Barrett had seen the gauge signifying a problem and had already hit the kill switch. Austin found the source of the sparks was a lead into one of the dynamos. The connection had come loose while the plane was being bounced around by the violent turbulence.
He examined the connection for damage, found nothing serious and quickly reconnected the cable. Austin yelled at Barrett to power up. The humming of the bees began, and rose to a pitch where it drowned out the roar of the jet engines. Karla had joined Barrett at the control panel. Austin stood near the intercom where he could keep in close touch with the cockpit.
"How does it look?" Austin asked.
Barrett's eyes swept over the control panel and he smiled. "Everything is on track."
Austin gave him the thumbs-up, and called to Zavala, "What's our altitude?"
"Eight thousand feet."
"Good. Bring her down to four thousand, and then make a level pass directly over the ship. Let me know when we're starting the approach to the target."
"Aye, aye, sir."
As the plane dropped lower, the pilot had to contend with an unexpected burst of turbulence. He got the plane back on an even keel with some skillful flying. Zavala called to say that they were making their approach to the ship.
Austin called out to Barrett to give it the juice. He hesitated with his hand over the power switch, and for a second Austin thought he hadn't understood. Then Barrett stepped aside and put Karla's hand on the switch.
"This is in honor of your grandfather."
Karla replied with a broad grin and threw the switch. Power flowed into the antenna, where it was converted to pulses of electromagnetic energy. Austin had no precedent or experience to work with, so he was laying down a pattern of energy bursts in much the same way a sub hunter saturates the ocean with depth charges.
They were over the ship an instant later. Austin ordered the pilot to repeat the procedure, coming in at another angle. The 747 wasn't built for strafing runs, and the big plane seemed to take forever as it banked around in a wide turn and started back to lay down another series of charges.
Again Zavala yelled out the five-hundred-yard mark. Again Karla laid on the power.
Another pass, another barrage of electromagnetic pulses flowed into the sea around the ship.
"How long do we need to do this?" Zavala said.
"Until we run out of fuel, and then some," Austin said with a steely determination in his voice.
The mood was euphoric on the observation platform of the Polar Explorer.
Margrave and Gant gazed up through the glass-paneled ceiling, their faces bathed in the pulsating, multicolored light emanating from the aurora high above the ship. Margrave's strange face never looked more satanic.
"Spectacular!" Gant said in a rare show of emotion.
Margrave stood behind the control consol. He had been gradually accelerating the dynamos to full power, and the console was lit up like a pinball machine.
"The aurora indicates we've reached critical mass," he said. "The electromagnetic waves have penetrated the ocean floor. They'll change the electromagnetic flux and nudge the pole over. Keep an eye on the compass for the big flip."
Gant glanced at the compass dial, and then gazed out one of the big picture windows.
"Something is happening to the sea."
The ruffled surface of the ocean immediately around the ship had gone flat.
"We're at the epicenter of the polar shift," Margrave said. "A ring of giant waves will spin off from around the edge of an expanding circle. There will be some vortexes around the perimeter."
"Glad we're not in the way," Gant said.
"It would be unfortunate if we were. The area of disturbance is pretty random. That's what sank our transmitter ship. It's like the calm at the eye of a hurricane. We'll be fine here except for a slight mounding of the water."
Gant stared out at the rising sea. He had never felt so powerful in his entire life.
Austin's mind-set was the opposite of Gant's. He was like a doctor trying to bring a flatlining patient back to life, only in this case the lives of millions lay on the table. He peered out the window as the plane banked for another pass, unable to tell whether the antidote was working or not.
Then he noticed a circular area immediately around the ship where the water seemed to go dull, as if it were being flattened by a helicopter downdraft. He could see striations on the surface of the sea like the grooves made by a strong current. Moments later, the water began moving in an unmistakable swirl with the ship at its center. Within seconds, the area of disturbed water was at least a mile across, bordered by a ring of foam on its perimeter. As the current's speed picked up, the sea within the circle became lower than the surface around it.
Austin was witnessing the birth of a giant whirlpool.
The Polar Adventureonly rose around six feet above the surrounding sea level before it began to settle again.
Gant noticed that a depression seemed to be forming in the ocean around the ship. "Is this another side effect?" he said.
"No," Margrave said. His puzzlement changed to concern when the surface became even more radically dish-shaped. White-foamed rips indicated the clash of strong currents. He snatched up the microphone connecting him to the bridge. "Full engine power. We're sinking into a whirlpool."
Margrave shut down the dynamos.
"What are you doing?" Gant said.
"Something's not right. There shouldn't be this kind of reaction."
The ocean hollow was deepening and swirling currents had begun to form, but the ship was under power by then, and moving toward the side of the vortex. Its bow was slightly elevated, and it had to fight against the currents that wanted to drag it sideways, but the ship was making slow headway.
The maelstrom was expanding at the same time, however. Margrave screamed at the bridge to give the engines more power, but the ship seemed destined to lose the race, not really moving from the center of the vortex.
Then the character of the water changed again. The currents weakened, and the surface began to rise back to sea level. It was mounding again.
"What happened?" Gant said.
"A slight diversion," Margrave said. He wiped the nervous sweat from his forehead, and he smiled as he again powered up the dynamos.
As the ship rose higher in the air, the water around the vessel began to boil. The ocean liner was twenty feet in the air, then thirty.
"Stop this from happening," Gant said.
Margrave killed power again but the ship continued to rise.
Fifty feet.
"You fool! What have you done?"
"The computer models-"
"Damnthe computer models!"
Margrave left the control panel and rushed to one of the big windows wrapped around the observation platform. Her stared with horror at the sea.
The ship was at the top of a huge, fast-rising column of water.
Austin had seen the whirlpool grow until it was around ten miles wide. Now he watched in fascination as the vortex leveled out, changed into a seething pool of white steamy water, and began to mound into a watery cyclone.
The mountainous mass sprouting from the center of the vortex grew in height and width as it spun like a whirling dervish.