Visions of the Future (16 page)

“Doesn’t matter. Weis is trying to save face. You ought to understand that, buddy.”

Barney looked up at the plotting screen. Omega was northeast of Puerto Rico and boring in toward Florida.

“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” she asked Ted. “You know we can’t steer Omega. Even if he’d let us try to control the weather completely, we couldn’t be sure of keeping the storm off the coast. You shouldn’t have—”

“Shouldn’t have what?” Ted snapped back. “Shouldn’t have taken THUNDER when Weis and the President offered it? Shouldn’t have made that crack to the newsmen about stopping every hurricane? Shouldn’t have told Weis we’d try to steer Omega? I did all three, and I’d do them all again. I’d rather do something, even if it’s not the best something. Got to keep moving; once we stop, we’re dead.”

“But why,” Barney asked, almost pleadingly, “did you make that insane promise to the newsmen?”

He frowned, but more at himself than at her. “How should I know? Maybe because Weis was sitting there in front of the cameras looking so sure of himself. Safe and serene. Maybe I was crazy enough to think we could really sneak through a whole hurricane season okay. Maybe I’m just crazy, period. I don’t know.”

“But what do we do now?” I asked.

He cocked an eye at the plotting screen. “Try to steer Omega. Try saving Weis’ precious face.” Pointing to a symbol on the map several hundred miles north of the storm, he said, “There’s a Navy sonar picket anchored out there. I’m going to buzz over to it, see if I can get a firsthand look at this monster.”

“That’s… that’s dangerous,” Barney said.

He shrugged.

“Ted, you can’t run the operation from the middle of the ocean,” I said.

“Picket’s in a good spot to see the storm… at least the edge of it. Maybe I can wangle a plane ride through it. Been fighting hurricanes all season without seeing one. Besides, the ship’s part of the Navy’s antisubmarine warning net; loaded with communications gear. Be in touch with you every minute, don’t worry.”

“But if the storm comes that way…”

“Let it come,” he said. “It’s going to finish us anyway.” He turned and strode off, leaving us to watch him.

Barney turned to me. “Jerry, he thinks we blame him for everything. We’ve got to stop him.”

“No one can stop him. You know that. Once he gets his mind set on something…”

“Then I’ll go with him.” She got up from her chair.

I took her arm.

“No, Jerry,” she said, “I can’t let him go alone.”

“Is it the danger you’re afraid of, or the fact that he’s leaving?”

“Jerry, in the mood he’s in now… he’s reckless…”

“All right,” I said, trying to calm her. “All right. I’ll go with him. I’ll make sure he keeps his feet dry.”

“But I don’t want either one of you in danger!”

“I know. I’ll take care of him.”

She looked at me with those misty, gray-green eyes. “Jerry… you won’t let him do anything foolish, will you?”

“You know me; I’m no hero.”

“Yes, you are,” she said. And I felt my insides do a handspring.

I left her there with Tuli and hurried out to the parking lot. The bright sunshine outdoors was a painful surprise. It was hot and muggy, even though the day was only an hour or so old.

Ted was getting into one of the Project staff cars when I caught up with him.

“A landlubber like you shouldn’t be loose on the ocean by himself,” I said.

He grinned. “Hop aboard, salt.”

The day was sultry. The usual tempering sea breezes had died off. As we drove along the Miami bayfront, the air was oppressive, ominous. The sky was brazen, the water deathly calm. The old-timers along the fishing docks, were squinting out at the horizon to the south and nodding to each other. It was coming.

The color of the sea, the shape of the clouds, the sighting of a shark near the coast, the way the seabirds were perching—all these became omens.

It was coming.

We slept for most of the flight out to the sonar picket. The Navy jet landed smoothly in the softly billowing sea and a helicopter from the picket brought us aboard. The ship was similar in style to the deep-sea mining dredges of Thornton Pacific. For antisubmarine work, though, the dredging equipment was replaced by a fantastic array of radar and communications antennas.

“Below decks are out of bounds to visitors, I’m afraid,” said the chunky lieutenant who welcomed us to his ship. As we walked from the helicopter landing pad on the fan-tail toward the bridge, he told us, “This bucket’s a floating sonar station. Everything below decks is classified except the galley, and the cook won’t let even me in there.”

