Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  “Yes, father.”

  “Enough with the sniping, Thomas.” Declan rolled over. “If you’ve nothing kind to say, say nothing.”

  “You’ll make me puke with that kind of talk. Damn it, Declan, I can’t believe they locked us up!”

  Declan had turned to Alastair, who was now perched on a bunk. “At least this time we get to share a single cell.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t help matters,” Thomas muttered.

  But Declan merely asked, “Do you have any children, Alastair?”

  “Children? Me? Well no… none that I know of that is, but I almost had a daughter once… almost.”

  “How do you almost have a daughter? Tell me it wasn’t a stillbirth.”

  “No, no, no… .thank God. No, I was in love with her mother, and she—Gabby was her name—she adopted me, so to speak. Killed me having to leave Jane and Gabby, but staying would have only dragged them down with me.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Thomas said and then laughed.

  Declan laughed, his eyes meeting Alastair’s.

  Alastair could not hold it in any longer, and he burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of their situation; at the same time, he pictured his beautiful girls, the petite Dr. Jane Francis aka Dr. James Phineas Tewes when necessary, and her daughter, Gabby, a firebrand for women’s rights still, and a graduate of Northwestern Medical School, and a lovely younger version of Jane. Jane, who became James so as to deal with prejudices aimed all female surgeons. All this he missed along with his city—Ransom’s city as many called it. He silently laughed at the phrase, a kind of title bestowed on the “Bear” of Chicago. These memories made his heart a led weight in his chest. He missed the three of them—Jane, Gabby, and Chicago in that order.

  The combined laughter coming from the three prisoners masked his pain and resonated about the larger room outside the cell, bouncing off crates and sacks of potatoes and boxed grandfather clocks earmarked for Macy’s and furniture crated and marked for Marshal Field’s, Chicago. “I get outta this cage… I oughta slip into that crate going to Chicago. Go straight home to my women, make it official, marry Jane, adopt Gabby. Pipe dreams… regrets, I’ve had a few.”

  Then they heard a noise, something or someone approaching but making strange sounds—heavy breathing, someone struggling, knocking into things, gasping. In fact, it sounded like a man suffering from consumption—a great deal of hacking up, gut-wrenching coughing, vomiting. Echoing as it did in the chamber here, the gasping made the trio in the bars shudder when out of the darkness, a man in extreme distress banged into the cage with such force, the entire cage shook.

  The distressed man’s right hand extended through the bars, eyes like blackened plums, no seeds showing in them; he reached out toward Alastair and the boys, who’d backed to the rear of the cage as far back as they could manage.

  The man seemed on the verge of certain death, his skin seemingly afire—as if crawling with ants, his eyes blind, smoking, drying out before them; from his dress, he appeared a stoker—one of the small army of men aboard who shoveled coal into the furnaces. He wore a leather apron over a grimy shirt, high boots, his left hand still sporting one large leather glove. He tried desperately to walk through the bars to get at them—insanely so, rush-bang, rush-bang, rush-bang! while the inmates began shouting, screaming for someone, anyone to come to their aide.

  When they realized no one could hear them except for the poor devil trying to get at them, Alastair and the boys stood transfixed, knowing what they were seeing—knowing the horrid Belfast plague was here before them!

  Then as suddenly as he appeared, the victim spiraled away in a horrific, pain-fueled ballet. In fact, his body appeared saturated with pain. It was as if the poor man was attempting to run from himself.

  Thomas imagined the scene played out with his uncle as victim. Declan thought of the two miners who most certainly had done this macabre dance.

  Ransom imagined just how Tuttle may have gone into the water over the side of Titanic.

  All three would-be heroes imagined themselves futilely running from the killer within them… imagined being the suffering stoker, blinded, in terrible pain as every cell was drained of moisture, every organ shrinking—eyes, brain, heart, lungs, pancreas, liver, skin.

