Polar Shift Page 10

  Trout had put the motor at idle and was helping Gamay make a last haul when they looked up at the same time at a strange rushing sound. They exchanged puzzled glances and stared off at the ship. Nothing seemed amiss. People were visible, moving about on the deck.

  Gamay had noticed a flickering sparkle on the surface of the sea as if the sun were a fluorescent bulb on its last legs. “Look at the sky,” Gamay said.

  Trout glanced up and his jaw dropped down to his knees. The clouds seemed to be enveloped in a canopy of silver fire that pulsated in brilliant bursts of radiance. He gazed, awestruck, at the heavenly display, and responded with a very unscientific observation.

  “Wow!” he said.

  The noise they had heard repeated itself, only it was louder this time. It seemed to be coming from the open sea away from the NOAA ship. Trout wiped the drizzle out of his eyes and pointed at the ocean.

  “Something’s happening at about two o’clock, maybe an eighth of a mile away,” he said.

  A roughly circular patch of ocean was going dark as if a cloud were casting a shadow.

  “What is it?” Gamay said.

  “I don’t know,” Trout said. “But it’s getting bigger.”

  The dark patch was expanding, forming a circle of puckering, wrinkled water. One hundred feet in diameter. Then two hundred feet. And rapidly growing. A glittering band of white appeared at the edge of the dark circle and rapidly developed into a low wall of spume. A low moan rose from the depths as if the sea were crying out in pain.

  Then the center of the darkness dropped suddenly and a massive wound appeared in the ocean. It was quickly expanding in size, and would reach them within seconds.

  Trout’s hand instinctively reached for the throttle just as invisible fingers of current reached out from the widening gyre and began to pull them back toward the yawning black void.

  8

  THE GREAT GAPING CAVITY that had opened in the sea was visible only for an instant before it disappeared behind a mounding circle of foam. Tatters of spume flew off the top of the sudsy crest. An intense, briny odor saturated the air as if the Zodiac were suddenly in the midst of a huge school of fish.

  The NOAA ship was moving toward the Zodiac. People lined the rail. They were pointing and waving their hands.

  The boat was on the verge of extricating itself from the sticky currents when a big sea broke over the blunt bow and they lost headway. Trout’s jaw tightened. He cranked the throttle up as far as it would go and pointed the bow away from the cauldron. The motor revved to near-valve-popping levels. The boat lurched as if it had been given shock treatment. The Zodiac gained a yard or two before being snatched again by the powerful tentacles of current that were generated around the huge whirl.

  A rumble issued from the bowels of the sea, the sound so overpowering that it drowned out the desperate roar of the straining motor. The air was filled with a great vibration as if hundreds of pipe organs were set on low end. Thick, milky mist issued from the hole in the water. Making the scene even more unreal was the laser show overhead. The dancing lights had changed in color from silver to blue and purple.

  The boat scudded into a tightening spiral as it was dragged into the encircling belt of foam. There was no chance of escape. The Zodiac was lifted to the top of the roiling ridge of white water, now around six feet high, where it was buffeted and rocked with such violence that Gamay was almost thrown into the sea.

  Trout released the wheel and lunged for Gamay. His strong fingers caught the fabric of her foul-weather jacket and he pulled her back into the boat. It was no longer safe to stand. They dropped to their hands and knees and grabbed onto a safety line attached to one of the inflatable-hull tubes.

  The Zodiac was fully in the grip of the moving ridge of gleaming white water. As if the constant pitching and yawing weren’t enough, the boat spun like a drunken ballet dancer.

  The punishment continued as the boat was carried along the roiling ridge of foam. On one side was the sea. On the other, a great whirling funnel whose black walls sloped at a forty-five-degree angle. The sides of the whirlpool looked as hard as glass.

  The boat teetered dangerously at the top of the foaming wall and then slid into the great whirling funnel of black water. The fierce current whipping around the wall of the whirlpool surpassed the pull of gravity. The boat’s descent ended about twenty feet below the shiny rim of froth. Caught by the centrifugal force like the ball in a spinning roulette wheel, the boat began to go round and round the funnel.

