The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  Known to the locals as ‘The Eye of Miami’, but to Marc and Kim as just "The Light," having cleared it he advanced the throttle a few more inches and the graceful sub accelerated. Marc was always edgy during this 30-knot, 10-minute run through shallow water for he was keenly aware of his ship's vulnerability on the surface due to her low profile in the water. He had no desire to suddenly find himself under the bow of a stray surface vessel. He kept track of the depth compensator as the slowly changing numbers on its digital face indicated the sea bed gradually dropping away from under the ship to ever greater depth. The sea streamed from the back of the VIKING as the glistening ship cut a white gash across its surface, leaving a mass of foam in its turbulent wake. Kim stood just behind his boss, also quietly watching the depth indicator. The numbers on the dial clicked slowly past 270 feet, hovered briefly at 283, bounced to 297 and finally crossed into the 300 range. Marc looked up at Kim and they both smiled. Their love of diving and adventure was mutual and they both savored the moment of severing contact with the surface, to plunge into the darkness of the unknown with its pledge of danger and thrills of discovery.

  Marc pressed the intercom switch and glanced at the screen showing the two men in the passenger compartment eagerly drinking in the scene outside their observation windows.

  "Going down, gentlemen," he informed them.

  Having become engrossed with the view outside their windows, they were mildly startled by Marc's voice. They both looked up at the two-way TV screen and quickly smiled at the prospect of leaving the surface to enter largely uncharted, unpredictable waters. Then they turned their rapt attention back to the panorama of life outside.

  Marc keyed in ‘zero’ ballast, then tripped a toggle switch on the control console marked "FLOOD". For the half-dozen seconds required for the ballast tank valves to open, nothing noticeably happened. Then there came a sound like water thundering into an empty tunnel. Swiftly the noise grew to a muted roar beneath Marc's feet and passed along the length of the sub as torrents of sea water cascaded into the already partially-filled ballast tanks. The weight of the water pouring into the tanks caused the sub to become much heavier and it swiftly disappeared beneath the surface leaving only the tall tail stabilizer knifing through the waves for a moment. Then it, too, vanished from sight.

  The only trace left on the surface was a thin trail of bubbles rising from the depths to burst against the ceiling of the sea. And then there was nothing. The VIKING had gone home.

  Among the inevitable straggle of fishermen lining the rocky bay shore of McArthur Causeway, one casually called it a day. He drove across to the beach side, tires singing on the metal grids of the bridge, and turned after seven blocks onto South Collins Avenue. In six blocks he crossed Harley Avenue and a block later dead-ended where he could see the channel through the buildings that were facing him. He watched as the bow wave of the VIKING marched in to beat against the beach. Unsnapping a holster on his right hip, he withdrew a tiny cellular telephone. Keying in a number, he let his eyes drift back to the distant surface of the channel and spoke one word into the phone. "Underway."

  Chapter 8

  As he dropped away from the surface, Marc Justin imagined that this is what it must be like to step through a mirror and pass beyond reality into the dark unknown beyond. And yet, he must constantly remind himself that this cold, dark world was just as real as the one above, a parallel reality far more lethal and unforgiving of mistakes. Not made for fragile humans. By the time the stabilizer, 40 feet above the level of the pilot's head, had submerged, Marc had already mentally detached himself from the surface world above and was involved in the tasks of piloting his ship. He watched the thin red line of the ballast indicator gradually slide down through the positive range toward zero, the neutral buoyancy he needed. As the red line reached zero, preset parameters slammed the tank valves shut, denying the sea entrance to the ballast tanks. The rumble from beneath the ship died away. With a three percent neutral buoyancy and modifications in drag reduction, the VIKING's nuclear powered turbines could push the almost weightless ship to speeds more than four times that of any other submarine in the world.

  Satisfied with the VIKING's trim, Marc advanced the throttle until the sub's speed neared seventy knots...better than eighty-five miles per hour. He noted a course of 98° degrees, or roughly northeast, and a depth of 317 feet. "Kim," he called to his assistant, "if you want to take it awhile, I'll show 'em around."

  Marc slid the chair back and got up. Kim settled himself, locked the chair forward and acknowledged "I have the helm." Marc nodded, crossed the room and turned at the door.

