Quest for the Nautilus

by Jason Henderson

  “We don’t need to.” Gabriel made a quick explanation of the supercavitation drive.

  Nerissa listened and then summarized: “You broke your ship to make it go faster. That’s pretty … amazing.” Amazing didn’t sound like something she approved of, but whatever.

  “I didn’t break it,” Gabriel said. “It’s just … we’re doing what we have to do to help her.” Gabriel looked down, his cheeks flushing. The Obscure was his home, as much as Nemolab. But if he had to make a choice between one of the most important things to him in the world and his mom, his mom would win any day. “The Obscure will pull through.”

  Nerissa didn’t answer that. The statement hung there, daring him to doubt it himself.

  “Anyway, it was only possible because we don’t have, like, hundreds of extra people,” Gabriel said. They could never have done anything like the supercavitation change-up with the Nebula. There would be nowhere to put the crew when the sub stopped pumping breathable air through the compartments.

  “No, it’s pretty brilliant,” Nerissa said. Still more polite than usual. Still stunned about the Nautilus, he knew. Gabriel could sense her fighting not to turn the subject back to the lost ship. “Can you move the Eye? Really move it? I don’t want you blowing yourself up.”

  “We can move it.” Gabriel looked at Misty, who nodded. They would want to wear lead clothes. Lead everything. “We’ll put it in the personnel carrier room.”

  “How quickly can you get here?” Nerissa asked. Peter looked at Misty, who came back with …

  “Sixteen hours if nothing gets in our way.”

  “Holy mother of mackerels,” Nerissa whispered. “All right. We gotta keep our eye on the ball. Submerge the Nautilus somewhere and mark it. Then rendezvous fifty miles south-southwest of their position. I’ll send you the coordinates.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said. “Then what?”

  “Then we talk to the Maelstrom, and one way or another, we are getting our mother back.”

  27

  17:25:37

  FOR THE SECOND time, the crew crammed themselves into the escape dinghy and submerged. “Boy,” Peter said as they dropped to two hundred feet, the rush of air bubbles beginning to drizzle along the side of the hull. He looked around at the closed windows that showed nothing but interior hull metal. “I’ll never think of the Obscure as small again.”

  “You thought of it as small?” Misty asked.

  “Well, there’s the Nebula,” Peter pointed out. “That thing could swallow us. We ready?”

  “Ready. Hit it, Peter,” Gabriel said from the jump seat. “Let’s go find them.”

  There was a jolt as the air flow outside increased and steam on the hull hissed, the bubble forming, and then they were thrown back against their seats as the Obscure shot forward. Gabriel felt his insides settle, and then he leaned forward. “Now. We have seventeen hours to work with. I recommend we take shifts, and each grab five hours of sleep. Misty, you can go first.”

  Suddenly the ship lurched, and Peter yelled, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

  They were still moving but slowing, the ship juddering in the water. Gabriel could feel the vibrations hitching. He had never felt the Obscure move so unevenly. He leaned on the driver’s seat. “What is it?”

  Peter showed him the pad. “Something’s wrong with the engine.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Misty asked.

  Peter stared for a moment at the diagram. The engine room was lit up orange. “No.”

  Gabriel breathed. “Okay, surface. Let’s check it out.”

  A few minutes later, as the Obscure floated on the surface and fresh air circulated through the ship once again, the three of them crammed into the engine room below the bridge.

  Gabriel and Misty were shining handheld lamps as Peter crawled around underneath the great black housing of the engine. Gabriel hunched down to keep from hitting his head on a large pipe and talked to Peter’s legs, which were sticking out from under the engine. “Well?”

  Peter’s voice was muffled. “Yee-ah-aa-ahh.”

  Peter scuttled out and, lying on his back, grabbed a rag from nearby and wiped thick streams of oily black from his hands. His face was smudged. “I was afraid of that.”

  “Give it to us straight, Doc,” Misty said.

  Peter sat up, gesturing with the rag. “The propeller’s not meant to spin in the air.”

  “Meaning what?” Gabriel didn’t follow.

  “Well, we made a sub into an airplane, and the bubble is the sky, right?”

