SLINGSHOT, page 3
part #1 of The Starchild Saga Series
CHAPTER TWO
IMAGE 3—Apex end of the Western Complex—About fifty kilometers further west, the two arms of the Complex meet at the far side of a twenty-kilometer-wide circle
WESTERN COMPLEX—300 KM WEST OF BAKER ISLAND
“H
ey, Alex! Got control of those tubes yet?” Klaus Blumenfeld stretched out a massive helping hand, his gray eyes twinkling.
Alex glanced at the big man’s uncovered, shaven head. “You’re going to burn that top yet, Old Boy.”
He stepped down from the floater’s cockpit to the pontoon and across to the dock, matching the pace of the tall German engineer as they made their way along the floating catwalk that marked the underwater location of the tube complex, toward a protruding hatch at the intersecting walkway in front of them.
“Like the Schimmelreiter,” Klaus said with a grin.
At Alex’s puzzled look, he added, “You know, the ghost rider in Thomas Mann’s famous novel.”
The hatch did resemble a hooded ghost’s head, looming up from the catwalk, its recessed door lost in dark shadow.
The wheel on the massive oval submarine hatch turned smoothly. Klaus swung the door out and motioned Alex to precede him down the steep staircase or “ladder,” as Klaus insisted on using nautical terminology. Once inside, he closed the outer hatch and joined Alex at the bottom of the ladder some five meters down. He glanced at a monitor panel on the bulkhead, and when the lights had all turned green, opened the hatch in the wall. Alex and Klaus passed through the hatch into a small chamber with a large oval pressure-door that Klaus called a “seal,” set into the opposite wall. Klaus palmed a plate on the bulkhead and, with a faint hiss of compressed air, the seal twisted slightly and slid back into the tube wall.
They stepped through the opening into a chamber that served as both a pressure lock and elevator. To the right were three plates: S for Surface, L for Lock, and T for Tube. The S glowed with a bluish light; Klaus touched L, and the seal closed behind them. A rush of air greeted them. Alex swallowed to clear his ears, and Klaus just yawned and touched T. Alex felt a slight downward motion, and in about thirty seconds, the seal hissed open to reveal the spacious living quarters suspended halfway between the surface and the massive two-kilometer-long linear induction motor Klaus was constructing.
They stepped out into a thickly carpeted passageway, a five-meter-diameter tube that stretched directly out from the combination pressure lock and elevator. Another five-meter carpeted tube stretched to the left. Every few meters, large portholes pierced the curving bulkheads so that the passageways were bathed in eerie, flickering green light. They strode down the left tube, past several portholes, and turned right through an open pressure seal into a small chamber. Klaus palmed a plate on the bulkhead. With a faint hiss, the seal behind them closed, and a few moments later, one in front of them opened.
“Safety first!” Klaus grinned at Alex as they stepped through the emergency airlock into his personal living quarters. Alex had ordered that all living quarter airlocks be interlocked to close automatically should one of the interconnecting tubes breach.
The wall before them was entirely transparent. It looked out over the construction activity through water so clear that it hardly seemed to be there at all. Off to the right, divers assisted a submersible in emplacing a section of tubing. Their back-mounted twin gills twinkled with reflected morning sunlight. The main tube stretched to the right, vanishing in the watery distance. It was punctuated by periodic blisters that formed individual living modules currently occupied by the construction crew, but slated for power plant personnel once the system became operational. To the left, just visible through the transparent wall, their tube extended for 200 meters to intersect the massive vertical Ocean Thermal Energy Converter, or OTEC cylinder as they called it, that started four meters above the surface and ended a thousand meters below. It was a hundred meters in diameter and could be seen clearly through the transparent water to the left.
Alex stood gazing through the wall at the frenzied panorama before him. A classic Beatles song floated through the slightly compressed air surrounding them while Klaus built a head on the beer he handed to Alex.
“Easy to make a head at this depth,” he said with a grin, wiping the foam off his upper lip with a massive hand. “But you should try it at one hundred meters! The bottle sucks air in when you open it!”
