Quest for the Nautilus

by Jason Henderson

  “He has his own…” Gabriel stared at the page. “He has his own abbreviations. The equal sign means parallel. Gabriel looked down. “V.”

  “So the letter V doesn’t mean very,” Misty said.

  Gabriel felt a jolt of adrenaline creep through his body.

  “So what is it? Peter, scan through the whole thing, can you, show me every V?”

  Peter started the scan and soon the image stopped on a different page.

  We had a minor hubbub among the crew just as we passed Mariana V.

  “Mariana V?” Misty asked.

  “Mariana Trench,” Peter said. “They crossed the Mariana Trench, and he called it Mariana V.”

  Gabriel clutched his forehead. “Oh, no no no. We were wrong. We were wrong. They didn’t go to the Gilbert Islands, they went to the Gilbert Trench. And the clues were right there.”

  “Yeah,” Peter said. “And you can kick yourself as much as you like, but remember the other problem with the Gilbert Trench? It’s in Antarctica. Gilbert Trench is over seven thousand miles away.” Peter showed the map, with a long line running from their current position at Kiribati to their goal. “Down past the southern tip of South America, all the way to the bottom of the world. And our fastest time—our fastest time…”

  “… is seventy knots,” Misty said.

  “And that’s assuming the engines are running just fine,” Gabriel offered. Which sometimes they weren’t.

  “So, the fastest we could get there is…” Peter looked up as if he were doing a long calculation.

  “Eighty-seven and a half,” Misty muttered.

  “Eighty-seven and a half hours. And even if we performed a miracle and we could hit, say, eighty-seven knots, a hundred miles an hour”—Peter dropped his voice—“then it would still take seventy-two hours.”

  “And we don’t have it.” Gabriel looked at the clock on the wall. “We have less than forty-two hours, gyahhh!” He slammed his hands against the railing that ran along the bank of stations under the main screen. “We know the right place now. We know it.”

  “It’s okay,” Misty said. “We’ll…”

  Gabriel bit his lip. Every time he blinked, he saw his mother. “It’s not okay. What looks okay about this to you? A band of techno-pirates or whatever they are has my mother, and what I need is over seven thousand miles away.”

  “Gabriel, you asked me to keep you on track, and this is me doing that. Now stop; stop and think.” Misty pushed back her hair, huffing. “I think it’s time to call your sister. We can pick up the search after.”

  “Don’t you remember what her plan was? A rescue mission, and barring that, my dad’s plan of trying to hand over a fake. No, I’m not giving up,” Gabriel responded. “I don’t know, maybe we could contact the Maelstrom, negotiate…”

  “Wait a minute,” Peter said.

  Gabriel looked back. “What’s that?”

  Peter bent forward in his seat, staring at his own steepled fingers through thick glasses. “Okay, this might sound absurd, but…”

  “Please,” Misty said.

  Peter slid out of his seat and paced for a moment. “It’s, uh … Have either of you ever heard of supercavitation?”

  Misty looked at Gabriel and then back at Peter. “I know bells are supposed to be ringing, but honestly I got nothin’.”

  “What, that’s a Chinese thing. Right?” Gabriel was searching his memory. It wasn’t something the Nemos had experimented with.

  “Okay.” Peter waved his arms, and it had the effect of looking like he was ordering them all to wipe clean the whiteboard in their minds. “An airplane can go about six hundred miles an hour, but a typical submarine goes about sixty. Why that difference? Why are submarines so much slower?”

  “Well, drag,” Misty said. “Water is harder to move through than air.”

  “Right!” Peter walked over to Misty, his hand tilted as he moved it along like he was pushing something heavy. “You’re pushing water along. We try our best to make the sub as smooth as we can, to cut the drag in the water, but still. Water is heavy, and it’s hitting the sub and pushing it back. We have enormously powerful engines just to hit a speed of about a tenth what a plane can do.”

  “Okay,” Misty said. Gabriel sat down, watching Peter and listening intently. He loved seeing a brain at work.

  “Okay!” Peter went on. “So, the idea of supercavitation is, what if you put a sky around the submarine? As in a big bubble of air that allows the sub to fly underwater.”

