Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris
Page 27
Chapter Twenty-One
The Leviathan
Joseph looked at the silhouette; he noticed that it was slowly undulating. “No, this one has a tail – it’s a blue whale!”
“And a baby!” exclaimed Sharianna. “Get a little closer.”
Upon their approach, the 100-foot leviathan turned its giant head and the calf moved to the other side of its mom. The whale showed no other signs of distress; Joseph moved in a little closer. They could see the long, powerful tail gently sweep through the water as the whale glided effortlessly through its environment. As they neared the surface, they suddenly saw the huge tail give a powerful thrust as the giant mammal, more than twice as long as the robot, lunged through a school of krill, leaving the baby behind. They saw the huge lower jaw expand as it engulfed thousands of tiny fish.
“Wow, Mom and Dad should see this,” declared Joseph.
“We did,” came the reply from the doorway behind them.
The majestic mammal made a couple more passes through the school of krill and then dove back down and swam serenely away with her baby.
“What is that noise?” pondered Mom.
They listened intently and heard a sound through the water that definitely sounded mechanical.
“Is it another submarine?” asked Sharianna.
“No, submarines are designed to run silently under water,” replied Dad.
As they looked, they saw a rusty old hull, with barnacles clinging to its side, through the water above them.
“It’s definitely not a military ship,” stated Dad. “They never let them get that bad.”
“It’s heading in the same direction as the whale,” observed Mom. “Do you think it’s a whaler?”
“I thought blue whales were protected!” asserted Sharianna.
“They are!” confirmed Mom.
“Match its speed and stay underneath the ship,” directed Dad. “Let’s see if we can determine what kind of ship it is.”
As they drew close to the ship, they could see a large, sloping ramp cut into the side of the ship extending up onto the deck. It was streaked with red that was slowly draining into the ocean.
Mom’s heart started to pound as her anger mounted.
“A little faster, Joseph,” she instructed.
As they looked up along the bow of the ship, they saw the huge harpoon loaded and ready to fire, with two men out on the platform. Suddenly, one of the men looked into the water and, motioning to the other, pointed directly at them.
“They saw us!” exclaimed Joseph.
“Good, I hope they’re scared,” replied Mom.
“Are they going to shoot the mother whale?” asked Sharian-na distressfully. “What about the baby?”
“They’ll take it too,” cried Mom angrily. “We’ve got to do something!” she almost shouted.
“There they are!” Sharianna looked through the water out front and could barely discern the shadow of the two whales returning to the surface.
Joseph got an idea; he suddenly slowed the robot down.
“What are you doing?” asked Sharianna, as the rusty old hull passed over them.
“Watch,” was all that Joseph had time to say as he reached out with one of the hands of the robot and caught the ship by the giant propeller. The ship came to a grinding halt as Joseph reached out with the other hand and squashed the blades like a ball of tinfoil. Then, while still holding onto the propeller, he swung the ship around like a top, and pushed it in the opposite direction, while accelerating to a speed at least twice the capability of the whaling ship. Joseph was as angry about the illegal killing of the whales as Mom. He didn’t let go of the whaler for a few miles while traveling at a break neck speed.
“Be careful, don’t sink it,” cautioned Dad. “The men who work on it are probably just trying to feed their families. It’s the owners of the ship that should be sunk.”
Realizing that Dad was right, he finally let the ship go and the robot quickly retreated to the depths of the ocean floor.
“I’ll bet that will take a while to fix,” exclaimed Sharianna exuberantly.
“As superstitious as sailors are, they might have a hard time getting enough men to crew it once that story gets around,” concluded Mom triumphantly.
“Incredible,” declared Dad, as Joseph brought the hands of the robot up into the light and looked at them. They were still flawless. “How did you know the ship’s screw wouldn’t tear through the hands of the robot?”
“I didn’t,” replied Joseph, his voice trembling slightly.
“Did you get a GPS signal?” asked Dad.
“Yes,” answered Joseph. “You take over, Sharianna,” he flipped the control switch to her seat and, using their most recent GPS reading and the compass, plotted their course on the map, through the Aleutian Islands and into the Bearing Sea.
“I think we’ll have to slow down a little, once we pass the Aleutian Trench in order to navigate through the islands,” observed Joseph, as he examined the map.
After they passed over the Aleutian Trench, Sharianna slowed down and looked for any sign that the water was getting shallower, or a cliff, or shelf indicating that they were near land. Finally, she saw what looked like the base of a barren mountain rising up from the sea floor.
“This might be one of the islands,” postulated Joseph, as they rose along the slopes of the mountain. As they ascended past the twilight layer of the ocean they could see that there was land at the top of the mountain.
“Which way should we go?” queried Sharianna.
“Left,” directed Joseph, as he looked at the map. “If it is the Alaskan Peninsula and we were to go right, then we would be following the coast toward Canada.”
“Left it is,” concurred Sharianna. They turned southeast and followed the shoreline for about a half hour; slowly, they began to turn northeast as they rounded the tip of the island.
“Let’s go up and have a look around,” proposed Joseph.
The robot’s head pierced the surface of the water just enough for them to see that the island was barren and windswept, nearly devoid of plant life.
“Look at all those seals,” marveled Mom. “There must be thousands of them.”
Joseph looked at the GPS, then the map. “That must be the Bering Sea,” he concluded, as he pointed north.
As they proceeded along the shallow rocky bottom near the island they saw something that looked strangely out of place. In the distance, off to the right, they could see something that looked geometric, in the watery world of jagged rocks and boulders.