The Ganymede Project

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  When the rain of metal and debris finally stopped, Vladimir got up to survey the damage. The shelter was littered with paper, spilled liquid and numerous small items, but was otherwise intact. Birger coughed, climbed out from behind his chair, and gave a shaky thumbs up.

  The captain lay sprawled on the floor, face bleeding.They’ll make him a hero for this , Vladimir thought, propping him up out of the way.

  He touched the door, found it was slightly warm, and carefully opened it. A wall of fire blazed 100 meters away, bellowing acrid, oil-filled smoke into the night.There won’t be survivors . Vladimir turned back inside, coughing, closing the door.

  “Birger!”

  “Yes?” his companion said, sliding back into his seat.

  “Can you get a bearing on the jamming strobe?”

  “We’ll see.” He looked at his scope, blanketed by indecipherable dancing lights. “The good news is it still seems to be working.”

  “The bad news,” Vladimir said, toggling test switches, “is that we can’t launch missiles.”

  Birger switched tracking modes, couldn’t see anything, then switched modes again. The display changed to a snowy line of phosphor. “Got it. Strobe is at two seven zero.”

  Vladimir moved to the plastic-covered area map, marking the position of the battalion’s radar with a grease-penciled dot. He picked up the phone.

  “Tower—You still there?”

  “Barely,” came the reply.

  “Give me an optical bearing to the object,” Vladimir said, penciling a light line along the jamming strobe’s 270 bearing.

  “Two-three-zero,” the tower responded.

  Vladimir plotted the intersect of the two bearing lines with a small X. “Good. Now I’m going to ask for updates from your positions at regular intervals. Birger?”

  “Still two-seven zero. Unchanged.”

  “Tower?”

  “Two-three-five.”

  It’s moving away, Vladimir thought. Over the next several minutes, with help from Birger and the tower, he roughed out the object’s northwesterly track.Murmansk. It’s headed for Murmansk .

  When the object moved beyond the tower’s visual horizon, Vladimir phoned Murmansk district to warn them. They, in turn, alerted all military facilities in the area, including the submarine base at Poljarny.

  * * *

  Where are the lights? Yuri thought.

  They swam on and on, pushing water with their fins, past the same repetitive bottom, into the same repetitive blackness. A bubble of liquid night trapped them in all directions.

  Just when Yuri began to think the harbor map was inaccurate, or that they had drifted hopelessly off course in the currents, the bottom sloped upward. He saw the floodlit entrance to the pens.

  The lights were more than beacons marking the base. They were a polarity for the mind. An end point.

  They cut their sealights, penetrated further, and approached a slick, gray hull.

  India, Yuri thought.Intelwasright .

  They skimmed along the submarine’s lower pressure hull, swimming upside down for better viewing. The 350 foot length, sharply angled bow and absence of torpedo tubes told them they were looking at an India Class submarine.

  They checked for any evidence of peculiar mission-orientation, but found none below the waterline. Monico gave a hand signal. They started to move aft.

  Then, the lights went out.

  It was a peculiar kind of power outage, plunging the bay into total darkness, silencing all electro-mechanical noise. Even their battery-powered sealights didn’t work. Monico’s Digital Range Meter wouldn’t illuminate. Everything electric was inoperable.

  They hung there, clinging to bottom of the India submarine, afraid to surface, afraid to leave.

  They’ve detected us, Yuri thought.They’re watching us. They know where we are. This is a game. They’re playing with our minds .

  Lights in the submarine pen flickered. Power returned to a steady flow. They could see each other again.

  Monico motioned for them to stay in position, then carefully surfaced. He looked around for a moment, then popped back down, signaling for Yuri and McGahn to follow him up.

  Local time was two AM.

  Inside the covered pen, there were no signs of guards or naval personnel. They were grateful for Soviet efficiency and for the distractions of an empire in chaos—or an unscheduled power failure.

