by Unknown
‘That’s good news. At least it’s us he’s sizing up,’ said Salty.
‘Get me a tank, Salty,’ J.P. shouted as he made for the hold at the other end of the boat. ‘I’m going in after her!’
‘You’ll do no such thing!’ ordered the old man, the eyes in his weathered face tightening into a piercing stare. ‘I’m the captain of this ship and you’ll do as I say. Now quit running up and down like a puppy dog. Sharky seems pretty taken with The Oceanaut. For now, chances are he don’t even know she’s down there.’
‘I hope you’re right. I figure she’s got about forty minutes on a tank. As long as she’s spotted him, she’ll make for one of the caves and sit it out.’
‘She didn’t take a tank,’ whispered Jackson.
‘No! Don’t tell me she’s free diving!’ J.P.’s expression turned to horror.
‘She didn’t take anything but a big fin and a weight belt.’
‘In a few minutes, she’s going to have to come up for air!’ said J.P.
Jackson felt sick.
Brooke had seen the Great White. She’d noticed the ominous outline of the huge fish within the first few seconds of her dive, its massive body blocking the sunlight as it glided overhead. The shock had made her gasp, and she’d had to fight to keep control of the air that wanted to rush out through her nose.
Free diving was the art of swimming underwater on a single breath. Brooke had learned the technique during summer breaks on Martha’s Vineyard from the free divers who sometimes congregated on the island for competitions. She marvelled at their ability to stay submerged, sometimes for as long as ten minutes, on a single lungful of air. The technique required her to draw big slow breaths on the surface to lower her heart rate and expand her lungs. Once she was underwater, it was important she remain calm and composed as the faster her heart pumped, the more precious oxygen it would suck from her blood.
Seeing the six-metre shark hadn’t done much for Brooke’s composure, however. She had considered turning back to the boat, but something told her to continue her descent towards Verne, where she could turn and get a fix on the shark.
It became immediately clear that Verne was snagged on a flattened section of lobster netting. Part of a nylon rope, which was tangled round a sharp outcrop of rock, had been sucked into two of the robot’s propeller shafts and he was stuck fast. Brooke swam quickly behind Verne, wedging herself in a gap in the rock before looking back up at the keel of The Oceanaut hovering like a big grey cloud above her. The shark dropped in and out of view in the shadows of the boat as it cruised a wide arc around it.
Brooke guessed that attempting to free Verne would take a good minute or so and might end up signalling her position to the Great White. She focused hard on trying to keep calm and giving her brain time to sort through the options. Swim now, while she still had all her strength, and try and beat the 30 kilometres per hour fish to the boat. Or sit tight and hope that he’d swim away in the two or so minutes she could remain down here.
Neither filled her with much hope.
Jackson caught his breath. His vigil at the monitors, while J.P. and Salty had been arguing about whether to dive in after Brooke, had paid off. ‘It’s Brooke! She’s signalling to us.’
Brooke was clearly visible on the centre screen. She had squashed most of her body into a small crevice on the undersea rock face and was glaring, wide-eyed, into the camera. On close inspection, Jackson could make out a small yellow pipe coming from behind the camera and snaking its way into the side of her mouth.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ said Salty. ‘She’s suckin’ air outta that contraption a yours!’
‘She must be using the tank that feeds the Oxy-Fuel combustion chamber. It’s a small cylinder, filled with pure oxygen, that Verne uses as a kind of turbo charger! It should buy her some more time, but not much – the tank is tiny,’ said J.P.
‘How much oxygen does it hold?’ asked Jackson.
‘Three litres exactly,’ the professor replied.
‘She’ll suck in… I’m guessing 1,800 millilitres per breath? Hold it in for, say, three minutes… after all, even for a free diver, this is a high stress situation. So, 600 millilitres a minute. Factor in a percentage of oxygen loss, because that pipe’s not a perfect delivery mechanism… what, twenty per cent?’
Jackson looked up at the others. ‘I’d suggest she has five minutes’ breathing time. Roughly,’ he concluded.
‘I’ll be darned,’ said Salty. ‘He is a computer.’
