Triton (31 page)

“It’s underwater for a reason,” she said. “I think it’s hydrolyzing seawater into oxygen and hydrogen.”

“Why?” He glanced behind him. Seeing Sky barely limping along under Cedar’s arm, he slowed. Onboard the Triton, her wounds would heal.

“Those air sacks we saw,” said Naomi, “they
floated
; they were full of hydrogen gas, which is lighter than air. I’m guessing it’s fuel for some kind of fusion drive, since that’d be the only way to get something this big into space.”

“There’s no way you could get this into space just by burning gas,” said Brynn.

“Not burning it,” said Naomi, “
fusing
it. Like a nuclear bomb, but with the energy spread out. Humans haven’t figured out how to make a fusion rocket yet—at least, not without blowing up the rocket—but clearly the Triton is more advanced than anything we know.”

“There’s no way this gets off the ground,” Brynn muttered.

“I’m not making this up,” said Naomi. “With something this advanced—”

“
Advanced?
” said Cedar with a sneer of disbelief, trailing his fingers along the warped planks lining the corridor. “This thing is not advanced. It was built by a carpenter . . . it’s ancient.”

“So we shut down the hydrolysis,” Jake said, getting them back on task, “and we deprive it of fuel?”

“Exactly.”

They walked in silence.

“Where’s Zé Carlos?” Brynn peeked around the abandoned corridor. “Shouldn’t he be in here with us?”

“Asleep, I’m guessing . . . like the rest of humanity.” Jake rapped his knuckles against the stacked wooden pods lining the corridor. “He managed to get himself taken.”

“Actually, I believe he gave up his ticket when he said fuck you to God,” said Cedar.

The fog cleared ahead of them, revealing a ledge. Jake threw out his hand to halt the others, and with a dizzying rush of vertigo, he grasped the sight beyond. They stood at the edge of a vast cavern hewn into the Triton’s inner structure. Its distant edges shimmered behind the intervening atmosphere, miles away.

Countless fluid-filled sacks hung from the ceiling, dripping and steaming, each filled with a gigantic grayish-blue creature. Jake’s heart went still. Prickles crawled across his skin.

Whales.

Creatures the length of football fields, behemoths. Blue whales, sperm whales, finbacks . . . stacked end to end,
millions
of them, dwarfed to the size of minnows by the scale of the Triton.

Next to Jake, Cedar released Sky’s shoulder and stepped forward, craning his neck to take it all in, gathered before them—the fauna of the world’s oceans.

“Guys, I don’t think the Triton is a spaceship,” he said, his eyes roving from specimen to specimen. “In fact, I don’t think it was ever meant to leave the planet . . .” he blew air through his lips. “It looks like an ark.”

“Not just any ark,” said Brynn. “Those inscriptions we passed, they’re written in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, a precursor to Hebrew . . . I think this is
the Ark
.”

“What ark?” said Jake.

“The one commissioned by God four thousand years ago,” she said. “
Noah’s
Ark.”

“There’s no way
a man built this,” said Naomi, poring over the Bible they had brought with them in disbelief. “Look, it says on page four God commanded Noah to build an ark four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. He asked him to take seven of every clean animal and two of every unclean animal—like they taught us in Sunday school.”

“You didn’t really believe that story literally, did you?” said Cedar.

“I didn’t believe it at all.”

“Well, whoever wrote Genesis must have changed the numbers so they
were
more believable. Clearly, this ark fits all
life on earth.”

“But we couldn’t even build something like this today,” said Naomi, shaking her head.

“Noah had a biblical timescale,” said Sky.

“And God’s help,” Cedar muttered, still gazing out at the whales.

Careful not to tear the soaking pages, Naomi flipped back to page three. She scanned the mention of the nephilim and the flood, and a line near the bottom drew her gaze.

“So if all the good creatures were teleported onto the ark,” said Brynn, “if they were all
taken
, then that means we weren’t the good creatures . . .”

