Zero Hour

by Clive Cussler

  The giant array of pipes locked itself into place. Ghosts of electromagnetic energy chased one another around the interior and across the polished walls of the sphere. The whole setup continued to glow as if it were covered in St. Elmo’s fire.

  “The counterbalancing pulse is in effect,” the Iranian man said. “It should be tuned perfectly, but there is still a slight distortion.”

  Thero was furious. He was ready to exterminate whoever had failed him. A slight distortion at low power would be fatal at higher energy levels. It would render his threat impotent.

  “Explain the failure!” he demanded.

  The engineers and technicians pored over their individual screens, checking and rechecking for any sign they’d missed. They chattered among themselves trying to understand what they were looking at.

  “Well?!”

  “It’s not us,” the German woman said finally. “Our energy output is balanced perfectly.”

  “Then what is occurring?”

  The Chechen youth spoke hesitantly, as if he were unsure. “Something out there is reading our signal, absorbing part of it. It’s creating an interference pattern, upsetting the balance.”

  “Reading our signal?” Thero’s mind whirled.

  “Yes,” the youth replied. “I think I can counteract it and restore . . .”

  Understanding came to Thero suddenly, hitting him like a hammer. “No,” he said. “Shut it down. Shut everything down!”

  “What?” someone asked. “Why?”

  “They’re probing us. Waiting for us to power up and homing in on our signal. Shut the system down!”

  Thero went to switch the system off himself, when an arm barred him. He turned to see his son, George.

  “How dare you stay my hand!” Thero shouted.

  “It’s too late,” his son told him. “Like radar, we’ve already been painted. There’s no point in shutting it down now.”

  “That may not be true,” Thero charged.

  “You know it is,” George said.

  “Then we must stop them,” Thero blurted out.

  He looked over to the engineers. “If they can detect us, then we can find them. Pinpoint the origin of this distortion. Quickly.”

  The Korean and the two Iranians sprang into action, glancing up at Thero nervously, gawking at him as he conversed with his son.

  “Do not raise your eyes to us!”

  They looked back down at their work, made a series of calculations, and came up with a solution.

  “Typing the location in now,” the Iranian woman said.

  A map appeared on the monitor above the Plexiglas viewport. It displayed Thero’s location, his island of Tartarus. It also displayed the waters of the Southern Ocean and the southwestern tip of Australia. A flashing dot indicated the location where the offending distortion was located. Almost due east, only nine hundred miles from the island.

  “How could they be so close?” he gasped. “Traitor. There must still be a traitor among us!”

  “It must be a ship,” the Korean said.

  “Of course it’s a ship!” Thero bellowed.

  “Perhaps we should shut down,” Thero’s son suggested.

  “Now?!” Thero barked. “I think not! Like you said, it’s too late. Prepare to destroy them.”

  “It’s not wise to risk full power without testing.”

  The crew continued to gawk at the argument between father and son. The embarrassment enraged Thero even further. “No more questions!”

  “The system isn’t ready!” his son pleaded.

  “Silence!”

  With that, Thero’s son retreated, and Thero gazed out at his crew.

  “Set the machine for a short impulse,” he ordered. “Align the dislocation to occur directly in their path. The distortion alone should swallow them whole.”

  Kurt and Joe were still on the bridge, waiting for a printer to churn out the latest weather map, when it jammed midpage and wouldn’t restart.

  “What’d you do?” Joe asked.

  “I didn’t touch it,” Kurt said.

  Joe stepped to the computer to restart the printing process. “That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “No signal.”

  “Telemetry’s down,” Captain Winslow told them. “It’s been in and out all day. Something to do with solar flares messing up our satellites.”

  Kurt remembered hearing how that would be a problem this year, the sun was entering the most active phase of its eleven-year cycle. Sunspots and flares were stirring up powerful electromagnetic storms in the upper atmosphere, creating incredible displays of light over both the northern and southern poles.

  Kurt glanced out the windows. If they weren’t socked in under a thick blanket of clouds, the aurora australis, or southern lights, might have been a treat to see.

  “I’m going to get some air,” Kurt said. “Let me know when the link is reestablished.”

  He opened the bulkhead door and stepped outside. A chilly blast hit him, chasing away the cobwebs that had been creeping over him. The wind from the ship’s motion whistled past, biting his exposed skin. He pulled his coat tight and shoved his hands into its pockets.

  He stepped to the rail and stood there, enjoying the solitude, until a bulkhead door opened behind him.

  He glanced back to see Hayley coming out onto the deck. “Kurt,” she shouted, “I think we’ve found them. I think we’ve found Thero.”

  She moved toward him, eyeing the rail cautiously. A couple sheets of paper fluttered in her grip as the wind tried to pull them loose.

  Kurt took them from Hayley, and she grabbed on to the ship’s rail with both hands.

  He looked down at the printouts. On top was a map with arcs and lines drawn on it. They angled off to the west. It looked like nothing but open ocean. On the edge of the page was a numerical bearing to the target.

