Absentmindedly, McHugh replied, “Nothing radical, Tom. If it is Russian, then we are in deep trouble. We won’t be able to deploy a sizeable station at that depth for any period of time. Based on the magnetometer readings this thing, whatever it is, is substantial. If your Nematode, or whatever you call it, can help us locate the source of this anomaly, we can get down there with the Trieste for a look.”
“Don’t we have sonar arrays deployed at those depths?”
“No, our SOSUS nets are generally deployed at much shallower depths. No submarines are known to be able to dive to the depth associated with the anomaly. If the Russians have a submarine capable of that depth, they could hide in the submarine canyons off Santa Catalina Island and be within thirty miles of Los Angeles and not be detected by our SOSUS nets.”
“Holy shit!” said Sevson, sinking into a chair. “God, it’s Cuba all over again!”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, Tom. We have no knowledge that the Russians have that kind of technology. If they did, I think we would have heard by now.”
“Bob, I think you’d better see this,” interrupted Mike, who had been looking over the shoulder of the Western Light technician.
“Commander, we have a reading,” called out the sonar technician. McHugh walked across the small room to stand behind the technician. On the CRT, the greenish lines were definitely displaying something.
The green trace was rising steadily, not in dramatic jumps, but steadily as each trace ran across the face of the oscilloscope, the tension in the instrumentation room grew. Evans and Sevson joined McHugh and Mike. More lines were painted vertically on the screen. Each new line gave a better indication of the shape and size of whatever the side scan sonar saw.
As the object began filling the screen of the CRT, McHugh asked the operator to turn on a backup plotter. McHugh went to the plotters and what he saw was something big, as big as a football field, and oval in cross section. This was not a natural feature like a rock outcropping or fault line.
“Damn!” uttered Frederick Evans.
“What do you make of it?” asked McHugh.
“From the sonar record, it appears that the object is quite large, perhaps over a football field long. By triangulation we’re pretty certain that the centroid of this thing, whatever it is, is also the peak of our magnetometer trace within a statistical accuracy of one standard deviation,” replied Sevson. Evans nodded assent.
“You’re not writing a scientific paper, Tom. How about some plain speak for the troops,” chided McHugh.
“What it means is that we found whatever was causing the magnetic anomaly on Evan’s Orion flight; it’s just that we don’t know what it is.”
“What if we drop the Trieste on this thing,” asked McHugh.
“You could be here for years. All that the Trieste will be able to see would be an infinitesimal part of whatever is there. In order to get a definitive idea of this object, or whatever it is, we need to have mobility. The explanation of this could be perfectly normal. We could be merely seeing the tip of a massive seamount, magma, or a salt dome.
“It’s just that the regularity of the shape bugs the hell outa me. I’ve never seen anything like it before, just doesn’t make sense, especially given the fact that the benthic topography is so uniform for hundreds of miles around. If the geology of the region were such that we could predict a seamount or a salt dome, then I’d feel better, but it doesn’t.”
“You don’t normally associate a salt dome with anomalous magnetometer readings, do you?” questioned Mike.
“Not normally, and certainly not at the levels we have found here. A magma outflow could explain the magnetometer readings, but the area is not known for volcanic activity. Also, magma flows would never be so regular in shape. It’s almost like someone lobbed a gigantic football onto the ocean floor,” explained Evans.
“We’ve got to get down there and have a look, any suggestions gentlemen?” inquired McHugh.
“We could attach television cameras and strobes to the Nematode, but we would be basically seeing only small portions of the object at one time.” offered Sevson. The combination of darkness and the relatively small field of illumination offered by the Nematode’s on-board lighting would not give much of an overview; just small snatches of the object now depicted on the sonar tape.
“Doesn’t anyone have a free swimmer that could get to those depths?” asked an exasperated McHugh.
Both Sevson and Mike’s face lit up simultaneously.
Mike spoke first, “MacAlear Aviation has been developing a free swimming submersible that is allegedly capable of 20,000 foot depths. Some guy from MacAlear gave a talk at Stanford last year about their oceanographic programs and I remember being impressed with the depth.”
“Yeah,” said Sevson, “I’ve read about it as well. For some reason, there hasn’t been much press about the submersible in trade journals. I think everyone assumes that MacAlear abandoned the program. With the drop off of Navy funds a lot of programs have bitten the dust in the last year or two. I guess that the MacAlear submersible is a victim of some government cutback.”
“How can we find out more about this submersible?” asked an intrigued Robert McHugh.
“A good friend of mine works for MacAlear, I think you know him, Ed Robison,” replied Sevson.
“Wasn’t he the one who ran the Wayward Wind aground off Baja in ‘59?”
Sevson had also sailed on the R/V Wayward Wind and had a similar photograph like the one on McHugh’s wall in Port Hueneme.
“Yup! That’s the guy.”
“I guess he thinks if he stays in deep water, he’ll be okay.”
“Let me give him a call when we get back to Annapolis,” offered Sevson.
1967: Free Swimming
“Know of any quick places to eat?” asked Sevson.
“We could go down to the Oasis on El Camino,” offered Mike. “It’s not the fanciest place in the world but the hamburgers are good. It’s sort of a graduate engineering student hangout. Believe me, you’ll love it.”
Pulling into the parking lot of the Oasis, Sevson wasn’t sure what Mike was getting him into. The rather plain looking facade of the bar/restaurant wasn’t quite what he expected. As Sevson and Mike entered the dimly lit dining area, Sevson was not terribly impressed by the peanut shells on the floor, the long hard wooden benches, and the heavy wood tables.
Mike, on the other hand, seemed to be oblivious to the dingy surroundings. He went right to the counter and ordered two cheeseburgers, fries and drinks.
Sevson found two places on a bench, having to stare down a couple of shallow, pasty looking students who were hogging the entire table without any food in sight.
After what seemed to be an eternity, Mike came over with a tray holding two red plastic baskets, made to look like woven straw baskets, two mugs of some brownish solution — the glasses already frosting over. In the baskets were cheeseburgers in sesame rolls, French fries, and a slice of tomato sitting on a leaf of lettuce. The food was lying on a white paper napkin and a strip of wax paper.
“Didn’t I tell you that you would like this place?” said Mike enthusiastically.
Sevson grunted, as he brushed some peanut shells and food scraps off the wooden table. Mike handed Sevson’s red plastic basket to him and sat down across the table. The two former squatters at the table looked darkly at the older man in a white, short sleeve shirt and tan trousers with white socks inside brown penny loafers and the young Chinese dressed in the tan uniform of the United States Navy.