Monster: Tale Loch Ness

by Jeffrey Konvitz

  She looked at the note pad on her seat. She had scrawled down the license number of the van. At the very least, she was determined to find out something about its occupants. She would do it tomorrow.

  Scotty looked out the fourth-floor window of Travis House. He could see Inverness Harbor below. Beyond, the Black Isle Bridge.

  Sunday afternoon, navigation was light.

  He chewed through the end of a new cigar, his attention recalled by Dr. Rubinstein, who had gruffly cleared his throat.

  "Here's a representational graphic," Dr. Rubinstein said, pointing to an Inverness Firth Navigational chart on the wall.

  Scotty moved closer. They were in the Travis House attic, which Scotty had set up as an alternative headquarters to their offices at Geminii base, where they could work, free from Geminii oversight.

  "You'll notice the flags," Dr. Fiammengo said. "They represent each of the dives already made."

  They had established five dive teams to explore the Inverness Firth for the cavern entrance. Dr. Rubinstein had drawn up the suggested dive points. It had been over a week since the first dive.

  "Has anything looked promising?" Scotty asked.

  "Not really," Dr. Rubinstein replied. "One team of divers picked up some current anomalies." He pointed to the chart. "But they proved to be red herrings."

  Scotty turned to Dr. Fiammengo. "Did you get the quake seismic material?"

  She held up a looseleaf notebook. "All that was available. All the Richter readings. We spent yesterday going over them. It doesn't seem promising. All the known faults have had significant sesmic activity. If there's an offshooting unknown geologic fault that's hollowed out, it would have to be seismically inactive, and that's unlikely."

  Scotty licked his lips; they were tension dry. "I take it the land work has also been unproductive."

  "Totally," Dr. Rubinstein said.

  "Damn," Scotty cursed.

  "Where do we go from here?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.

  "We continue to look," Scotty answered. "Unless you both tell me it makes sense to go ahead with the snatch without finding the creature's access tunnel."

  Dr. Rubinstein shook his head. "Based on your concerns, Whittenfeld's concerns, Geminii's concerns, no."

  "You're not concerned about the drill ship and the lives of the men?" Scotty asked, cuttingly.

  "Of course, I am, and I resent that inference every time you make it."

  "It's not an inference. It's a fact. And I don't give a shit if you resent it or not!" Damn! He was doing it again. He'd promised himself he would deal with the researchers and even Whittenfeld as if he were pleased to have joined them in the hunt. It made sense. He had a better chance to see the trap scheme through to fruition if he didn't rock the passengers in the boat too hard. But it was difficult, and there were times he just couldn't hold in his resentment, anger, impulses.

  "Scotty," Dr. Fiammengo pleaded. "We're scientists. There's no way we could have allowed this opportunity to pass. You detest us. I know. But if we had done things any other way, your way, we would never have had the opportunity we have now, the opportunity to capture the creature."

  "It is a beast!" Scotty suddenly snapped, the image rocketlng into his head out of nowhere. "The beast!"

  "All right. A beast. The beast. But it's the greatest discovery in the history of science. Legend come to life. And we are going to catch it. Catch it for the world. It will be our accomplishment. Yours as well. You realize that or you wouldn't have decided to help. And we promise you, no one will be hurt."

  "Beyond those who've already died."

  "If I could bring them back, I would."

  What's the use, Scotty thought. "We'll continue to look," he said.

  Dr. Rubinstein poured himself a glass of water.

  "You're sure the cavern exists?" Scotty asked.

  "Absolutely," Dr. Fiammengo said. "It has to."

  Scotty left the room and returned several minutes later holding two reams of charts, which he placed on the table.

  "Let's try these wiggle and variable-density seismic sections," he suggested. "The ones we use to locate petroleum and gas traps."

  "How can they help?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.

  "They're compiled by measuring the rebound angle and speed of sound waves introduced to the ground and reflected off underlying formations. The measurements help us determine the depth to and nature of the formations. If the sound source penetrates an air interface, we should pick it up due to a decrease in sound velocity."

  "Why didn't we look at these before?" Dr. Rubinstein asked.

  "Near-surface readings aren't very accurate."

  "Then why look now?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.

  "A thought occurred to me. What if our theoretical cavern did not run transversely near the surface but proceeded like a roller coaster? We might suddenly have an air interface at several thousand feet, exactly where there shouldn't be any, and it might just have been overlooked on the sections."

  "How do we go about it?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.

  "I'll put two of our senior geophysicists on it. I'll study the charts, too. In the meantime, we'll continue with the dives and surface work and get the trap into position."

  "What if the seismic charts show nothing?" Dr. Rubinstein asked, concerned.

  Scotty expelled a whoosh of breath. "We'll face the problem when we come to it."

  They returned to the ground floor.

  "Did we overlook anything?" Dr. Fiammengo asked as they prepared to leave.

  "No," Scotty replied. "I'll call you as soon as we've analyzed the information."

  A summons from Scotty Bruce came the following day. The researchers immediately drove to Geminii base. Scotty's office was inundated with charts.

  Scotty looked visibly tired; he'd had little sleep.

