by Bob Finley
Then he switched on the intercom.
"Trish, is Kim here yet?"
"Right here, boss," came Kim's voice over the intercom.
"Come in a moment, would you, Kim?" Marc said.
The door opened and Kim, already in uniform, came in.
"Gentlemen," he said, rising, "I'd like you to meet my assistant and crew, Kim Matsumoto."
The three shook hands.
"All ready?" Marc directed at Kim. Kim nodded briefly.
Marc again pushed the intercom button.
"Trish, did you find some uniforms that would fit?"
"Yessir, got `em right here."
"Alright, we're ready for them. Thanks."
She entered with two uniforms identical to the ones Marc and Kim wore. He took them and handed one to each of the scientists.
"Gentlemen, if you'll step down the hall to the locker room and change into these, we'll be ready to go aboard. Your clothing and valuables will be quite safe in the lockers."
He herded them into the hallway and indicated the locker room.
"We'll be at the dock out front. Trish will show you there when you've changed," Marc instructed them as he and Kim made their way toward the front entrance.
Chapter 6
The VIKING lay quietly in the clear water at dockside. The only civilian nuclear-powered submarine in existence, it incorporated the most advanced design propulsion and instrumentation to be found on any ship, civilian or military. But its 32 million dollar price tag didn't even dent the financial resources of its very wealthy owner, Marcus Justin. A man who considered research and experimentation, unencumbered by bureaucratic red tape, to be the basis of progress, his vigilance for new developments assured him first place in the race to explore and exploit the ocean's resources. Marc stood at the "bow" and looked down the 140 foot length of her brushed titanium hull with deep pride, for she was his creation from the first sketch to the last dollar.
Only the top third of the craft was above water, leaving sixteen vertical feet of the ship submerged.
Close by Marc, where conventionally the bow of the ship should have been, the top of a vast crystalline bubble gently bobbed in the breeze-ruffled water. On top, forty-four feet back from the bow, was the sliding hatch cover of the entrance to the massive vehicle. At the stern, even with two-thirds of the ship submerged, a huge vertical stabilizer towered thirty feet above the dock. On it was the Justin symbol which Marc also displayed on his uniform...the globe pierced by a large "J." The entire ship most resembled a huge wingless Boeing 747 down at sea.
A vibrant thrum, like that heard inside an electric power station, suddenly emanated from somewhere toward the stern of the ship. Kim, already aboard, was testing the propulsion system. White water belched from the bow and stern simultaneously, then, one by one, progressed along the sides as he tested the horizontal maneuvering thrusters. Then, looking remarkably like a whale, water burst from thrusters on top of the ship and rocketed 40 feet into the air. Some of the spray drifted forward and touched Marc's face. Standing directly in the sun, Marc welcomed the misty coolness.
A startled cry behind him caused him to wheel about just in time to catch the expression on Ben Master's face as most of the spray drifted down on him and Frank Sheppard as they approached the ship.
Barely suppressing a grin, Marc called out, "Sorry, Mr. Masters. Had I known you were there I'd have warned you." His glance fell on the twinkle in Frank Sheppard's eye and he turned quickly away to keep from laughing aloud. The water around the ship had stopped seething now, Kim having completed the testing.
"Does that thing always spit at strangers?" Masters asked, dabbing at his long face with a handkerchief.
"Kim was testing the propulsion thrusters to see that they're operating properly. I'm sorry I didn't see you in time to warn you," Marc, though amused, apologized.
"S'alright," Masters concluded with a slight wave of his hand. His gaze riveted on the offender.
"So this is the VIKING," he mused, partly to Justin, partly to himself.
Marc studied the man's face. He thought he detected, if possible, a look of excitement on it. His hopes rose a little. Perhaps he and this elusive wraith might yet find a common interest.
"Just a minute," Sheppard called, "if you don't mind."
Marc stopped and faced him.
"Not at all. What is it?" he asked.