“Come on, Klaus....”
“No, really. At that depth, room pressure exceeds bottle pressure. It sucks, let me tell you!”
Both men laughed, and Klaus sat at his desk, turning his chair to look out the transparent wall, while Alex sat in an overstuffed chair facing Klaus.
“Well,” said Alex, “Margo got the tubes back to thirty meters this morning. Lost anchor buoys are giving us more problems than I anticipated, you know.” He crossed his legs. “I’m beginning to come around to Margo’s perspective that there’s more than ocean waves and coincidence at work here.”
“Are we talking pirates and peg-legs?”
“How about ocean sailers with big money backing?” Alex sighed, feeling the weight of his job. “What’s your situation now?”
Klaus reached behind the desk and pulled out a roll of blueprint drawings. He could have called them up on his Link, but he preferred the substantial feel of the older drawings. Alex never could understand the real reason for Klaus’ anachronism, but Klaus was the best, and the paper came with the territory.
Klaus unrolled the drawings on the deck between them and anchored the curling edges with their beer mugs. Several dark circles on the drawings testified to Klaus’ usual mode of work.
“Here we are,” said Klaus, his large hand spread out over a tear-drop-shaped circular feature with its large end about twenty kilometers across and its smaller end drawn to a point about sixty kilometers to the east. “We’ve been lucky, you know.”
Alex raised an eyebrow.
“Look at it this way. My work area at this end is spread out over more than six hundred square kilometers....”
“Wait a minute!” interjected Alex. “Ninety-five percent of what you do takes place right here.” He pointed to the small area in the apex of the point. “That’s one square kilometer at the most...give me a break!” He picked up his beer and took a swig. “And most of that is right out there.” He gestured at the activity taking place outside the transparent wall.
“Okay, Alex, okay. But let’s assume a man is hurt right here.” Klaus pointed to the farthest section of the semicircular deflector. “At best, that’s a half-hour trip, even using the skimmer.” Klaus jammed his finger first at the westernmost end of the deflector and then at the downslope at the structure apex where the two linear induction motors were located. “I need two floaters, Alex, two of them!”
“Klaus, Klaus...the cost! Two planes, the pilots, fuel—that’s a small fortune, man. Don’t you know that?”
“Ja! And make one of them a Fräulein!” Klaus grinned and bumped mugs with Alex. “To the Fräulein pilot!”
Klaus let the top drawing roll up. The second one was a detail containing just the semicircular deflector, a thirty-two-kilometer-long rigid structure formed of powerful electromagnets designed to deflect the rapidly moving tube of segmented soft iron in a 180-degree reversal.
“The electromagnets are going in place this week; actually, should be done by day-after-tomorrow.” Klaus got up and walked over in front of the transparent wall, his back to Alex. “We can test continuity then, but we’re still behind schedule on the well. Give me more men,” he turned and grinned at Alex, “and I’ll do it faster.”
Alex exposed the next drawing. It showed a plan view of a hundred-meter-wide Ocean Thermal Energy Converter with its attendant surface structures. It also showed a foreshortened orthogonal view of the entire structure. Alex worked with it every day, but it still boggled his mind. The massive ferro-cement tube extended a kilometer down into the deep, a gigantic well suspended in the ocean. Surface waters in the well heated by the sun’s rays expanded convectively and flowed out the structure through spillways at the surface. This water was replaced by dense cold water that flowed up through the tube from one kilometer below, turning large turbine blades as it passed, generating massive amounts of power. Power to drive the linear induction motors at this end of Slingshot, to bend the ribbon in its path around the semicircular deflector. Sufficient power to supply a medium-size city, almost five hundred megawatts, like a nuke plant or a large coal plant.
“Have you experienced further problems with the well?” Alex pointed to the orthogonal view of the massive generator.
“Not since the bad shipment of syntactic foam, the batch that collapsed under pressure last week.” Klaus turned around and shrugged. “What the hell, Alex! Nobody’s ever done it before. Bound to be some problems, what?” He grinned. “Now, what about those extra men? I really need them to get back on schedule.”