  They both nodded.

  “And our propeller usually is pushing against the weight of the ocean. So all this time we’ve been running it, we’ve been moving about ten times faster, and the propeller has been moving easily twice, three times as fast as usual. Now what causes the propeller to turn is, like any engine, pistons and rods that are driven by the energy of the—”

  “Fast-forward,” Gabriel said.

  “Thank you,” Misty said.

  “It’s burning out the engine,” Peter said. “What could have happened is that lots of stuff just broke, but instead a safety kicked in and the Obscure stopped.”

  “Why now?” They didn’t have time for this.

  “It’s probably been on the way to happening the whole trip. Now, because there’s a crack in the connecting rod. If it broke completely, the engine would never run again.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Well, we gotta keep using the supercavitation process, so … I assume you can fix it?” They barely had time for that. “Because if we go back to the standard engine, we don’t…”

  Peter shrugged. “Gabe, are you listening? You’re assuming that I can get it to run at all.”

  Gabriel dropped to a crouch, shining the light. There was a pool of black grease smoking under the engine. “Work the problem. Options?”

  Peter pointed. “So, okay … we have to keep the supercavitation, so whatever we do now has to prep it to continue moving way faster. The thing that’s showing wear is the rod, so let’s assume that if we fix that, we’re fine.”

  “Fine,” Gabriel said. It didn’t sound fine, but … “And the solution would be?” He rolled his hand.

  “Can we fix the crack with Nemoglass?” Misty asked.

  “What?” Peter asked.

  “Nemoglass, it’s built to withstand tons of pressure. You said there’s a cracked rod, that’s like a metal rod, right?”

  Peter nodded, holding his hands apart. “About three feet long.”

  “We can’t melt Nemoglass here,” Gabriel said, “even if we had an extra window to pull apart and melt down and slather onto the rod.”

  “Forget melting it,” Misty said. “You have a cracked metal rod, what do you do with a cracked bone? You splint it. If we had a sliver of Nemoglass, we could use regular adhesive to splint the rod. Is there room for that?”

  Peter thought. “Yeah. But where are you going to get this Nemoglass splint?”

  “Again,” Gabriel said, “all our windows are in use. But for the rest of the ship…” In his mind, he was running through the Obscure, looking at everything. He needed a smallish bit of Nemoglass. Once he had seen a coffee cup made of Nemoglass, presented to an ambassador as a gift. But generally they didn’t just throw Nemoglass around. He moved his mind to the back of the ship. “There are two dive suits—they have Nemoglass masks,” he said.

  “You can’t use those,” Misty said. “We might need them.”

  “I agree.”

  “Wait,” Misty said. “The Katanas have retractable Nemoglass windshields. The windshield is in three sections. They’re about two feet tall. Would that work?”

  “You get it here,” Peter said, “and we’ll see if we can glue it on.”

  It took twenty-five minutes for Misty to return with a piece of the windshield of one of the Katanas, and by that time Peter had set to work taking care of a bunch of other things just in case. He had Gabriel bring much heavier oil up from storage to mix in, and he also ran a di
agnostic on the energy shield. Fortunately, it looked okay. Misty was dripping wet as she burst back into the engine room with a slightly curved section of Nemoglass, about a foot wide and two feet long.

  Gabriel grabbed a gun for applying an adhesive normally put to work to fix exterior holes and used it to attach the piece to the rod. “Don’t get that on your hands.” Gabriel handed Peter the gun.

  “You’re telling me.” Peter held the end away from him and the Nemoglass in his other hand and dropped back, disappearing under the engine. “I still have airplane glue on my hands from the bridge model.”

  For a few moments, he worked, and Gabriel and Misty waited. Misty folded her arms. “What do you think?”

  I think we’re killing the ship, Gabriel wanted to say. They were making things up as they went along, tearing apart pieces that he and his family had spent years bringing to life. The Obscure was a life to him, as carefully balanced and calibrated as a dolphin. But his mother was out there, and his Obscure was going to bear the brunt of the fight to save her.

  “Anything to get her back,” he said.

  Peter slid out. “Guys,” he said, “it ain’t pretty, but I’ll bet it can fly.”