  “The sub keeps moving.” Gabriel pictured it. “If the bubble keeps moving, the water flows around the bubble, and the cavity of air in the back keeps pushing you faster forward.”

  “And no water pushes back on the sub. It hits the bubble, which just slides on,” Peter explained. “If you can do that, if you can make an air cavity around your sub, your sub could go as fast as a plane.”

  Please let this be going somewhere real. “Okay,” Gabriel said, “but we don’t have that. You’re talking about something that would have to be an entirely new engine design, or at least a new body design.”

  Peter turned, throwing the same hand out, still tilted, but now it meant stop. “Gabe, do you want to get there or not? Think about what you usually say to us. ‘Options?’ Don’t think about can’t; think about how.” Peter spun around, this time gesturing come on. “Options. How do we make one? Right now.”

  “We…”

  “Don’t say can’t,” Peter said. “I told you. I’ve been with you long enough to know that if you weren’t so worried, you’d be the first to push us to say how. So come on. How?”

  Maybe Peter was right. Maybe Gabriel was so scared for his mother he was forgetting to use his brain. Okay. Think. “Make a bubble,” Gabriel said. “How?”

  “Force air out of the sub?” Misty said. “If you could force enough air out to make a bubble big enough for the whole sub.” She snapped her fingers. “What about the tubes—you could use the forward torpedo tubes.”

  Peter nodded. “Okay, but it would have to be a constant flow of air.”

  Gabriel jumped up, pointing at the ceiling. “We already make a constant flow. The air processors convert the CO2 into breathable air.”

  “CO2, O2, it won’t matter for the bubble,” Peter said.

  “But then you raise a real problem,” Misty said. “Which is: What are we supposed to brea—”

  “Don’t go there yet,” Peter said. “Follow the thought.”

  “Right,” Gabriel said. “Work the problem.” Because that was always the way.

  Peter was spinning slowly as he talked, and for a moment he looked like he was in command of the bridge. “Stay on this. Can we, could we really, use the torpedo tubes to force out a constant stream of air, ongoing, as long as we’re underway?”

  “Yes, until we overtake the supply of air,” Gabriel said. “But how would you hold the bubble together?”

  “Ah,” said Peter. “We have what most subs don’t: We have the electric shield, the one we use to zap intruders. I think … I think … that if we run it constantly, it will react with the air and the water to keep a constant bubble.”

  “Okay,” Misty said, “let’s say that’s true. What about when you overtake the oxygen supply completely? Then we’d have to surface.” Misty shook her head. “But anyway, there’s still the little matter of…”

  “Not yet,” Peter said. “Not that part yet. Stay with me on this. Say we do all that, how much time would we have in the air pocket before we had to surface? Wait, wait.” Peter had that answer himself. He kept his wait gesture up as he flipped through screens, looking for oxygen outputs, apparently. He tapped some numbers into a notepad app and gestured to Misty. “How does this look to you?”

  Misty went over and looked at the figures Peter had put down and nodded.

  “We would run out of air and have to surface in thirteen hours,” Peter said to Gabriel. “Now, we don’t even know how fast it would go.”

  Gabriel
looked back at the map, and the line showing seven thousand miles to cover. Could it …

  “Okay,” Peter said to Misty. “Now for your other problem.”

  “Yeah, well…,” Misty said. “We’re mammals, and we have to breathe. If we push all our oxygen out, there won’t be any left for us.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Aren’t you glad you transferred to a new school?”

  “No, no, we have air to breathe.” Peter snapped his fingers. “Come on, guys, I don’t even dive, and I know this.”

  Misty’s eyes went wide. “We can use diving suits. Scuba gear. We have plenty of oxygen; the air in the ship will be toxic, but we’ll just pretend we’re diving.”

  “No. That’s not a bad idea,” Gabriel said, “but I can do you one better. We’ll travel in the escape dinghy. It has its own air processors. Totally separate.”

  “So…” Peter seemed to be picturing it. “We abandon the body of the Obscure and control it by remote from the escape dinghy. Are there three seats in that thing?”

