Zero Hour nf-11 Read online

  Small boats moved here and there. A pair of tugs worked to drag a monstrous bulk carrier out into the channel, while crewmen, painting and scraping and fighting the endless battle against rust and corrosion, scampered over other vessels like crabs on the rocks.

  Devlin guided the launch past all this and out into the anchorage. He kept a fair course, moving slowly past the waiting ships, until a particular vessel caught his eye.

  Slowing the launch just a bit, Devlin stared at a black-hulled vessel with a dark gray superstructure. It looked vaguely familiar, like a small cruise liner, though the dark paint was neither festive nor striking. The more he studied the ship, the odder her appearance was to him. She didn’t seem to carry any lifeboats, radar masts, or even antennas. In fact, she carried none of the normal appendages that sprout from modern ships.

  In his inebriated state, Devlin struggled to make sense of it. He saw no one on deck and no sign of activity. The ship itself reminded him of a derelict, stripped for parts. Her black-gray color was like that of charred steal, but the coating wasn’t soot, she’d been deliberately tinted that way.

  Subconsciously, Devlin angled the launch toward her, moving closer and then coming around the bow. There he spotted something new, something unmistakable.

  “It can’t be,” he said out loud.

  In front of him lay the overlapped plating of a hasty repair job. Plates of different thickness and consistency had been welded and riveted into place to cover a breach in the hull. The heavy black paint covered it all, but the jagged, H-like shape of the repair was unmistakable.

  He shouted to Keane. “Wake up,” he said, “you have to see this.”

  Keane grunted something and rolled over.

  “Keane?!”

  No response. Devlin gave up on him and turned back to the ship. He was wide awake now.

  “You’re a bloody ghost,” he whispered, edging closer to the black hulk. “A bloody ghost or a bloody trick.”

  He was still muttering various curses of disbelief when the launch bumped up against the ship. He reached out and touched her. There was an odd, almost rubbery feel to the paint. But the ship itself was real enough.

  A sense of uncontrollable anger began to well up inside Devlin, a dark Irish rage. Years of guilt and self-hatred fueled it. Someone was tricking him, or had tricked him years ago.

  He passed around the bow and headed for the stern. A gangway sat in the lowered position, resting diagonally across the aft end of the ship. Its bottom step was eight feet above the harbor’s oily waters. Devlin pulled up next to it.

  He cut the throttle and lazily tied a line to the sloping stairs. He didn’t bother with Keane and instead climbed onto the launch’s roof. From there, he clambered awkwardly up onto the gangway.

  It shook with his weight and banged against the hull, but it held. Despite the racket, no one appeared to welcome him aboard or shoo him away.

  Devlin began to climb. He moved slowly at first on shaky legs, and then faster as he became more certain of the truth. “I saw you go down!” he shouted at the ship. “I saw you bloody well go down!”

  He stumbled as he neared the top and sprawled out on the last few steps, breathless and almost weeping. He could see raised letters on the stern. They were hidden beneath the rubbery black paint, but they hadn’t been scraped off before the new paint was slapped over the top.

  He ran his hand across the letters he could reach. They were real, just like the ship itself.

  Pacific Voyager.

  Like a man caught in the surf, Devlin was bowled over by waves of emotion. Confusion, sadness, and elation hit him almost simultaneously, one after another. How could the ship be here? Had someone salvaged her? Last he knew, the wreck hadn’t even been located.

  He sat there, sobbing like a child and hoping he wasn’t in the middle of a dream, until the sound of footsteps came from above. The squeak of a gate followed as a section of the rail was pulled back where the gangway met the main deck.

  Devlin looked up as a man appeared. The face was bearded now but familiar to him. An odd moment passed as two sets of eyes tried to connect what they saw to distant, faded memories.

  The bearded man won the race. A sad smile crept over him. “Hello, Padi,” he said in a kind and melancholy way.

  “Janko?” Devlin said. “You’re alive? But you went down with this ship.”