  All three began rattling their cage, pulling at the bars, shouting for someone to come, praying Lightoller might return soon enough to see what they had seen, but no one came and the darkness around them became darker, and the sounds emanating from the dying stoker had ceased with the suddenness of a dog put down.

  “God has a sick sense of humor,” said Declan, head in his hands.

  Deflated, fearful, nerves frayed to the maximum, the three inmates of this floating asylum alternately paced and pounded at the bars holding them. From down here at the bottom of Titanic, they could feel the massive ship’s equally massive engines churning. Ransom said, “Feels like Captain Smith means to make Queenstown in record time!”

  “Anxious, no doubt, to put us off!” shouted Thomas, struggling with a loose shoelace and almost stumbling over.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Declan said.

  Thomas echoed his words. “We’ve got to get out of here.” In the near distance, the caged dogs in a separate compartment began a frightened caterwauling as if they were now under attack by the mad stoker.

  TWENTY FOUR

  David nearly jumped from his bed and hit his head on the low ceiling on hearing the order to dress for dive come over the PA system. All systems were finally a go. He’d begun reading Declan Irvin’s journal again, not sure why except that the book had a compelling feel to it, one that declared it authentic, and one that declared that it had been held in the hands of this rogue lawman Ransom and the young want-to-be doctor named Declan Irvin, as well as Second Officer Lightoller.

  The divers had wasted no time in getting dressed anew for the dive and were on deck and ready to enter Max again—this time with the certainty that they were on their way to dive the Titanic! Excitement was fast filling the submersible as much as body mass, and while in single file to climb into the sub, Ingles asked Bowman, “Where in hell’ve you been, man? You never came back to the cabin.”

  “Keep it to yourself, heh? Gambio and me, we figured it could be our last chance at a little play before we all die.”

  “What’re you talking about—all die?”

  “There’s some weird shit happening around here or haven’t you noticed?”

  “I’ve noticed… you bet.”

  “Just watch your back, man—and mine, too while you’re at it; I’ll do the same for you.”

  “We ought to be safe below.”

  “I’m countin’ on that but aren’t you worried what we might come back to aboard Scorpio, man? I mean… who knows what’s gonna go on while we’re gone?”

  “Scorpio a ghost ship? It’s crossed my mind, yeah, but as long as we stay in contact with the surface, we keep informed, right?”

  “Sure… sure, partner, if you say so.”

  Once all the divers had taken a seat inside the submersible, they began to relax somewhat, when suddenly, they could feel the crew working the heavy machinery around and above them going to work—the metallic pinging and vibrations of being connected to the crane, lifted up, swung over the side, and the gentle touchdown on the surface, the release from the crane, and now the shaking little room telling them they were bobbing in the North Atlantic close on to Scorpio’s outer hull.

  Swigart, over the communications link announced, “9:32PM all systems are a go—copilot Dave Ingles, pilot Lou Swigart and the full dive team en route to Titanic.”

  David was both pleased and surprised to be settling in as copilot in the twenty-four foot rectangular pressure cooker of a sub, which from all sides resembled a thing fathered by a Chinook helicopter and an elongated flying saucer. Hemmed in on all sides by instrument panels, necessary overhead pipes and conduits that threatened to crown David if not careful, he
realized that sitting strapped in was the most comfortable a man might get inside MAX. After the sub leveled-off and went to stationary hovering, then a man might stand, stretch, and work out any bodily kinks, but for now any such movement was not a good idea. The trip down should not be any longer than a trolley ride from 42nd to 52nd Avenue, New York given Max’s propulsion system, speed, and maneuverability. Mad Max put Bob Ballard’s then amazing Alvin to shame.

  Swigart had trained on MHD propulsion as had each diver in the event that any one of them needed to pilot Max, but for now it was Lou’s baby—under his control. “Hit the lithium-hydroxide blower for me, will you, Dave?”

  Ingles did as requested, opening the blower that would keep their oxygen free of carbon dioxide as already the sub was becoming stuffy as carbon dioxide levels rose. Each phase of the operation was carefully monitored from Scorpio’s control room as well.

