Chapter Twenty-Three
Orca!
Mom waited in the airlock until Dad and Joseph entered with their treasures. She put her arms around the two men. “We’re all safe.”
“Yep,” Sharianna replied proudly from the control cabin.
Dad and Mom took the captain’s chairs and they headed north across the Bering Sea. Joseph and Sharianna sat in the lower observation area.
“It looks like it gets a lot shallower as you approach the Bering Straight,” reported Sharianna, as she looked at the water depths shown on the map.
It was a welcome change to be traveling through the upper layer of the ocean that was lit by the sun’s rays, rather than the pitch black depths along the deep ocean floor.
It was amazing how much sea life there was in the northern oceans. Salmon, steelhead, herring, and many other fish flourished in the cool water. It is true that they were not as colorful as the tropical fish around their island paradise, but they seemed to be as plentiful.
As they traveled through the Bering Straight, they began to see more marine mammals like seals, and even walruses.
“I think we should continue north for a while, because it looks from the map that the water is a little shallow along the northern coast of Alaska, and we wouldn’t want to risk detection,” admonished Joseph, as they left the Bering straight behind and entered the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean.
“Look, over there, the water looks cloudy,” observed Mom.
Dad slowed down to take a look.
“It’s a school of small fish. There must be millions of them!” exclaimed Sharianna.
“They are being herded.”
Seven black and white whales were circling the huge school of fish, while expelling streams of bubbles, condensing the swirling mass of fish tighter and tighter.
Dad stopped the robot in order to watch what the killer whales were doing. As the whales swam around and under the fish they condensed them into a tight, almost solid mass, right up against the surface. Then, five whales would stay in the herding pattern, while two dashed into the swarming mass of fish with their mouths wide open, shooting straight to the surface, and jumping clear out of the water. They continued this – taking turns herding and feeding, until the school of fish was decimated and the orcas had their fill.
“Hey, they are coming toward us.” Sharianna felt a surge of excitement as the huge, graceful mammals glided through the clear arctic water. Sharianna remembered their California trip when they went to Sea World in San Diego. She loved to see the killer whales perform and especially liked to see them through the glass wall of their tank as they swam underwater. While they were feeding, the orcas seemed to ignore the robot, even though they were now somewhat close. Now that they were done feeding, they seemed to be curious. The whales swam around the robot, nudging it now and then with their noses. They didn’t seem to be the least bit scared. Dad began to slowly move away in a northerly direction and the whales followed, swimming alongside the robot, as if they had found a new friend.
“This is incredible,” marveled Sharianna, it’s like being at Sea World, except that these are wild whales, and they are just as playful! Talk about whale watching, I’ll bet you never see anything like this from a boat!”
“Did you know that killer whales really aren’t whales?” asked Joseph.
“Then what are they?” demanded Sharianna skeptically.
“They are in the dolphin family.”
Dad slowly increased the speed of the robot and the orcas matched its speed for a while; then finally, they had enough fun and dropped out of the race.
“I think we ought to continue north for a while,” suggested Dad. “I think I would feel safer traveling out in deep water.”
“Did you know that my great Uncle Rex was the only man from Utah that was on the Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine to go to the North Pole, under the polar ice cap?” bragged Mom. She paused for a moment. “Funny, he never talked about it much. Joseph, how far are we from the North Pole?”
Joseph looked at the GPS. “186.42 degrees west longitude and 74.11 degrees north. We could be there in less than two hours.”
“We’re so close…” Mom looked at Dad with raised eye-brows and a questioning look.
“I guess a small detour shouldn’t hurt,” conceded Dad.
As they made their way north, Dad continued to follow the random zigzag pattern, rising only long enough to take the GPS readings. They were now under the permanent pack ice that covers the extreme northern tip of the planet.
“We must be getting pretty close, judging from the last GPS reading and the heading we took since then,” said Joseph. “Let’s rise near the surface and see how close we are.”
The lights from the robot were a small prick of light in the dark depths of the Arctic Ocean.
“What is that?” asked Sharianna.
“What?” replied Joseph, peering into the darkness.
“Over there to the left. I saw something black.”