  The bearded man offered a hand and helped Devlin to his feet, bringing him aboard and steadying the inebriated old sailor as he stood on the main deck.

  “I wish you hadn’t found us,” Janko said.

  “Us?”

  “I’m sorry, Padi.”

  With that, Janko shoved a handheld device into Devlin’s ribs. The blow stunned the old sailor, but the massive shock that followed did more damage. Devlin convulsed as he fell backward. He was unconscious by the time he hit the deck.

  A watertight hatchway opened behind Janko, and two other men came running out.

  “Is everything all right?” one of them asked.

  Janko nodded and slipped the device back into his pocket. “Check the launch.”

  One of the men raced down the stairs. The other glanced at Devlin, lying still on the deck. “How the hell did he know who you were?”

  “He was the chief on the tug I signed on to,” Janko explained. “The one who cut us loose in the storm. From the look of it, he’s been beating himself up ever since.”

  “What should we do with him?”

  “Take him below,” Janko said. “Bodies bring attention. Disappearance is more easily explained. Especially that of a drunk.”

  A shout came up to them from the launch below. “There’s another man in the boat. He’s passed out cold.”

  “He must have been unconscious when they got here,” Janko thought aloud. “Doubt he’ll remember a thing. Untie the launch and let it drift. By the time he wakes up, he’ll think this one went overboard. Another sad accident at sea.”

  The man below untied the launch and shoved it off before coming back up the stairs.

  “We need to get under way,” Janko said as the two men picked Devlin up and carried him toward the hatch.

  “And then what?” the first crewman asked. “What do we do with him when he wakes up?”

  “We show him what became of the ship he lost,” Janko explained. “And then we toss him in the pit, along with the crew from those Korean freighters. He can dig for Thero’s diamonds like all the rest.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Australian outback, just south of Alice Springs

  The Ghan raced through the desert like a great metal snake: twenty shimmering passenger cars pulled by a pair of matching diesels in a brick-red paint scheme.

  Named in reverence to Afghan explorers who helped map Australia’s desolate interior and adorned with a camel logo, the Afghan Express traveled a route that stretched vertically across the continent, from Darwin in the north down to Adelaide on the island’s southern coast, pulling into Alice Springs every few days near the halfway point of its journey in each direction.

  A four-hour whistle-stop allowed passengers to explore the small town, but, as dusk approached, the train began to fill up once again. Kurt and Hayley boarded shortly before departure.

  “Where exactly are we going?” Hayley asked.

  Kurt said nothing. He just kept moving forward until he reached the Platinum Car, in which the train’s most luxurious accoutrements resided. A steward opened the door to their compartment, revealing a compact lounge, complete with a private bathroom and shower, a small table, and a pair of large plush chairs that folded out into beds at night. The space was tight, like a ship’s stateroom, but the modern design and décor made it seem more spacious.

  “Pick a side, any side,” Kurt said, “and then relax and await the gourmet dining to follow.”

  Hayley pointed, and Kurt placed her small carry-on beside the chair.

  “Are you trying to impress me?” she asked.

  “Possibly,” Kur
t admitted. “But mostly I figured you could use a little taking care of after all you’ve been through. It’s not every day someone steps out of their regular life and takes on something like this.”

  A soft smile appeared on Hayley’s face. She seemed surprised and reassured all at the same time. “It feels like forever since someone gave a bit of thought to what I might need. Thank you.”

  “You’re more than welcome,” Kurt said, putting his own pack away as the train eased off the stops and began to move.

  An hour later, night was falling. The view through the picture windows of the cabin was that of an indigo sky blending slowly with the matte black of the MacDonnell mountain range. With this for a backdrop, dinner arrived, brought in by a private steward on a rolling cart.

  Kurt paid the steward, included a generous tip, and then acted as a combination sommelier and maître d’, laying a cloth napkin across Hayley’s lap and presenting the wine.

