The Krone Experiment (16 page)

“That’s absurd,” retorted the officer,
“nothing moves that fast,” but his ears heard the noise and his
eyes read the screens; his shaken voice belied the conviction of
his words. He stepped quickly to the ship’s phone.

Washington began expertly to assimilate the
flow of information from the panel before him. He switched the left
screen for a brief moment to the target noise indicator display and
mumbled to himself, “white noise, no sign of a screw frequency.” He
switched the screen to the target data and track history mode, fed
from the computer memory. “Now at three thousand meters,” he sang
out. The noise from the speaker grew steadily. The knot in his
stomach tightened with each fraction of a decibel. He reached to
turn down the volume and spoke over his shoulder.

“It’s not coming right at us. It should pass
us about eleven hundred meters off the port bow.”

The duty officer repeated the message to the
captain.

They listened, unmoving, as the sound peaked
and then diminished slightly with a perceptible change in pitch.
Washington noted its passage through the ship’s depth level, headed
for the surface.

Abruptly the noise ceased, to be replaced
with an almost painful silence as saturated ears tried to adjust.
Active dials lapsed into quiescence and the bright blip on the
screen disappeared. Washington swiveled in his chair to exchange
wide-eyed looks of surprise with the duty officer who reported once
more to the captain.

Washington returned his attention to his
instruments. Ten, fifteen seconds went by. Slowly he turned up the
sensitivity of the device and the volume on the speaker and
earphones. Only the routine sounds of the sea issued. After
twenty-five seconds the duty officer still stood with the phone
clamped in a sweaty hand, but others in the cabin began to shuffle
in relief. Washington increased the gain a bit more and
concentrated his trained ear to detect any hint of abnormal sound.
He systematically switched display modes but found no clue to the
thing that had just assaulted them.

With the suddenness and impact of a physical
blow, the cabin filled with the sound again. Washington shrieked,
ripped off his earphones and slapped a palm over each ear. He
slipped off his chair and knelt in a daze of confusion, his body
pumped with adrenalin, his ears ringing with an intense hollow
echo. Several figures rushed to the sonar console. Two friends bent
to Washington. Someone fumbled, then found, the volume control. The
frightening hiss dropped to a muted roar and the duty officer was
left in the new quiet, shouting hoarsely into the phone.

The noise dropped gradually, and then just
before it faded below a perceptible level it ceased abruptly once
more. Silence fell in the cabin, broken only by the chatter of the
sonar and the quiet moan of the man who remained on the floor,
rocking gently, his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed
shut.

Several days after the cancellation of
Project QUAKER, Isaacs played a closely fought game of handball
with a friend and colleague, Captain Avery Rutherford, one of the
senior officers in Naval Intelligence. Rutherford was three years
older than Isaacs, but in excellent shape. They split the first
four games and went to a tie breaker on the match game. Isaacs
scored once and served at game point. After several volleys, Isaacs
took a shot in front court. Calculating to catch his opponent off
guard, he hit the ball softly to the front wall, but it went a bit
too high and gave Rutherford time to cover it. With Isaacs in the
front court, Rutherford played a favorite shot that came off the
front wall as a lob calculated to land in the rear corner, a
troublesome left hand return at best. He then retreated rapidly to
center court just behind the service area to await the return,
hoping to hear the satisfying silence of a missed shot.

Isaacs knew the other man’s tactics, however,
and back-pedaled furiously to cover most of the distance to the
left rear corner before the ball left the front wall. This gave him
time to plant his feet firmly, eye locked on the descending sphere.
The ball bounced on the floor, then off the back wall, nicely
clearing both it and the side wall. Isaacs made the shot at hip
level, putting into it everything his weaker left hand could
muster. The ball rifled cross court, just missing Rutherford’s left
knee. It struck almost dead in the corner, the front wall a
fraction of a second earlier than the right, two inches above the
floor. It skittered once and then meekly rolled across the court to
bump gently into Rutherford’s toe.

The sudden denouement caught Rutherford by
surprise and he just stared at the ball. Then he scooped it up and
turned.