  “They’re on that line somewhere,” she said. “Without a second sensor operating, I can’t get a precise fix, but they’re on that line somewhere.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I did the calculations three times,” she said. “I checked everything. There were no errors. Something in this exact direction is disturbing the zero-point field.”

  She looked up at Kurt, positively beaming. Then she stretched up and gave him a quick kiss.

  “Just trying out the spontaneity thing,” she said.

  Kurt smiled. “I like it.” He reached toward her, slid a hand behind her head, and pulled her toward him for a proper kiss.

  “Okay, I like yours better,” she said. “Can we try that again?”

  “Let’s talk to the captain first.”

  “Do we really need his permission?” Hayley asked. “I know it’s his ship, but . . .”

  “About the map,” Kurt said. “And our new heading.”

  “Oh . . . all right,” she said.

  He took her by the hand and stepped toward the hatch, stopping as a flash on the horizon caught his eye.

  He turned and gazed directly into the night but saw nothing but darkness.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “See what?”

  “That flash.”

  “No,” she replied. “I didn’t see anything.”

  As they stood and gazed into the darkness, like two people waiting to see fireworks go off, a strange feeling began to creep over Kurt. He could sense the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

  Finally, another flicker of light appeared. This time, Kurt saw it plainly, but it wasn’t a flash on the horizon like a strobe light or even a definable bolt of electricity, it was more like heat lightning in the summer, covering the whole horizon, flickering dimly. Only, it wasn’t coming from the sky. The sea itself was flashing, as if the whole of the ocean were bioluminescenc
ing.

  “Could this be an effect of the aurora?” he asked.

  Hayley pulled back trembling. “It’s not the aurora,” she said. There was a chill in her voice. The sound of fear.

  “What is it?”

  “Electromagnetic discharge,” she said. “It’s a side effect of disturbing the zero-point field.”

  “Because of your sensor?”

  “No,” she said, shaking. “It’s not us. It’s Thero.”

  The sea flickered again, much brighter this time, and the ship lurched downward. It happened so suddenly that Kurt and Hayley were flung to the deck. The bow dug into the water, and a towering wall of spray blasted up into the air and then fell in sheets around them.

  Kurt pulled himself up and looked aft. A line of foam stretched out into the dark, straight as a ruler and perpendicular to their path, but he saw no retreating wave.

  “Kurt,” Hayley cried.

  He swung his eyes forward. The ocean was flickering again, a pale blue-green, just enough to show its contours in the dark. Fifty yards ahead, another line was forming on the sea. It peeled back like skin being cleaved open and formed a deep trough right in front of them. It stretched across the ocean in a straight line, but it wasn’t a wave. There was no raised vertical component to it. It was more like a gap in the water, like a drainage ditch cut across a road.

  The Orion hit this gap at a slight angle. The ship rolled awkwardly as she plunged into it.

  Kurt wrapped one arm around Hayley, crushing her to him with all his strength and lacing his other arm through the rail.

  The ship’s bow knifed into the bottom of the trough, all but submarining. It was already rising as it reached the far side, coming up in a corkscrew motion, and flinging Kurt and Hayley into the air like riders who’d been tossed off a prize bull.

  They landed on the deck just as a second curtain of icy water cascaded down upon them, soaking them to the bone.

  Kurt tasted the salt of the water. It stung his eyes and the abrasions he’d taken from the first impact. Without waiting for her to stand, he grabbed Hayley, pulled her up and began running toward the safety of the bulkhead door.

  A foot of water had covered the foredeck. It sloshed out through the drainage holes, taking Hayley’s printed papers along for the ride.

  A klaxon blared above them, and Kurt realized it was the ship’s alarm sounding for a collision. The ship was turning hard.

  “Brace for impact!” the captain’s voice called over the loudspeakers. “All hands, brace for impact!”

  Kurt glanced forward, looking past the bow. The ship’s lights had come on, illuminating a new trough directly in front of them, perhaps a hundred yards off. This one was deeper and wider than the other one, wide enough to swallow the ship. From Kurt’s angle, it looked like the edge of a great cliff in the center of the sea, an edge they were about to go over.

  The Orion leaned hard over as the rudder hit the stops. Kurt felt the vessel shudder as the props went into reverse.

  One look told Kurt it wasn’t going to be enough.

  He pulled the hatch open and shoved Hayley through, scrambling inside right behind her and slamming the steel door shut. He wrenched the handle down, locking it just as the deck began to fall out from beneath him.

  A moment of weightlessness followed, like they were on some gigantic amusement ride. Then Kurt was slammed into the deck. A tremendous boom reverberated throughout the ship, like a dozen cannons being fired off together. It was the sound a wall of water made when it struck the hull flush.

  A muted silence followed, and Kurt knew the ship had gone under. If she was buttoned up tight, she would come to the surface again. But, for the moment, Kurt couldn’t feel her rising.

  Several seconds went by before the momentum of the ship changed and she began to rise, several more before the sea released her.

  She heaved up, bursting free of the water, and then crashing back down like a breaching whale. Kurt pulled Hayley to her feet and helped her forward.

