The Victoria Stone

by Bob Finley

  Ben Masters and Frank Sheppard were observing the surrounding sea from their vantage point by the front ‘wall’. Ben asked, "Mark, are there usually this many sharks in this area?"

  Marc glanced up from the sonar screen to look at Masters. Then he looked beyond the acriliglass wall of the control sphere into the unobstructed clear blue water in front of the ship. A brief glance was enough. A silent patrol of at least a dozen medium sized sharks were rolling coldly curious eyes at the occupants of the VIKING. Suddenly, from below and behind the ship, a huge shark appeared scant inches from the four-inch-thick clear wall of the control sphere and glided menacingly, deliberately, by Frank and Ben. They both involuntarily took a quick step backward. The massive creature, fully 18 feet long, focused instantly on their movement. For a half-second it made no movement except to coast silently forward, watching. Then with an almost imperceptible flick of it’s great tail it shot away from the ship, disappearing majestically into the blue haze below them.

  "What was that ?" Masters exploded shakily.

  "Great White," Marc explained, gazing below the ship at the spot where it had disappeared. "Probably the most aggressive shark in the sea…and," he added ruefully, "probably the one that accounts for more swimmer's and diver's deaths than any other."

  Ben Masters, recalling the cold-blooded stare of the huge beast just feet away, felt a shiver run through him.

  "Why the rush hour congestion, though?" Frank interjected.

  "Two reasons, probably," Marc explained. "The most obvious is the time of day...sundown is suppertime. You can expect the most shark activity at dawn and dusk, though, of course, in between times, they're always unpredictable."

  "What's the other reason?" Frank inquired.

  "Well, sharks are curious critters. We've noticed a lot of times they're attracted by a sound or smell. These," he indicated with a sweep of his hand, "might have been attracted by the cavitation of water when we braked or to the sound of our jet turbines, or maybe even something about the ship we can't hear. Plus,” he added, “we’re right at the edge of where deep water shoals to shallow water. Kind of like hawks or ravens hanging suspended just off the edge of a cliff.”

  "What if one should...ram this glass wall?" Masters queried.

  "It's pretty strong," Marc smiled. "But, we're equipped to handle most any threat from," his glance took in the milling pack outside, "those sharks out there to . . . say, a big bull whale in heat."

  He reached up over his head and swung down a sinister looking black box on a swiveling arm. A circle of metal prongs protruded from its front. Neither Ben nor Frank had noticed it before.

  "What's that?" Ben's curiosity was quickly piqued.

  "It's an ultra-low frequency sound transmitter," Marc told him.

  "What does it do?" Ben pressed.

  "With a 2/5 of a second burst of sound from this," he patted the cold metal, "any average-sized shark will die an almost instantaneous and very painful death. The larger the creature, the longer the burst. But a three-second exposure to this sound beam is enough for anything, no matter how big."

  Ben Masters, engineer, stood in awe. "I've never heard of the existence of a weapon like this," he ran his fingertips hesitantly over the device.

  "The original working model was produced in a French lab over sixty years ago. But for some reason, no one ever capitalized on it... until I bought the patent rights and turned it over to my engineers for miniaturization and refinement."

  "Then this is a miniature of the original?" Ben asked.

  "Not really," Marc replied. "This is right much smaller than the one we bought the rights to, but the real miniature version is a waterproof pistol worn in a holster on a diver's hip. It's a lot more protection than a spear gun or a ‘bangstick'." Marc glanced at his watch. It was five of seven. A frown of irritation creased his face. He intensely disliked people who were late for appointments.

  "Any radio contact?" he tersely inquired of Kim.

  Kim gave a shake of his head without looking up. Marc glanced at the sonar indicator, hoping for a blip. Nothing.

  A tense foreboding began to build in him. He walked uneasily around the console and planted himself near the glass wall of the sphere, staring moodily at the menacing, darting forms of the sharks outside. He barely noticed the muted bursts of the station-keeping jet thrusters.

  He had no way of knowing that a pale blue single engine plane had appeared on the horizon, coming out of the lowering late afternoon sun. The droning of its engine was the only interruption in the drowsy vastness of the empty sea. From two thousand feet the pilot scanned the ruffled surface of the azure desert below.