  They were looking at the only India Class sub owned by the Soviet Northern Fleet. U.S. spy satellites monitored its construction at the Komsomolsk shipyard in the early ‘70s. The Russians launched it in 1975. It had no known weapons—an unusual feature for a Soviet sub. The other unusual feature was an after casing built to carry two submersibles in a ‘piggy back’ fashion, with docking hatches accessible from the mother ship. The Russians leaked the story that the submersibles were DSRVs—underwater rescue vehicles. Naval intelligence suspected this was just a cover—disinformation.

  From the water, Yuri could see the top of one submersible just aft of the sail. The second submersible was missing.

  Monico signaled to stay in the water. He exchanged his fins for Yuri’s camera, climbed along the edge of the after casing and moved to the submersible docking platform. He looked in. Then he scraped a small amount of material from the side of the submersible, took four photographs from various positions and slipped back into the water. He didn’t put the fins back on until he was safely on the bottom.

  Monico gave Yuri the camera, checked his watch, then signaled to terminate the mission.

  They had what they came for.

  * * *

  Just keep a fix on Monico, Yuri thought.Everything will be okay .

  He could see Monico’s fins just ahead, beating up and down in the light of the sub pens, going deeper, fading.Now you see him, now ...

  Monico vanished like a black fish in a sea of ink, but Yuri still held the buddy line. Behind him, he felt McGahn’s pull on the rope.

  He continued swimming, but his mind played tricks. There were noises. Or so he thought. Dim light played against the water’s rippling, silvery canopy. Or so he thought.

  Light? That can’t be. He hit the illumination button on his watch.It’s not daylight yet. Won’t be for —

  A spotlight blinked ahead.Monico! It must be okay to turn the sealights back on . He flicked the switch, throwing a steady beam at the swimmer. Monico reached him, grabbed the light, and switched it off.

  Yuri and McGahn huddled next to their leader, floating, neutrally buoyant. Strange sounds—moans and clicks—penetrated the water. In the darkness, Yuri saw another light, in a direct line between their position and the sea gate. It bobbed up and down on the bottom, moved toward them, and seemed to be guided by some intelligence.

  Then, the light went out.

  Above them, the choppy membrane separating sea from sky turned translucent, tinged by bright light from a giant globe hovering above it.

  They’ve found us, Yuri thought.

  In the added light, he could see the outline of a mini-sub, possibly the mate to the one onboard theIndia . It had caterpillar treads.

  The sub seemed built to crawl along the sea floor like some giant bottom-dwelling organism. Now, it was as dead as a stone—no lights, frozen.

  The ambient light changed to silver, then dimmed as the illumination source above the water moved away.

  They were in darkness again.

  The tracked submarine’s lights came on. Yuri watched it move at a slow but steady clip—perhaps two to three miles per hour—in the direction of the submarine pens.

  He listened to its sounds—clicks and whistles and groans.It makes noises like a whale. Maybe audio camouflage.

  Harbor seals streaked ahead of the mini-sub, briefly caught in its beam.

  It’s fooling them, too, Yuri thought.They think the sounds come from a predator .They’re frantic. They’re scouting.

  He moved behind the submersible, adjusted camera settings and took snapshots.<
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  He let the sub roll forward into the darkness and waited for McGahn and Monico. When it was out of sight, he flashed his sealight in a 360 degree arc around his position. Two other lights winked back. The team rejoined.

  Monico took the lead, lighting the path with one hand, watching his Digital Range Meter with the other.

  A giant steel-framed structure materialized in front of them. Monico swept it with his light. The sea gate was open. Caterpillar tracks ran through it, along the bottom.

  Yuri threw his beam onto the beacon and the lifeline.Almost home , he thought.

  They swam through the gate. Yuri was tired, puzzled by the mysterious lights, ready to breath normal air again. He suddenly tumbled in the wash from a large moving object. He assumed they were being buzzed by harbor seals.

  He felt McGahn’s hand grab his vest from behind.What ? he thought, turning around. A powerful wash of water propelled him sideways.This is no harbor seal .It’s a lot bigger !

  He somersaulted out of control in a liquid vortex.

