pacific, without any food or water, without any idea where the closest land was. Then he remembered from Joseph’s map that they must be somewhere in the Caroline Islands. At least we have the suits, he thought. When he felt they were safely far enough from the island he stopped.

  “What’s the plan?” inquired Mom.

  “Did you go all the way to the bottom?” asked Joseph.

  “No, the pressure was too great,” replied Dad sadly.

  “Maybe we could get an undersea ROV?” Joseph proposed, hopefully.

  “That’s a great idea, but it could take weeks, even if we could find this island again,” bemoaned Dad. “I don’t know if Percy could last that long,” he added softly, as he put his hand on Joseph’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think finding the island will be a problem, simply ask about the one that blew its top,” Mom reasoned.

  “He’ll starve,” Sharianna sobbed – she couldn’t bear to think of the dog she loved starving to death all alone at the bottom of the ocean. “Oh, Robo-ship, I wish you were here,” she whispered to herself through her tears.

  “He won’t starve,” consoled Mom. “I’m sure he’ll eat the rest of Joseph’s Doritos, and I left out some bread and cookies.”

  “It will be okay, princess, we’ll figure out some way to find Percy,” promised Dad.

  “I think we should go south until we find another island,” Mom suggested.

  Joseph spoke up, “When I was looking at the map, I noticed that the Northern Mariana Islands belonged to the United States – there must be people who speak English. I think we should go west.”

  “There might even be a research station that has an undersea ROV,” said Sharianna hopefully.

  Dad looked up at the sun, then toward the pillar of smoke coming from the island. “I’m sure the island is south, so that must be west,” he said, pointing off to the right.

  Sharianna suddenly grabbed Dad by the arm and pointed.

  “Something big is coming toward us under the water!” shouted Joseph in a frightened voice.

  “Hurry, that way!” commanded Dad, pointing to the west. “And fast!”

  Apprehension gripped Joseph as he speculated what could be chasing them. His mind was called involuntarily to the old shark movies with the great white shark that relentlessly pursued its victims.

  As his family sped across the water with Thomas taking up the rear, he looked back, expecting to see the distance widening, but discovered that it was actually narrowing.

  Joseph looked over his shoulder. Their pursuer was now making a large wake and the water was spraying off of its head like the hull of a speedboat as it bore down on them.