CHAPTER 57
By the time Andrew reached the bridge, the engines had already rumbled up to peak speed. Penny climbed out of the tank and looked back to see the waters behind them roiled into a raging froth by the propellers as they pulled away. Soon the sea in the area they had just left began to mound up as if some new continent was rising from its depths. Water roared down from the top of the emerging dome like a hundred Niagaras. As waves like rolling mountains surged toward them, Andrew brought the Valentina around to meet them head on. She knew why. They’d pitchpole if they tried to outrun them.
Chiffrey was half-crawling his way to the foredeck, satphone still in hand. Everyone else was clinging to whatever was nearest. In silent awe, they were lifted to the peak of the first wave as if in the hand of a god, then dropped like heroes found wanting into the trough below only to be carried up once again, forgiven.
The surface of the huge rounded mass burned with a cold fire. Lightning struck the dome, and leapt back above to clouds tinged with a pulsating green. Thunder crashed, but instead of rain falling, a phosphorescent glow blushed out along the tips of the waves all the way to the ship and up the masts. The whole sky took on a magenta cast, and an unexpected fragrance wafted through the air. Violets.
“My dream,” Malcolm said, a satisfied smile washing over his face. “Just as it was….”
The dome kept rising, widening out as if it would never stop until its sides abruptly curved under to reveal a slightly convex bottom festooned with crystalline structures in the center. Like titanic signal lights, they flashed in alternating hues of green and blue in a pattern just beyond Penny’s incomprehension. As it rose above the waves, water still poured off it in torrents, but the seas were beginning to calm. The largest waves had passed, and Andrew had once again brought the Valentina through intact.
“We are not under attack,” Penny heard Chiffrey yell into his satphone as the wind brought his voice to her ears. He cupped his hand around the mouthpiece. “Do you copy? Not under attack. Do you copy?” She raced past him down to the bow.
The dome made its way up so slowly she could barely tell it was moving. It hummed like a child’s top, and the deck beneath her feet vibrated in sympathetic resonance. A rosy hue played about the waves and on the Valentina’s mastheads. Though the time was near midnight, light from the luminescent waters shone bright as day. The seas had become relatively calm. Everyone was standing now, quietly watching as the dome floated up. When it was far above them, but still as easy to see as a second moon, it seemed to move away in every direction at once, and the sky all around it fell apart like a heat mirage. A brief instant of absolute silence fell over them all. Then came a slow boom, like the deepest thunder ever heard, that reverberated on and on. A torrent of silvery hailstones fell straight down into the sea in front of them then stopped as quickly as it had begun.
The sky, left empty, now seemed a poorer place.
The engines powered up slightly. Andrew was taking them closer to where it had emerged.
Seaweed strands, pulled up from the bottom, were floating everywhere. The sea was transformed into a phantasmagoria as thousands of fish skimmed along the surface, leaping out of the rosy fluorescence in crazed splendor. The gulls and other seabirds were finding their way back and, even though it was night, began to feast with abandon under the sky of a spectral day.
“Matthew!” Chiffrey said, suddenly remembering. He ran aft and up the steps to the tank’s observation platform. Penny followed him, though there was really no need. She sat down by the side of the tank and waited. Chiffrey stared into the empty waters of the tank as if he would somehow find an answer there.
“Lost him,” he said finally.
She didn't look at him, but replied in a whisper. “He’s gone. But not lost.”
Far From The Sea We Know Page 57