  "I don't see any sign of your contact," he called over the noise of the engine.

  His passenger in the jump seat, grotesquely garbed in a red jump suit and bulky parachute pack, also wore large rubber swim fins and a MARC I lung strapped on the front of the jump suit. The unreal appearance of the figure was topped off by a helmet completely covering the head with a smoked glass visor pulled tightly down over the face. An air hose coupled the helmet to the air lung.

  "Are you sure this is where I'm supposed to be dropped?" the ponderous figure called, in a voice muffled by the helmet and visor.

  The pilot nodded his head vigorously. "30 seconds dead ahead," he yelled. "I'd stake my life on it!"

  "The question is, would you stake my life on it?" shot back the figure in the jump seat, leaning forward to peer through the windscreen.

  "I guarantee this is the place you're supposed to be. What I don't understand is why. Are you sure you don't want me to make a few passes after you hit to make sure you're O. K.? You're a long way from a hot tub," he urged.

  The helmeted head gave a shake.

  "Might call unhealthy attention to me," came the reply.

  The pilot gave his passenger a long hard look, shook his head, and yelled, "What's ‘unhealthy’ is jumping out that door! We’re seven miles off the coast. Other than us, there’s nothing else out here."

  The helmet slowly swiveled to give him a dark, unblinking stare.

  "Okay, it's your burial at sea." He shrugged, jabbed his finger at the sea below, and called "Ten seconds. Stand by!"

  The figure, with ungainly grace, maneuvered around in the seat, forced the door of the aircraft open, and assumed a squatting stance in the open door. A muffled shout came from the helmeted form. The pilot leaned closer, screwed up his eyes in an effort to hear better and yelled, "What? I can't hear you!" This time he faintly caught the words "good roll" and nodded affirmatively. He checked his watch, looked vainly below once more for a sign of life, then reached over and gave the figure in the open door two staccato slaps on the back. Simultaneously, he wheeled the aircraft into a hard right bank and cut power. The combined effort of the suited figure and the heeled-over angle of the plane was like a catapult. The suddenly empty doorway slammed shut from wind pressure and the pilot was alone. For just a moment he wondered why someone would jump out of a perfectly good airplane in the middle of the ocean. But he had no intention of letting curiosity endanger the roll of cash in his pocket. He throttled his engine to full power and, without glancing back, turned the craft into the sun for the ten mile trip back to the airport on Bermuda.

  The small red dot in the sky streaked silently, face down and spread-eagled, toward the sea. For long moments nothing happened. Then, at eight hundred feet, something red and white streamed upward above the plummeting figure. It quickly became a long thin thread and then, with an audible crack, abruptly blossomed into a parachute. The cargo beneath it pendulumed violently to and fro and then made a large white splash on the otherwise unmarred blue surface of the sea.

  Marc, standing in the tense quietness of the control sphere was startled by a sudden explosion at the surface only yards in front of the sub. All heads in the room jerked upwards toward the mushrooming cloud of air bubbles. The sharks, of one accord, instantly scattered to a temporarily safer perimeter. In a millisecond a figure in
red burst feet first through the cloud of bubbles. As the bubbles began quickly to dissipate, Marc glimpsed the unmistakable sight of a parachute settling onto the surface. The figure, now nearly twenty feet underwater, gave a sharp slap on the chest release and deftly slipped out of the ‘chute harness. With a practiced movement the figure, still trailing bubbles from the surface, rolled face down and flipped the MARC I from chest to back. The weirdly-helmeted figure was still engrossed in adjusting its helmet when the first shark knocked it end over end on a "scratch and sniff" test run. A sudden jolt of awareness shot through Marc like an electric charge.

  "Zap 'em, Kim!" Marc yelled. He pivoted quickly without another word and took the raised threshold of the door like a low hurdle runner.

