panned back and forth. The cylindrical stem connected to the sphere via a smooth joint – as if the whole thing, sphere and stem, were cut from one enormous piece of material.
“Move down the stem,” McHenry instructed. It was smooth like the sphere, but he hoped there was a marking of some kind – a serial number or a company name – giving away its maker.
Stuart lowered the sub along the stem, panning the camera back and forth along the way. It revealed nothing but a smooth, white surface, but its radius increased gradually with depth. The Little Dakota stopped.
“We’re at maximum depth,” Stuart informed.
“Damn,” McHenry cursed. “Where are we?”
“Twenty-three hundred meters on the tether,” Stuart replied. “We started at 240 meters, so the absolute depth of Little Dakota is currently 2,540 meters.”
“Christ, that thing goes on for another 1,500 meters,” McHenry said. They needed a longer tether. “Bring it up, and let’s get the hell outta Dodge.” It was time to communicate the information back to Naval Command.
McHenry was acutely aware of the risks they’d been taking, and how easy it was to get used to such behavior. His father, a machinist, had often claimed the he’d been able to keep all of his fingers by sustaining a healthy fear of the powerful machines that he used every day. It was prudent to have a similar outlook as a sub captain.
But that self-preserving awareness was slipping away. The mystery at the bottom of the sea was taking over.
2
Sunday, 10 May (5:58 a.m. EST – Washington)
The sun warmed the right side of Daniel’s face as he sipped coffee from his glass mug. His unusually early 6:00 a.m. arrival warranted something stronger than his usual cup of green tea. He’d been awake since 4 a.m.
Horace hadn’t given him much to go on. However, the old man’s words had kept him riled through the past two nights. Existential implications.
Something was sounding in the icy deep of the Weddell Sea, a little over 150 miles off the coast of western Antarctica. It had been two centuries since Captain Cook heard the same signal in approximately the same location. The noise must have been dormant for all that time; otherwise it would have been discovered by military ships, or by the multitude of scientists who studied that part of the world. So why had it come back to life?
Daniel concluded the previous evening that Operation Tabarin had been instigated by the voyage of the German ship, Schwabenland . And it seemed that that vessel had spurred events that extended many years into the future, maybe even to present day.
As if cued by his thoughts, there was a knock at the door. He opened it, and Sandy stood in the doorway with a large envelope. He signed the receipt, thanked her, and closed the door.
The size of the package disappointed him.
He sat on the couch and tore it open, removed the contents – about two hundred pages of individually bound documents – and set them on the coffee table in front of the couch. He sorted them by country of origin, and located the one that he sought: a report by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS, now known as MI-6. It was the logical place to start, Tabarin being a British mission.
He finished reading the document in just under two hours and looked over his notes. The Schwabenland was an exploratory vessel. It had set out on its Antarctic expedition at the end of 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II. Herman Goering himself had authorized the mission, the official objective of which had to do with Germany’s concerns about the whaling industry. It made sense since whaling was important for the supply of lubricants and food products. However, the Germans were more likely concerned at the time with another whale byproduct – glycerin for nitroglycerine to be used in explosives.
It was also suggested that, anticipating the invasion of Russia, Goering needed to test aircraft performance in
“Move down the stem,” McHenry instructed. It was smooth like the sphere, but he hoped there was a marking of some kind – a serial number or a company name – giving away its maker.
Stuart lowered the sub along the stem, panning the camera back and forth along the way. It revealed nothing but a smooth, white surface, but its radius increased gradually with depth. The Little Dakota stopped.
“We’re at maximum depth,” Stuart informed.
“Damn,” McHenry cursed. “Where are we?”
“Twenty-three hundred meters on the tether,” Stuart replied. “We started at 240 meters, so the absolute depth of Little Dakota is currently 2,540 meters.”
“Christ, that thing goes on for another 1,500 meters,” McHenry said. They needed a longer tether. “Bring it up, and let’s get the hell outta Dodge.” It was time to communicate the information back to Naval Command.
McHenry was acutely aware of the risks they’d been taking, and how easy it was to get used to such behavior. His father, a machinist, had often claimed the he’d been able to keep all of his fingers by sustaining a healthy fear of the powerful machines that he used every day. It was prudent to have a similar outlook as a sub captain.
But that self-preserving awareness was slipping away. The mystery at the bottom of the sea was taking over.
2
Sunday, 10 May (5:58 a.m. EST – Washington)
The sun warmed the right side of Daniel’s face as he sipped coffee from his glass mug. His unusually early 6:00 a.m. arrival warranted something stronger than his usual cup of green tea. He’d been awake since 4 a.m.
Horace hadn’t given him much to go on. However, the old man’s words had kept him riled through the past two nights. Existential implications.
Something was sounding in the icy deep of the Weddell Sea, a little over 150 miles off the coast of western Antarctica. It had been two centuries since Captain Cook heard the same signal in approximately the same location. The noise must have been dormant for all that time; otherwise it would have been discovered by military ships, or by the multitude of scientists who studied that part of the world. So why had it come back to life?
Daniel concluded the previous evening that Operation Tabarin had been instigated by the voyage of the German ship, Schwabenland . And it seemed that that vessel had spurred events that extended many years into the future, maybe even to present day.
As if cued by his thoughts, there was a knock at the door. He opened it, and Sandy stood in the doorway with a large envelope. He signed the receipt, thanked her, and closed the door.
The size of the package disappointed him.
He sat on the couch and tore it open, removed the contents – about two hundred pages of individually bound documents – and set them on the coffee table in front of the couch. He sorted them by country of origin, and located the one that he sought: a report by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS, now known as MI-6. It was the logical place to start, Tabarin being a British mission.
He finished reading the document in just under two hours and looked over his notes. The Schwabenland was an exploratory vessel. It had set out on its Antarctic expedition at the end of 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II. Herman Goering himself had authorized the mission, the official objective of which had to do with Germany’s concerns about the whaling industry. It made sense since whaling was important for the supply of lubricants and food products. However, the Germans were more likely concerned at the time with another whale byproduct – glycerin for nitroglycerine to be used in explosives.
It was also suggested that, anticipating the invasion of Russia, Goering needed to test aircraft performance in
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