  The mysterious light returned, changing the water canopy to a silvery, glittering mirror, sketching the outlines of dark shapes and undulating sea bottom.

  As he oriented toward the light, flipping right-side up, he saw the severed end of McGahn’s arm. The hand still gripped his vest. Monico was no longer in front. He had disappeared.

  Dimly, he could see the mini-sub, perhaps thirty feet away. He swam for his life, seized a ladder rung below the Well and tried to pull himself up.

  A powerful force yanked him backwards.

  He tumbled upside down, again and came face to face with Death. The huge black and white sea mammal tugged at Doug’s severed arm, still fastened to Yuri’s BCD.Orca !

  He kicked as hard as he could.

  The arm came free—one end still in the killer whale’s mouth.

  He felt a flipper wedge between snapping, razor sharp teeth. Another kick pulled his foot free of the fin, but he lost swimming leverage.

  He tumbled away from the Orca. The mysterious light faded back into darkness, leaving him blind. He thought he remembered Aqua Man’s position, scrambled toward it, and crashed into the sub’s hull, falling downward, dazed.

  He felt for handholds.

  A bow-wave of water pushed toward him.

  He pulled himself through the Well with a single, continuous movement and fell to the deck.

  The boat rocked violently.

  Water drenched his body as the Orca hit the hull and snapped its jaws through the Well’s opening.

  Aqua Man’s motion dampened down to a quiet, but sickening see-saw.

  Yuri pulled himself up. He looked through the observation port. A giant eye, shedding greasy whale tears, looked back. He sensed raw, predatory intelligence behind the huge eating machine.

  The Orca backed away. It was fully the size of Aqua Man—roughly 30 feet. It made noises similar to the Russian mini-sub. Low-pitched barks, whistles, screams and moans penetrated the hull. It called other members of the pack.

  Yuri turned on the outboard lights to get a better look. Monstrous shadow shapes lurked near the edge of darkness, returning banshee-like calls to their leader.

  Smaller, streamlined shapes darted across this field of monsters.The harbor seals !

  The Orcas recognized a new feeding opportunity and moved quickly in pursuit, not satisfied with recent man-sized meals.

  * * *

  As Yuri steered Aqua Man back to the extraction point for a rendezvous with the Colby, he was shaken. One part of his brain performed mechanically, working the controls, doing what it was trained to do. The other part of his brain flip-flopped between crushing emotions and wild, intellectual speculation.

  Why? My God, why?

  What was the light? What did it have to do with the caterpillar sub and the Orcas?

  What went wrong?

  There was an objective reality he had to deal with—now and forever. Two people died in a split second. His camera broke on impact with the Orca. The sample of hull coating that Monico carried back in a pouch was now inside some whale’s belly. Nature or Soviet biological weapons had intervened in their mission, demonstrating the limits of precision planning.

  Why? My God, why?

  Yuri searched for answers. Maybe the animals had been trained to kill, in a program that paralleled a similar, U.S. Navy effort.

  But the pieces don’t fit.

  Still, there was another possibility—the masking sounds of the Russian mini-sub had unexpected consequences.

  By making sounds like an Orca, the sub attracted Orcas. Holy Loch and Karlskrona created an ambiguous picture for naval analysts.

  Since no humans understood the Orca language, the Russian may have inadvertently broadcast messages to Orca hunting packs—here there is food.

  What about the light? The phenomenon was clearly artificial, with profound implications. Yuri decided the Russians had a new, advanced Anti-Submarine Warfare capability.They were hunting us .They were tracking us. They were trying to kill us.

  This was Yuri’s theory—a theory developed by an active mind, based on ambiguous data. It was a theory that he nevertheless believed, as he steered Aqua Man toward the Colby’s rendezvous position, then homed in on its acoustic beacon—a beacon designed to mimic the communications signals of other seagoing life forms.

  9. POUNCE

  June 1981

  New Mexico

  “Two nine eight, seven six five nine,” the radio squawked.