  Back to the dinghy they ran, quickly, because every moment was time lost and they were still down at the bottom of the world.

  They shut the metal wall behind them and climbed in, and Gabriel said, “Peter, set a course for Midway Island.”

  Peter monitored the ship as the systems kicked on. “Engines. We’re moving.”

  Indeed they were. “Yes.” Gabriel clapped Peter on the shoulder.

  “Air stream. Energy shield. There’s the steam. And we’re in the bubble.”

  They fell back in their seats as the ship accelerated.

  “Supercavitation process is online,” Peter said. “Now … I think we were gonna get some sleep.”

  “You want to go first?” Misty asked. “You’ve been working.”

  “I’ve been lying on a floor. You go.”

  “Don’t have to ask me twice.” She put her tablet into a rubber grip on the dash and settled back. Peter and Gabriel fell silent. Then Peter said to him, “You can sleep, too. It’s better if just one of us is awake, and I can wake you up in a few hours.” Peter was offering him an extra hour.

  “Oh, I don’t think I can sleep,” Gabriel said. No way. They had found the Nautilus, and more importantly the Dakkar’s Eye. His brain was on fire. Besides, he was sitting in a cramped jump seat. He might rest his eyes, though. He closed them.

  Seven hours later, he awoke because Peter was reaching back and shaking his shoulder. Unbelievable. The body just takes over if you’re tired enough. “How are we doing?”

  “Steady as she goes,” Peter said.

  Misty yawned and shifted in her seat, and her eyes opened. “I can’t believe I’m still with you people.”

  “You want to sleep more? Gabriel can take the ship,” Peter said.

  “No, I’m awake,” Misty said. She held out her hand and took the tablet, then looked at Gabriel. “Nine hours to go, Gabe. You want to play a word game?”

  He would have said, At a time like this? except that he was tired of his every waking thought being one of fear for his mom. “Sure,” he said, adjusting in the cramped jump seat. “What kind?”

  Misty folded her arms and tilted her head. “Uhh … Sea Creature Alphabet.”

  “Sea Creature Alphabet?”

  Peter kept his eyes closed but said, “As in name a creature that starts with A, B, C…”

  “Oh,” Gabriel said. “Okay.”

  “A…”

  “Anemone,” Gabriel said.

  “Barracuda,” Misty countered.

  “Chambered Nautilus,” Gabriel said.

  “Nah, I don’t think that counts,” Misty said. “We need a straight C.”

  “Uh, coelacanth,” Gabriel said.

  “What’s a coelacanth?” Peter muttered.

  “It’s a fish with arms,” Misty said. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

  “You’re making it so easy,” Peter said.

  “We’ll whisper,” Gabriel said. “Dugong. It’s like a manatee.”

  “I know what a dugong is,” Misty scoffed.

  They played through the alphabet twice and moved on to oceans and seas. For the first time in days, Gabriel felt really rested.

  * * *

  Eight and a half hours later, Peter was sleeping and Gabriel poked his shoulder, awakening him as the recognizable glowing shape indicating the Nebula appeared on the sonar screen on Peter’s tablet. “Peter, time to slow the ship down, we’re coming to sixty miles off Midway.”

  Peter sat up and looked at the sonar. “Where’s the Nebula?”

  Misty pointed to the larger of two shapes on the sonar image. “Right here—and I have no idea what this little ship is.”

  The intercom crackled. “Whoa, space people,” Nerissa said. “Welcome back to the North Pacific.”

  “What have you done to the Obscure?” came another voice on the intercom. It was Dad. “I swear you shot onto my screen like a comet.”

  “We made some modifications.” Gabriel turned to Peter. “That little ship is the Eclipse; it’s a personal sub of my dad’s.”

  “You shouldn’t go closer to Midway,” Dad said. “They’ll be watching for me to come alone.”

  So Dad still hoped to show up by himself and hand over his fake device. “Can we rendezvous on the surface?” Gabriel asked. “Just to talk it all through.”

  They agreed. “Surface,” Gabriel said. As Peter brought them upward, Gabriel folded his arms in defiance. “If he still thinks he can hand over a fake, I’d like to see it.”

