Scott Williams: The Pulse

“Do you know where we are?”

“Close enough. We’ll reach St. Thomas in time to enter the anchorage about this time tomorrow morning. We should get a visual by the glow from all the lights there early tonight. At night you can see the more populated islands from a long way out at sea.”

“What if this power surge, or whatever it was, caused their electricity to go out?” Artie asked.

Larry chuckled at the thought. “Not likely. That would take one hell of a powerful event—though it doesn’t take much for the lights to go out anyway on those islands. But this wouldn’t have anything to do with that, I wouldn’t think. My best guess is that it was just some kind of space interference or solar flare-up or something that messed up the satellites. Although I’m surprised it would affect local VHF radio reception, unless it somehow disrupted the big transmitter stations on the islands. We don’t know if we can talk to other vessels or not, since we haven’t seen any. But there’s usually some boat-to-boat chatter going on even this far out, and I should be able to get the NOAA weather radio channel in St. Thomas, so that’s kinda weird.”

“I just wish I could call Casey and ask her what’s going on up there in the Big Easy. I guess she’s getting dressed for class by now,” Artie said as he looked at his watch.

Despite all the caffeine, Artie was exhausted from being awake and sick for so long, so when Larry told him he didn’t need any help steering, he stretched out on the cockpit seat and slept through the morning. When he woke shortly after noon he felt even better, and the nausea still had not returned. As he stretched his arms and stood against the cabin bulkhead, he asked Larry if they were still making good progress and glanced at the GPS to see if it had started working again.

“I guess not, huh? You decided to just turn it off?”

“No,” Larry said. “It looks like we’ve got an even bigger problem than the lack of satellite reception. The whole chartplotter unit just went off as if it had been powered down about two hours ago. I can’t get it to do anything when I push the power button. The VHF radio did the same thing. Without the autopilot to hold course, I didn’t want to go below and check the 12-volt circuit panel, but if you’ll take it a minute, I’ll go do that now.”

Artie got another cold Coke out of the ice box and moved into position behind the helm. Larry disappeared down the companionway steps and reappeared five minutes later.

“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, Doc. The VHF is dead as a doornail. The stereo is dead. The single-sideband radio receiver is dead. Even my personal handheld GPS receiver that was turned off and stuck in the locker under my bunk is dead. Not only is the autopilot disabled because it can’t communicate with the chartplotter, but the unit itself won’t even power on. I tried to power up my laptop and it won’t come on either; ditto for my cell phone. But we still have ship’s power. The batteries are apparently still working, and the LED cabin lights still come on, but there’s nothing to that but a simple 12-volt circuit and a single switch from the breaker panel. It’s apparently everything with sensitive electronic circuitry that’s shut down.”

“What could have caused that to happen? That stuff didn’t shut down right after I saw the lights last night. It was just the signals that were lost. Did you see anything else this morning?”

“No,” Larry said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It was daylight and you can see how bright the sun is. If whatever caused those lights to appear last night had happened in the daylight, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have seen them at all. For all we know, this could have been an even stronger second surge.”

Artie’s Blackberry was still in the pocket of his foul-weather jacket that was now bunched in a corner of the cockpit. He was reaching for it as Larry pondered the cause of the strange shutdowns. He took it out of the Ziploc and pressed the power button. It normally took a couple of seconds before it would light up when it had been turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.

“What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.

“I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”

“I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”

“In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”

“I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”

“It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”

“What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”

“I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”

“Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”

“Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”

“I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”

Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear Ibis to the north-northwest along the rhumb line that Larry plotted on the chart. He said they were making good progress and should arrive as predicted shortly after daylight the next morning. The afternoon wore slowly on under the tropical sun as the two brothers separately pondered reaching land again and finding out the source of the strange electrical pulse.

They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was otherwise devoid of traffic and they saw nothing but the occasional breaching dolphin until nearly sunset, when Artie noticed several objects floating in the waves several hundred yards ahead, and just slightly east of their course. He assumed it was floating garbage or debris of some sort until they sailed closer and saw how much of it there was. Many of the floating objects were shiny, reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. Pointing it out to Larry, Artie asked what he thought it could be.