  "I’ll be back before we go over The Wall," he said.

  "Right, boss," Kim replied, eyes affixed on the instruments. ‘The Wall’, for their purposes, was a slot in the Bahamas between Chub Cay on the Berry Islands and the northern edge of Andros Island where the edge of the Continental Shelf plummets down Grand Bahama Canyon, dropping from 2,000 feet to 12,000 feet over a distance of a little over a hundred miles. The run between there and Bermuda would see another drop, down to 17,000 feet before the gradual rise as they approached Bermuda. With complete confidence in his assistant, Marc stepped through the door and headed for the observation room to conduct the tour of the ship he considered vital in case of emergency.

  Leaving the control room, Marc passed down the narrow hallway of the sleeping quarters and entered the observation room where Frank Sheppard and Ben Masters were intently watching the huge observation "windows." Momentarily unnoticed, Marc quietly crossed the room behind the two men. Reaching down to a small raised console between them, Marc depressed and locked a switch similar to that on a flashlight. The semi-darkness of 300 feet was suddenly illuminated, revealing shockingly clear water. The only indication of the sub's speed was minute particles suspended in the water rocketing past the windows. Neither man could prevent a gasp of surprise. Frank Sheppard pivoted quickly in his chair to look at Marc.

  "You startled me! I didn't hear you come in," he smiled. "That's a great view you've got out there," he inclined his head toward the window.

  "Even at the speed we're moving," Ben Masters added; then as an afterthought asked, "Say, just how fast are we running, anyway?"

  "`Bout 80 miles an hour," Marc replied casually.

  A look of shock blanketed Ben Master's face. "But," he looked incredulously at Marc, then at the window, and back at Marc, "but, I don't even drive my car that fast!" he sputtered.

  Marc smiled and hazarded a glance at Frank Sheppard who appeared impressed but unperturbed. "I'm sure you don't, Ben," Marc said, being careful not to bite his tongue which had inexplicably become entangled in his cheek.

  “I don’t understand how you can go that fast underwater,” Ben pressed. “I worked for a while in the fluid dynamics arena and it doesn’t seem possible. I mean, water’s a lot denser than air, so…”

  “Normally, Ben, that would be true,” Marc interrupted him. “But the VIKING isn’t ‘normal’. Her design incorporates a ‘workaround’ that uses two unique features. One lets us travel at up to roughly a hundred miles an hour. The other, when we turn it on, boosts that speed to about two hundred miles an hour. We only use it when we’re in a hurry.” The blank looks on both their faces and the fact that they were both scientists encouraged him to explain.

  “Every six months,” he said, “we run the VIKING through a kind of ‘dry dock’ where we give her a superhydrophobic polymer bath. Think of it as waterproofing, though it isn’t really. On a smaller scale, you can go down to your local building supply store and buy a product that’s been around for years. Glaco rain repellent. You spray an object with the first can, dry it, then spray it with the second can. Works like magic. Water won’t adhere to what you sprayed it on. It rolls right off it. The bath we immerse her in is a hybrid variation, but it works the same way. She ‘slides’ through the water with very little friction.”

  “Okay,” Ben countered, “what about the ‘second feature’ you me
ntioned. That lets you double the speed?”

  “Well, that’s a mechanical add-on,” Marc answered. “We installed a supercavitation nozzle at the VIKING’s bow that blows really tiny air bubbles out at high pressure. We control the size of the bubbles and the angle at which they’re injected. What it does is create one big air bubble along the hull of the ship called a ‘supercavitation envelope’. In other words, the ship is traveling through air instead of water, which drastically cuts down on drag reduction. By a factor of about 300, actually.”

  “I’ve never heard of that,” Frank said.

  “It isn’t really a new idea,” Marc admitted. “From the late ‘70s on, the Russians had a torpedo called the Shkval that achieved speeds of up to 230 miles per hour using supercavitation technology. We just improved on it and took it to a larger scale. So, with a polymer bath and a ‘bubble machine’, we can run like a scalded cat. And, when I said it isn’t really a new idea, I was referring to a Frenchie mathematician who came up with some of the basics back about the time the Liberty bell was being delivered to Philadelphia. If you have trouble going to sleep one night, look up ‘d'Alembert's paradox’.”