“Everything is black,” replied Joseph, “How could you see something that is black?”
“It was sort of shiny black and it looked geometric.”
“There it is!” exclaimed Mom, as the object came into the view of the ship’s lights. “Oh, my goodness, it can’t be…can it?”
“It’s another obelisk!” confirmed Dad.
“It looks like it is made of the same material as the one on the moon,” observed Joseph.
“What in the world is it doing submerged under the ice at the North Pole?” puzzled Mom.
“I still want to know who built them,” wondered Dad thoughtfully.
“Why did they put it at the North Pole?” inquired Joseph.
“I wonder if it is exactly at the North Pole,” said Dad. “Let’s go up a little and see if we can get a GPS reading.”
“It is exactly at the North Pole all right,” Joseph announced, as he looked at the GPS.
“Let’s find its base,” directed Mom, “and see if it has the same writing on it as the one on the moon.”
“Good idea,” agreed Dad, as he descended to the bottom.
The lights of the robot shone on the glistening surface.
“Look, there are no crustaceans, barnacles or other sea life attached to the surface,” observed Joseph. “What does it mean?”
“It’s either brand new, or it is so smooth that nothing can get a grip on its surface,” concluded Dad.
As they circled the base of the obelisk, it became apparent that it truly was much larger than the one on the moon.
“It must be four or five times as big as the other one,” commented Dad, in absolute awe.
“There is writing on it!” exclaimed Mom. “Sharianna, show me the pictures of the other obelisk.”
Sharianna scanned through the dozens of pictures that she had taken and found those of the obelisk and handed the camera to Mom.
“It’s the same,” she declared breathlessly.
“Pangea!” Mom suddenly exclaimed excitedly, as she examined a round symbol that looked like a world with a single continent and a slender triangle extending from the top.
“What’s Pangea?” questioned Sharianna.
Joseph remembered watching a PBS program about continental drift and plate tectonics; he showed her the map of the world. “Look, if you fit North and South America to Africa and Europe, pull in Australia and Antarctica, you get one great big super continent – Pangea.”
“It sure does look the same,” concurred Dad contemplative-ly, as he looked from the map back to the symbol on the obelisk.
“It’s a depiction of Earth!” asserted Mom. “Why didn’t I see that when we were on the moon?” she asked herself.
“Except that it is Earth millions of years ago,” amended Dad.
“I wish we knew what the rest of these symbols mean,” pondered Mom.
“Wait a minute,” gasped Joseph. “Look, over there, the last sym
bol. Shine the light over there, Dad. That one wasn’t on the moon’s obelisk.”
“It’s the continents as they are today!” exclaimed Sharianna.
Sophia was bursting with unanswered questions: “Were the obelisks built during the age of dinosaurs, or more recently? Who built them? Why did they come? Why did they leave?”
Mom felt compelled to investigate. She flipped the control switch to her side and reached out with the robot and gently ran the finger of the robot around the edge of the square spiral.
“I don’t know if you should…” began Dad.
Mom then touched the center.
“Why did you do that?” asked Dad.
“I don’t know,” she replied.
“Oh, oh,” moaned Joseph, as the row of symbols began to disappear. They expected the obelisk to open up like the one on the moon. They were surprised when it began to slowly rise from the floor of the ocean. The silt on the ocean floor around the base of the obelisk was sucked up as the obelisk accelerated, causing the ocean to be murky, instead of clear.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Sharianna, as they sat in stunned silence.
“Let’s follow it!” cried Joseph.
Mom piloted the robot, following the wake left by the obelisk, but it was already out of sight. Suddenly, they heard a sharp cracking sound travel through the water as the point of the obelisk penetrated the thick layer of ice covering the ocean, followed by a powerful percussion reverberating through the sea.
“That last noise sounded like an explosion,” said Sophia nervously, as she peered into the darkness above the robot.
Without warning, she saw a long cylindrical object in the darkness above.
“A sub!” exclaimed Joseph incredulously. “How did they find us clear up here?”
They veered off to the left, in an effort to avoid the subma-rine.
“Oh Oh,” groaned Sharianna, as she saw another cylindrical shape emerge from the semi-darkness directly in their path, heading in their direction quite rapidly.