  Kim quickly swung the low-frequency sound ‘cannon’ into position from its overhead storage, unlocked and shoved the pilot's chair back out of the way with his legs to give himself standing room and, sighting quickly, squeezed off a rapid sequence of bursts at a fourteen foot hammerhead that was intently locked in on its victim like a homing torpedo. In the heat of the moment, he led the attacking shark by several feet with the first few bursts, allowing the shark to run into the line of fire. As the first two bursts hit, the shark violently veered away from its intended meal and went into an out-of-control right bank that would have carried it under and thirty feet below Kim's feet. From his vantage point, looking almost directly down on the shark's back, Kim took deliberate aim at the shark's head and squeezed off one shot at the precise spot he knew the auricular lobes of the beast's two foot wide brain to be in. The physical effect of the direct hit was that the part of the brain that translated nerve messages into muscle coordination vibrated so violently from the ultra-low frequency sound that the shark's brain literally shook itself to bits in a tiny explosion of tissue and cartilage. With a final, spasmodic jerk of its head, the ugly hammerhead did a slow barrel roll and dropped away from the frenzied scene, head down and quivering toward the darkness below.

  "Another one!" Frank Sheppard barked urgently.

  Kim tore his gaze from the sinking shark and quickly picked up the advancing menace in his sights. Instead of going straight in for the kill, this smaller tiger shark started a tight turn around the now terrified figure in the water. As it wheeled intently around, Kim scored five shots on the exposed white belly, successfully exploding the brute's heart and vital organs. It violently jackknifed, then snapped out rigid again and bore straight in for the kill. Kim stood horrified. With the shark directly between him and the vainly backstroking figure in the water, he couldn't safely fire. The tiger swiftly closed the distance and struck the red-garbed victim in the left shoulder. Then an odd thing happened. Instead of grabbing its victim like a bulldog shaking a ragdoll, the shark merely shot past in an unveering path. Fifty feet beyond, it slowly stopped swimming like a clock running down and, with a final weak flick of its tail, slowly began to spiral downward into the depths.

  Kim was surprised to find that he was holding his breath. He let it out uncertainly.

  "What was that all about?" Ben asked as he stared at the obviously uninjured diver above them.

  "That," Kim replied weakly, "was the equivalent of a dead man walking!"

  Both men looked incredulously at Kim.

  "I've seen a shark, in a feeding frenzy, eat its own intestines, not knowing that it was killing itself," he explained.

  Just then, a swimmer, hastily clad only in underwear briefs, mask, and fins, and with a pistol on his hip, stroked powerfully out from under their feet, headed flat out for the frightened diver hanging just under the surface. In a flash Kim recognized the powerful, bronzed figure.

  "Marc!" he shouted.

  Then, picking up his lost cool, Kim purposefully swung the "cannon" to the ready position.

  "Ben! Frank!" he barked, "help me keep a close watch for sharks!" Ben moved to the opposite ‘corner’ of the room while Frank remained where he was.

  "If you see one peel off, sing out!" Kim called.

  Marc had reached the unfortunate swimmer and was gesturing to follow him back to the sub. Grabbing the figure by the arm, he half-towed it for several feet until the person seemed to find the ability to kick. Then Marc turned and made directly for the sub with the diver hard on his heels. Kim alertly watched their progress while keeping an eye on the jumble of sharks attracted by the dying thrashes of those he'd killed. Marc and the red-clad diver were only twenty feet away and slightly below Kim, headed for the diver's elevator in number six where Marc had entered the water, when Kim saw it. The big White was coming like an express train out of the deep twilight below in a straight line beyond and below Marc. Ben Masters spotted it a half-second later.

  "There!" he yelled, "There!" jabbing his long bony arm helplessly and doing a little jig of frustration.

  Sheppard's head snapped around. "It's the same one we saw earlier!" he breathed.

  Kim grabbed a microphone. His voice rang out clearly through the external speakers.

  "Marc! Behind you! Six o'clock! You're in my line of fire!"

  Marc Justin whirled abruptly to face the onrushing white shark as it bore in straight as an arrow with one obvious deed on its tiny brain. Realizing that there wasn't time to get both himself and his defenseless charge out of Kim's line of fire, he roughly heaved the diver behind himself. With a swift, practiced movement he drew the pistol from its holster and, gripping it with both hands to steady himself, aimed it pointblank at the charging shark. In less than two seconds, the beady-eyed projectile had closed the distance between them to no more than thirty feet. "Fire!" Kim yelled into the microphone. The tensed figure held steady.