  The Zodiac hung at a forty-five-degree angle, its flat bottom parallel to the slanting surface, with the port side lower than starboard. The bow pointed forward as if the boat were still moving under its own power.

  The Trouts twisted their bodies around so that their boots were wedged under the downhill pontoon. They looked down into the whirlpool. It was at least a mile in diameter. The funnel slanted sharply, and the bottom was hidden behind the swirling clouds of thick mist that rose from the churning water. Light passing through the mist had created a rainbow that arced over the maelstrom as if nature was trying to moderate its raw display of power with delicate beauty.

  Without a stationary reference point, it was impossible to determine how fast they were moving or how many times the Zodiac had made the circle. But after several minutes had passed, the rim seemed higher. It became painfully obvious that the boat was descending even as it was hurled forward.

  Trying to reorient herself, Gamay glanced up at the circle of sky wheeling far above. She saw movement at the rim of the whirlpool and pointed with her free hand.

  Trout wiped the water out of his eyes. “Oh hell,” he said. “It’s the Franklin.”

  The vessel was at the edge of the gyre, its stern protruding into thin air from the ridge of foam. The ship disappeared after a moment. Seconds later, it returned to view, only to disappear again.

  The Trouts forgot about their own misfortune. From the ship’s peekaboo performance, it was apparent that the Franklin had been caught in the swirling currents generated by the vortex and was being drawn into the funnel.

  The ship oscillated back and forth in a deadly game of tug-of-war as the propellers came out of the water and the vessel lost way. The ship would tilt, the propellers would catch and the vessel would rise up and over again in a bucksaw motion that went on for several minutes. Then the entire length of the vessel was drawn over the lip and into the cauldron. The ship’s bow was higher than the stern. It hung there as if stuck by glue.

  “Go, baby, go…!” Trout yelled.

  Gamay gave him a quick glance, even smiling briefly at the unusual display of emotion, before she, too, joined in the cheering.

  The smooth water behind the ship boiled as if someone had turned the burner on high. The engines were doing their work. The propellers biting into the slanting sides of the funnel, the ship inched its way painfully toward the rim again, settled back, shot upward at an angle, was buried by the foam, then gave a mighty surge that carried it over the lip.

  This time, the ship disappeared for good. The Trouts cheered, but their celebration was tempered by their own sense of loneliness and impotence against an unstoppable force of nature.

  “Any ideas about how we get out of here?” Gamay shouted.

  “Maybe the whirlpool will end on its own.”

  Gamay glanced down. In the few minutes they had watched the ship struggle, the boat had dropped at least another twenty feet.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The water had lost its India ink cast, and the slick black sides had picked up a brownish tinge from the mud being scooped up from the bottom. Hundreds of dead or dying fish whirled in a great circle like confetti caught in a windstorm. The damp air was thick with the smell of brine, fish and bottom muck.

  “Look at the debris,” Paul said. “It’s rising from the bottom.”

  Wreckage was being churned up from the floor of the sea in the same way a tornado picks up objects and lifts them in the air. There
were splintered wooden cartons, plywood, hatch covers, scraps of ventilators, even a damaged lifeboat. Much of the material sank back into the vortex, where it was regurgitated and destroyed with the same effect as if it were at the bottom of Niagara Falls.

  Gamay noticed that some pieces, mostly small, were heading up toward the rim. “What if we jump into the water?” she said. “Maybe we’d be light enough to rise to the top like that stuff.”

  “No guarantee we’d ascend. More likely, we’d get sucked farther into the whirlpool, to be ground up like hamburger. Remember that the first rule of the sea is to stick with your boat—if possible.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a great idea. We’ve dropped lower.”

  It was true. The boat had slipped farther into the whirlpool.

  A cylindrical object was working its way up the side of the whirlpool. Then several more followed.

