Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Mariana Trench

  “Those couldn’t have come from china,” declared Mom, apprehensively.

  “They couldn’t be from that carrier near Tokyo either—there are no planes that fast,” said Joseph. “What if they fire on us too?”

  Sharianna looked down. “Hey, what about the ocean?”

  Immediately, Dad lowered the robot beneath the surface of the waves.

  “Do you think they saw us?” asked Sharianna.

  “I don’t know but we’re not going to wait around to find out. Now I know they can track us; otherwise, they could not have found us so quickly.” Dad piloted the ship through the water as fast as he dared. “I don’t want to make a wake that they can follow.”

  “Maybe they already had an aircraft carrier in the vicinity,” Mom speculated.

  “They must have some sophisticated form of global position-ing, or something…I wonder how they are tracking us—we don’t give off any heat and we don’t make any sound,” pondered Dad, as he dove down even deeper.

  “How deep do you think we are?” asked Sharianna.

  “I don’t know but we can still see, so we can’t be more than one or two hundred feet.”

  “I think we have been oblivious tourists too long,” declared Mom. “We need a plan. How are we going to get home without being detected again? I don’t want them tracking us straight to the barn.”

  “I don’t really even know where we are,” complained Dad.

  “We’re in the Pacific Ocean,” stated Joseph, proudly.

  “That doesn’t help much,” replied Dad. “The Pacific is huge.”

  Joseph suddenly remembered that he had grabbed his back-pack when they were loading the robot because he wanted his iPod that was in it. I haven’t even used it, he thought. “Hey, I still have your GPS in my backpack!” He jumped up and, clearing the steps up to the main level in one leap, crossed the control cabin with two big steps. Ducking his head, he darted into the small corridor that led to the cargo bay.

  “Will it work clear out here?” asked Sharianna, while Joseph was gone to get it.

  “The GPS works off of many satellites that orbit the entire earth; it should work,” explained Dad hopefully.

  “As long as the satellite we destroyed wasn’t the key GPS satellite,” commented Mom wryly.

  Joseph returned with his backpack. “Look what else I’ve got!” he exclaimed, as he dramatically pulled from his backpack his astronomy book that Uncle Jared had given him.

  “We’re not in space anymore,” said Sharianna tersely.

  “Yeah, but look here, it’s not just about space,” he retorted, as he opened it up to a large fold out map of the world.

  “Excellent!” praised Dad.

  “Yea!” exclaimed Mom happily, as she looked at the GPS. “It works. Now we know where we are and where we are going; all we have to decide is how we are going to get there.”

  Joseph wrote the coordinates down on the map.

  “If we lived on the coast we could stay under water the whole way,” said Sharianna.

  “What if we approached from the north, across the Great Salt Lake?” suggested Joseph. “There is nothing out there.”

  Joseph was looking at his map. “What if we came from way up north? If we flew really low, I’ll bet no one would even see us crossing Canada.” Joseph drew a line on the map with a pencil across the Pacific, between Hawaii and Japan, through the North Pacific, through the Bearing Straight, into the Arctic Ocean, then back south through the Northwest Passage to Hudson Bay, across the north end of Manitoba, then down through Saskatchewan, Montana, Idaho and back to Salt Lake City. “We can stay hidden under water almost the whole way.”

  “Yeah, but look, it’s a lot farther over land from Hudson Bay than it is from the California coast,” Sharianna pointed out.

  “I like Joseph’s idea because there are fewer people up north,” said Mom.

  “Look, a whale!” interrupted Dad, as he saw a large silhou-ette out in front and above them, coming their way.

  “It must be a blue whale—it’s so huge,” gasped Joseph.

  Suddenly, Dad was gripped with trepidation as he realized that the silhouette did not swim like a whale. He began diving deeper.

  “That’s not a whale, it’s a submarine,” Joseph corrected himself.

  The submarine matched their descent.

  Dad increased his speed and began to pull away.

  “How deep do you think we can go?” asked Sharianna.

  “Deeper than them, I hope,” replied Dad. “That’s a nuclear submarine – its real maximum dive depth is still classified.”

  The light from the surface began to fade and they could no longer see the submarine.

  “Why didn’t they fire on us?” asked Sharianna.