"I think it’s time an understanding was reached. Uncle Sam's footing this bill so, technically, we're not paying passengers. And I, for one, would rather not be treated like one. So I suggest that we dispense with formalities and get on a first-name basis. I'm Frank," he punctuated his statement with a decisive nod of his head.
Marc looked at Masters. He nodded agreement and said, "Ben."
Marc smiled, also gave a brief nod, and added, "Marc." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the Viking. "And Kim."
"That's better," Frank Sheppard sighed. "Now I can relax."
Marc grinned as they followed him to the mobile passenger gangway down the dock opposite the sub's hatchway. As they reached the device, Marc stepped aside, swept his arm in the grand manner of a maître-d'-hotel, and said "Won't you join me?" The two men climbed the few aluminum steps up to the platform, followed by Marc Justin.
"Stand there and hold on," he indicated a meshed metal catwalk. Following instructions, they stepped into place and gripped the handrail. Marc flipped a switch on a small panel and there came the sound of an electric motor from beneath the platform. Gripping a lever in each hand, Marc pushed forward on one of them and the platform gave a lurch.
Manipulating first one lever, then the other, the ramp with the three men on it telescoped out over the ship and lined up with the entrance hatchway. When he was satisfied with its position, Marc left the controls and stepped off the ramp onto the small flat area around the ship’s hatch. He knelt, pulled up a recessed handle, and slid the door back on its track, revealing a circular hatch door underneath, with a four-pronged "dog" closure. He gave the dog a fast spin and the hatch abruptly popped open a couple of inches. Gripping the edge, he swung the counter-weighted three-foot door back out of the way. A flat, aluminum disc almost filled the space where a hole should have been.
"Who'll be first?" he asked of the two men.
"I'll go," Ben Masters replied eagerly, to Marc's mild surprise. He would have expected him to be a bit recalcitrant under unfamiliar circumstances.
"Alright," he replied. "Just step on that," he indicated the metal disc, “like Kim’s doing. It's a hydraulic elevator. Simply depress the button with your foot." Following Kim, Masters stepped on the platform and immediately began to sink from sight. Marc caught an expression of pleasure on his face as he disappeared. Momentarily, the elevator returned and Marc shepherded Frank onto the elevator, himself following in turn. Stopping the elevator's descent just inside, he closed and secured the hatch, then continued the descent. Through the clear Plexiglas walls of the tubular elevator shaft, Marc could see the two men below, Sheppard looking up at him and Masters, very much in character, drinking in the details of his surroundings, seemingly oblivious to all else.
Stepping from the elevator Marc showed the two men to their seats, switched on the color monitor allowing two-way communication between the passenger's observation room and the control room, and went forward to assume his responsibility of piloting the craft safely from the confining shallows of the harbor into the relatively safer depths of the open ocean.
Chapter 7
Marc Justin walked into the blue coolness of the control sphere. The morning sun splashed through the "roof" of the room and reflections of the breeze-stirred ripples on the bay’s surface, five feet above the level of Marc's head, danced crazily about the room. The deep blue carpet on the floor, the pilot's station with its high-backed, padded chair in metallic blue leather and matching instrument console, and "CommPuter" console of the same color against the back wall of the room, contrasted pleasantly with the clear green wa
ter outside. As if on cue, a school of three-inch-long blue hamlets swarmed toward him across the sandy bottom just beyond the glass wall of the control room, flashing their neon brilliance in the sun before abruptly dashing away. As he watched, they wheeled and sidled back, their curiosity insatiable.
As he entered, Marc saw that Kim was seated at the CommPuter paging through high resolution images of satellite weather updates.
"So, what do you think of the new toy?"
Kim glanced up briefly then immediately returned his attention to the screen in front of him.
"Response time is unreal. It gives me answers so fast I think it knows what I'm going to ask before I do!"
Marc leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look. "Resolution looks good," he observed.
