Robin Cook - Abduction

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Suzanne answered. She took a deep breath. She was beginning to recover.

“The depth gauge says we’re rising,” Donald said. He glanced at the other instruments, including the sonar monitors. Their erratic signals suggested there was a lot of interference in the water, particularly affecting the short-range sonar. The side-scan was a bit better, with less electronic noise, but it was difficult to interpret. The hazy image hinted that the sub was sitting stationary on a vast, perfectly flat plain. Donald’s eyes went back to the depth gauge. He was mystified; in contrast to what the sonar was suggesting, it was still rising, and faster than it had been moments before. Quickly he reopened the ballast tanks, but there was no effect. Then he put the dive planes down and added more power to the propulsion system. There was no response to the controls. But they continued to rise nonetheless.

“We’re accelerating,” Suzanne warned. “Rising like this we’ll be on the surface in just a couple of minutes!”

“I can’t wait,” Perry said with obvious relief.

“I hope we’re not coming up under the Benthic Explorer, ” Suzanne said. “That would be a major problem.”

Everyone’s eyes were riveted to the depth gauge. It passed through one thousand feet and showed no sign of slowing. Five hundred feet shot by. As it passed one hundred feet Donald said urgently: “Hold on! We’re going to broach badly.”

“What does ‘broach’ mean?” Perry yelled. He heard the desperation in Donald’s voice, and it sent a new chill through him.

“It means we’re going to leap out of the water!” Suzanne shouted. Then she repeated Donald’s warning. “Hold on!”

As the frantic whirring of the depth gauge reached a crescendo, Perry, Donald, and Suzanne once again grabbed their seats and held tight. Holding their breath they braced themselves for the impact. The depth gauge reached zero and stopped.

Immediately following that final click of the gauge, a loud sucking noise emanated from somewhere outside the craft. After that, comparative silence reigned within the sub. Now the only sound was a combination of the ventilation fan and an augmented but still muffled electronic whir of the propulsion system.

Almost a minute passed without the slightest sensation of movement.

Finally Perry breathed out. “Well,” he said. “What happened?”

“We can’t be airborne for this long,” Suzanne admitted.

Everyone relaxed their death grips and looked out their respective view ports. It was still as dark as pitch.

“What the hell?” Donald questioned. He looked back at his instruments. The sonar monitors were now filled with meaningless electronic noise. He turned them off. He also dialed down the power to the propulsion system, and its whirring stopped. He looked at Suzanne.

“Don’t ask me,” Suzanne said when their eyes met.

“I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on.”

“How come it’s dark outside if we’re on the surface?” Perry asked.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Donald said. He looked back at his instruments. Reaching forward, he put power back to the propulsion system. The whirring noise reappeared but there was no motion. The craft stood absolutely still.

“Somebody tell me what’s going on,” Perry demanded. The euphoria he’d felt a few moments earlier had dissipated. They obviously were not on the surface.

“We don’t know what is happening,” Suzanne admitted.

“There’s no resistance to the propeller,” Donald reported. He turned the propulsion system off. The whirring died away for a second time. Now the only sound was the ventilation fan. “I think we are in air.”

“How can we be in air?” Suzanne said. “It’s totally dark and there is no wave action.”

“But it’s the only explanation for the sonar not working and the lack of resistance to the propeller,” Donald said. “And look. The outside temperature has risen to seventy degrees. We’ve got to be in air.”

“If this is the next life, I’m not ready for it,” Perry said.

“You mean we’re out of the water entirely?” Suzanne still had trouble believing it.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Donald admitted. “But it’s the only way I can explain everything, including the fact that the underwater phone doesn’t work.” Donald next tried the radio and had no luck with that either.

“If we’re sitting on dry land,” Suzanne said, “how come we haven’t tipped over? I mean, this hull is a cylinder. If we were on dry land, we’d surely roll over on our side.”

“You’re right!” Donald admitted. “That I can’t explain.”

Suzanne opened an emergency locker between the two pilot seats and pulled out a flashlight. Turning it on, she directed it out her view port. Pressed up against it on the outside was cream-colored, coarse-grained muck.

“At least we know why we didn’t tip over,” Suzanne said. “We’re sitting in a layer of globigerina ooze.”

“Explain!” Perry said. He’d leaned forward to see for himself.

“Globigerina ooze is the most common sediment on the ocean floor,” Suzanne said. “It’s composed mainly of the carcasses of a type of plankton called foraminifera.”

“How can we be sitting in ocean sediment and be in air?” Perry asked.

“That’s the question,” Donald agreed. “We can’t, at least not in any way that I know of.”

“It’s also impossible for globigerina ooze to be this close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” Suzanne said. “That sediment is found in the middle of the abyssal plains. Nothing makes sense.”

“This is absurd!” Donald snapped. “And I don’t like it at all. Wherever we are, we’re stuck!”

“Could we be completely buried in the ooze?” Perry asked hesitantly. If he was right, he did not want to hear the answer.

“No! Not a chance,” Donald said. “If that were the case there would be more resistance to the propeller, not less.”

For a few minutes no one spoke.

“Is there any chance we could be inside the seamount?” Perry asked, finally breaking the silence.

Donald and Suzanne turned to face him.

“How could we be inside a mountain?” Donald asked angrily.

“Hey, I’m only making a suggestion,” Perry said. “Mark told me this morning he had some radar data that suggested the mountain might contain gas, not molten lava.”

“He never mentioned that to me,” Suzanne said.

“He didn’t mention it to anyone,” Perry said. “He wasn’t sure of the data since it was coming from a shallow study of the hard layer we were trying to drill through. It was an extrapolation, and he only mentioned it to me in passing.”

“What kind of gas?” Suzanne asked while her mind tried to imagine how a submerged volcano could become void of water. Geophysically speaking it seemed impossible, although she knew that on land some volcanoes did collapse in on themselves to form calderas.

“He had no idea,” Perry said. “I guess he thought the most promising candidate was steam held in by the extra-hard layer that was giving us so much trouble.”

“Well, it can’t be steam,” Donald said. “Not at a temperature of almost seventy degrees.”

“What about natural gas?” Perry suggested.

“I can’t imagine,” Suzanne said. “This close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, it’s a geologically young area. There can’t be anything like petroleum or natural gas around here.”

“Then maybe it is air,” Perry said.

“How could it get here?” Suzanne asked.

“You tell me,” Perry said. “You’re the geophysical oceanographer. Not me.”

“If it is air, there is not a natural explanation that I know of,” Suzanne said. “It’s as simple as that.”