Naomi didn’t hear the rest of Brynn’s comment. She reread the line at the bottom of the page, her heart slamming.

“So how do you think he built it?” said Jake’s voice, somewhere above her.

“Don’t know,” said Cedar. “Maybe God acted through him.”

Acted through him.
Of course. In a flash, Naomi’s hazy thoughts clicked into focus. “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord,” she whispered aloud, reading from the Bible.

“What’s that?” said Jake.

She glanced up. “There are hallways onboard this ship. There are stairs. There are doors. There are instructions written on the walls . . . because someone’s supposed to stay awake during the flood.”

“Well, yeah,” said Cedar. “Noah and his family.

“Which means they weren’t taken.”

“Or they woke up. Like Sky.”

“Right, but how would the Triton know who’s working for God and who’s just along for the ride,” she said breathlessly. “How would it know who to take? Those moments we don’t remember, when we did impossible things . . . when someone else acted through us. That’s why we weren’t taken. God acted through us, so the Triton left us alone figuring we were doing Noah’s job.”

“I would hardly compare what any of us did to building
this
.” He waved his hand around the corridor.

“Be faithful over little things, and I will make you ruler over much,” said Naomi. “That’s a quote from the Bible, right? I bet Noah didn’t remember building the ark, either. That’s why all the numbers are wrong.”

Cedar stared at
Naomi and realized her explanation was the only one that fit the facts. But in his head, he went over the logic again, replayed it, just to be sure—because he needed to be sure.

Clearly this wasn’t an alien ship.

It was an ark, built by humans four and a half thousand years ago. The ancient Hebrew on the wall proved that.

Nor was it meant to store the “worthy” specimens while the rest were wiped from the face of the earth. It was meant to protect everything. All life.

Even the five of them.

Even
him
.

“But what was it doing in space?” he asked, voicing the one remaining flaw in their theory.

“Clearly it couldn’t be left on earth,” said Naomi.

“So God’s up there, he gets the itch to power up the good ol’ Ark and beam it back down to the surface . . . and
why
doesn’t he step in and save our asses when it busts open our cruise ship?”

“Actually, I’m not sure he powered it up this time,” she said.

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but he’s pretty much had a hands-off policy for the last two thousand years.”

“Except for the little things,” Cedar muttered.
Except for the car crash
. Except for saving two lives when three would have died.

“Except for the little things,” Naomi agreed.

The little things
.

Cedar fell to his knees, pressure stinging his sinuses. Just the little things. Little things like suffering in Sky’s place, so she wouldn’t have to. Little things like watching over Brynn, so she could save someone else’s life. Little things. Like being there for him when he made the decision to save himself and his little sister instead of his mom . . . the little things that made all the difference. Together, those little things were more than enough.

A tear slid down his cheek, and he felt Sky kneel down next to him and wrap him in the most loving hug he had ever received.

He had one more question.

“If God didn’t start up the ark,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady, “then who did?”

“I think we did,” said Sky.

She was right
, of course.

Sky was always right.

It took them hours to find the bridge of the Triton, but by evening the next day, they did. It was a vast chamber tucked up in the vessel’s peak. Three hazy glass windows, each a hundred feet thick, peered down the three faces of the pyramid—into the inky blackness of the ocean.

The most beautiful chair, carved out of cypress wood, presided over the bridge—no doubt the piece that Noah brought.

God had brought the rest. Technology no one recognized.

The moment the five of them stepped onto the bridge, it was obvious who had started up the Triton.

On the chair, stamped with the red white and blue logo of NASA—and below that, the emblem of the Triton Project—hung an astronaut’s space suit.

At midnight, five days ago, the NASA spacecraft Triton IV had navigated into the interference zone and rendezvoused with the Ark. Astronauts had entered through the airlock. They had found their way to the bridge.

And they had turned it on.

An orange binder laying open on the floor explained why. It was a technical document, jammed with architectural drawings, endless tables of data, instructions. In a dozen languages.