“Don’t worry, I think we can evade them,” declared Mom, as she turned the robot with the intention of diving off into the depths.
Suddenly, off to the left, a third submarine emerged from the shadows below, also making a beeline for the robot.
Mom turned the robot again, searching for an avenue of escape, when a fourth sub appeared and effectively cut off their flight. The first three subs were closing fast when the fourth one abruptly fired an extremely fast torpedo directly at the robot.
In a split second Mom made her decision and looked up at the solid ice above. The light from the sun barely penetrated into the water below the permanent ice cap that floated on the Arctic Ocean above the North Pole.
“It looks pretty solid,” cautioned Dad, as the robot shot toward the barrier of ice. As they got closer, he amended his first assessment of the ice. “No, I think it’s fractured from where the obelisk went through not too far from here.”
The robot hit the ice with such an immense impact that the primordial ice shattered and huge chunks went flying into the air. As the robot burst through the thick ice, it was followed by a huge vortex of water that was drawn high into the air, followed by an enormous explosion that enlarged the hole in the ice even more, as the torpedo detonated.
They looked up in the sky, but could see no sign of the obelisk. “No telling which direction it went,” declared Dad, “we might as well continue home.”
Mom brought the robot back down so close to the surface, that the wind created a mini snowstorm as they sped across the frozen north.
Realizing that the subs would be linked to the tracking satellites, they decided not to travel too far on the surface before coming to a stop over the ice.
“That was close,” sighed Mom, her heart still pounding. “What now?” she asked.
“I think we are safer way down deep, where the subs can’t go, and the satellites can’t track,” Dad replied.
Mom flipped the switch back to Dad. “You take over.”
“Are we going to crash through the ice again?” asked Shari-anna.
Suddenly, Joseph got an idea. “What about the laser; you could cut a hole in the ice and we could drop down through.”
“Great idea,” acknowledged Dad, as he activated the laser and cut a circle through the ice a little bigger than the widest point of the robot. Then, by landing the robot on one edge of the circle of ice, it tipped down as the robot slid through, like opening and closing a door.
“I’ll bet they won’t even be able to see where we came through the ice,” said Joseph as he looked up and saw the huge disc of ice rotate back into place. Dad continued to descend until they reached the bottom.
“How in the world did they know we were there?” asked Sharianna.
“They must have somehow been able to track our every movement,” theorized Joseph.
“I don’t think so,” replied Mom, as her deductive abilities kicked into gear. “Otherwise, I think they could have easily caught up to us in Hawaii – we were there a whole day, and I’m sure there were submarines at Pearl Harbor that could have intercepted us, if they had known where we were. I’ll bet Uncle Rex saw the obelisk when the Nautilus first went to the North Pole. Maybe that’s why he didn’t talk about it very much…”
Joseph interrupted, “And that is why the submarines were waiting for us at the North Pole: They knew the obelisk was there, and the one on the moon…I’ll bet they assumed that we are the aliens who put them there! And they assumed that when we came back we would return to the obelisk!”
“Maybe we are!” declared Sharianna.
Everyone looked at Sharianna incredulously. “Well, maybe the same aliens who built the robot also built the obelisks?”
“Maybe. But the question still remains: What happened to them and where are they now?” Mom’s analysis continued as she looked at the picture of the writing on the obelisk. “I sure wish I knew what this said. The material that both the robot and the obelisks are made of is hard, but the similarities end there: the obelisks are pure black, while the robot’s appearance depends on how close you are to it and seems to encompass many colors.”
Joseph continued the comparison, “The obelisks are geomet-ric with sharp angles, while the robot doesn’t have any sharp angles at all. And none of the symbols inside the robot look like the symbols on the obelisk.” He said, as he waved his hand over the symbols on the console for added emphasis. “And these chairs are made for people our size, while the steps inside the obelisk were obviously designed for creatures much taller.” He smiled with this last gesture, feeling like he had irrevocably disproved Sharianna’s theory.
“Your argument seems convincing…” agreed Dad.
“That’s not proof,” argued Sharianna.