‘That’s all great,’ said J.P. ‘But unless we figure out a way of luring that shark away from the area, your maths isn’t going to do her much good.’
The two older men started talking hurriedly through suggestions for leading the shark away, but Jackson wasn’t listening. He had his own idea.
It was a safe bet that the notion of flying Tug and Punk out to the boat wouldn’t be one that J.P. would agree to. But as Jackson remotely triggered the robots’ flash startup sequences, he was confident that his plan stood at least as much chance of success as the pretend seal J.P. was forcing a reluctant Salty to construct out of a bright orange buoy and strips of an old brown towel.
Jackson sent a simple text message: ‘U ERE TP SPD’. A moment after receiving it, Punk and Tug obeyed, flying at top speed in tight formation barely half a metre above the sea’s surface towards the GPS coordinates of the phone where the message was sent from. Jackson calculated that a straight-line, flat-out run would take them about five minutes. It was going to be tight.
Until they arrived, Jackson would dedicate himself to Project Towelling Seal. He looked over to see J.P. fumbling with a length of thin metal rope he had wound round the tubular towel-covered buoy. The professor, who had dedicated his life to the design and construction of robots, was so distracted with worry that he was all fingers and thumbs.
Salty unceremoniously barged J.P. out of the way and proceeded to tie a hangman’s knot with the wire, then secured the creation to a sturdy-looking fishing rod.
Not quite sure what else to do, now that Salty had taken over from his efforts on the towelling seal, J.P. explained his plan to Jackson. ‘Research into attacks by this species of shark on humans suggests they attack swimmers, which they mistake for seals. If we can cast my seal far enough out and reel it in at the correct speed, we might stand a chance of hooking him. If Salty’s right, and he’s a two-tonner, we’ll not be able to land him. But with a hook in him, we’ll know where he is and might be able to slow him down if we all get behind it! That should give me the time I need to swim down to Brooke and signal.’
‘Are you sure you need to go into the water too?’
‘We know she can’t see much down there. It’s the only way I can signal to Brooke when it’s safe to surface.’
Jackson looked at the pretend seal now dangling over the edge of the boat. It turned slowly; a large steel hook glinted in the sunlight. He glanced at his mobile phone – seven minutes and counting.
Salty stood astride the base of the large metal fishing rod that sat in a holder, screwed to the deck by ten centimetre-wide nuts. It was an impressive set-up, but as Jackson took position alongside the old fisherman, he wondered if the hardware was up to the job. With his large strong hands Salty pushed the rod forward and then pulled it back as far as the eleven-metre metal pole would flex, letting it whip forward and catapult the bizarre makeshift mammal out to sea.
It was an impressive cast. The bait splashed down at least thirty metres in the opposite direction to Brooke. Salty started to wind in the line, the wrinkly, sun-baked skin on his arms stretching over rippling muscles as he frantically turned the handle on the rod’s massive, industrial-strength reel.
The shark continued its patrol. It hadn’t detected the scent of anything, and had found little of interest beyond the subtle vibrations that had brought it here, save for the large white mass around which it was circling. The shark didn’t know what it was, or why it had come to rest in this place. And, even
after millions of years of evolution, the great fish had no way of knowing that it was a boat, with people on board who found the fish’s presence utterly terrifying. All that drove this example of the ocean’s most efficient killing machine was a primeval instinct that something edible was near.
Then something changed – a rhythm in the waves and a current that hadn’t been there before. An irregular and turbulent flick-flack on the surface of the water that signalled something sizeable and possibly palatable.
Jackson and the rest of the crew of The Oceanaut saw the Great White’s pectoral fin cresting the surf for the first time since the huge animal’s arrival. It circled again but, this time, its radius pointed towards the dummy seal and not The Oceanaut. Then it vanished.
‘Brace yourselves, lads, he’s coming in, full steam,’ cried Salty.