"Huh! Good isn't the word. The new processors the shuttle jockeys installed for us last month makes this satellite data a thousand times better than it was before. Here, look." Kim's fingers danced over the keys. He hit the PrintScreen key and two seconds later a color print ejected. He scooped it up and handed it to Mark.
"Look at the detail!" He slid around so they could both see the print.
"See, the weather's clear until we get the other side of the Corner Seamount," Kim pointed at the print in Marc's hand. "Now watch this." He tapped in quad parameters, watched the image shift, then zoomed in 50% and hit PrintScreen. He handed Marc the print. "Bermuda, from ten thousand feet. Check the detail." He smiled. "Did I say detail?" He turned back and zoomed in to 90%. The printer slipped another color picture onto the desktop. Now it was Marc's turn to smile.
"This is like looking out the penthouse window of a downtown hotel," he mused.
"If he was standing just right, with a hundred percent zoom I could show you the name of the constable directing traffic at the corner by reading his nametag," Kim laughed.
"Were," Marc mused, still studying the print.
"Were, what?" Kim asked.
" ‘Were’ standing just right' , not ‘was’ ".
Kim grimaced. "Hey, where I grew up, spelling was easy. The most letters any word had in it was four!"
Marc smiled. "Looks like the weather's pretty good at the Bermuda rendezvous point. What's it look like further out?"
Kim keyed in coordinates for the Mid Atlantic Ridge and handed Marc another print. Marc grunted.
"Nasty storm. I'd hate to have to surface in that mess." He dropped the ominous print on the desk. "By the way, what do all these pretty pictures cost?"
Kim grinned evilly.
"Whadda you care, boss? You own the satellite network. Just keep thinking what everybody else is going to have to pay you who wants to use the system."
"And in the meantime, you get to play with the new toys," Marc observed.
"Part of the bennies. By the way...".
"Yeah?"
"You're gonna make some computer purists unhappy by naming this gadget a CommPuter."
Marc turned very deliberately and looked straight at Kim. "Oh? Why?"
Kim looked him in the eye. "To a couple of million very influential people who worship at the altar of the microchip, the word 'computer' is synonymous with Yahweh, and you're on sacred ground." He swiveled his chair slightly and smiled. "Once, in grad school, I made the mistake of calling my computer a 'computator'...you know, a cross between a computer and a calculator...I might as well have slapped my professor, from the look on his face. And my final grade for the course was mysteriously an entire letter grade lower than my test and exam grades had been. So, when I asked my professor about it, what do you think he said?"
"Run it through your 'computator"?"
Kim laughed. "Did you know my professor?" he accused.
"CommPuter's just a compression of two words, 'communication' and 'computer'.
"Nevertheless..."
Marc valued his associate's opinion and weighed it carefully. "When we get back, remind me to have Marketing have another look at it." Kim nodded.
Marc shook his head ruefully. "Have you cleared departure with Bay Control?" he asked.
"Right. Cleared for an eight-fifteen departure," Kim returned. Marc looked at his watch. It was eight-oh-five.
"Okay. Let's kick the tires and light the fires," he said.
He crossed the room to the pilot's seat. With his foot he depressed a lever at the base of the chair, releasing the lock, and slid the chair smoothly back on its track. He sat down in the chair and placed his feet on two leg-rest struts projecting out from the front of the chair. Intentionally installed on a slightly inclined plane, the chair then glided forward under its own momentum and locked into position. This placed him as close to the curving acriliglass wall in front of him as possible and allowed him a totally unobstructed view of the scene outside. Reaching to his left he pulled the x-shaped safety belt across his chest and lap, and snapped the two straps into place on the right edge of his seat.
On each of the wide arms of the seat was a panel of buttons. These controlled the ducted maneuvering thrusters necessary for delicate control of the massive ship in close quarters. Pushing down the buttons activated the various thrusters, or pushing down and forward locked them so that any combination could, if necessary, be held indefinitely without the inconvenience of manual attention. The further down a button was depressed, the more forceful was the jet of water from the thruster until, at full power one of these thrusters was capable of turning the ship quickly in a different direction, even at high speed. Were, in fact, used for that very purpose.
