by Rob Sangster
“Can you go out early and stand by?”
“I’m going nowhere without orders.”
Jack didn’t want to sit in Astoria for three days hoping Barbas didn’t destroy the rim of the Pacific Ocean in the meantime. But he didn’t have a better solution, which meant he had to keep Heinz on the hook.
“Okay, book us for three days from now. Reach us through Molly if you get called out sooner. And Heinz, you’re going to save a lot of lives.”
Heinz nodded and started out the door again. He looked back and said, “I can help you guys. Trust me.”
“Molly,” Jack said after Heinz left, “I have no idea what’s going to happen next, but it could be another tsunami. Stay connected to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on NOAA’s National Weather Service website. Quietly make sure everyone in Astoria recognizes the signs of an incoming tsunami. Get people ready to evacuate within five minutes’ notice and have a plan to get at least two hundred feet higher than river level.”
“I’ll start right now. I just hope that making a big deal out of this doesn’t make anything bad happen.”
Jack shook her hand. Gano gave her a hug. As they left, Jack thought about Heinz’s parting words.
As they walked onto the street, Gano asked, “Let’s imagine that this pipedream, maybe I should call it a nightmare, turns into reality, and we actually wind up back on Chaos. Do you have any plan for what we’d do then, you know, what with being outnumbered a hundred to one? I know your usual thing is to talk until the other guy gives up, but have you got anything better than that?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. As it happens, I have the only plan that might work, and I got the idea from Barbas himself when we went there two weeks ago.”
“Is this like the Riddle of the Sphinx where I get killed and eaten if I don’t figure it out? Or could we do it the easy way where you just tell me?”
Jack did.
“I was hoping for something a little more, I don’t know, sane,” Gano said. “You better give me the name of your mescaline dealer. He’s peddling some good shit.”
Chapter 33
July 29
12:30 p.m.
Astoria
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER they left Molly at the tavern, Jack guided a dinghy alongside Challenger where she was anchored in the Columbia River, a couple of hundred feet off the battered Astoria wharf. A crew member dropped a line that Gano secured to a cleat on the dinghy.
As Jack used the lifeline and a helping hand to climb onto Challenger’s main deck, Drake called, “You handled that dinghy pretty well.” He didn’t say “for a lawyer” or “for a landlubber,” but that was in his tone.
“He ought to,” Gano responded as he came aboard. “He won an Olympic gold medal for rowing single shell.” Gano’s tone had an edge.
Drake shifted his gaze to Gano and cocked one eye but only acknowledged Gano with a nod.
“Steve, this is Gano LeMoyne. He’s a friend and a pilot.” Jack didn’t feel he owed Drake a lengthier bio. “That tsunami cause you any problems?”
“We were a good way offshore, so the waves were small when they passed. Just a bit of a bump. After NOAA placed the epicenter not far from Chaos, I put that together with your claim that Barbas is destabilizing methane hydrate under the seabed. You don’t sound so crazy anymore.”
“Good. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
This was a moment of truth. To persuade Drake to take him to the bottom again, he had to make Drake believe he was better off with Jack Strider’s help.
In the chartroom, he said, “Before our first dive, I said I’d give you the rest of the photos Gano took aboard the platform. They’re on this memory stick.” He handed it to Drake. “And now I have much more information for you.”
It took less than five minutes to convey the gist of what the Chaos employees had told him about operations on the platform. “That tells me Barbas must be close to expanding to a full-scale drilling operation. But because those isopods screwed up Pegasus’s camera lens, I don’t have any objective evidence that the drilling template or the ‘tank’ even exist. With what I have now, I can’t persuade anyone in authority to help me go after Barbas.”
“If this was my prom,” Gano said, “I’d pull Barbas out of his fancy helicopter and put him under my own private house arrest where he couldn’t run anything. That operation would grind to a stop right quick.”
Drake’s bushy eyebrows went up. Maybe he was seeing Gano in a more favorable light.
“House arrest, otherwise known as kidnapping, might be justified,” Jack said, “but until methane is flowing in high volume, Barbas won’t leave that platform.”
“We could buy a cheap fishing boat,” Drake said, “load it with explosives, and set up an impact trigger. We tow it out to that damned platform and lash the wheel on a course that will blow the shit out of two or three of the vertical supports.”
“I’m usually in favor of blowing the shit out of things,” Gano said, “but that’s not a great idea this time. Those Ka-52 puppies are armed with rockets, air-to-surface missiles, and machine gun pods. Oh, and a few thousand pound bombs to drop down Challenger’s smokestack. Your ship would be an oil slick before she got anywhere close to the platform. Speaking for myself, I’m not booking any suicide missions.”
“Then suppose I use Pegasus to take out all of his seabed installations. No more mining and no more tearing into that hydrothermal vent. My on-board torpedoes can do the job.”
Barbas’s threat to the HTV had set Drake off. He sounded like a wartime commander, not a scientist.
“Can’t do that,” Jack said. “Blowing up the drilling equipment could destabilize the entire methane hydrate field and launch a mega-tsunami. You could make the worst-case scenario happen all by yourself.”