  “Eh, the rear seat folds down, but it’ll work,” Misty said. There were two front seats in the dinghy, plus a cramped third behind those.

  “Shotgun,” Peter said.

  Amazing. If Peter was right, they could cover the distance in a tenth of the time. If, if, if. But Gabriel knew Peter, and he put a lot of faith in Peter’s ifs.

  “Okay, let’s do it.” Gabriel looked at his wristband. “Misty, can you join me below? We gotta rip out the oxygen lines and shove them into the torpedo tubes. Peter?”

  “Aye.”

  He pointed. “You are some kinda freaking genius.”

  Peter collapsed into his seat. “I coulda told you that.”

  “Keep telling us.” Gabriel started walking toward the back. “Prep the oxygen processors to be our main output. We’re gonna use the torpedo tubes as an air outlet, so you may as well take the weapons systems offline. Kill everything. All power to the air and the engines. Okay, is it decided?”

  “It’s my idea,” Peter said, “so yeah.”

  “Absolutely,” Misty said.

  Gabriel looked at his wristband and said, “Let’s get the work done—and us in the escape dinghy—in one hour.”

  “Sure, why not,” Peter said, “because if we’re gonna make an experimental craft out of our only working one, we might as well hurry.”

  * * *

  “I hope we don’t need these.” Misty crouched next to a padded composite crate that held the torpedo they had just removed from the tube. The crate was used for moving anything explosive onto the ship. It lay next to three others—all the torpedoes they were carrying.

  Gabriel barely heard her, because he was inside a crawl space nearby with a flashlight in his mouth, shifting large tubes aside, looking for the right one. He glanced down past his feet into the torpedo room where Misty clasped the crate shut with a series of metallic snaps. “I’m just gonna hope we won’t.” Gabriel looked back up and moved a large blue tube aside. He finally spotted a large hose the size of his head labeled O2. “Found it.”

  Misty stuck her head into the crawl space. “You need the clamps?”

  “Yes.” She slid a pair of constricting clamps, metallic rings with machinery at the center, to him, and he grabbed them when they reached his knee. He laid one down and opened the other over his face, sliding it around the oxygen tube. “Peter, I’m cutting the tube.”

  “Copy.”

  Gabriel fastened the ring and then the next one, about six inches down from that. Then he pressed a button on the side of the handles, and the clamps began to constrict, tightening around the oxygen tube. The tube rattled and bobbed over his head as it thinned out where the clamps were, like a long balloon rapidly squeezed in the center. Then he took a knife and began to cut.

  A moment later, Gabriel shimmied out of the crawl space, dragging one end of the tube with him. The end he had cut looked like the ruffled collar on a Tootsie Roll, and the tube of oxygen danced in his hand.

  He stood up, looking at the torpedo tubes. They were two tunnels in the wall of the torpedo room, each about a foot and a half wide, about six feet apart. The apparatus to hold the torpedoes slid out and back, so the entrance was fairly smooth.

  “What did you come up with for a connector?” he asked. They needed something that could connect the tube in his hands to the two holes in the wall.

  Misty turned around and indicated the thing at her feet. “Well, I took a pair of old diving suits and cut them open, then I welded them together and used the sleeves and legs as material just to make them bigger. It’s a … pretty serviceable rubber funnel.” She picked it up, and Gabriel grabbed one end with his free hand as the air hose bounced.

  “This is nice,” Gabriel said. The collar of one of the suits would fit the hose almost perfectly, as it opened to a funnel of fused rubber. He could still make out the original sleeves and legs.

  They clamped the collar of the suit to the oxygen tube and then used a quick-setting glue—do not get this on your hands, he remembered his sister telling him the first time he saw it—and sealed the funnel to the wall.

  They stepped back and regarded their work. There would be no test. “Okay, Peter, I’m gonna open the oxygen hose and start venting air out of the tubes. You ready to increase production?”

  Peter paused. “Yes, we’ll be pumping approximately eighteen times the amount of oxygen through the system as we normally do, and three times as fast. Uh, I recommend we do that by remote once we’re in the dinghy.”

