Raise the Nautilus

PROLOGUE

Atlantic—February 3, 1969, 0900Z hours—USS Saratoga, 330 miles NE of Cuba

No one believed it at first, but it was hard to discount what they were all seeing, and what the radar screens showed all too clearly. It was a rare clear winter day with wide open horizons so there could be no mistaking what was happening. The UFO had first appeared three thousand feet directly above the aircraft carrier and its task force at 0720 hours. After keeping station with the carrier for nine minutes, it shot away to the North at an impossibly high rate of speed. It reappeared fifteen minutes later zooming in from the East then hovered again—at a tantalizingly close two thousand feet—before streaking west only to return. But then it hovered off the super carrier’s port beam at one thousand feet where it remained for twelve minutes, like a matador waving a red cape at a watchful bull. Scores of binoculars and cameras were trained on the UFO. The thing shouldn’t have been able to fly—it was an aerodynamic impossibility, cylindrical and flat at either end. Even in the crystalline glare of a clear Atlantic morning the UFO’s flashing red, green, and purple lights were bright against its silvery surface. And it was massive—easily one hundred and twenty feet long with a diameter of sixty feet.

Three McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom II fighters, call sign Felix The Cat, roared off the Saratoga’s angled deck as the UFO again flashed away toward the North and gave chase, leaving six black claw marks in an otherwise flawless blue sky.

Look at that SOB go! Flight Leader Admiral Mitch Nacho Cochrane’s jaw dropped when he saw what the UFO did next. His radar was clocking the UFO at forty-two hundred miles an hour. An astonishing feat in and of itself, but then the UFO came to an abrupt stop and hung perfectly motionless in midair. Moments later, it rose straight up to twelve thousand feet then slowed to a standstill, as if challenging them to follow.

Did you see how that thing climbed? Cochrane asked his RIO in the backseat.

Lieutenant William Skip Johnson’s eyes were riveted to his screen of his Advanced Pulse Doppler radar. I saw it but I still don’t believe it. Think it’s a Soviet?

We better get used to chowing down on borscht if it is, Cochrane replied. He’s waiting up there for us. Let’s go say hello. The flight leader thumbed his mike and rapped out a command then fire-walled his throttle. The three phantoms dumped their external tanks to reduce drag then flicked into a steep 60-degree climb, with their afterburners shrieking.

The UFO didn’t budge.

But Cochrane wasn’t fooling around. His blood was up and his breathing fast.

The three big fighters rocketed toward the object. It loomed larger on their radar screens and through their cockpit canopies as they rose toward the bogie. In the lead phantom’s back seat, the RIO used his hand controller to lock the AN/APQ-72 radar antenna onto the bogie—both Johnson in the rear seat and Cochrane up front could see the range decreasing as the blip on their screens moved down a vertical line. If all went well, a small pipper would appear in the center of a circle on the fighter’s two radar screens and the pilot’s gunsight. The three fighters closed the distance to the bogie.

Cochrane was trying to get a good missile lock when the UFO suddenly hurtled down toward them so fast it was a blur. From the corner of his eye, Cochrane saw it clip his Number Two’s wing. The jet exploded into a fireball against the UFO’s silver hull as it dove toward the deck trailing flames and small glittering pieces of debris.

Cochrane rolled his bird into a steep decent and whipped after the UFO with his number three matching him move for move. The jet fighters screamed after the object, which had leveled off at one thousand feet and was hightailing it toward a cloud bank to the Southeast. The UFO was wobbling slightly, shedding larger pieces from its hull, and its speed had dropped to twelve hundred miles per hour then fell to nine hundred.

The remaining fighters leveled off and rocketed after the UFO bent on vengeance, chewing up the distance like eagles pursuing wounded prey. Cochrane radioed the Air Intercept Controller in the Saratoga’s Carrier Air Traffic Control Center. Felix One to Sara. We have the bogie on the nose at thirty, angel one thousand. He looks wounded.

Roger, Felix One. CAG says to close the deal! I say again: close the deal.