  “A 2008 Penngrove Cabernet Sauvignon.”

  “I love a good cabernet,” Hayley said, her eyes sparkling like a child awaiting a present.

  “I haven’t had this one,” Kurt said. “I’m told it’s very smooth, with a hint of licorice and vanilla.”

  He uncorked the bottle and took her glass, pouring it from about ten inches above. “A good fall helps the wine to aerate,” he said. “It speeds up the breathing process. But we should still give it a few minutes.”

  “Why not?” Hayley replied. “The poor crushed grapes have been in there for years. Be a shame not to give them a few minutes to soak up the fresh air.”

  Kurt poured a glass of his own and set the bottle down.

  Next, he lifted the insulating covers from the plates set up before them. An avocado-green-colored soup with dashes of red was first. “Pea-and-ham soup, with a hint of garlic.”

  “Looks delicious.”

  Pulling the cover off the second scrumptious-looking dish, Kurt continued, “Braised short ribs with silver-beet gratin. And the pièce de résistance…” He removed the final lid. “Bread-and-butter pudding, soaked in sweetened custard and brandy.”

  “I might just start with that,” Hayley said. “How on earth did you conjure up such fantastic foods on a train out here in the never-never?”

  “Platinum service,” Kurt said. “And, besides, the chef is a personal friend of mine. At least he has been for the last few hours.”

  She took a deep breath. “If this is traveling, perhaps I could get used to it.”

  Kurt sat down as Hayley sampled the soup.

  “Must say I’ve never met someone so brave and intelligent who’s afraid to travel,” Kurt said.

  “I know it’s strange,” she said. “I know all the statistics, how the most dangerous part of any trip is the drive to the airport. I understand aerodynamics, and I spend half my life dreaming about far-off places, but something grips me when I leave home.”

  “You seem okay now,” Kurt pointed out.

  She smiled. “Maybe it’s the company.”

  “Consider me your personal guide and protector wherever we go.”

  “Truth is, I’d love to see the world,” she said. “And the universe. I used to dream about being an astronaut. Seems a little silly, when getting out of Sydney makes me feel like I’m going to be ill.”

  “The universe is a big step,” Kurt said. “Let’s start by getting to Perth.”

  The Ghan would take them south to Port Augusta, where they’d board another of Australia’s great trains for the journey west.

  For the next twenty minutes, they ate and chatted lightly, enjoying the atmosphere and the gentle motion of the train. Only after they’d had their second helpings of bread pudding did Kurt ask the question that was most on his mind.

  “So tell me about zero-point energy,” he said.

  She finished the last sip of her cabernet and slid her glass toward him. Kurt filled it halfway and then topped off his own glass.

  “Zero-point energy is a relatively simple concept,” she said. “It’s the energy remaining in a system when all that can be drawn from it has been taken out.”

  She pointed to the bottle of wine. “Imagine this bottle is a system or an energy field, and you or I decide to drink from it with a straw.”

  “Which we would never do,” Kurt pointed out.

  “Not unless we were outrageously desperate,” she replied with a conspiratorial smile. “But assuming we’d lost all sense of decorum and decided to give it a try, we’d be able to siphon off the energy from it right down to the bottom of the straw. But any wine below the reaches of the straw would remain behind untapped. That wine that can’t be reached is the zero-point energy.”

  “Unless we found a longer straw,” Kurt said.

  “Exactly,” she said, “except that physics tells us that, at some point, there’s no such thing as a longer straw.”

  “Can you give me a real example?”

  “The classic case is helium,” she said. “As it’s cooled, the molecular activity within the sample begins to slow, and the helium turns from a gas to a liquid. At absolute zero, it should freeze into a solid, and all molecular activity inside it should stop. But no matter how far one lowers the temperature, right down to absolute zero, helium will never turn into a solid under normal atmospheric pressure.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Some energy remains in the system. Some energy that can’t be removed.”