  They reached the bridge to find water sloshing about. One of the windows had been shattered and smashed in completely. The captain was hanging on the wheel, a bloody gash across his jaw. The XO was down on the floor and out cold, having been flung against the far bulkhead.

  Joe was slamming a metal plate into the slot where the shattered window had been. He wrenched a lever tight, locking it into place just as the main lights went out.

  “Power’s gone!” the captain said.

  The sea flashed again, a beautiful and deadly blue that raced outward in all directions. Another trough began opening in front of them, the waters parting like the Red Sea.

  The ship was still moving as the lip of the disturbance raced underneath them. She dropped once again.

  In the darkness it was terrifying, a free fall that lasted for seconds but seemed endless. As the ship hit the bottom of the trough, the jarring impact was accompanied by the sound of wrenching metal. Rivets popped as high up as the bridge and, somewhere deep, the keel broke. As if to finish them off, the towering walls of seawater slammed together around the Orion like giant hands clapping.

  This last act of the angry sea might have killed everyone on board, except that the two great hands spent most of their energy smashing each other. As they rebounded off each other, the current they created dragged the stricken vessel to the surface.

  She came up for only a minute and was soon awash and sinking.

  The bridge was flooded from the impact, with the remaining windows smashed out. The water was frigid, cutting into one’s skin like knives.

  Kurt still had his arm around Hayley. In the glimmer of the emergency light, he saw Joe opening a life-raft container, and Captain Winslow desperately trying to order the crew to abandon ship.

  Kurt grabbed a life jacket, pulled it over Hayley’s head and cinched it tight.

  “Stay with Joe!” he shouted.

  She nodded as Kurt waded to where the XO had fallen. Heaving him up, he passed the unconscious man to the captain and then glanced at the stairwell to the lower deck.

  He saw a crewman staggering upward as the water flooded down upon him. The man was injured. He could hardly fight the current. Kurt pulled him up and passed him to Hayley, who helped him into a life jacket of his own. Holding the rail, Kurt began to climb down.

  “There’s no use,” the crewman said, “they’re all gone. Those that weren’t pulled out when she broke are drowned. It’s all water below this deck.”

  Kurt ignored him, splashing down into the stairwell and diving into the icy black liquid. He inched forward, one hand on the wall, the other outstretched and numbly feeling around for any sign of a crewman. He found no one and turned back.

  When he came up, water was pouring in through the shattered windows again. The top of the bridge was all that remained above water.

  Joe grabbed him under the arm and yanked him free of the stairwell. “I’m not going to let you kill yourself,” he shouted, dragging Kurt to the hatch and toward the inflated orange raft.

  Joe flung Kurt onto the raft and jumped on behind him. His momentum carried them away as the Orion sank beneath the waves. It vanished to the sound of random, muffled explosions as the last air pockets in the ship were purged one by one.

  Kurt glanced around. Aside from the single crewman who’d struggled up from belowdecks, only those on the bridge had escaped.

  The hexagonal life raft rolled up on one of the low swells, and Kurt stared into the dark, his eyes straining for any sign of another raft or anyone in the water. He saw nothing. But neither did he see another flash like those that had preceded the strange ruts appearing in the sea. “Do we have any flares?”

  Joe dug into the raft’s survival kit. “Six,” he said. “Three white, three red.”

  “Fire a white one,” Kurt said. “We have to see if anyone else is o
ut there.”

  Joe pointed the flare gun skyward and fired. With a whoosh, the blazing little sphere rocketed upward, casting a harsh glow across the rolling waves. Kurt stared and stared, his eyes darting about, as the moving carpet of the swells stretched out before him.

  Plenty of wreckage and debris had come to the surface. Insulation, packaged stores, and unworn life jackets, anything with buoyancy. He saw no sign of another raft but spotted two people bobbing among the wreckage.

  “There,” he said, pointing and grabbing an oar.

  The flare only lasted another ten seconds, but Joe had also found a flashlight. He kept it trained on the floating crewmen as Kurt and Captain Winslow rowed the life raft in their direction.

  Kurt hauled the first crewman onto the raft. She was a young woman he recognized from the radio room. The second survivor was the boatswain’s mate Kurt had seen on the previous night’s watch. Neither one appeared to be responsive. Two others were found, who Kurt didn’t know by sight.

  “Are . . . they . . . alive?” Hayley asked through chattering teeth.

  “Barely,” the captain said. “They’re all but frozen. Hypothermia doesn’t take long in thirty-eight-degree water. We’ve got to get them warmed up.”

  “With what?” Hayley asked.

  “Body heat,” Kurt said. “Everybody needs to huddle together. We’re all wet. We’re all going to lose our heat fast if we don’t conserve it.”

  The group began to move to the middle of the raft, leaning against one another and pulling a microfiber survival blanket over themselves. All except Kurt and Joe, who were aiming the flashlight around and looking for other survivors.

  They pulled in a few empty life jackets and several pieces of cloth and plastic, things that might prove useful at some point, but they found no other survivors. Eventually, they knew there was no more point in looking.