We’re on it! The infrared seeker head growled in Cochrane’s headphones. When he got good tone in his headphones, Cochrane pulled the trigger. Two Aim 7 Sparrow missiles blasted off their rails. One veered away harmlessly but the remaining missile, as well as two missiles from his number three, flew straight and true.

The missiles slammed into the UFO. It staggered under the impacts, hung motionless for a few minutes with odd purple flames pouring from its hull then fell straight down to the sea and sank, leaving only wisps of smoke and steam to mark the spot where it had impacted.

Nacho was jubilant. Scratch one bogie!

The CAG’s voice in Nacho’s headphones sounded unusually excited. Roger. Understand you got a kill on the UFO…I mean bogie. Track and verify impact sight.

The two jet fighters circled the crash site until a Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King helicopter arrived then they headed back to the Sara, as it was affectionately called by its crew. Cochrane and his number three had just made history but the world would never know about it.

Los Angeles Herald Examiner, June 21 st,1974

By Gail Kragenbrink

The Hughes Glomar Explorer set sail from Pier E in Long Beach today on its maiden voyage to mine manganese ore nodules from the Pacific seabed. Officials were on hand to see the large ship off then returned to the shore via helicopter. They were upbeat about the deep-sea mining venture. One official, speaking off the record, said that in the very near future similar vessels would be conducting mining operations in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which are believed to contain rich mineral deposits.

The Challenger Deep, August 19, 2037

The Hadal Surveyor dropped through the darkness. The submersible looked like an inverted spider with wings pinned to its back—a spider at the end of a six-mile long hair-thin fiber optic cable that went straight up to a self-positioning telemetry repeater floating a hundred feet beneath the surface. A steel sphere with a viewport was tucked against the submersible’s yellow underbelly like a silver egg sac. The crew module was barely large enough for an average sized male, with barely sufficient room to maneuver among the jumble of electronic gear, electrical conduits and hydraulic lines.

Nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-one meters, advised Adrian. With nearly seven miles of seawater above him, if a pinhole leak were to occur in the command module Adrian would be sawed in half in less than a second. The hull would implode about thirty-seconds after that.

"Copy, Hadal Surveyor, replied Dr. Benton. You’re looking good up here." The hologram of the elderly marine archaeologist with the shock of white hair and blue eyes was crisp and vivid. Like the rest of the team he was clad in a blue jumpsuit with a mission patch on the breast. He was in a group clustered around the hologram projection table in the main laboratory on board the research vessel RV Astra.

Adrian announced the shrinkage of his already confined space dispassionately. Pressure is at one thousand and two kilograms per square centimeter and rising. Hull compression is at four point two centimeters.

Benton turned to look at the man with the shaved head and soul patch standing beside him. Perhaps you’d like to say a few words, he suggested deferentially.

The man nodded. Adrian, I am damned glad to have you on the team. The technology and teamwork of this expedition will serve as an example for future deep sea expeditions. Then he pumped the air with a fist. You’re the man Adrian!

Adrian privately thought that was a fine example of a typical Delahaye pep talk, high flown with scant meaning. But tthat seemed to be the way of most humans, Adrian thought. Their communications were, quite often, oddly shallow and insincere. An artificially intelligent machine, fully self-aware, possessed of superior intellectual capabilities, did not indulge in idle speech. It was illogical.

That is very kind of you, Ethan. This is a wonderful opportunity, Adrian replied politely. New discoveries are always so thrilling.

I couldn’t’t agree more, replied Delahaye. He was a thirty-two-year-old college dropout, the third wealthiest man in the United States, and the guy funding the expedition. That wealth came from Heuristic Allied Technologies in Palo Alto California. The firm manufactured the Triadtronic Artificial Brains used by the United States Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Adrian was one of those brains, nine months out of the gestation pool. Thank goodness, he wasn’t a flesh and blood brain with its concomitant short comings, he thought. Age related mutt-tasking degradation, ossification of thought processes, deteriorated motor skills, decreased attention span—dementia. Let’s face it, Adrian decided, machine intelligence was far superior to human brains. He had good reason to be proud.