A letter slipped out and fluttered to the floor, which Naomi picked up and read aloud.

Welcome to Noah’s Ark,

Two years ago, the SuperNova Early Warning System detected a burst of high-energy neutrinos from the galaxy’s center believed to signal an incoming gamma-ray burst large enough to destroy all life on earth.

Shortly thereafter, the Ark was discovered. Or, some believe, it was shown to us. The Triton Project represents the international effort to make it operational again. The Ark is our only hope.

We believe that once turned on, the Ark will capture all life and protect it in suspended animation. We do not know who, if anyone, will remain awake.

The cataclysmic event will be short. Beginning mid-September, earth’s surface will be uninhabitable. The radiation will peak in October and trickle off by Christmas, after which it will be safe to release your cargo.

Enclosed are instructions on how to operate the Ark, gathered from NASA spacecraft Triton II and Triton III. The fate of our planet lies in your hands.

Godspeed,

Peter Granger, Ph.D.

The Triton Project

“Well that’s just great,” said Naomi, slamming the binder shut and flipping it onto the floor. “I have to spend
four months
cooped up in this lumber yard with you losers?”

“Hey, at least we get to save the world,” said Brynn, sharing a secret, flirty grin with Jake.

Oh, fine and dandy for the lovebirds. They all got to enjoy a four month honeymoon without parents, school, or curfews.

What did she get?

She got the responsibility of saving the world piled on her shoulders.

Still, she couldn’t help but smile as she settled into Noah’s chair, couldn’t help but feel that at last everything was going to be okay. That all was right. She ran her fingers over his engravings, the details, wondering if Noah had somehow known those thousands of years ago that she would take his seat next.

What it would mean to her.

There were little things they couldn’t know, of course. Little things, like why, two years ago, an observatory in Hawaii had chosen to aim their telescopes into one particular region of deep space—and had found salvation there. Why the largest cruise ship in the world, MS
Cypress
, had missed Bermuda and sailed three hundred miles off course, giving the only living creatures on earth a direct line of sight to the fallen Triton. And why five teenagers, with no sense of their own worth, had been the ones left behind on that ship. The ones handed the fate of the world.

Coincidences, perhaps.

Little things.

It hadn’t been easy.

Even with God’s blueprints, building the Ark four thousand years ago hadn’t been easy. Finding it in space hadn’t been easy. Getting it working again—the Triton Project—hadn’t been easy. It wasn’t meant to be easy.

But there were always little things.

Naomi surveyed the gleaming controls lining the bridge of the Ark and rubbed her hands together.

Just like piloting a cruise ship.

A Message from Dan Rix

I hope you had as much fun reading
Triton
as I did writing it! If you enjoyed the adventure with Jake, Naomi, Cedar, Brynn, and Sky on the MS
Cypress
, I would really appreciate you leaving a review for it on Amazon. It can be just 20 words long. If you did, click below to . . .

>> TELL OTHERS WHAT YOU THOUGHT OF
TRITON
<<

I plan to write many more books like
Triton
, including my upcoming YA techothriller trilogy about telekinesis . . .

God’s Loophole

Coming March 27

Gabe Coolridge’s prom night is cut short when he gets a frantic call from his older brother Jeremy, the UC Berkeley dropout turned CEO of this year’s hottest tech startup. He’s talking about things Gabe doesn’t understand—venture capitalists, prototypes, million dollar IPOs; he’s stumbled on something big and he needs people he can trust. He needs Gabe.

Nicknamed “the bubble”, Jeremy’s invention isolates users from reality and lets them directly experience quantum effects. Inside the bubble, humans can even manipulate individual atoms. For the computer industry, it’s a dream come true.

Except the bubble may have side effects.

After being inside the bubble for only a few minutes, Gabe feels a strange desire to go inside again. He has nightmares and wakes up vomiting in the middle of the night with no idea who he is. Even more troubling, the bubble seems to eat through every kind of radiation shielding known to man . . . whether it’s plugged in or not.