  Gabriel looked at Misty. “We, uh, we just might destroy the oxygen system.”

  “I know,” Misty said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I mean, we won’t die,” Gabriel said. “We’d just go to the surface and … and I guess chug toward Midway.” And then all this would be for nothing, because they would have no ransom, and they would be too late.

  “I’m assuming we got it right,” Misty said.

  He sighed and nodded. He was committed to this course. It would work or it wouldn’t, but they’d spent ten minutes inspecting the system to see if there were any weak spots, so it would be fine.

  Right?

  I’m sorry, he thought, looking at the ship. I’m sorry for having to do this.

  “You ready?’ Gabriel asked Misty.

  “Go.”

  “Okay, unclamping now.” Gabriel reached over to the end of the funnel, feeling for the clamp around the end of the oxygen tube. It was clumsy going because he was feeling through thick rubber, but he knew what he was looking for. He found a thumb latch and fumbled his way to flipping it.

  Air began hissing out of the hose and filling the funnel, which grew immediately, a little tent perched on the wall, its mouth over the tubes.

  “Okay, Peter, we’re now ready to vent our air. Meet you at the dinghy.”

  “Copy, powering down all systems but engines and air. Meet you there.”

  The pulsing in the walls, usually almost imperceptible, ceased, and the lights dimmed to an emergency red. Misty looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, boy, I hate when it looks like this.”

  “What, those aren’t the best times?” They started running out of the torpedo room and up the ladder, and then met Peter in the corridor coming out of the bridge. He was carrying his backpack, and it looked stuffed.

  “What’s all that?”

  “A surprise,” Peter said.

  They moved down the central corridor, past the personnel carrier room, the only sounds their footsteps and the rattle of the air tubes in the walls. They went through a portal in the starboard wall into the small room with a handprint on the wall, and Peter did the honors of putting his hand on it because he got there first. The wall sprang up, and they were looking once again at the escape dinghy. It was barely big enough for three people. Peter unlocked it, and the doors sprang up, and they climbed in.

  Misty got in the driver’s seat. As Navs it would have made sense this time for Peter to take it, but he had to drive the Obscure
, and this dinghy wasn’t going anywhere. She wouldn’t be using the joysticks at all. Peter hopped into the right front seat—he had called shotgun. He stuffed his backpack next to his feet and grabbed a tablet off a clasp on the dash while Gabriel climbed into the back. He wanted to be able to see the whole dash.

  Gabriel reached over and hit a button, and the wall closed around them, and then he closed the window of the dinghy.

  Now they were closed into the small craft in what amounted to a tiny pocket on the side of the Obscure. Misty powered it on, and they heard the hum of the engine as it rested in its harness, air-conditioning kicking in and sending air around them.

  “All right,” Gabriel said. “Oxygen increase?”

  Peter brought up a remote version of his entire Navs station, and Gabriel saw a diagram of the Obscure over Peter’s shoulder. Air flow was indicated by a bright blue series of arteries running toward the front. He slid an indicator far to the right.

  “Increasing,” he said.

  Presently they felt the cradle of the dinghy begin to rock. The ship was vibrating in the water. If any subs were looking for them, they would surely be visible now.

  “Energy shield?”

  “Energy shield … on maximum.”

  “Vent the air,” Gabriel said, and Peter said aye, and he brought up a view of the front cameras of the Obscure. Air began to force itself out of the ship, a cloud of dissolute bubbles. The bubbles burst and hissed steam as the electricity hit them and the oxygen flowed over, dissipating. He increased the air flow again.

  “Moving to flank speed,” Peter said, and the ship slowly moved forward.

  “Increase to maximum air,” Gabriel said, and the ship began to vibrate more fully as the bubbles increased, the steam bursting, and suddenly they could see the wet surface of the ship moment to moment inside the bubbles. Larger bubbles began to form.

  “Increase speed,” Gabriel said. “Thirty knots.”

  The ship began to move, the rattling dissipating as it sailed forward inside the bubbles. No, not bubbles. One bubble. Like a sleeve of steam and air. “Do you feel that?” Peter asked.

  “What?” Gabriel didn’t feel anything.