Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

Gamay gave him a hard stare, then shook her head and crawled farther out onto the bow. She bunched her legs under her and was preparing to make the leap.

"Stop!" Trout shouted.

She turned and glared at him. "Make up your mind."

Trout had seen what Gamay hadn't. The whirlpool's glassy sides above them were clear of debris. The wreckage that had been kicked up by the churning seemed to have reached an invisible barrier beyond which it failed to rise. The debris was moving back down into the funnel as quickly as it had risen.

"Look," he yelled. "That sea trash is being pulled down again."

It took Gamay only a few seconds to see that he was right. The amphorae were as high as they were going to go. Trout stretched his hand out and pulled her back into the boat. They held on to the safety lines, unable to do anything more than watch helplessly as their boat descended farther into the abyss.

9

The spherical figure on the computer screen reminded Austin of the membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus of a malignant cell.

He turned to Adler. "What exactly are we dealing with here, Professor?"

The scientist scratched his shaggy head. "Hell, Kurt, you got me. This disturbance is growing by the second, and it's moving in a circle at thirty knots. I've never seen anything like it, in size or speed."

"Neither have I," Austin said. "I've run into rough swirling currents that gave me sweaty palms. They were comparatively small and short-lived. This seems more like something out of Edgar Allan Poe or Jules Verne."

"The vortex in Descent into the Maelstrom and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea are largely literary inventions. Poe and Verne were inspired by the Moskstraumen maelstrom off Norway's Lofoten Islands. The Greek historian Pytheas described it more than two thousand years ago as swallowing ships and throwing them up again. The Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus wrote in the 1500s that it was stronger than Charybdis from The Odyssey and that the maelstrom smashed ships against the bottom of the sea and sucked in screaming whales."

"That's the stuff of fiction. What about reality?"

"Far less frightening. The Norwegian whirlpool has been scientifically measured, and it isn't even close to the violent cauldron described in literature. Three other significant whirlpools, Corryvreckan, Scotland, Saltstraumen, also off Norway, and Naruto, near Japan, are far less powerful." He shook his head. "Odd to see any whirlpool action on the open sea."

"Why is that?"

"Whirlpools usually appear in narrow straits where there is fast-moving water. The whirling confluence of tides and currents, combined with the shape of the sea bottom, can create substantial disturbances on the surface."

The image on the screen showed the distance shrinking between the whirlpool and the Benjamin Franklin. "Could that thing be a danger to the ship?"

"Not if earlier scientific observations are any indication. The Old Sow whirlpool off the coast of New Brunswick is approximately the same strength as Moskstraumen, with speeds of about twenty-eight kilometers per hour. It's the largest ocean whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere. The turbulence near the phenomenon can be dangerous to small boats, but it poses no hazard for larger vessels." He paused, staring in fascination at the screen. "Damn!"

"What's wrong?

He stared at the malignancy on the screen. "I wasn't sure at first. But this thing is growing rapidly. In the time we've talked, it has almost doubled in size."

Austin had seen enough.

"I'd like you to do me a great favor, Professor," he said, keeping his voice cool and calm. "Get to the survey control center, fast. Tell Joe to pull the ROV immediately and come to the bridge as soon as possible. Tell him that it's urgent."

Adler glanced at the screen once more, then hurried off. While the professor went on his errand, Austin climbed to the bridge.

Tony Cabral, the Throckmorton's skipper, was a genial man in his late fifties. His tanned face was dominated by a strong nose, he had an upturned black mustache and his mouth was usually stretched in a crooked grin that made him look like a benevolent pirate. But he wore an expression of dead seriousness that changed to one of surprise when he saw Austin.

"Hey, Kurt, I was just about to send someone looking for you."

"We've got a problem," Austin said.

"You know about the SOS we received?"

"First I've heard of it. What's going on?"

"We picked up a Mayday from the NOAA vessel a few minutes ago."

Austin's worst fears were realized. "What's their status?"