“I can’t, Klaus. I’m sorry, but there’s just no way.”
“Not even using the money we saved with my modifications?” Klaus’ shoulders drooped a bit.
“Klaus, what you did was magnificent. No! I really mean that. It really was!”
Klaus tried to interrupt.
“Hold on, friend. You conceived of using syntactic foam spherules as binding material in the ferro-cement. That was a stroke of genius. It’s made the difference between staying on schedule and budget instead of whatever-the-hell.” Alex smiled warmly at his friend. “But there still is no way I can hire on more underwater workers.” Alex held up his hand as Klaus was about to speak. “I may be able to find two or three in Margo’s crew...”
Klaus burst into smiles, the sag gone.
“On loan, of course, against your budget.”
The German’s smile remained where it was. He held up his nearly empty mug. “Danke, Margo. I love you!”
Outside, the submersible backed away from the emplaced tube section. The divers disappeared through a hatch in the tube’s side. The faint sound of rushing air could be heard inside the snug living room where the men continued their discussion. Unseen from their vantage point, water rushed out through wells extending through the tube’s underside. When bubbles started pouring through these openings, the rushing stopped. A school of brightly colored fish chased the flashing bubbles swirling up the curved tube walls, but they stopped short as the silver spheres broke free and headed toward the surface.
“I’ll have to inspect that tube section now,” said Klaus. “Those boys are good, but when they know I’m looking over their shoulders, they’re even better.” He grinned apologetically. “You can come, if you want.”
Alex knew better than to take him up on his offer. This was the German’s area of responsibility. His men had to know that the buck stopped with Klaus.
Alex stood to go, leaving the blueprints on the table. “I know my way out.” He headed for the airlock.
Klaus turned toward the opposite wall, looking over his shoulder. “I’m going to swim over. Keeps them on their toes, not knowing where I’ll show up next.”
He passed through a doorway as Alex stepped into the lock. As the seal slid into place, Alex saw Klaus laying out his skins and gills.
CHAPTER THREE
IMAGE 4—Baker Island showing locations of the various facilities
BAKER ISLAND—MARGO JACKSON’S QUARTERS
M
argo stood in front of a large picture window surveying the panoramic spectacle of long Pacific rollers breaking against the exposed coral reef on the northwest side of Baker Island. Her quarters were housed in a low, chalk-white building perched atop a bluff five meters above a rugged tidal flat. At high tide, breakers rolled across the shallow reef, churning white here and there, but always reforming, picking up momentum, to dash against the sun-bleached coral barrier below her window. But now, across the rugged expanse of brown coral, living polyps struggled to survive their exposure to the noontime tropical sun while the long breakers spent themselves against the reef boundary 200 meters further out.
Margo’s gaze focused on the horizon. Sixty-seven kilometers beyond the breakers lay Howland, and some three thousand kilometers beyond Howland lay Honolulu. Amelia’s next leg, she thought, and turned to the framed photo on the wall behind her.
“What happened that you missed Howland? Where are you now?”
Margo was troubled by the puzzling disappearance so many years ago. TIGHAR claimed to have solved the mystery back in the nineties. Members of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery had discovered artifacts on Nikumaroro Island that eventually convinced them Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, had somehow reached its shores, some 550 kilometers south of Howland. Margo was not overwhelmed by the evidence. Noonan was one of the finest aerial navigators in the world. His last message to the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Itasca, standing off the eastern end of Howland, was: “KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you, but cannot see you…gas is low….”
To Margo, this did not sound like they were hundreds of kilometers off vector. She watched a line of squalls passing the island several kilometers out. Thunderheads dominated the pattern, moving with the squalls like sentinels of doom. A bolt of lightning flickered between two looming cloud towers. Then a flash caught her eye, and she squinted against the noontime glare to make out a small plane banking toward the island.
“Be careful, Alex,” she whispered as she turned to her Link.