“The risk is worth taking if that’s the only way to save my hydrothermal vent.”
That HTV was an irresistible magnet that had attracted three brilliant minds—Renatus, Barbas, and Drake—and made them nuts. Each wanted something different from it so badly that he minimized the risk to justify getting his way.
“The risk is too great,” Jack said.
“Who’s going to stop me? You?”
Gano glanced at Jack with a tight smile, an expression that meant Gano was ready to tell Drake who was going to stop him.
Jack shook his head slightly to back Gano off. He felt sweat break out. He couldn’t let anything interfere with getting another trip to the bottom.
“I’m not going to stop you,” he said. “We’re going down together.”
“Suddenly you’re okay with my plan?” Drake looked wary.
“No. I have a better one. We get more information on what he’s doing. Back that up with plenty of photos. Then I’ll go to President Gorton and get his help. It’s the only way.” He was sure that if Drake dove without him, he’d attack Barbas’s seabed installations. “But you have to swear you won’t torpedo anything.”
“Gorton? How about Superman?” Drake scoffed. “Get real.”
“Listen up, damn it,” Gano shouted in Drake’s face. He pointed at Jack. “I’ve watched Gorton kiss this man’s ass.”
Drake’s small frame seemed to compress under Gano’s intensity. “That true?” he asked Jack.
“Let’s just say I might be able to get his help to take Barbas down.”
“So call him right now.”
“This isn’t amateur hour. I need solid proof. Barbas is a world figure. Even with photographs, I’ll have to do a lot of convincing.”
He saw in Drake’s closed face that he hated relying on anyone else, especially someone from outside his own tribe of scientists.
Drake finally said, “I have a feeling I’m going to regret it, but I’ll take a chance on you.”
&
nbsp; “You left something out.”
“And I won’t use my torpedoes.” His rough voice was grudging.
“Now that that’s settled,” Jack said, “tell me why you’d risk causing a tsunami to protect this hydrothermal vent. What is that about?”
“I intend to prove my hypothesis that this hydrothermal vent is where life on Earth began.”
“Damn,” Gano interrupted, “that’s—”
Drake silenced him with a hard look. “Hydrothermal vents nourish an incredible variety of life forms that survive in scalding temperatures, tremendous pressure, total darkness, and chemicals we thought were fatal to life. And yet they thrive.”
He pulled open the door of an Isotherm marine refrigerator, took out three beers, and handed them out. After taking a swig, he went on.
“The genetic material of microbes in and around this HTV indicates they are the most primitive organisms ever identified. Think about that. And every second, these microbes are colonizing and changing the surface of the part of the Earth’s crust we call the seabed. We know that life on Earth has gone through many cycles, so it could have originated and evolved differently at different times, not just all at once as taught by most religions. I believe this HTV was the crucible where microbes originated and evolved into every other form of life.”
Jack got it. Drake saw himself as a twenty-first century Darwin who could understand and explain life. The difference was that Drake thought he heard the whole symphony while Darwin had heard only one instrument. No wonder he was driven.
Gano rubbed his forehead. “You’re making my hair hurt. So this HTV is like some Garden of Eden?”
“Don’t be a fool. No voices, no lightning, no ribs involved. Through these microbes, I’ll prove that life originated spontaneously from non-living matter. That will set off an explosion of critical thought in the scientific world.”
Life from non-life. Jack imagined how that would turn the teachings of some religions upside down. There would be howling and gnashing of teeth—and rejection.
“I’m not alone,” Drake said. “A few other scientists have similar views.”
“For example?”
“Günter Wächtershäuser, a German chemist, says the earliest forms of life were based on chemical processes that produce energy. We call that metabolism. I plan to show how that works inside an HTV. Extremely hot water rises and flows over metallic solids like iron sulfide and nickel sulfide. That causes chemical reactions that produce a molecule that replicates itself. It gradually evolves to become a simple cell on which natural selection operates to produce stronger survivors. I had long talks about this with Wächtershäuser at the University of North Carolina where he taught.”
Gano looked skeptical. “But Wächtershäuser’s ideas are just theory, right?”
“Much more than theory. In 1977, scientists in a submersible named Alvin found the first HTV ever discovered, a very small one near the Galapagos Islands. An entire community of creatures was living around it in extreme conditions of pressure, temperature, toxic chemicals, and darkness that should have made life impossible. But those scientists were so unprepared to find life that they took only a few samples and had to preserve them in Russian vodka. Much later, I learned that the density of organisms near an HTV can be a hundred thousand times greater than in seawater farther away. That’s one of the most important discoveries of the past one hundred years.” His usually hoarse voice had risen; his leathery face creased in a smile. He was in his own private zone.
Jack got the big picture. If Drake was wrong, old beliefs would go on unchanged. If he was right, turmoil, denial, and resentment would follow. What Drake was saying right now revealed how obsessed he was about his mission. That would have consequences for all of them.
