Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

"I think it's time we talked," the professor whispered.

Austin nodded and returned to the control console. He told Joe he would be in the ship's recreation room, then he and the professor left the survey center. With the rest of the ship's complement working or watching the pictures of the Belle, they had the rec room to themselves. It was a comfortable space, with leather furniture, a television set and DVD, movie cabinet, pool table and Ping-Pong table, some board games and a computer.

Austin and Adler settled into a couple of chairs. "Well," Adler said, "what do you think?"

"About the Belle? You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce why it went to the bottom. The deckhouse was blasted off."

"We have the satellite pictures showing wave activity. There's no doubt in my mind that she was hit by one or more killer waves far bigger than anything we've seen before."

"Which brings us back to your theories. You were reluctant earlier to talk about them. Has finding the ship chang

ed your mind?"

"I'm afraid my theories are out of the ordinary."

Austin leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. "I've learned that nothing is ordinary when it comes to the ocean."

"I've hesitated up to now because I didn't want to be labeled a humbug. It took years for the scientific community to accept freak waves as fact. My colleagues would rip me to shreds if they knew what I was thinking."

"We couldn't let that happen," Austin said reassuringly. "I'll respect your confidence."

The professor nodded. "When the empirical evidence of these waves became too strong to deny, the European Union launched two high-resolution-image satellites. The project was called Max Wave. The goal was to see if these waves existed, and examine how they might influence ship and offshore platform design. The European Space Agency satellites would produce 'imagettes,' covering an area just ten by five kilometers. Over a three-week period, the satellites identified more than ten freak waves all higher than eighty-two feet."

Adler went over and sat in front of the computer. He tapped the keyboard until an image of the globe appeared on the screen. The Atlantic Ocean was speckled with annotated wave symbols. "I'm using the census data from Wave Atlas. Each symbol denotes the location of a giant wave, its height and the date it was formed. As you can see, there has been an increase in wave activities over the last thirteen months. And in the size of these monsters as well."

Austin pulled up a chair next to the professor. He scanned the wavy symbols. Each symbol was annotated with the height and date of the event. The waves were randomly scattered around the world, except for several clusters.

"Do you notice anything unusual?"

"These four circular patterns are each spaced the same distance apart in the Atlantic, including the area we're in now. Two in the North Atlantic. Two in the South. What about the Pacific?"

"I'm glad you asked me that." He manipulated the globe until the Pacific Ocean came into view.

Austin whistled. "Four similar clusters. Strange."

"That's what struck me as odd too." A faint smile crossed his lips. "I've measured the clusters and found that they are exactly equidistant in each ocean."

"What are you saying, Professor?"

"That there appears to be a conscious plan at work here. These waves are the work either of man or God."

Austin pondered the implications of the professor's statement. "There is a third possibility," he said after a moment. "Man acting as God."

Arching a bushy eyebrow, Adler said, "That's out of the question, of course."

Austin smiled. "Not necessarily. Mankind has a history of trying to control the elements."

"Controlling the sea is another matter."

"I agree, although there have been crude but effective attempts. Dikes and storm barriers go back hundreds of years."

"I was a consultant on the Venice tidal gate project, so I know what you mean. Stopping the ocean involves a relatively simple concept. It's the engineering that becomes the challenge. The creation of giant waves would be far more difficult."

"But not impossible," Austin said.

"No, not impossible."

"Have you given any thought to means? Something like huge underwater explosions?"