He laughed at his own joke. He was a pleasant-faced Yankee, about our own age, square-jawed, solidly built, the kind that stays in the Navy for life.

We clambered up a ladder to the bridge.

“We’re anchored here,” the lieutenant said, “with special bottom gear and arresting cables. So the bridge isn’t used for navigation as much as for communications.”

Looking around, we could see what he meant. The bridge’s aft bulkhead was literally covered with viewscreens, autoplotters, and electronics controls.

“I think you’ll be able to keep track of your hurricane without much trouble.” He nodded proudly toward the communications equipment.

“If we can’t,” Ted said, “it won’t be your fault.”

The lieutenant introduced us to his chief communications technician, a scrappy little sailor who had just received his engineering degree and was putting in two Navy years. Within minutes we were talking to Tuli back in THUNDER headquarters.

“Omega seems to have slowed down quite a bit,” Tuli said, his impassive face framed by the viewscreen. “She’s about halfway between your position and Puerto Rico.”

“Gathering strength,” Ted muttered.

They fed the information from THUNDER’s computers to the picket’s autoplotter, and soon we had a miniature version of Ted’s giant map on one of the bridge’s screens.

Ted studied the map, mumbling to himself. “If we could feed her some warm water… give her a shortcut to the outbound leg of the Gulf Stream… then maybe she’d bypass the coast.”

The lieutenant was watching us from a jumpseat that folded out of the port bulkhead.

“Just wishful thinking,” Ted muttered on. “Fastest way to move her is to set up a low-pressure cell to the north… make her swing more northerly…”

He talked it over with Tuli for the better part of an hour, perching on a swivel stool set into the deck next to the chart table. The cook popped through the bridge’s starboard hatch with a tray of sandwiches and coffee. Ted absently took a sandwich and mug, still locked in talk with Tuli.

Finally he said to the viewscreen image, “Okay, we deepen this trough off Long Island and try to make a real storm cell out of it.”

Tuli nodded, but he was clearly unhappy.

“Get Barney to run it through the computer as fast as she can, but you’d better get the planes out right now. Don’t wait for the computer run. Got to hit while she’s still sitting around. Otherwise…” His voice trailed off.

“All right,” Tuli said. “But we’re striking blindly.”

“I know. Got any better ideas?”

Tuli shrugged.

“Then let’s scramble the planes.” He turned to me. “Jerry, we’ve got a battle plan figured out. Tuli’ll give you the details.”

Now it was my turn. I spent the better part of the afternoon getting the right planes with the right payloads off to the exact places where the work had to be done. Through it all, I was calling myself an idiot for trekking out to this mid-ocean exile. It took twice as long to process the orders as it would have back at headquarters.

“Don’t bother saying it,” Ted said when I finished. “So it was kinky coming out here. Okay. Just had to get away from that place before I went over the hill.”

“But what good are you going to do here?” I asked.

He gripped the bridge’s rail and looked out past the ship’s prow, toward the horizon.

“We can run the show from here just as well… maybe a little tougher than back in Miami, but we can do it. If everything goes okay, we’ll get brushed by the storm’s edge. I’d like to see that. Want to feel her, see what she can do. Never seen a hurricane from this close. And it’s better than sitting in that windowless cocoon back there.”

“And if things don’t go well?” I asked. “If the storm doesn’t move the way you want it to?”

He turned away. “Probably she won’t.”

“Then we might miss the whole show.”

“Maybe. Or she might march right down here and blow down our necks.”

“Omega might… we could be caught in the middle of it?”

“Could be,” he said easily. “Better get some sleep while you can. Going to be busy later on.”

The exec showed us to a tiny stateroom with two bunks in it. Part of the picket’s crew was on shore leave, and they had a spare compartment for us. I tried to sleep, but spent most of the late-afternoon hours squirming uncomfortably. Around dusk, Ted got up and went to the bridge. I followed him.

“See those clouds, off the southern horizon,” he was saying to the lieutenant. “That’s her. Just the outer fringes.”

I checked back with THUNDER headquarters. The planes had seeded the low-pressure trough off Long Island without incident. Weather stations along the coast, and automated, equipment on satellites and planes, were reporting a small storm cell developing.

Barney’s face appeared on the viewscreen. She looked very worried. “Is Ted there?”

“Right here.” He stepped into view.