  “What’s that?” Trout said.

  Gamay wiped away the moisture from her eyes and looked again, at a point twenty feet ahead and slightly below the Zodiac. Before becoming a marine biologist, she had been a nautical archaeologist, and immediately recognized the tapered ceramic forms with their greenish gray painted surfaces.

  “They’re amphorae,” she said. “And they’re moving upward.”

  Trout read his wife’s mind. “We’ll only have one chance to go for it.”

  “Our weight may change the dynamics, and there will only be one chance to go for it.

  “Do we have a choice?”

  The three ancient wine vessels were maddeningly close. Trout pulled himself up to the steering console and pressed the starter button. The engine caught. The boat moved ahead at its crazy angle, and he had to compensate with its tendency to fishtail by creative handling of the wheel. He wanted to get above the amphorae to block their way.

  The first amphora in the group started to drift across the bow. In another second, it would be out of reach. Trout gunned the motor, and the boat passed just above the moving object.

  “Get ready,” Trout yelled. The leap would have to be perfectly timed. “It will be slippery, and it’s going to roll. Make sure you grab on to the handles and wrap your arms and legs around it.”

  Gamay nodded and climbed onto the bow. “What about you?” she said.

  “I’ll catch a ride on the next one.”

  “It’s going to be hard to keep the boat steady.” She knew that without someone to keep the boat under control, Trout’s leap would be even more hazardous.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Like hell, you will. I’m not going.”

  Damned stubborn woman. “This is your only chance. Someone’s got to finish that damned wallpapering. Please.”

  Gamay gave him a hard stare, then shook her head and crawled farther out onto the bow. She bunched her legs under her and was preparing to make the leap.

  “Stop!” Trout shouted.

  She turned and glared at him. “Make up your mind.”

  Trout had seen what Gamay hadn’t. The whirlpool’s glassy sides above them were clear of debris. The wreckage that had been kicked up by the churning seemed to have reached an invisible barrier beyond which it failed to rise. The debris was moving back down into the funnel as quickly as it had risen.

  “Look,” he yelled. “That sea trash is being pulled down again.”

  It took Gamay only a few seconds to see that he was right. The amphorae were as high as they were going to go. Trout stretched his hand out and pulled her back into the boat. They held on to the safety lines, unable to do anything more than watch helplessly as their boat descended farther into the abyss.

  9

  THE SPHERICAL FIGURE ON the computer screen reminded Austin of the membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus of a malignant cell.

  He turned to Adler. “What exactly are we dealing with here, Professor?”

  The scientist scratched his shaggy head. “Hell, Kurt, you got me. This disturbance is growing by the second, and it’s moving in a circle at thirty knots. I’ve never seen anything like it, in size or speed.”

  “Neither have I,” Austin said. “I’ve run into rough swirling currents that gave me sweaty palms. They were comparatively small and short-lived. This seems more like something out of Edgar Allan Poe or Jules Verne.”

  “The vortex in Descent into the Maelstrom and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea are largely literary inventions. Poe and Verne were inspired by the Moskstraumen maelstrom off Norway’s Lofoten Islands. The Greek historian Pytheas described it more than two thousand years ago as swallowing ships and throwing them up again. The Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus wrote in the 1500s that it was stronger than Charybdis from The Odyssey and that the maelstrom smashed ships against the bottom of the sea and sucked in screaming whales.”

  “That’s the stuff of fiction. What about reality?”

  “Far less frightening. The Norwegian whirlpool has been scientifically measured, and it isn’t even close to the violent cauldron described in literature. Three other significant whirlpools, Corryvreckan, Scotland, Saltstraumen, also off Norway, and Naruto, near Japan, are far less powerful.” He shook his head. “Odd to see any whirlpool action on the open sea.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Whirlpools usually appear in narrow straits where there is fast-moving water. The whirling confluence of tides and currents, combined with the shape of the sea bottom, can create substantial disturbances on the surface.”