“Damnation, Bob, that was a hell of a
shot!”

“Thanks,” Isaacs grinned. “Amazingly enough,
that’s just what I wanted it to do.”

They played two more games for exercise, but
without quite the fire. Isaacs took the first by a comfortable
margin, Rutherford the last.

After the game, they left sweat-sogged piles
of gym clothes in front of their lockers, grabbed their towels and
stepped into the steam room. They sat on the bench and rehashed
their play, each enthusiastically recalling the other’s good points
and mixing in an occasional soft-pedaled critique.

They fell silent for a couple of minutes.
Then Rutherford swiveled his head and looked at his companion.

“Do you mind a little shop talk, off the
cuff?”

Isaacs leaned back against the wall, his eyes
closed.

“Of course not, what’s on your mind?”

“Well, we’ve had scattered reports of a
strange acoustic phenomenon, sort of an underwater sonic boom. This
thing’s been kicking around. Nobody’s done anything about it
because no one knows what to make of it. I just wondered whether it
might ring a bell with you?”

“No,” said Isaacs lethargically, “I haven’t
heard anything about it. We’ve been up to our ears counting screws
and bolts in Tyuratam, waiting for them to launch the other shoe.
Some kind of explosion?”

“No,” Rutherford shook his head and pinched
some sweat out of his eyes, “it’s not localized like that.
Something seems to be moving through the water, making a hell of a
racket as it goes. It comes from the ocean bottom and apparently
disappears momentarily at the surface. Then, it reappears and
proceeds back down to the bottom.”

“Some kind of missile, torpedo?”

“Seems like it, doesn’t it? But there’s no
indication of any launching craft. Besides this starts from really
deep down, miles.”

“How about an underwater volcano, maybe
spewing out blobs of lava, or rocks?”

“There’s probably too much drag in the water
for that to be possible, but I’d give some credence if the reports
were from one spot. They’re not, though. They’re from all over the
globe. Several from mid-Atlantic shipping lanes, a few near Japan,
a couple from the Sixth Fleet in the Med, one south of Madagascar,
another in the Sea of Tasman between Australia and New Zealand. The
latest one came from a sub north of Hawaii, that’s why it’s on my
mind. A particularly close call, poor bastards thought they were
being attacked. Anyway, the thing seems to hop all over.”

The men fell silent. Rutherford leaned over
to examine a chipped nail on his big toe. Isaacs had not really
been concentrating on the conversation. Now snippets of it rolled
around in his head. Suddenly, a surge of adrenalin went keening out
of his belly and through his body. His eyes snapped open and,
despite the heat, he felt as if someone had just raked a large icy
comb down his back.

He sat up and faced Rutherford who still bent
over his foot.

“Those reports you just described, they seem
to be either north or south of the equator, about equal distances.”
He tried to keep his voice casual.

“Oh yeah, I forgot to mention another curious
feature. This thing appears at random times, but always near the
same latitude, sometimes north, sometimes south.”

“Thirty-three degrees.”

Now Rutherford swiveled his head in
surprise.

“Hey, friend, you’ve been holding out on
me!”

Nervous energy drove Isaacs off the bench.
“Nothing like it,” he said intently, “just slow to make the
connection.” He paced the small room randomly, oblivious to his
steamy surroundings, his mind racing. “Good lord, in the water,
too! What the hell does that mean?”

Rutherford had witnessed his friend’s bursts
of intensity before and, failing to understand what had set him
off, watched bemusedly as Isaacs moved about, his cock flipping
drops of sweat and condensed steam at each sudden turn.

Isaacs stopped in front of him.

“Up to last week we were analyzing the
seismic equivalent of your phenomenon. Something’s moving through
the Earth, generating seismic waves.”

He sat suddenly next to Rutherford and
continued.

“I had some of my people keeping an eye on
it, even though we didn’t know what to make of it.”

Then he was thinking out loud.

“The seismic data only told us what was
happening in rock. I convinced myself that, whatever it was, it was
confined to the Earth’s crust, that the seismic waves were its
essence. Now you tell me something about it continues into the
water.” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. I don’t like this at
all.