  "But what if we should run into something at that speed?" Masters pressed.

  With the back of his index finger, Marc stroked the spot under his chin where there always seemed to be a slight stubble of beard. He appeared to give serious consideration to Ben's question. He raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and finally looked intently at Masters.

  "How well do you swim?" he asked.

  Masters' already sallow complexion lightened by several shades. His Adam’s apple put Ichabod Crane's to shame. Marc couldn't hold it any longer. He burst out laughing, clapped a large hand on the man's thin shoulder and said reassuringly, "Ben, after you've had a look around the VIKING, I think you'll be as confident as I am that every possible safety precaution's been taken." In spite of his reassurances, Marc noted the cautious look of doubt on the engineer's face. He thought to himself that if anything could convince an engineer, a look at the VIKING's advanced structural design would. "I'd like very much to see the rest of the VIKING, Marc," Frank Sheppard spoke up. "Would you mind?"

  "Not at all. In fact, that's why I came back here, to show you around," Marc explained.

  "You mean right now?" Masters asked eagerly. Marc nodded in answer and smiled at the man's unrestrained enthusiasm.

  "I've been through this a good many times," Marc went on, " and I've probably developed a museum guides' spiel. So, if it gets a little too glib, or you have any questions at all, just interrupt me, okay?" They nodded.

  "Okay. From the top . . . first, this," his gesture encompassed the room about them, "is not a ‘room’. This is a ‘sphere’ ...number three sphere, to be precise." He inwardly smiled at their obvious puzzlement. "You see, this vessel is basically six round balls, or spheres, laid in a straight line, each one butting up against the others. The titanium hull outside acts like a vise, holding them solidly in place so that they can't shift around. And, of course, the hull also serves to streamline the whole conglomeration and to enclose the propulsion system toward the rear of the ship. For convenience's sake, I've numbered the spheres one through six, front to back. Number one is the control room, from where the pilot controls the ship; number two contains sleeping quarters for a crew of two plus four passengers; we're in number three right now, the passengers' observation sphere. Incidentally, the elevator over there" . . . they involuntarily looked at it . . ."is the only surface entry or exit from the ship; number four is a combination galley and lab; five is the nuclear reactor room ...pardon me, ‘sphere’...and six is the dive ‘room’, from where divers may leave and return to the ship while submerged or on the surface." He paused. "Now, does that help to orient you at all?" He looked at Masters who mutely affirmed it with a slow, concentrated nod of his head.

  Frank Sheppard said, "Well, I have a pretty poor memory, but I can count to six on a good day."

  "Okay," Marc acknowledged. "You've seen number three, then. Shall we move on?"

  They quickly followed him through the doorway into the next sphere.

  "Number four," he announced. The ‘room’ was divided into right and left halves, not by the walls of a passageway, but instead, where walls would have been, by floor-to-ceiling, foot-and-a-half-thick, see-through aquaria, complete with a collection of dazzling rare tropical fish, swimming lazily in the illumination of hidden spotlights. The result, combined with the warm, yellow gold decor, was the instant establishment of a camaraderie, heightened by cozy intimacy and excited by the illusion of seeing without being seen. The right half of the room as they entered was both kitchen and dining area; the left a lab. Both were lavishly equipped: the kitchen was designed to deliver prepackaged meals steaming hot in two minutes flat, with a menu that any shore based restaurant would envy; the lab contained equipment for physical, chemical, or biological oceanography plus electronics equipment so advanced that some of it wasn't even on the market. In fact, much of it was developed by Justin-owned companies and was still experimental.

  Frank Sheppard walked into the lab and slowly scanned it. He ran his hands lovingly over the gleaming equipment. He turned back to Marc and Ben Masters with a look of awe on his face.

  "I don't believe this lab!" he breathed. "Why, I don't even know what some of this stuff is and I've been in this field over twenty years!" Marcus Justin, pleased by the older man's response, promised, "We'll have to get together in here soon, then, and acquaint you with it."

  "Could we?" Sheppard asked.

  "Of course," Justin replied. He turned to Masters who was idly examining the fish in the lab ‘wall’.