  Swigart immediately dove below the surface by a simple means of opening initial ballasts intakes as in any sub. This brought her nose with her huge cross-styled front-viewing window facing sharply downward—at dive attitude. Lou then opened the throttle that brought in the seawater not for ballast but for propulsion, thanks to applied spinoff uses of military technologies. In this case the USN’s having developed a compact, self-regulating nuclear reactor. The unit was size of a typical coffin.

  Max’s maneuvering thrusters, both in the two towers and along both sides, were a variation of magnetic bearing technology coupled with the principles behind maglev train propulsion or gauss cannons, which cycle magnets—magnetic field generating devices such as coils—in order with the proper timing so that acceleration was induced. This meant that a computer could reverse the cycling of the magnets or coils, thereby reversing the motion of the thruster blade, and tightening or loosening the timing to increase or decrease the speed of rotation, thereby providing a throttle control so that it wasn’t an off/on proposition.

  And if that were not enough, all this generation of magnetic fields made the use of magnetic anomaly detection systems difficult if not impossible. However, Scorpio above was outfitted with a unique sonar imaging system and Max had a holotank remote terminal via a little understood device called the Big Sister or CIS which was still undergoing trials or rather experimentation by the US Army, a patented application formally called Combat Information System. In actual use, the CIS system allowed for a distributed network of sensors to have their data correlated and retransmitted back to units on the field of battle, giving commanders greater awareness of the tactical environment than their own onboard sensors can provide. This device and method promised to be indispensable to research and exploration such as the Titanic expedition was now in the thick of. Woods Hole wanted it to work, and probably wanted this more than anything else to come out of Scorpio’s salvage operation. The biological specimens they spoke of, the testing of liquid air paks, the findings of deeper than deep water exploration on human beings, artifacts lifted from Titanic—all of it was, for Woods Hole, a front to mesmerize the public and keep their minds off this new technology. It was a modus operandi no longer limited to military research.

  David, Swigart, and some of the others found it all incredibly exciting and fascinating. Basically all the information that the sensors onboard Scorpio IV, and all the sensor devices it could deploy, were beamed down to a receiver installed in Max. All topside displays returned on various screens and through holographic projectors. So all that had to be onboard the sub itself was a transmitter to specify what data might be desired, and how the user might wish it displayed. A receiver and projectors and/or screens alone truly reduced the space, power, and weight required to make use of such a technology, which made it feasible and realistic.

  All the old technology based on the same principle as sponge divers grabbing rocks to sink to the bottom no longer applied—nor did turbine-powered shafts linked to a rudder.

  With Max, there were no spinning, noisy turbines, but rather intake sponsons—a term only an engineer might know. These devices took up room on each side of the sub where they sucked in seawater at its forward open ‘torpedo’ hatches and flushed the same amount of water per square gallon out the rear hatches. This created a more powerful and maneuverable forward dynamic than any previous small subs or large had ever enjoyed. The system was known as The Caterpillar—and was as quiet as its namesake and undetectable on sonar unless its captain wanted it to be.

  This system made Max as silent as a living creature and just as fast and maneuverable under water. It could travel at remarkable speed over untold nautical miles, leaving not so much as a mist and no cavitations. The only cavitations or air bubbles came as a result of the sub’s bodylines, but even this only at her highest speed, and at this speed it was gone before detected. In other words, no sonar invented could detect or track it if its pilot wished it so. And even then it would have to be the most sensitive state-of-the-art sonar.

  Max had no huge screws or turbines churning the water. In fact, there was no sign of a propulsion system whatsoever. Instead the submersible was thrust through the depths generated by water rushing through tubes enclosed in those sponsons at the submarine’s sides.