Jackson was scared now. He gripped his part of the rod and pushed his feet hard down into his trainers. He didn’t have to worry for long. The shark appeared like a rocket, rising vertically from below the pathetic pretend prey, water frothing around its gills like steam on a launch pad. Jackson saw what he thought was the glint of the steel hook before everything disappeared in a puff of spray. Salty let go of the reel, which became a crazed Catherine wheel until he slammed down the brake switch. The moment the brake bit into the steel line, The Oceanaut lunged towards its starboard side. Boxes, bags, robot battery packs, and almost J.P. himself, slid into the water as the monstrous animal, bait in mouth, attempted to swim away.
‘For God’s sake! What are you doing?’ yelled J.P.
‘Leave the fishing to me, Prof,’ shouted Salty, anchoring the rod with one bulging bicep. ‘Your poor excuse for dinner ain’t gonna pass the taste test. I needs to keep it sprightly, or he’ll lose interest! Wait till he got the hook, then we can decide what we do next.’
‘How d’you know he’s not hooked yet?’ asked Jackson.
‘You just know!’
‘Well, make sure you don’t keep it to yourself,’ said J.P., who was still having trouble standing on the listing deck. He was now fully suited up for the rescue mission with wetsuit, face mask, tank and regulator. Jackson also noted he had the biggest knife he’d ever seen strapped to the outside of his leg. Jackson knew the professor was a man of many talents, but he had difficulty imagining him in the role of shark fighter.
‘There! Can you feel him? Now he’s hooked!’ shouted Salty.
Jackson quickly lent his support to the old man’s efforts to control the frenzied yanks of a tonne of muscle on the line.
Suddenly the line went slack and Salty shouted to J.P. to watch the line.
‘He’s coming about!’ yelled Salty. ‘If he decides he wants to show us how strong he is, and you’re in the way of that line, it’ll slice you in two!’
‘If he goes anywhere north of us, shout,’ called J.P. ‘That’ll be my chance to go for Brooke!’
Salty let out a grumble, which wasn’t too far removed from the sound the engines of The Oceanaut made when they were first fired up. He still didn’t agree with J.P.’s plan to go in after his daughter but there wasn’t much else he could do either.
With the line still slack, the Great White appeared beside the boat, drifting slowly past the starboard side. It was the first time that Jackson could take in the scale of the animal. It was more than half the length of The Oceanaut. And it was so close he could smell it, a jagged stench of stale meat that stuck in his nostrils. The shark was under the boat now, moving diagonally, and Salty’s reel was whirling again.
‘I’m going in!’ J.P. shouted, and a moment later he dropped below the stern of the boat.
Brooke had been observing the effects of her father and the crew on their uninvited guest. She had watched as something vaguely resembling her rolled-up beach towel had landed in the water before becoming shark bait. She couldn’t see the fishing line as parts of her diving mask were now steamed up, but she got the general idea. Pound for pound, the engineer in her didn’t rate The Oceanaut’s chances of winning if it came to a tug of war between the boat and the shark.
Still trapped in the crevice of the underwater rock face, Brooke clutched Verne to her, having cut away most of the nylon fishing net. She thought how, if she ever got out of this mess alive, she would advise her father on a new design for a protective fender that could be retro-fitted round all of Verne’s propellers. Brooke had kind of left her dad to fend for himself on the Verne project. She rarely helped him out at all these days; she was too much into her own stuff. No two ways about it, she was a bad daughter.
Note to self, thought Brooke. Apologize to Dad for shark incident. Help Dad with his robots. Tell Dad his sports car was in fact washed out to sea.
Just when Brooke thought she couldn’t feel any more guilty, she spotted the unmistakable shape of her father in a wetsuit leaving the safety of The Oceanaut.
And, unless this was some horrible nightmare, she could also make out the outline of the shark, turning towards him in the distance.
CHAPTER 14
The sensation of forcibly regurgitating a seal was a new one for the shark.
As the huge animal hurtled downwards and the reel ran out of line, the force jerked the mock bait and hook clean out of its stomach.
‘He’s loose, damn it!’ shouted Salty, the metal rod whipping back as all the tension went from it.
The professor felt a surge of fear race through his body. He’d been scared when he had entered the water, but this was different. It was as if his body knew something he didn’t. In any other circumstances he would have stopped and turned round to confirm what his senses were telling him, that a shark was following him. But his daughter was down there and he simply had to get to her.