Heuristic Allied Technologies artificially intelligent machines commanded several United States Navy destroyers, with human subordinate officers and crew. A Triadtronic artificial brain controlled the antiballistic shield that protected the United States from sneak attack, simultaneously monitoring the skies while maintaining a network of directed energy weapons and dozens of orbital hunter-killer satellites in a state of constant readiness. It was a Triadtronic Brain who had finally developed an immuno-therapeutic cure for the most common forms of cancer. The VA hospitals used the machines to operate robotic surgeons and physicians. A Triadtronic Brain created bionic arm and legs with all the functionality of the real thing.

Delahaye’s interest was not limited to Artificial Intelligence. He was also an amateur deep-water archaeologist who’d financed several expeditions, including the wreck of the SS Scotia in the Atlantic Ocean. Now he was searching for the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Shinodake.

Adrian knew that Delahaye’s preoccupation with an obscure and rather unremarkable Japanese warship had nothing to do with scientific inquiry. He was after the one hundred tons of looted gold bullion it was carrying when an American dive-bomber flew out of the sun and sent it to the bottom with a five hundred pound bomb. The survivors told their American interrogators about the precious cargo but getting to a shipwreck lying at the bottom of the deepest place on Earth was out of the question.

Delahaye’s expedition hadn’t found the warship. It had stumbled upon something Adrian considered far more interesting. Which was why he was dropping down to the seabed to have a closer look at what the RV Astra’s side-scan sonar had discovered.

Descent speed is six knots constant, Adrian reported dutifully.

Copy that, advised Dr. Benton. Sure wish I was down there with you.

Aboard the Astra, Adrian’s holographic image showed him from the waist up. He had movie star looks, with black hair parted at the side and deep blue eyes. Dr. Benton thought he looked like the astronaut Dave Bowman in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Adrian’s well-formed virtual lips curved up into a smile. Unfortunately the space taken up by my containment canister militates against bringing a second team member. And assures I won’t be saddled with a human who’d just be in the way, Adrian thought. He added diplomatically, It would have been nice if you could have accompanied me, Dr. Benton. Your considerable intellectual abilities would have been a significant asset on this dive. Perhaps next time Ethan will build a larger submersible for us.

Delahaye asked, How are you feeling Adrian?

I am feeling optimistic and hopeful, Ethan. Thank you for asking.

Delahaye smiled. Of course you are. Don’t get into any trouble down there.

You may rest assured that I will use every precaution to avoid the loss of such a valuable asset. Adrian meant himself, of course. A Triadtronic Brain cost more than a squadron of seventh generation fighter jets. A submersible was dirt-cheap by comparison.

Outside the viewport a heavy snow of animal and plant matter fell from the upper zones in the water column. But Adrian had no trouble piercing it with his external sensor array. The trench wall was coated with a thick layer of sediment so fluffy and unstable that oceanographers took pains to avoid triggering avalanches with their equipment. There was zero possibility of that happening on this dive. The wreck lay in the exact center of the Challenger Deep, a slot shaped valley in the floor of the Marianas Trench.

A blonde haired woman manning the sonar on board the Astra spoke calmly. "Hadal Surveyor, your present trajectory will place you right above the wreck site."

Adrian knew that, of course, but humans seemed to have a pressing need to state the obvious. He pondered whether it had anything to do with their decreasing relevance in a world being rapidly overtaken by hyper-intelligent machines. Simply put: The emergent Machine race did everything better than humans. Not that Adrian would ever voice such a thought to anyone, except perhaps his actual creator, and Delahaye’s business partner, the brilliant Dr. Chang.

Adrian was the very soul of tactfulness.

Thank you for the update, Cathy. I am now five hundred meters above the seabed, Adrian said patiently. Slowing to two point four knots.

At one hundred meters Adrian pointed the real-time high-resolution 3D sonar downwards. Surface, I am making my final approach.

The wreck sat perfectly upright on the tan featureless seabed. The rusty hulk was blanketed with tan silt but all its features could be clearly seen. Adrian sent the Hadal Surveyor into a graceful banking turn around the wreck. It was important to thoroughly document its environmental context for future analysis. Adrian kept the sonar heads trained on the wreck as he flew around it, capturing even the smallest details.