  The patrolman keyed the microphone. “Yeah... This is Sergeant Pete Beach, New Mexico State Patrol. My folks patched me through to your phone. I called the Command Post at Kirtland Air Force Base. They weren’t interested in what I had to say. Maybe you are.” He craned his neck toward the sky, watching.

  “What’ve you got?” the radio voice asked.

  “Some kind of aircraft. Very peculiar. Hovers like a ‘copter and cruises like an airplane. It moves pretty fast. I saw it land in the Manzano’s between Belen and Albuquerque. I thought maybe it was some kind of experimental thing. But sometimes the maneuvers look pretty dangerous, you know? Out of control. There’s gotta be somebody interested in this. If you aren’t, maybe FAA.”

  “What’s it doing now?”

  “Rolling on its longitudinal axis. This big ol’ cigar-shaped thing—just hovering in the sky and rolling. I’ve been following it around in my patrol car now for about an hour and—”

  Beach watched the object in the sky, transfixed by a sudden change in dynamics.

  “You still there?” the radio voice asked. “Hello. Hello.”

  “It’s tumbling, like it’s out of control. It’s tumbling horizontally, moving away. Faster and faster. Like it’s falling sideways. You should see it. God, it’s spectacular.”

  “Do you see any kind of—”

  “Shit!”

  “Beach. What’s it doing? Beach?”

  Beach looked toward a distant area of mesas and steep rock walls, where a glow perfused the sky in erratic blue light. He took a deep breath, and talked slowly. “Coyote Canyon—That’s the test range, isn’t it? For Air Force Weapons Lab? And Defense Nuclear Agency?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, they can’t ignore it now, can they? Kirtland Command Post, I mean.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “‘Cause that’s where it just crashed.”

  * * *

  The AH-1F Cobra gunship rolled a hard left, narrowly avoiding a jutting mesa. In the front seat, Gottlieb gripped his chest straps and heaved, spitting his stomach into his lap. He fumbled in his pockets, couldn’t find kleenex, then used his sleeve to wipe. His hand trembled as he blindly waved at Gillford Chisholm—young, muscular, cocky—at the stick in the elevated backseat. “Please,” he wheezed into the intercom, “go slower. I’m an old man. My heart...”

  Outside the cockpit, the steep yellow-and-rust walls of Coyote Canyon zipped by at over a hundred and fifty miles an hour, almost close
enough to touch. Gottlieb dry-heaved.

  “Gotta keep up my airspeed if we’re gonna beat the Air Police there,” Chisholm said, matter-of-factly, behind his helmet-mounted display.

  Gottlieb nodded, then twisted his face as though in pain. On a narrow dirt road below, a blue jeep sped in the same direction, trailing a plume of dust.

  “Air cops,” Chisholm said, as they passed the vehicle. Gottlieb tried to look, but centrifugal force jerked his body backwards as Chisholm pulled on the stick, arcing the craft upward, turning in a tight spiral, dropping back down into the canyon. Gottlieb felt his body float off the seat under negative gs. He dry-heaved again.

  The Cobra slowed as it rushed toward the ground, hovering above the road, waiting, boiling up dust.

  The blue jeep, marked ‘Air Police’, rounded a bend, then lurched to a stop, blocked by the helicopter, pointed nose-to-nose.

  “You have no authority here,” Chisholm announced on the bullhorn. Words and chopper noise reverberated through the canyon. The jeep did not move. The helicopter hovered. “Go back. Operation Pounce has control. Check it out.”

  The Cobra held its position as the Air Policemen made the radio call.

  After half a minute, Chisholm turned to Gottlieb inside the cockpit. “We need to be on-scene. We can’t wait around for this bureaucratic shit.” Gottlieb nodded, still gray-faced and troubled by a wobbly stomach. Chisholm armed weapons.

  Inside the jeep, a new development caught the attention of the two Air Policemen. The Cobra’s gun turret slued the long-barreled 30mm cannon toward the jeep’s windshield.

  The driver dropped the radio, slammed the jeep in reverse and accelerated backwards on spinning wheels, rounding a turn, out of harm’s way.

  Chisholm fired a warning burst.