There are between seventy and a hundred recorded shark attacks a year, he told himself as he swam desperately downwards. And, of those, an average of eight are considered fatal. The odds are in my favour, he thought. Keep swimming.
Brooke saw things differently. As her father finally reached her, the shark was less than a few metres behind him, jaws agape and closing at terrific speed. She grabbed the straps on J.P.’s back and used them to heave him into the space behind Verne. With one quick thrust of its tail, the shark collided with the white robot, its gaping jaws clamping down on it like a steam press, ripping it from in front of J.P. and Brooke.
With a fast flurry of bites and twists, the shark soon worked out that the ball of syntactic foam and complex alloys wouldn’t make for easy digesting and let Verne fall from its mouth. It then turned into a sweeping arc that it intended would bring it back to the rock face with enough momentum to make it into the cave. 145
Salty was familiar with the English family’s penchant for exotic machinery. Since J.P. had been a child, let alone Brooke, Salty had been roped in to help test or retrieve all manner of modified vehicles designed for land, sea and air. Even so, the two contraptions that had just arrived above The Oceanaut were very strange indeed.
‘At the risk of askin’ a silly question: are those two waterproof?’
‘Not exactly,’ Jackson replied. As he continued to speak, he sent a text message to the two robots – ‘HLDNG PTTRN’ – ordering them to stay overhead. ‘But they were designed to operate in the vacuum of space, so all their important bits should be sealed.’
‘What about their unimportant bits?’ ventured Matty.
‘It’s a little late to worry about that now. I guess we’re about to find out.’
With the robots in a steady cruise above the boat, Jackson watched the live feed from Verne through the doorway of the cabin as the robot came to rest upside down on the seabed. Despite his encounter with the shark, Verne’s vital statistics, represented by a series of numbers down the side of the screen, showed he was still functioning fine. Jackson quickly copied the first two lines of numbers into his phone and prepared to send them as a text message to Punk and Tug.
To Jackson, at least, his plan was simple. The robots’ new Artificial Intellige
nce programming, which had brought them safely to the boat, could be used to guide them both to Verne – and therefore within very close proximity to Brooke and her father. And the shark. Jackson could use their infrared scanners to identify the shark’s heat signal and seek it out. He’d seen both robots do enough damage on land to know that, unlike Verne, they were a match for a shark. With Punk and Tug thinking for themselves, Jackson would be free to control Verne, via the goggles and control glove which Brooke had left behind.
He sent the message containing Verne’s precise location on the sea floor:
Instantly, Tug broke formation and nose-dived into the water. Punk, however, continued to fly in circles around the boat.
Jackson’s handset pulsed with warmth. He glanced down and saw an emoticon on its screen surface. It was from Punk: (0_<)
The robot was flinching. He was telling Jackson, through his digital sign language, that he was too scared to follow Tug into the water. Jackson would have laughed, if the situation weren’t so dire. He would have to deal with him in a minute – for now it was crucial to get Tug to the seabed.
Tug registered the experience of flying in a liquid, for his first time, in the only way he knew how, as an extreme and instant change in weather pressure and ambient temperature.
For a few seconds he overcompensated and, instead of subtly adjusting his course towards Verne’s location, the stunted flaps and ducts of fast-moving air at the rear of his triangular body that provided directional control pushed too hard against the water, causing him to spiral. But within a few seconds Tug had computed the important new variables of his underwater environment, the weight of the water molecules and the increased drag they caused on his sleek body.
‘TGT LRGST HEAT SIG,’ Jackson texted Tug.
‘B(~_^)D,’ replied the robot, his sensitive thermal-imaging system scanning the water ahead of him.
Tug’s view of the sea floor instantly changed. The aquamarine blue, shot through with shafts of sparkling white light, was replaced by almost total blackout. Jackson watched the same view on his handset, but it was nowhere near as clear as it would have been on the surface, as the salt and silt in the water were absorbing much of the red light from Tug’s emitter. But, as Tug was nearing Verne’s position, his tracking software locked on to the outlines of three faint shapes, automatically drawing a box round each.