  "Ben, I seem to recall that you've done some work in the nuclear reactor field."

  "Yes. Yes, I have," Masters replied, turning back to Marc. "Not extensively, of course. Mainly dealing with power plants for permanent undersea habitats…hospitals, oceanologies graduate schools, civilian projects, such as that."

  "Well, you should find number five sphere particularly interesting, then. It's the reactor room." Marc moved down the ‘hall’ toward the next doorway. Unlike the open, intrasphere doors they had encountered, this doorway was massive, framed by gray, heavy-looking metal- a door resembling the kind found on bank vaults. Though the door was presently open, Marc stopped. Releasing a latch behind the door, with an effort he swung it away from the wall to a partially closed position.

  He turned to the two men.

  "You'll see a message on the back of this door," he said.

  Frank Sheppard moved to one side so he could see it and read aloud: "WHEN RED LIGHT IS FLASHING, ENTRANCE TO THIS ROOM IS FORBIDDEN, UPON PENALTY OF DEATH!" He stepped back. "That's pretty strongly worded!" he accused.

  "Yes," Marc agreed as he pushed the heavy door back to the wall and latched it, "it is. But it's a fact, not a threat. In case of an emergency involving the reactor, these lead and stainless steel doors automatically seal off the room to avoid contaminating the rest of the sub. That red light over the door would be blinking. Anyone entering the reactor room...or caught in the room... at that time would be subject to a very painful, nasty death from exposure to radiation. "Of course," he added on a more hopeful note, "I expect no difficulty where the reactor's concerned. I'm merely telling you this for safety's sake. Should an emergency actually arise, there might not be time for explanations."

  "Indeed," Sheppard thoughtfully reflected.

  Marc passed on through the door, Masters close behind. Frank Sheppard followed a little more slowly, sobered by the conversation.

  The reactor room was blood red. Lushly carpeted throughout the sub, the only difference in the carpet of the various spheres was the color. Here in the very heart of the sleek vessel, from whence it literally derived its life, the carpet, as well as the rest of the interior of the sphere, was appropriately the color of blood.

  In the middle of the room was the reactor itself. Ben Masters pushed past Marc and in a few long-legge
d strides, reached it. He turned to Marc, obviously bewildered.

  "This can't be the reactor!!" he burst out, looking to Marc for confirmation.

  "It can and is," Marc assured him.

  "But it's not big enough. Why, this isn't even . . .," he paused, stepped back for a better look, "…it isn't even a tenth the size it ought to be!"

  "You're close, Ben. It's dimensions are only five feet, eleven inches high, not counting the ‘scram’ mechanism on top, and three feet, two inches long, and that includes the biological shielding from radiation," Marc informed the amazed engineer.

  Frank Sheppard interrupted. "I'll admit I'm ignorant where these gadgets are concerned, Marc. It's obvious that Masters there is impressed by the smallness of the thing. Is this good?"

  "Good?!" Ben Masters excitedly shot at Sheppard. "When you compare this with other existing reactors, it's a midget!"

  Marc smiled, amused at Master's out-of-character excitement.

  "Take the N. S. Savannah, the first nuclear powered commercial ship...it used to be on display in Charleston harbor, you know...of course, it's five or six times longer than this ship, but its reactor is thirty-five by fifty feet, plus the water, iron, and polyethylene shielding. Or take the Navy sub, the Skipjack. It's only about twice the length of the VIKING, and just its core vessel, where the nuclear fuel is contained is fifteen and a half feet high and seven feet in diameter." He looked at Marc. "How big is the reactor's core vessel, Marc?"

  "Nine and seven-eighths inches," Marc responded.

  Masters shook his head and looked again at the reactor with renewed respect.

  "Where did you get a reactor like this?" he asked.

  "It's on loan to us from Babcock and Wilcox of Lynchburg, Virginia. You'll recall they built the reactor for the N. S. Savannah you just mentioned. This reactor is still experimental, but we have a contract that provides that, if the reactor performs satisfactorily, it will be left in the VIKING free, as payment for use of the sub as a test vehicle. It was installed fifteen months ago and we have yet to find a flaw in its performance.”