  “There’re probably American. And not as impetuous as the Chinese,” Dad replied. “They probably want to capture us without completely destroying the ship,” he theorized, as they dove deeper.

  “Or maybe they just want to talk to us?” proposed Sharianna.

  “They would probably experiment on us and dissect us,” warned Joseph.

  “They wouldn’t dissect us. Would they? Dad?” inquired Sharianna.

  “No, I don’t think so; besides, they are not going to catch us, are they?” he replied.

  “It won’t matter, if the pressure crushes us,” cautioned Mom, with a little worry in her voice.

  “I don’t hear any creaking,” consoled Joseph.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” questioned Sharianna.

  “Submarines always creak before they are crushed,” Joseph reasoned.

  “How do you know that?” Sharianna probed skeptically.

  “It’s in all the movies,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, so then it must be true,” she answered sarcastically.

  Mom looked at the GPS. It wasn’t working. “At least the built in compass is still working,” she said. Joseph, what were the last coordinates?”

  “I think we’re too deep for the GPS,” speculated Dad.

  Joseph looked on the map where he had written down the coordinates, “147.22 degrees longitude and 17.68 degrees North.” He located the position on the map. “We’re right over the Mariana trench! The map says it is the world’s deepest sounding: 35,827 feet.”

  “That’s deep,” agreed Mom.

  “Yeah, you could take Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on earth, and put it upside down in the Mariana trench and it still would not reach the bottom,” commented Dad.

  “How do you know where you are going?” asked Mom.

  “I don’t,” replied Dad.

  “It’s black as pitch out there,” complained Sharianna.

  “What is that?” inquired Joseph, as a small light appeared on the screen. They drew closer and Joseph suddenly exclaimed: “It’s a bioluminescent jellyfish! And it’s huge! Mom, remember the book you got me about the creatures in the deep oceans? A lot of creatures down here make their own light.”

  Dad brought the ship to a stop in front of the large jellyfish, but it swam down into the deep.

  Sharianna remembered watching one of the NOVA programs with Dad: “I wish we had those spotlights that the deep sea ROV’s have on them.” She suddenly got an idea: “Robo-Ship, light up the water in front of us.”

  Immediately, light shone from the eyes of the robot, lighting the ocean in front of them for several hundred feet.

  There was a flurry of motion as creatures scurried to escape the unfamiliar light.

  “Wow, there’s a lot of life down here,” marveled Mom.

  Dad proceeded with renewed confidence; at least now he could see if they were about to plow into an underwater mountain or the ocean floor.

  “Do you think the submarine can track us?” asked Joseph.

  “I don’t know what its sensor range is,” answered Dad, “but I’m quite sure that we can move
a lot faster underwater than they can. If we stay ahead of them and don’t follow a straight line, I think we can lose them.”

  “And there is no way they can dive as deep as us,” stated Mom. “Right?”

  “Yeah, right,” replied Dad, with an air of confidence that did not altogether reflect his actual thoughts.

  Suddenly, there appeared a huge, unusual looking creature that extended from the top of the screen down into the murky darkness.

  “A giant squid!” exclaimed Joseph.

  Again, Dad brought the robot to a stop. “I think we are the first people to ever see a giant squid, this big, alive,” he said. “It must be 100 feet long!”

  “Look, it has something in its tentacles,” exclaimed Joseph.

  As they looked closer they could see that it had actually captured a shark, about six feet long, in its tentacles and was bringing it up to its mouth. They were close enough to see the light reflect from its great big eyes.

  Unexpectedly, from above the squid, they saw a huge shape descend. The giant invertebrate was preoccupied with consuming its newly captured meal; it did not discern the danger that sped toward it from above.

  Joseph immediately recognized the huge blunt, square head extending a third of the way down the body, and its small, under slung lower jaw. Small, was a relative thing; it was only small when compared to the total size of the head – the jaw was still over eight feet long.

  “It’s a sperm whale! Get a picture of that Sharianna!” he exclaimed, as they heard a very low toned reverberation that sounded a little like a sonic boom. Immediately, the squid seemed to go limp and what was left of the shark slowly drifted down into the depths, as the 60-foot whale opened its mouth and with a movement of its tongue created a vacuum that sucked the invertebrate into its mouth. As soon as the huge jaws closed on the body of the invertebrate, its tentacles seemed to spring back to life, writhing and twining themselves around the head and neck of the colossal mammal, tearing and pulling at the whale’s skin, but to no avail.