  The image on the screen showed the distance shrinking between the whirlpool and the Benjamin Franklin. “Could that thing be a danger to the ship?”

  “Not if earlier scientific observations are any indication. The Old Sow whirlpool off the coast of New Brunswick is approximately the same strength as Moskstraumen, with speeds of about twenty-eight kilometers per hour. It’s the largest ocean whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere. The turbulence near the phenomenon can be dangerous to small boats, but it poses no hazard for larger vessels.” He paused, staring in fascination at the screen. “Damn!”

  “What’s wrong?

  He stared at the malignancy on the screen. “I wasn’t sure at first. But this thing is growing rapidly. In the time we’ve talked, it has almost doubled in size.”

  Austin had seen enough.

  “I’d like you to do me a great favor, Professor,” he said, keeping his voice cool and calm. “Get to the survey control center, fast. Tell Joe to pull the ROV immediately and come to the bridge as soon as possible. Tell him that it’s urgent.”

  Adler glanced at the screen once more, then hurried off. While the professor went on his errand, Austin climbed to the bridge.

  Tony Cabral, the Throckmorton’s skipper, was a genial man in his late fifties. His tanned face was dominated by a strong nose, he had an upturned black mustache and his mouth was usually stretched in a crooked grin that made him look like a benevolent pirate. But he wore an expression of dead seriousness that changed to one of surprise when he saw Austin.

  “Hey, Kurt, I was just about to send someone looking for you.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” Austin said.

  “You know about the SOS we received?”

  “First I’ve heard of it. What’s going on?”

  “We picked up a Mayday from the NOAA vessel a few minutes ago.”

  Austin’s worst fears were realized. “What’s their status?”

  Cabral frowned. “Most of the message was garbled. There was a lot of background noise. We recorded the call. Maybe you can make sense of it.”

  He flicked a switch on the radio console. The bridge was filled with a cacophony that sounded like an oratorical contest at a madhouse. There was wild shouting, but the words were mostly incomprehensible except for a hoarse male voice that cut through the pandemonium.

  “Mayday!” the voice said. “This is the NOAA ship Ben Franklin. Mayday. Come in, anybody.”

  Another voice, more garbled, could be heard in the background, bawling: “Power! Damnit, more power…”

&nb
sp; Then came a quick phrase. It was only caught for an instant, but that was all that was needed to convey the unmitigated terror.

  “Damnit! We’re going in!”

  Cabral’s recorded voice came on. He was trying to respond to the SOS.

  “This is the NUMA ship Throckmorton. What is your situation? Come in. What is your situation?”

  His words were drowned out by a dull, churning roar as if a monsoon were howling through a cavern. Then the radio went dead. The silence that followed was worse than any noise.

  Austin had tried to imagine himself on the Franklin’s bridge. The scene was obviously one of chaos. The voice calling the Mayday was probably the captain’s. Or, more likely, he was the one urging the engine room to give them more power.

  The unearthly swirling roar was beyond anything in Austin’s experience. He realized that the hair on the back of his neck was standing up like soldiers at attention. He glanced around the bridge. Judging from the apprehensive faces of captain and crew, it was clear that he was not alone in his thoughts.

  “What’s the Franklin’s position?” Austin said.

  Captain Cabral stepped over to a blue-glowing radar monitor.

  “That’s another crazy thing. We picked them up on radar eighteen miles away. They were moving in a southwest direction. Then they disappeared from the radar screen.”

  Austin watched the radar sweep line go around a couple of times. There was no sign of the ship, only some patches of scatter where the radar beam touched the wavetops. “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Less than an hour. We’ve got to haul in the ROV first.”

  “Joe’s doing it now. He should have the vehicle aboard by now.”

  Cabral gave the order to get under way and head toward the Franklin at top speed. The Throckmorton pulled anchor, and its high bow was starting to cut through the ranks of waves when Zavala showed up with Professor Adler.