“Listen, we’ve learned some things you
apparently haven’t stumbled onto yet. This thing is always there,
and very methodical. It just goes back and forth, back and forth,
always on the same path through the Earth.” He waved his arms. “And
then out into the ocean! Shit! No reason to think it doesn’t
continue into the atmosphere! No telling how far it goes.”

He leaned back against the wall. “Our problem
is that McMasters scuttled our operation, claimed it wasn’t Agency
business.” He paused for a moment. “Damn, it’s hot in here! Let’s
go someplace where we can do a little serious talking. Better make
it your office, since the subject is officially ‘verboten’ on my
turf.”

As Rutherford steered his staff car through
the prerush hour traffic, Isaacs explained animatedly how his
interest in the seismic signal became aroused during his duty at
AFTAC. He then outlined the progress Danielson had made,
culminating in her conclusion that the phenomenon followed a
trajectory fixed in space. They finished the drive in silence while
Rutherford ruminated on this new information.

A half hour later they entered Rutherford’s
office. Rutherford ordered up the Navy file on the acoustic
phenomenon. He sat behind his desk while Isaacs remained standing,
rocking nervously on the balls of his feet. Rutherford spoke
first.

“Boy, I’m really having trouble absorbing
this. I had a notion of a random, infrequent occurrence, and now
you describe something punching through the surface like clockwork,
every eighty minutes or so. I guess I still don’t get the picture.
Tell me again how this fixed motion works.”

“Let me use this globe,” Isaacs said as he
lifted a fancy relief model of the Earth off its shelf and put it
on Rutherford’s desk. He grabbed a pencil and held it pointed
toward the surface of the globe, about a third of the way above the
equator. “The thing always moves along a line, like this.” He moved
the pencil in and out, parallel to itself, “Zipzip, zipzip. But as
the Earth turns,” he spun the globe slowly with his free hand, “the
thing always comes up in a different place.” He tapped the pencil
rhythmically as he spun the globe, each tap hitting it an inch
further on than the last.

“Let me see that,” said Rutherford, reaching
for the pencil. He held it alongside the globe so that he could
project it in his imagination into the center of the globe. Then he
moved it back and forth along its length as he spun the globe
slowly, eraser to the northern hemisphere, then point to the
southern, eraser to the north, point, south. “Okay, I think I get
the picture, but what could possibly do that? Through the center of
the Earth? Jesus Christ!”

He jerked his head up as a knock sounded at
the door.

“Come in.”

An aide came in bearing a file folder.

“Bob, Lieutenant Szkada. Lieutenant, Bob
Isaacs, Central Intelligence.”

Isaacs nodded at him.

“Sir.” The young man placed the folder on
Rutherford’s desk.

“That’ll be all,” Rutherford said to him with
a note of paternalism.

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant turned and
left.

“Sharp young man, that,” Rutherford confided.
“My right arm.” He pulled the file toward him. “Let’s see what we
have here.” He extracted a list of reported detections and handed
it to Isaacs. Rutherford leafed through the corresponding
write-ups, looking for ones that were not hopelessly sketchy.

As Isaacs scanned down the list of sonar
reports, he let out a loud exclamation.

“I’ll be damned!”

“What?”

“One of life’s little ironies. Several of
these reports are from the undersea arrays of acoustic
monitors.”

“Sure, we have those babies all over, bound
to pick up something like this. So?”

“That system is also operated by AFTAC. The
whole ball of wax was right under my nose, both seismic and sonar
data. I’m kicking myself, I was so hung up on the seismic signal
propagating through the Earth. I had my people trying to put
together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.”

Isaacs threw the list on the desk and pulled
a chair around beside Rutherford. They spent fifteen minutes
checking the time and position on Earth for each of the reports and
converting that data into a projected position on the celestial
sphere, to see what stars were overhead. As near as they could
tell, it was always the same patch of stars. All the sonar events
fell on the path predicted by the seismic data. Trying to estimate
whether the influence was precisely at the phase that brought
Danielson’s seismic signal to the surface was more difficult, but
the evidence they had seemed damning enough.