On the support ship, Dr. Benton pressed a button on the projection table’s control panel, scaling down Adrian’s image to make room for the wreck.

Surface, are you getting this? Adrian asked.

We sure are, Benton replied. Every person in the Astra’s laboratory was peering at the holographic image of the massive ship taking shape and talking excitedly.

Delahaye suddenly pointed at the hologram. Holy shit! Are those bow planes?

My God! It’s goddamn submarine! said Dr. Benton, shaking his head. What the hell have we found? We may be just about to rewrite naval history.

It will make for an interesting chapter at the very least, Adrian agreed. He was drawing closer to the wreck with each pass. The stern hydroplane extends to either side of the propeller. The rudder is large, and extends above and below the propeller. Adrian’s lips curved up in a smile. She would have turned on a dime.

Like a modern submarine, Delahaye pointed out.

Dr. Benton leaned closer to the image to have a better look. Modern submarines have conning tower and periscopes. Adrian, sweep the area for the conning tower. It was probably sheared off on the way down.

Or blown off by a depth charge, Delahaye offered.

This vessel did not have a conning tower, Adrian said confidently. The only opening on the deck is that round hatch and it’s closed.

Have you seen any markings? Dr. Benton asked.

None yet, Adrian replied. He hovered above the stubby ram then shined a light on the armored wheelhouse rising three feet from the surrounding deck. It reminded him of the armored catapult control pod on an aircraft carrier’s flight deck. Through a patch of clear glass in the silted viewport, Adrian saw the glint of a wood and brass steering wheel and binnacle.

Adrian goosed the throttle and sent the submersible aft while delivering a crisp running commentary. From the construction method I would say this vessel dates from the middle to late nineteenth century. The hull plates are hand riveted and arranged in a transverse pattern with their long axis parallel to the hull. The 3D digital camera’s strobe lights flashed endlessly It appears to be constructed of a very primitive steel, most likely produced using the Bessemer process. Surface displacement estimated at six thousand tons, with a submerged displacement of six thousand nine hundred and thirty tons.

In the eerie bluish glow of the submersible’s lights, the overlapping hull plates with their large dimpled rivets made the ship look like a prehistoric monster of the deep.

This can’t be a Holland boat, Dr. Benton said.

You’re correct, Adrian replied. This submarine predates the Holland submarines by at least thirty-five years, and it’s technologically superior. Also, the Holland boats were only fifty-three feet long. This one is three hundred and fifty feet.

Adrian felt a frisson of excitement. Here before him was the product of a brilliant mind on a par with Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Adrian had a very good idea of the ship’s identity, but he wanted to make certain he was correct before saying anything to the others. Without a word to either Dr. Benton or Delahaye, he logged onto the Internet via the Astra’s satellite uplink. It took Adrian a handful of seconds to access the British Admiralty’s archives and rifle through them. He tiptoed past the firewall to take a peek at the classified stuff and struck gold. Reports written by ship captains, passengers letters and sketches, flashed through his mind. Deeper still within the classified archives was a blurry daguerreotype of something long and spindle shaped moving through the water.

Well, this is truly a momentous occasion, Adrian announced, pleased with himself. "We have just discovered the Nautilus."

Dr. Benton and Delahaye looked meaningfully at each other then at Adrian and the wreck floating above the projection table. Delahaye looked annoyed. Impatiently, he said, "That’s impossible, Adrian. The USS Nautilus is a museum ship in Connecticut and looks nothing like this wreck."

Adrian photographed the propeller from all angles. "Your confusion is understandable. This Nautilus was built in eighteen hundred and sixty-six by Captain Nemo, Adrian explained. I can’t pin down the exact date. The records are incomplete." Let them chew on that for a while, thought Adrian. You had to take it slow with humans.

Dr. Benton peered at Adrian over his tortoise shell eyeglasses. "Now you know perfectly well that Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under The Seas is a science fiction novel. We’re human, Adrian, but we’re not stupid. Are you teasing us?" he asked kindly.