On the right arm, in front of the cluster of buttons, was a chromed T-bar, very similar to a floor-mounted gear shift in a sports car. It was mounted into a horizontal slot and, at present, rested in the "STOP" position nearest Marc.
In front of him stood a curving console with six monitor screens mounted linearly, and countless toggle switches, dials and gauges tall enough for convenience, yet low enough to allow unobstructed visibility on the starboard side.
Marc's right hand found a red switch labeled "Reactor" and flicked it to the "ON" position.
"Fire in the hole," he said to no one in particular.
In the reactor room far back in the ship, the control rods on top of the nuclear reactor smoothly but very slowly rose minutely and stopped. The digital readout above the reactor switch marked their progress as it crept to "25 %" power and automatically hovered there. This supplied Marc all the power necessary for low-speed operation. As the throttle on the chair arm was advanced beyond 25 %, the reactor would automatically regulate itself proportionately to the demands made on it.
Marc gave the instrument console a final glance and noted no discrepancy. One of the color monitors showed his two passengers in their seats. Another, it’s camera mounted high on the rear vertical stabilizer, gave him a bird's eye perspective of the length of his ship. He zoomed in slightly for a better view of the dock mounted mooring cranes, one forward and one aft. He brought up Trish on one of the monitors.
"Checking out, babe."
"You've got a couple of hot items pending here, y'know. Want me to reschedule them for next week?" she reminded him.
"Handle 'em," he told her.
"I might not do it like you'd do it," she cautioned.
"If you handle them like you handle me, they'll never know what hit 'em!" he grinned and glanced at the control displays.
"Hey!" she said softly.
He glanced up at the screen. Trish's face was sober.
"Ya'll be careful, y’ hear?"
Marc smiled.
"Always."
He pushed down the ‘External PA’ button.
"Stand clear of the ship," he announced to an empty dock.
"Stand by to cast off lines," he called with naval formality.
With his left hand on the panel of buttons on the chair arm, he simultaneously depressed and locked two buttons. Immediately two thrusters on the starboard side, nearest the dock, began pumping water, straining gently to push the ship away from the dock. Marc depressed the out
side public address system again.
"Casting off lines," he announced.
There came a thud from somewhere above as both mooring cranes simultaneously released the ship from their protective grips. The VIKING, freed of her shackles, crabbed sideways away from the dock. Marc allowed the starboard thrusters to push the ship a length and a half from her berth. Then he cut the stern thruster on the starboard side and brought up the one on the port side. The combination caused the ship to pivot to the left until it faced the opposite direction from the way it had faced while moored at the dock. Marc switched off all maneuvering thrusters. Placing his right hand on the throttle recessed into the right chair arm, he eased it forward. The huge ship began effortlessly to glide forward. He switched on the HolarScope and the screens in front of him came to life. Though the top part of the ship was above the surface of the sea due to buoyancy, the pilot's level of vision was nearly ten feet beneath the surface, making surface navigation impossible without the use of the HolarScope and the forward facing stabilizer monitor.
"Maneuvering," he announced.
Marc guided the sleek craft into the passageway between Lummus Island and Dodge Island, his home base. With ease born from many such passages, he piloted the VIKING through the half-mile-long channel between the two islands until he approached the point where it entered the main channel which would lead, in sequence, through Government Cut, Bar Cut, and Outer Bar Cut, finally surrendering the ship to the open sea. Obtaining final departure clearance from the Coast Guard station on Causeway Island, he steered his ship into the main channel. As he passed through Government Cut he gave a brief mental salute of farewell to Miami. Making the 45 turn to port he entered the nine-tenths-mile-long channel and, hugging the right wall of the man-made submarine canyon and, watching the stabilizer camera monitor, shortly spotted the white light of the 110 foot Fowey Rocks Light, flashing twice every ten seconds. Clearing that light symbolized the beginning of a new adventure to him and he always looked forward to it.