“The computer run just finished,” she said, pushing a strand of hair from her face. “Omega’s going to turn northward, but only temporarily. She’ll head inland again early tomorrow. In about forty-eight hours she’ll strike the coast somewhere between Cape Hatteras and Washington.”

Ted let out a low whistle.

“But that’s not all,” she continued. “The storm track crosses right over the ship you’re on. You’re going to be in the center of it!”

“We’ll have to get off here right away,” I said.

“No rush,” Ted replied. “We can spend the night here. I want to see her develop firsthand.”

Barney said, “Ted, don’t be foolish. It’s going to be dangerous.”

He grinned at her. “Jealous? Don’t worry, I just want to get a look at her, then I’ll come flying home to you.”

“You stubborn…” The blonde curl popped back over her eyes again and she pushed it away angrily. “Ted, it’s time you stopped acting like a spoiled little boy! You bet I’m jealous. I’m tired of competing against the whole twirling atmosphere! You’ve got responsibilities, and if you don’t want to live up to them… well, you’d better, that’s all!”

“Okay, okay. We’ll be back tomorrow morning. Be safer traveling in daylight anyway. Omega’s still moving slowly; we’ll have plenty time.”

“Not if she starts to move faster. This computer run was only a first-order look at the problem. The storm could accelerate sooner than we think.”

“We’ll get to Miami okay, don’t worry.”

“No, why should I worry?” Barney said. “You’re only six hundred miles out at sea with a hurricane bearing down on you.”

“Just an hour away from home. Get some sleep. We’ll fly over in the morning.”

The wind was picking up as I went back to my bunk, and the ship was starting to rock in the deepening sea. I had sailed open boats through storms and slept in worse weather than this. It wasn’t the conditions of the moment that bothered me. It was the knowledge of what was coming.

Ted stayed out on deck, watching the southern skies darken with the deathly fascination of a general observing the approach of a much stronger army. I dropped off to sleep telling myself that I’d get Ted off this ship as soon as a plane could pick us up, even if I had to get the sailors to wrap him in anchor chains.

By morning, it was raining hard and the ship was bucking badly in the heavy waves. It was an effort to push through the narrow passageway to the bridge, with the deck bobbing beneath my feet and the ship tossing hard enough to slam me against the bulkheads.

Up on the bridge, the wind was howling evilly as a sailor helped me into a slicker and life vest. When I turned to tug them on, I saw that the helicopter pad out on the stern was empty.

“Chopper took most of the crew out about an hour ago,” the sailor hollered into my ear. “Went to meet the seaplane west of here, where it ain’t so rough. When it comes back we’re all pulling out.”

I nodded and thanked him.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t, she?” Ted shouted at me as I stepped onto the open section of the bridge. “Moving up a lot faster than we thought.”

I grabbed a handhold between him and the lieutenant. To the south of us was a solid wall of black. Waves were breaking over the bows and the rain was a battering force against our faces.

“Will the helicopter be able to get back to us?” I asked the lieutenant.

“We’ve had worse blows than this,” he shouted back, “but I wouldn’t want to hang around for another hour or so.”

The communications tech staggered across the bridge to us. “Chopper’s on the way, sir. Ought to be here in ten to fifteen minutes.”

The lieutenant nodded. “I’ll have to go aft and see that the helicopter’s properly dogged down when she lands. You two be ready to hop on when the word goes out.”

“We’ll be ready,” I said.

As the lieutenant left the bridge, I asked Ted, “Well, is this doing you any good? Frankly, I would’ve been a lot happier in Miami…”

“She’s a real brute,” he shouted. “This is a lot different from watching a map.”

“But why…”

“This is the enemy, Jerry. This is what we’re trying to kill. Think how much better you’re going to feel after we’ve learned how to stop hurricanes.”

“If we live long enough to learn how!”

The helicopter struggled into view, leaning heavily into the raging wind. I watched, equally fascinated and terrified, as it worked its way to the landing pad, tried to come down, got blown backwards by a terrific gust, fought toward the pad again, and finally touched down on the heaving deck. A team of sailors scrambled across the wet square to attach heavy lines to the landing gear, even before the rotor blades started to slow down. A wave smashed across the ship’s stem and one of the sailors went sprawling. Only then did I notice that each man had a stout lifeline around his middle. They finally got the ’copter secured.