  “And that’s zero-point energy?”

  “Exactly,” she said once again.

  “So if it can’t be removed,” Kurt said, “what hope is there in accessing it?”

  “Well,” she hedged, “all things are impossible until they’re proven otherwise. Theoretically, there are fields of energy all around us sitting at their zero point. The same theory that postulates the existence of such fields suggests it may be possible to dislodge this hidden energy the way someone dislodges electrons in a power grid and reaps the benefits of electricity. Only, no one has been able to do it yet.”

  It sounded a little like the mythical ether of the old days to Kurt, a substance that was once believed to fill the emptiness between planets and galaxies when scientists of the day couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a vacuum.

  “Has anyone tried?” Kurt asked. “Before you and Thero, I mean.”

  “A few brave souls,” she said. “I assume you’ve heard of Nikola Tesla?”

  Kurt nodded.

  “Tesla was one of the first,” she said. “In the 1890s he began developing what he called his Dynamic Theory of Gravity. He tinkered away on it for years until 1937, when he claimed it was finally complete and promised boldly that it would displace Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, at least in explaining how gravity works.”

  “Don’t we know how gravity works?”

  “We know what gravity does,” she corrected, “but we don’t know how it causes what it causes. Tesla believed it was connected to a kind of energy field that existed everywhere, but in some places this field had greater concentrations than others. He also believed that that field could be tapped and the result would be an unlimited energy source, one that would bring peace and prosperity instead of thermonuclear explosions and genocide.”

  “So you’re telling me that zero-point energy and gravity are connected?”

  She nodded. “If Tesla’s right — and Einstein and the others are wrong — then, yes, the two are connected in very complex ways.”

  Kurt considered this. “Complex enough to cause what Thero is threatening?”

  She seemed to need a second to think about it. “Tesla spent four decades working on his theory,” she said, “more than half his life. He made his great announcement, insisting to the world that he’d finally completed the Dynamic Theory of Gravity, that all the details were worked out, and then he never published it. After all that work, he locked it away and never spoke of it again. Despite years of ridicule and the crushing poverty he’d fallen into thanks to the treachery of Westing
house and Edison, Tesla took the Dynamic Theory of Gravity to his grave.”

  Kurt had never heard this story. “Has any record of it ever surfaced?”

  Hayley shook her head. “When Tesla died, your government seized all his belongings and papers — despite having no legal reason to do so. They were held for a year or so and then finally released to his family. His work on zero-point energy and the Dynamic Theory of Gravity were not among them.”

  Kurt considered what she’d told him. He knew Tesla’s reputation as a genius and as a mad scientist of sorts. He also knew Tesla was primarily considered a pacifist. It was fully conceivable that Tesla had destroyed all records of his theory. It was also possible that somewhere in the vast archives of the federal government there lay a file with Tesla’s name on it with the missing papers inside. He made a mental note to relay this information to Dirk the next time he checked in.

  “The fact is,” Hayley continued, “we’re dealing with a primal force of nature. Many would tell you it’s something best left alone.”

  “But Thero isn’t leaving it alone,” Kurt pointed out. “So what happens if he makes a breakthrough?”

  “If he’s successful, a vast output of energy and a side effect of short-lived, extremely powerful gravitational fluctuations.”

  “Can you try that in English,” Kurt said.

  “The Earth isn’t going to be vaporized or anything,” she said. “We’re not going to start floating out of our chairs like astronauts in zero g.”

  “What will we see?”

  “The first and most dramatic manifestations will be noticed in the seas,” she said.

  “The tides,” Kurt said.

  “Exactly,” she replied. “The oceans of the Earth are drawn by the gravitational pull of the moon. The land is pulled on as well, but, unlike the liquid of the ocean it’s locked in place except at the fault lines.”

  “How much power are we talking about here?”

  “If the papers sent to us are valid,” she began, “potentially more energy than all of humankind has produced and expended since the beginning of the industrial revolution.”