Dad continued: “I was about to say, I think I will reserve my opinion until we have further information.”
“Well, a few days ago, I wouldn’t have believed that anything that has happened to us in the past few days could ever happen, so I’m fine with a little mystery…for now,” stated Mom.
“Do you think that second loud noise was a torpedo fired at the obelisk?” asked Sharianna.
“Do you think NASA tracked the obelisk into space?” asked Joseph.
“I don’t think they could miss something as tall as a moun-tain shooting up from the North Pole,” commented Dad.
“I wonder if its propulsion is the same as the robot,” pon-dered Joseph.
“We don’t even know how the robot works,” Mom reminded him.
“To answer Sharianna’s question: I think they did fire on the obelisk, like they fired on us,” responded Dad.
“Do you think there are aliens inside the obelisk?” asked Sharianna. “Maybe we should try to find it.”
Mom quickly responded: “No way! We have no idea where it went or what technology or weapons it might have—we’re going home.”
“Why did the submarines try to
destroy us?” asked Sharian-na.
“I couldn’t really tell for sure, but the fourth submarine seemed different than the first three. I suspect that the first three were American, and the fourth one might have been Russian,” theorized Dad.
“You wouldn’t want to let your enemies get their hands on alien technology, would you?” reasoned Joseph.
“But I thought the cold war was over,” stated Sharianna.
“Yeah, but we’re still not best friends,” counseled Mom.
They quickly made their way across the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, following a course southward, directly toward Heiberg Island in the extreme northern territories of Canada.
“We are about to pass the magnetic North Pole,” commented Dad, as he looked at the map.
“I didn’t know there were two North Poles,” said Joseph.
“Yeah, the magnetic North Pole is a few hundred miles from the geographic North Pole,” said Dad. “It has even moved during the history of the earth,” he added. “In fact, at least once, the poles actually reversed their polarity.”
“Why would it move?” inquired Joseph.
“I think the scientists believe it is because the earth’s magnetic field is generated by the movement of the earth’s liquid iron core. Changes in its flow, due to the slow cooling of the earth over millions of years, affects the magnetic field. The movement of the continents across the globe may even have an effect.”
“The earth’s magnetic field is what protects us from the sun’s solar wind. Without it, the atmosphere would be stripped away and life could not exist.” Dad loved to throw out little tidbits of scientific information.
“I thought there was no wind in space, because there is no air,” challenged Sharianna.
“That’s true, but solar wind refers to small particles and radiation thrown out by the sun.”
Joseph continued Dad’s lecture. “That’s what probably happened to Mars: it lost its magnetic field, and then its atmosphere, and consequently, its life.” Joseph had watched the same program as Dad.
They stayed under water and snaked their way among the islands, through the gulf of Boothia and into Hudson Bay.
Joseph was looking at the map. “Hudson Bay should be called a sea, because it’s bigger than the black sea and it’s even wider across than the Mediterranean Sea.”
“Hey, there is a big river that leads up to Reindeer Lake, in Saskatchewan,” said Joseph. “I think that is as close to home as we can get while staying under water.”
Dad acknowledged Joseph’s suggestion. “Okay, we’ll go up the river and wait for nightfall in the lake. We’ll have to go overland once we leave the lake. I think from here on out we should only travel at night, and below the sound barrier to try to avoid detection.”
Upon leaving Reindeer Lake that evening, they flew low to the ground, making sure not to travel faster than the speed of sound across Saskatchewan and into Alberta, where they foune a railway that led south.
“What if we followed the railroad really low and went about the same speed as a train?” proposed Mom.
“Yeah, that way, even if we were detected, they would probably think it was a train,” added Joseph.
“Great idea,” complimented Dad.
The moon was still almost full; they could see the moonlight reflecting off the top of the rails where the wheels of the train had made the metal shiny.
It wasn’t very long before they caught up with a freight train headed south. They followed it so close that it appeared as if they were part of the train.
“I’m glad that trains don’t have cabooses with brakemen anymore,” commented Dad, as he followed the blinking red light at the back of the train until close to dawn.
Sharianna, Joseph and Percy fell asleep on the huge beanbag on the lower observation level of the control cabin.