With a sigh, she slipped into the straight-backed chair in front of her Victorian-style desk and tapped her Link pad. The space above her keyboard shimmered momentarily. Sparkling points of light coalesced, and then the wall behind her desk faded behind a three-dimensional image of the 1,828-kilometer-long submerged tube complex that had become her sole reason for existence.
The orthogonal birds-eye view arrived at her Link courtesy of GS32, hanging in orbit some 40,000 kilometers overhead. The occasional sparkle on the translucent ocean surface was actual sunlight glinting off a wave. Eighteen-hundred-twenty-eight buoys appeared as tiny specks identifiable only because they formed a continuous line stretching between Baker and Jarvis Islands.
Margo touched her pad, and a faint grid appeared on the ocean surface. The Equator, glowing red, crossed the line of buoys at a shallow angle to the east about halfway to Jarvis Island. She touched the pad again, and the picture zoomed out, revealing the east coast of New Guinea and the Port of Lae, some 4,100 kilometers west and slightly south of Howland. And Nikumaroro Island, about 600 kilometers almost due south. She moved her cursor to hover near Nikumaroro.
“Did you end up here, Amelia?” she murmured. “Is this where you spent your last days while the world searched up here?” She moved the cursor north to the wide end of a purple wedge that started at Lae and terminated with a 500-kilometer-wide cross-section centered on Howland. The wedge contained Baker Island and the growing deflector complex west of Baker. Margo zoomed in on the complex.
Her Link-enhanced satellite image clearly showed the large circular opening of the thermal generator. She tapped her pad, and the Link superimposed a shimmering structure around and above the generator. It looked like a symmetrical teardrop with its point located 330 kilometers west of Baker. The OTEC generator was nestled in its point. A faint line exited the point, angling into the sky at about fifteen degrees. A faint vertical line connected the middle of Baker Island with the sloping line eighty kilometers above the surface.
Margo tapped her pad to zoom the picture out. The faint structure followed the line of buoys for 1,828 kilometers to Jarvis Island, where it joined another vertical line emanating from that island’s center, and then sloped down to a mirror image of the structure west of Baker.
It seemed so small and delicate when viewed this way. Twenty-five-hundred klicks; so vulnerable…to wind, to wave…. She paused in her thoughts and glanced out at the receding squalls. …and to sabotage…. A worried frown settled across her face.
She had found the break on the underside of the tube. How did it get there? They were nowhere near normal shipping lanes, and besides, the break was on the underside; so how did it happen? For now, she decided to write it off to natural causes, but she resolved to undertake a statistical analysis of all the breaks thus far. If it really was sabotage, she needed to know. But it seemed so unlikely. After all, who would care? Who could possibly benefit from damaging Slingshot? Even the Green community seemed to be supporting their project, perhaps because Slingshot would significantly reduce rocket propellant exhaust in the atmosphere. Sabotage seemed so unlikely; but the analysis would show something, she decided, as she turned to listen to footsteps crunching through the crushed coral walkway leading to her door.
The door opened, framing Alex’s silhouette against the noonday brightness.
“Margo!” Alex grinned at her as he strode into the room.
A faint whiff of ozone mixed with aviation fuel accompanied him. He turned and looked out the picture window.
“You definitely have the best view for two thousand klicks in any direction.” He spread his arms as if to encompass the receding thunderheads.
“Drink?” Margo asked, walking toward an antique cabinet against the wall.
“Got any more of that Islay you picked up last month in Sydney?”
Alex glanced at Margo’s Link. “Earhart again…” He grinned at her as she handed him a fluted Glen Cairn Glass containing a clear dark amber liquid.
Margo shrugged. “The mystery isn’t getting any less mysterious.” She pointed to Nikumaroro Island. “How could they possibly have gotten down here, Alex? That’s almost eight-and-a-half degrees off course.” She was referring to the difference in vectors from Lae to Howland Island and Nikumaroro Island. “You certainly wouldn’t make that kind of mistake, and Noonan was as good as they got back then.”
