Polar Shift (NUMA Files 6)

Austin's cell phone started playing the blues. He excused himself and put the phone up to his ear. Barrett was calling, and he sounded excited. There was a muffled engine roar in the background.

"I can barely hear you," Austin said. "What's that noise?"

"I always think better when I'm riding. I think I've got it."

"Got what?"

"The nursery rhyme. It was code. I've got the formula for the antidote."

Austin couldn't believe his ears. "Say that again."

"The antidote," Barrett yelled, thinking Austin was simply not hearing over the noise of the motorcycle. "I've got Lazlo Kovacs's antidote for polar shift."

37

Shortly after the hot Brazilian sun dropped below the mountains, the handsome, 350-foot-long expedition vessel Polar Adventure slipped out of Rio de Janeiro harbor and headed on a southerly course toward the open waters of the Atlantic at its cruising speed of fifteen knots.

The Polar Adventure had been built by Danish shipbuilders in the late 1990s, and had enjoyed a busy schedule that took it to the Mediterranean, Europe, Greenland and most recently on Antarctic cruises. The ship had been purchased from its owners by a straw company set up expressly for that purpose by Gant's foundation.

The acquisition was purely an accounting device. On the books, the millions of dollars spent to acquire and refurbish the ship had been earmarked to build a factory in Santiago, Chile. The Adventure had been designed as a smaller version of the great ocean liners. The builders had lavishly decorated the decks and cabins with varnished wood and brass. Passengers could enjoy their voyage from the comfort of the outside cabins, the window-lined dining room, lounge, observation and covered promenade decks, or from an observation platform below the bridge.

As the ship plowed through the South Atlantic, Gant and Margrave stood on a balcony deep in the heart of the vessel. It overlooked a vast open space. A tall, cone-shaped metal structure, supported by extensive framework, rose from the center point of the space. Thick cables snaked out from the cone to four massive dynamos, two on either side of the structure. A covered moon pool below the cone allowed it to be lowered into the ocean.

"We essentially gutted every nonessential space below the main deck to make room for this setup," Margrave said with a sweep of his hand. "After our initial crude experiments, we decided that we didn't need four ships. One vessel, properly outfitted, could produce enough power to get the job done. We had been concentrating the low-frequency transmissions to a central point from the four ships."

"Which, as I understand it," Gant said, "created a scattering of the electromagnetic vibrations along the periphery of the target area, setting off unexpected waves and whirlpools like the ones that sank our transmitter ship and the Southern Belle."

"Right. We solved that problem by using the single transmitter you see here, with an increase in the power level. It also meant that we didn't have to build a new ship to replace the one destroyed in the initial experiments. We simply moved dynamos from the other three ships and added one."

"Are you satisfied with the crew I got you?"

"They look like a bunch of cutthroats, but they know their way around a ship."

"They should. They've cut their share of throats. I used my old business contacts to recruit them. They're all former pirates who went to work for an ocean-protection arm of our security company."

The two men left the transmitter hold and strolled along the polished wooden floor of the promenade deck until they came to the observation deck below the bridge. Windows that wrapped around the outside of the comfortably furnished platform offered a view of the sharp bow cutting its way through the ocean.

"This is where the passengers would normally observe wildlife," Margrave said. "We'll be watching the reversal with our electronic eyes."

He pressed a wall button and a screen dropped down showing a diagram of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. "I've always liked home movies," Gant said.

"You'll especially like these," Margrave said with a chuckle. "We'll have the entire target area under surveillance with our lead-shielded satellites. We'll be able to see the giant waves and whirlpools developing on the periphery of our target area. Should be quite spectacular!"

"Not too spectacular, I hope."

"Don't tell me you believe those phony warnings from Austin and his friends."

"I'm a political person, not a scientific one. But I do know that Austin was trying to torpedo this project with scare tactics." He smiled. "Maybe I'd do the same thing if I were in his place helplessly watching something that I couldn't stop."

"We didn't take the Kovacs Theorems at face value. We've run the computer models dozens of times. The waves and vortexes along the edge of the target will spin outward. We don't think there is much shipping in the area, but collateral damage is sometimes unavoidable in any great enterprise."

"Our compasses will change immediately?"

"That's our estimate. Our navigation equipment will be recalibrated just before we start the reversal and will work off our shielded satellites." He offered his most satanic grin. "We'll be the only ship in the world able to navigate. Should be quite the mess out there."

"Tell me more about the target area," Gant said.

"You can see it up there on the screen. Our friend the South Atlantic Anomaly. As I've explained before, it's essentially a 'dip' in the magnetosphere where there is less natural shielding." He pointed to an intersection where lines of latitude and longitude crossed. "About three hundred miles off the coast of Brazil is this area of weakest polarity, where a natural polar shift would occur."