  The force powering Max or MHD was so basic that it was taught in high school science classes. Flemming’s Left Hand Rule was a fundamental of electromagnetism stating that the confluence of a magnetic field and an electric current passing through a fluid caused the fluid to be propelled in a single direction. Not so recent technologies of 1965 saw the first prototype propulsion system. It was designed by senior undergrads at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under a Professor Seward Way. Way had worked for Westinghouse and his students began the long process to harness this phenomenon. By 1990, aboard a seagoing vessel thanks to Navy experiments were showing promise for actual application. As a result, in laboratories in Japan and the United States, systems known as magnetohydrodynamic or MHD drive units put the Left Hand Rule in small models and experimental flow loops. Replacing propellers with superconducting magnets allowed “jet” ships to ply the seas at 100 knots, a far cry from Titanic’s top speed of 24 knots over the surface.

  David Ingles had studied this type of system for years since the summer of 1990 when the Japanese, after sinking $40 million into creating a practical MHD using a 150-ton, 90 foot long seagoing vessel called the Yamato-1. But it took years beyond this to develop extremely dense, powerful magnets compact enough to be placed on a ship the size of Max. It began with improvements in superconductive materials, enabling these materials to be formed into electromagnetic coils, and then a quantum leap in both imagination and engineering, not to mention a dramatic drop in the costs. Soon a way was found to use new high-temperature yttrium-barium-copper oxide that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen rather than the more expensive and far more difficult liquid helium.

  As more compact, powerful and efficient magnets became readily available, the challenge shifted toward integrating all of the technologies into a complete propulsion plant, incorporating cryostats to maintain proper superconducting temperatures and a power supply to feed the magnets.

  David recalled his training; they’d all boned up on Max from top to bottom, and this included the propulsion system. It was powered by a sponson on each side, and maneuvering thrusters, vertical thrusters—two per side, horizontal thruster per each tower on Max. Each sponson contained thirty superconducting magnets evenly spaced like so many rings along the length of the sponson. Max had more powerful and scaled up hardware than anything under the sea.

  Max drew water in through the front aperture and propelled it through a smooth, Teflon-coated, featureless channel running through the center of each magnet. This reduced drag, meaning more efficient thrust.

  The final movement of the water is its being jetted out the rear—propelled in one powerful direction, thus moving the ship forward due to the thrust at its wake. Reversing propulsion direction was a simple matter for any pilot; it meant reversing order of the magnetic r
ings. She was the future of subsea exploration and exploitation in every sense of the word—and there were fortunes to be made. Something Warren Kane, Juris Forbes, and Lou Swigart understood all too well.

  In short, a complete nuclear power plant rested just to the back of middle of Max’s center of gravity—in the least precarious position in case of collision, and so that wire conduits might be as short as possible.

  The Japanese were already speeding cargo holds filled with automobiles from Japan to Europe underneath the Polar ice cap in similar, cargo-sized subs and doing so in less than five business days. Thanks to there being no need of connecting the power system with the propulsion system via a huge shaft, elegant airliner-shaped cargo sub designs proliferated. These sub-ships were in great demand as well thanks to the zero noise and the lack of moving parts which lessened the need for maintenance, thus decreasing operating costs.

  Passenger subs also riding on MHD submerged power pods were in the offing as such a submersible leaving Japan would take only three days to reach San Francisco while passengers enjoyed state of the art luxury travel beneath the waves with the occasional slow down to take photos of marine life at depths most would otherwise never experience. This in a vessel taken for a whale by sea life; a sub that did not disrupt sea life, but was rather a “part”of it.

  Ingles realized that without Kane’s having gathered the money men together, they would not be traveling in such style, that in fact, Mad Max would not have been built, and that after the Titanic show, Kane and his backers had far more lucrative plans for this dear submersible.

  “Today, gentlemen and ladies,” Swigart announced from the controls, speaking to the surface as well, “Today we will find out if anyone among us finds that 12, 500 feet of freezing salt water is not to your liking. Make history, eh? But first we make sure Maxi-million here is happy with the cold and the pressure. Ingles, time to replace the gas oxygen with the liquid environment.”