  "Is the news good?" Dr. Rubinstein asked as he admired the ivory elephant, still on the shelf.

  Scotty opened a map of the Inverness region.

  "This is the Inverness area between Loch Ness and the Inverness Firth. As you can see, few areas were left unmapped. No matter how the cavern might run, somewhere along its oourse it would have to have crossed one of our seismic grids." He pointed to the charts. "We pored over these things like bookworms."

  "And?" Dr. Fiammengo asked, expectant.

  "Nothing!"

  "Then you think it doesn't exist?" Dr. Rubinstein questioned, disheartened.

  "I didn't say that. I said these charts don't show it."

  "Could you possibly have missed it?"

  "I certainly could have. However, there's less of a chance the geophysicists did."

  "How accurate are the soundings?"

  "There's room for error."

  "Then we continue to look?"

  "Yes. We sink the trap. And we continue to look."

  Mary MacKenzie arrived at constabulary headquarters shortly before noon. Detective Chief Inspector MacKintosh was waiting for her. She gave him the van's license number and asked if he could trace it and discover whatever he could about the identity of the owner, or as she suspected, the renter. He asked for a reason. Council business, she replied.

  She left the building moments later, still bombarded by the questions that had continuously plagued her since the day before. Rolling in bed through the night, she'd reviewed her suspicions, the incidents that had raised her hackles. Paranoia? Maybe. A manifestation of her excessive zeal, the disease Scotty had so bluntly attributed to her? Panic in the face of an obviously dying relationship? Jealousy? Maybe those, too. Christ, there was little reason for her to have focused on the van. If she had catalogued suspicious vehicles in Inverness, even those near Travis House, she would have had a notebook full of license numbers. But something again had bothered her.

  There was no use beating it to death.

  MacKintosh would supply answers soon.

  Chapter 33

  The day dawned pleasantly.

  The Magellan lay still in the water.

  Four
large tugs churned around the drill ship's bow several hundred yards away. Behind them, attached to drag lines and supported by pontoons, was the trap.

  It looked like a colossal black arachnid.

  Bobbing on the water between the drill ship and the command barge were four yellow buoys. The trap would be set between them.

  The three sonar tugs swept their sectors.

  Scotty was on the Magellan's drill floor. Whittenfeld, Lefebre, and Spinelli were on the forward helipad watching the trap's progress. As far as Spinelli and even Foster knew, Scotty had returned to the fold voluntarily and enthusiastically.

  "You know what Red would have said?" Grabowski remarked as he and Nunn moved with Scotty.

  "It's a goddamn waste of time and money!" Scotty suggested.

  "That's right," Nunn observed; he and Grabowski had just been briefed.

  "He would have been wrong," Scotty added.

  They watched the tugs swing around.

  "There's a hell of a lot that can go wrong here," Grabowski declared.

  "I'm aware of it," Scotty said.

  "You're telling us something," Nunn charged, smiling obliquely.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Your tone of voice. The message is clear. Don't ask too many questions, it says!"

  "Sorry, but that's the way it has to be right now. You'll get a full rundown before any attempts. For the time being, though, just go about your jobs and keep your mouths shut."

  Whittenfeld and Lefebre, who had left the helipad, appeared below them.

  "We're ready," Whittenfeld called.

  Scotty climbed off the drill floor and joined Whittenfeld and Lefebre in a launch.

  The launch pilot maneuvered the craft away from the drill ship and slid it parallel to the trap, which had nearly been set into position.

  "Are those the cameras?" Whittenfeld asked, pointing toward bulges on the spokes.

  "Yes," Scotty replied. "There are sixteen, two set on every other spoke. However, we changed camera models. The plans assumed standard water conditions, and we damn well know that's not the case here. We've substituted Hydro TC-125-SITs, which have very high resolution at very low light levels. All but two of the cameras are Hydros. The other two are Rebikoff color underwaters."

  "And the sonar systems?" Whittenfeld asked; he'd made it plain that the responsibility for construction lay with Mr. Bruce and had therefore involved himself in the prep only sparingly.

  "Just as the plans specify. There's passive and echo ranging inside and out. We'll know the moment something approaches and then enters the jaws."

  The launch drew closer. Set at water level were the ballasts. There were four main ballast tanks for submersion and surfacing and several sets of smaller tanks for trimming and depth control. Four spools, two each at either end of the trap base, were all part of an ingenious anchoring system. The trap's four anchors would be cemented into the loch walls, much like the anchors of the Magellan. As the trap descended and ascended, the anchor lines would be spun in and out in order to keep the trap in a fixed position, held taut.

  In addition, the four tugs would maintain connections, assuring additional horizontal stability.

  Whittenfeld pointed toward the rear center of the trap. "The speakers?"

  "Yes," Scotty said. "We've increased the amplitude range, too." He pointed to the top of the spokes. "There are the clamps. Once we're sure the trap has closed around the creature, we'll activate the mechanism, which will bind the opposing spokes."

  "What if the creature doesn't move into the trap?" Lefebre asked.

  "It will," Scotty answered.