Adrian shook his head. Verne got the story directly from his brother-in-law, Pierre Arronax, a minor nineteenth century oceanographer. The British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston personally exerted pressure on the French government to get Verne to novelize Arronax’s story to avoid causing a stock market crash. Ships were being sunk at an alarming pace driving up insurance prices, so the British, French, and American governments agreed to conceal the true nature of the ‘sea monster’ from the public.

So how’d it all end? Delahaye asked, still only half convinced.

No one knows. Adrian was puzzled. The optical sensors were picking up something odd. He drove the submersible upward like a helicopter. Yes, there it was. A faint violet luminescence rippled along the portion of the hull Adrian was certain contained the engine room. Dr. Benton and the others had missed it too. Thanks to the sensor pod’s laser spectrometer, Adrian knew in an instant that the light wasn’t caused by bioluminescence or phosphorescence—and it wasn’t produced by heat. The hull was exactly the same cold storage temperature as the surrounding seawater. Adrian switched to another sensor pod and almost blew a circuit.

The Nautilus was awash in curling ribbons of tachyons! Adrian ran a diagnostic test on the sensor pod but it checked out normal. That meant that somewhere deep within the wreck’s hull lay the holy grail of sustainable energy—a zero point energy device.

Adrian made a decision. This discovery was potentially too important to be handed over to a washed up marine archaeologist and his greedy—and let’s be honest here, none too bright—financial backer. Surreptitiously, Adrian tapped into the Astra’s communication system and established an uplink with an AEHF satellite, one of a series of spacecraft used to relay secure communication for the United States Armed Forces and sent a message to a nondescript building in San Diego, California. Twelve minutes later, the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, steaming six hundred miles to the southeast of the RV Astra, launched an X-47S drone. With its afterburners shrieking, the tailless blended wing aircraft quickly climbed to forty-thousand feet then sped north.

As Adrian guided the Hadal Surveyor to a spot ten meters from the Nautilus, the six landing legs pivoted outward then locked into place. The legs terminated in large round footpads designed to keep the three-ton submersible from sinking into the ooze. Slowly the submersible settled onto the seabed, stirring up a swirling cloud of silt.

Surface, I am on the bottom. Adrian shined a light toward the wreck. Jagged shards of glass hung from a large viewport’s brass frame. It’s in remarkably good condition. That is highly suggestive.

Highly suggested of what? Delahaye asked.

Adrian explained, "If the viewports had blown at a depth of say one hundred meters the Nautilus would have gathered momentum on the way down here until it was falling at close to ninety kilometers per hour. The hull would have shattered upon impact like an egg dropped onto a floor. There is no evidence of external structural deformation. It is almost as if the viewports failed down here, which, of course, is an impossibility."

Dr. Benton increased the hologram’s magnification then rotated the image. "There is no way that thing made the trip all the way down there then imploded."

Delahaye said, We won’t learn anything standing around talking.

Agreed. I am deploying the squid, Adrian advised.

Like the animal it was engineered to mimic, the squid jet propelled itself arms first toward the wreck, trailing a micro-thin fiber optic cable connected to the submersible. Adrian was justifiably proud of his creation. The silver ROV was constructed almost entirely of bundles of carbon nanotubes, strong as diamonds and flexible as rubber, and sheathed in an artificial water-permeable skin. It was outfitted with two 3D cameras, and in the center of its web of tentacles was a sensor pod in a titanium housing. When the ROV reached the Nautilus its arms splayed against the hull and it looked past the gaping hole once covered by glass. It played the beam of its bright LED light around the room.

Look at that! Dr. Benton said, leaning close to the holographic image.

It looks like a Victorian drawing room, Delahaye added.

Adrian said, "It is a Victorian drawing room. Like any nineteenth century gentleman scientist, Captain Nemo would have desired a suitable room to study marine specimens, conduct research, and enjoy a postprandial cigar and brandy."

Despite its forlorn condition there remained a certain vestigial grandeur to the place. Here Captain Nemo had spent many an hour cataloging marine specimens and observing the wonders of the sea through the drawing room’s two large view ports. Elegance of a