  28

  1:24:58

  “LET’S SEE WHAT you found,” Nerissa said. The passenger compartment of the Obscure, big enough to hold the refugees from a sinking pleasure craft, still felt cramped to Gabriel as he, Misty, Peter, Nerissa, and Dad gathered around a table in the middle of the room. Dad had come from the tiny Eclipse—which looked very much like a quarter-sized Obscure and lay just off the starboard bow of the Nebula.

  The air was flowing, because they had surfaced and oxygen had started to flow again. They had spent a few minutes cutting the oxygen tubes away from the torpedo tubes—ending the supercavitation drive for now—and reattaching them to the air systems. In a moment, they would have breathable air again underwater. Even so, the ship smelled stale.

  “Of course, but…” Gabriel gave Nerissa and Dad a hug, and they both seemed raveled and harried. When he pulled away, they greeted Misty and Peter. Dad was wearing his lab coat and hadn’t shaved. Deep circles ringed his eyes. Nerissa looked crisp, and she had her Nebula headset hanging around her neck so she could talk to her own crew. They turned to the table.

  Before them on the table rested two boxes: the lead box the Obscure had brought back from the Nautilus and the result of Dad’s work of the last three days. Dad’s own project—Gabriel thought of it as the Replica Eye—took the form of a large Nautilus shell crafted from Nemoglass.

  “I didn’t know what the Eye was supposed to look like,” Dad said. “So I figured why not be a little poetic.”

  “What is it?” Misty asked, bending down to look at it. It throbbed from within with a bright pink light.

  “It’s a … lamp,” Dad said simply. “But it does provide power. If you attach electrodes to it, you can probably run this ship for a while. And Nemoglass always looks the same, so there’s nothing per se to indicate that it’s not old.” He shrugged. “We have to give them something.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Nerissa said.

  Gabriel wanted to play out the fake scenario a little more. “How do you think the Maelstrom is planning to test it?”

  “Assuming they will,” Peter said.

  “They will,” Nerissa said. “I would.”

  “I’m assuming electrodes and they try to power something, like a machine.”

  Nerissa said, “
I dunno, Dad.” She turned to the lead box and grimaced. “And this is the thing itself. Do we know what it really is?”

  “The best I can imagine,” Gabriel said, “it was a power supply, and it ruptured, causing the accident that the diary tells about. But we’re not reading any excess radiation now. Obviously, this lead housing was repaired before Captain Nemo and the crew abandoned ship.”

  “If that’s what they did.” Nerissa shrugged. “The way you describe it, it’s as though they just hid the ship. Why they didn’t come back…?” She shook her head. “There’s just no way of knowing.”

  “Shielded or not,” Misty said, “I’m not even crazy about the idea of moving this anymore. The lead box is tough, but we don’t know how fragile the insides are.”

  “If we’re going to hand it over, we’ll have to move it,” Gabriel said. They had met on the Obscure because no one wanted to move the Eye, but if they had to, they had to. He winced inwardly because he envisioned the box bumping into something just right and rupturing, and, who knows, maybe reducing the ship they were on to molten slag, a pocket of steam erupting around them. He looked from sister to father. “What do you want to do?”

  Nerissa looked at her watch. “Soon we’re gonna have to talk to the Maelstrom. And we plan our attack while we’re doing that.”

  “We can’t attack,” Gabriel hissed. He had been listening to her talk about a rescue mission since the beginning, but he was tired of playing along. It wasn’t realistic. “If we do that they’ll be stung, and that’ll be it. And I don’t even want to think about what they’d do to Mom. Just because everything with you has to be an attack, doesn’t make it smart.”

  Nerissa stood, if it was possible, even straighter. “Why don’t you tell me a little more about what’s smart, Gabriel? You’ve got a leaking bomb in your hold and a crippled ship to show for it.”

  “Stop.” Dad clapped his hands on the table. “Just stop. If we start snapping at one another, we’re done. And I’m not risking your mother because you’re both exhausted.” He looked at all four of them. “And you’re all exhausted. I can see it. Nerissa, you’ve been hunting for days.”