  He stared at the two men, now fully aware of their backgrounds, the bond between them. He also had a good idea of what made them tick and how the beat was anything but predictable and sane. Lefebre, the trained murderer, Whittenfeld, the obsessed manipulator of lives. They made him sick and angry.

  The launch pulled up to the barge. They boarded and entered the command cabin. Captain Harrigan, Dr. Rubinstein, and Dr. Fiammengo were inside.

  There were no other technicians on board.

  "We were just discussing the tie-in of the barge to the trap," Dr. Rubinstein said.

  "When we arrived at the right time," Whittenfeld declared, turning to Harrigan. "Did you review the operational orders with the other tug captains?"

  "This morning," Harrigan said.

  "How long until you're operational?" Whittenfeld asked.

  "Two more days," Dr. Fiammengo advised, injecting herself into the conversation.

  "The tie-in?" Lefebre inquired.

  "It will also take two days," Dr. Rubinstein said. "We plan to begin first thing in the morning. The end spokes will be attached first. The electrical crews will make the power connections; then we'll follow with the television and sonar teams and, finally, anchor and inspection divers. No, everything has been covered in detail. Everything is timed and scheduled. It should go like clockwork."

  "You sure this will work, doctor?" Whittenfeld asked.

  "It will work!" Dr. Rubinstein replied, brimming with confidence.

  Dr. Rubinstein began to explain the systems, particularly the computer and its associated display units. Dr. Fiammengo joined. Whittenfeld listened carefully. Lefebre seemed distracted.

  Scotty just watched.

  * * *

  The telephone rang. Several times. Jolted from sleep, Scotty placed the receiver to his ear.

  Sounds were garbled.

  He turned on the table lamp. The windows were black. He consulted his alarm clock. Three A.M.

  "Okay, Foster," he said, rubbing his eyes, clearing off cobwebs. "Say again."

  Foster's voice barked out of the phone. "They had a breakdown at Carrbridge."

  Scotty sorted impressions. Carrbridge. The new exploratory well. Twenty-two miles east of Loch Ness. "What kind of breakdown?" he asked.

  "Loss of circulation!"

  The words invoked terror. The closed circulation of drilling mud had been interrupted. Some of the mud was disappearing from the well below ground, and the down pressure was obviously being reduced.

  "Did they blow out?" he asked.

  "No, but they shut down. Whittenfeld's on his way to base. You're needed, too. There's a chopper on call."

  He climbed from under the covers. His clothes were next to the bed, thrown over a chair. He began to put them on.

  "Why'd they lose the circulation?"

  "Don't know. You'll have to ask them."

  Scotty dropped the phone, finished dressing, left the house, drove quickly to the Geminii base, and proceeded directly to the roof.

  A helicopter was already primed.

  "Take her up," Whittenfeld cried after Scotty had climbed inside and the door had been shut.

  "What do you have?" Scotty asked, huffing, exhausted. His

  shirt was askew; he'd buttoned it incorrectly in the rush.

  "Just what you have."

  The helicopter flew eastward into the black sky. They watched points of light recede into darkness. Several minutes after liftoff, floodlights appeared below. They'd reached the well site.

  The pilot landed the chopper. They climbed off. The Carrbridge company manager was there to meet them. The well was a beehive of confusion.

  "What the hell's going on here?" Whittenfeld asked, visibly perturbed.

  "We lost mud circ," the manager answered.

  "How bad?" Scotty asked.

  "Total."

  "Why?"

  "We're not sure," the manager said; he was very agitated. "We were at eight hundred feet. There was no sign of abnormal pressure, and we were in an extremely consolidated formation."

  "There's been no loss of drilling mud before?" Scotty asked. "Even small quantities?"

  "No. It's all been very hard stuff. We didn't even find unconsolidated formations in the shallow part of the bore. And no fractures."

  They walked to the well; there was some minor damage to the drilling assemblage. Most of the cre
w was clear of the derrick.

  "What about injuries?" Scotty asked.

  "Cuts and bruises," the manager replied.

  Scotty looked around. "Let me see the mud and bit records."

  The manager fetched the records. Scotty examined them in the bright glare of the floodlights and asked several more questions. The manager fired out answers.

  "What do you think?" Whittenfeld asked after Scotty had reviewed all the parameters.

  "I think we punctured into an underground cavern!" Scotty replied.

  Whittenfeld looked to the company manager, who nodded indecisively.

  "Look at the pump rates," Scotty said. "The other parameters. The loss of all the mud. The lack of gas or other fluids. No kick. Hell, we punctured a big space filled with air."

  "What now?" the manager asked.

  Scotty called for the well-site geologist. The geologist confirmed they had crossed no abnormal pressure zones. Nothing that would cause any problems.

  "Pull the drill pipe!" Scotty ordered. "We may have our cavern!"

  "But we're in Carrbridge. Nowhere near the Inverness Firth."

  "I know!"

  The rig crew began preparations to pull the drill pipe and shut in the well.

  Scotty collared the manager. "Do we have the ability to ream out a new hole so that I can get down in there? Say to forty-six or forty-eight inches in diameter?" They couldn't use the old hole; casing had already been inserted and cemented.