  With a large swish of its tail it swung its great head in the direction of the robot and seemed to pause as it observed them with its huge eyes. The great beast opened its mouth and with another sucking motion of its tongue drew in another eight feet of the giant invertebrate. Finally, the tentacles released their grip on the whale as he continued to feast. Then, with what looked like a deliberate nod of acknowledgment in the direction of the robot, it turned its immense square head and gracefully began its long ascent to the surface with the remnants of the squid’s tentacles trailing from its huge mouth.

  The whole family sat speechless for a moment as the whale disappeared into the darkness above. Finally, Joseph broke the silence, “Awesome,” was all he could say.

  “Yes, awesome,” echoed Dad.

  Dad pressed forward on the stick again until both small and large fauna streamed past the robot at an amazing speed. He estimated that they must be traveling at somewhere between fifty and seventy-five miles per hour, by the rate that creatures came into view in the lights and then disappeared back into the black expanse as they passed them.

  Off to the right, the wall of the underwater canyon came into view. This confirmed Joseph’s previous declaration that they were over the Mariana trench, for they now seemed to be deep within its walls.

  “Look, the walls are alive with life,” observed Mom.

  Dad slowed down in order to get a better look. To their surprise, they saw a myriad of fish and other creatures: the orange roughy, with its orange skin, the snaggletooth and the anglerfish with their bioluminescent fishing lures and their enormous teeth. They saw several kinds of translucent jellyfish with their poisonous tentacles.

  “Stop. There, to the right,” instructed Sharianna. “That section of wall moved.” As they approached closer, suddenly they saw a huge creature. “It looks like a manta ray,” speculated Joseph.

  “No way,” exclaimed Sharianna. “Look at those huge tentacles. It looks like it has huge paws with a dozen or so sharp hooks on each of those two longest tentacles.”

  As they approached, they startled a large fish about four feet long from its resting place on a rock shelf. It darted past the hiding place of the colossal squid. Like a flash, it reached out and embedded its long hooks into the fish and quickly drew it in.

  “It’s almost as long as the robot and must weigh at least a ton,” estimated Dad.

  They turned away from the wall and continued their descent into the trench.

  “Why are you diving even deeper?” questioned Mom.

  “I still haven’t heard any creaking.” Dad smiled, as he looked at Joseph with a wink. “No, really, I just want to make sure we put a lot of distance and depth between us and the submarine; besides, wouldn’t you like to see what is at the bottom?”

  “Yes,” answered Joseph. “It’s even better than climbing the tallest mountain.”

  “But the GPS doesn’t work when we are so deep,” comment-ed Mom.

  “I know, we’ll have to come up near the surface to figure out where we are; but in the meantime, I want to make sure we have lost them for good.”

  As they dove deeper and deeper into the trench they observed fewer animals, until finally they seemed to be alone in the depths.

  When they reached the bottom, Dad stopped. He put a finger to his lips. “Shhh…” Dad paused as his eyes darted around at the curved ceiling. “Did you hear a creak?”

  “Stop it, Dad!” commanded Sharianna.

  They continued traveling south along the bottom of the trench. Abruptly, they discovered a large number of army tanks and jeeps from the World War II era strewn along the bottom. They were somewhat deteriorated by the salt water, but all seemed to be intact. They looked around for the ship that must have been carrying them but they could not find one in the vicinity.

  Suddenly, Dad remembered a program on TV. “After the war, rather than bring so much equipment back home, they just dumped them in the ocean.”

  “That seems very wasteful,” said Sharianna, as if she were scolding those who made that decision.

  “What is that light!” exclaimed Mom, as she pointed toward a very faint glow a short distance beyond the reach of the robot’s lights.

  “How could there be any light way down here?” marveled Joseph.

  As they approached the mysterious illumination, they could gradually make out the sharply defined outline of a man-made structure silhouetted against the unearthly red glow. It appeared that the structure had a few windows in the upper sections that also emanated the strange glow.

  Mom put her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Maybe it’s a sunken city?” ventured Joseph.

  “Maybe it’s another space ship?” proposed Sharianna.