  "Fire!" Kim almost screamed in frustrated anguish. He could see the massive gaping mouth as the shark drove home its kill at forty m.p.h.

  In the last seconds, Kim saw Marc's arms twitch ever so slightly and the gun prescribed a slight upward arc as Marc fired on sustained automatic directly into the gory slit of a mouth and pierced the brain through the massive layers of cartilage in the deep upper recesses of the monster's throat. At the last instant, Kim fleetingly glimpsed the wicked eyes go blank. There was a tremendous impact, throwing all three men in the control room off balance, as three thousand pounds of armor-plated muscle slammed into the VIKING.

  Kim scrambled to his feet but his boss and the unidentified diver had disappeared. Afraid to look, Kim switched on the ventral, aft-scanning remote camera. In a second, he grinned broadly. The TV camera showed the two would-be meals just reaching the safety of the dive elevator far astern. He switched off the camera and broke for number six sphere. As he entered the air lock, the two dripping divers were just reaching room floor level as the elevator plucked them safely from the sea. Marc helped the diver to a chair on the perimeter of the room, then collapsed in one himself. "Get his gear off, Kim," he gasped as Kim entered the chamber.

  Kim expertly snatched the safety release mechanism loose, freeing the breathing device from the slumped diver. But he fumbled with the unfamiliar helmet. The diver brusquely pushed his hands away and sat up. Popping a snap loose on the bottom edge of the darkly-smoked helmet visor, the diver slid it up and out of the way.

  "Allow me," said a voice from inside. And Kim found himself, still bent over, peering into the most beautiful pair of green eyes he'd seen in a very long time. For the longest moment there was an electric silence in the room, the only discernible sound that of water dripping from the two divers' bodies. Then Marcus Justin very deliberately rose from his chair and came to face the diver still sitting on the fold-down wall seat.

  "Would you mind removing that helmet?" he asked very quietly. With one hand, the figure gripped the top of the visor opening and slowly slid the helmet off, causing dark, gleaming hair to cascade down around the shoulders of her jump suit.

  "Do you mind if I ‘remove’ this, too," she indicated the jump suit. Without waiting for an answer, she stood and quickly unzipped the wet uniform, allowing it to drop in a pile around her feet. Free
ing her feet of the swim fins, she stepped lithely out of the jumbled heap. With a quick toss of her head, she brought her tousled hair under control. It took Marc entirely too long to raise his eyes from her feet to her face.

  Offering her hand, she smiled warmly and said, "I'm Janese Cramerton."

  Marc automatically took the proffered hand. Then, half to himself, he muttered, "J. Cramerton," recalling the obviously inadequate telegram in his office. She nodded.

  "Dr. Janese Cramerton," he reiterated, this time more strongly.

  "You…said that," she smiled even more.

  "A woman?" he asked incredulously.

  "How long have you been at sea, sailor?" she asked in a husky voice, eyes dancing.

  He realized he was still holding her hand. He let go.

  "I'm not equipped on this mission for a woman!" Having found his voice, it now rose in protest.

  "Apparently the Secretary of the Navy thinks you are," she parried. "But don't let your inadequacies bother you. I brought my own equipment," she smiled wickedly.

  Marc straightened, now more sure of himself.

  "You don't understand. I have no idea what we're getting into here, but there's a good chance that it won't be very pleasant...and it could be very dangerous."

  "Captain Justin...that is, since you haven't had the courtesy to introduce yourself, I must assume you're Captain Justin...I am a qualified and highly trained scientist, asked specifically by my...and your...government to participate in this mission. I designed and installed the acoustic transceivers on the MARS III vehicle and went through three months of sea trials aboard her. If there's something wrong with her equipment, I'm the one who'll have to fix it. As far as I'm concerned, you and your ship are just my taxi. I have every intention, not only of remaining on this ship, but of seeing this assignment through to its fulfillment...either with you, or in spite of you. Now, if I may be allowed quarters and a change of clothing, I'll slip into something a little less comfortable."