“What do all those critters eat?” Gano asked, fully engaged by Drake’s narrative.
Drake gave Gano a look suggesting he was a lower life form himself. “Animals—humans, marine life, and the rest—get energy from eating. Plants get energy from sunlight. But life forms around an HTV get their energy from bacteria in the vent fluids. What fascinates me is that those bacteria are chemosynthetic, meaning they were created by the chemical reactions I just told you about that go on inside the HTV. So that’s how life is created from non-life. The bacteria use sulfur compounds in the HTV ‘juice’ to produce organic material through chemosynthesis. Then that organic material is eaten by snails, shrimp, eels, tube worms, fish, and so on right up the food chain.”
“And the HTV,” Jack said, “is the primary source of energy.”
“That’s why I’ll do whatever it takes to stop Barbas from damaging it and causing its entire ecosystem to collapse.” Drake’s blue eyes were burning. Then he seemed to realize how intense he’d become, and let his fists unclench.
“We know the early days on our planet were extremely hot, with volcanoes erupting everywhere. As it slowly cooled, land masses and oceans formed, but they weren’t shaped anything like what we see today. Does it make sense that life would suddenly spring into existence all over the planet? Of course not. It began as a very local event. I’m convinced that took place at this HTV.”
“On your second dive,” Jack said, “did you see anything that supports your theory?”
“The red-tipped tube worms there are twenty feet tall, triple the height anywhere else. Most of what I collected are microbes, and I haven’t examined them yet. In fact, the vast majority of species on Earth are microbes. Even though we’ve analyzed and classified only a tiny fraction, we’ve learned that microbes differ from each other as much as they differ from humans. Think what we can learn from them. When I’m successful, you’ll see biotech companies using HTV microbes to understand genetic diseases, maybe cure what we consider incurable.”
“Or maybe,” Gano said, “some of the bacteria and viruses will turn out to be deadly to humans. And what about terrorists getting hold of them?”
“That’s absurd. Besides, no scientific progress is risk-free.”
Jack broke in. “Nothing we’re doing is risk-free. Listen, I know you need to get Challenger underway pretty soon. We’ll line up a helo and pilot to bring us out for a rendezvous with you tomorrow.”
They agreed on coordinates, he and Gano lowered themselves back into the dinghy, and he rowed ashore.
He was worried by hearing Drake being as dismissive of catastrophic risk as Barbas was. On the other hand, he admired the guy because he was fueled by the same source of energy he drew on—curiosity. At least he’d gotten what he’d come for—another ride to the bottom. And he’d learned more about what made Drake tick. Drake was a “true believer,” obsessed and, therefore, unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Neither one of them trusted the other, and that would be a problem down the road.
LATER THAT NIGHT in his hotel room, after Gano had left to take Molly for a drive, Jack sat quietly and thought about what was ahead. On his team, he had a handful of people and a half-formed plan that depended on an ore carrier captain he didn’t know. On the other side, Barbas was a monarch who commanded a legion of well-armed knights in a castle surrounded by a two-hundred-mile-wide moat.
Jack needed help badly, and only President Gorton could deploy enough force fast enough to stop Barbas. In case he had trouble getting through to Gorton, he decided to call right away. He’d make the best case he could and give him a heads up that his help would be needed. He’d follow up tomorrow with more evidence, including photographs of the drill site.
Years ago, when both he and Gorton had been under great stress, Gorton had given him a secret phone number he said would always reach him. He’d never had any interest in trying it out until now. After the fifth ring, the phone was answered. “Mr. Strider. It’s been three years and ten days. How can I help you, sir?”
The deep bass voice belonged to Corte, a tall African-American who reported
directly to the National Security Advisor. The day he and Corte had met aboard Air Force One, Corte had drawn an S & W .45 and pointed it at Jack’s heart, ready to squeeze the trigger.
“Mr. Corte, please put me through to President Gorton. This matter is as urgent as the one the President and I were involved in before.” He paused to let Corte remember what had been at stake that time.
“I hear you, sir, but I can’t reach him.”
“Then get the National Security Advisor. She can always reach him.”
“She’s at Camp David with the President.”
“Contact her.”
“The President left clear instructions. No one is to interrupt them.” The tone of Corte’s voice had dropped even lower, like distant thunder.
“Mr. Corte, I’m going to outline this situation. Please take notes and see that they reach the President’s eyes.”
“Sir, your phone is not encrypted. Our security protocol prohibits—”
“For God’s sake, tell the President that by tomorrow night I’ll have the facts to prove there’s high potential for a catastrophe on the west coast. Make sure I can get through to him then.”
“And in what time frame might this catastrophe occur, sir?” Corte’s voice was unruffled.
“I don’t know, damn it. That’s my problem—and his.”
“I will do what I can, Mr. Strider. In fairness, I have to tell you that the office of the President is contacted an average of three times a week with claims of disasters that will occur unless the President does or does not do something. And nothing happens. As a result, we—”
“And they say Roosevelt’s people ignored advance warnings that the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor. Remember that, Corte.”