"You must remember, my time estimate is give or take a hundred years."
"It's older than a hundred years?"
"Would you believe," Max said slowly, dragging out the suspense, "a figure of nine thousand."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying your chamber was chiseled out of the Colorado rock sometime around 7100 B.C."
15
Giordino lifted the Bell-Boeing 609 executive tilt-rotor aircraft straight up into a Persian blue sky outside Cape Town, South Africa, just after four in the morning. Taking off like a helicopter, its twin prop-rotor engines tilted at ninety degrees, the huge propellers beating the tropical air, the aircraft rose vertically, until the tilt-rotor was five hundred feet off the ground. Then Giordino shifted the controls of the mechanical linkage that enabled both prop rotors to swing horizontal and send the aircraft into level flight.
The 609 seated up to nine passengers, but for this trip she was empty except for a bundle of survival gear strapped to the floor. Giordino had chartered the plane in Cape Town because the nearest NUMA research ship was more than one thousand miles away from the Crozet Islands.
A helicopter could not have made the 2,400-mile round trip without refueling at least four times, and a normal mold-engine aircraft that could go the distance would have had no place to land once it reached the volcanic island. The Model 609 tilt-rotor could land any place a helicopter could and seemed the ideal craft for the job. Depending on the freakish whims of the winds, the flight should average four hours each way. The fuel would have to be monitored closely. Even with modified wing tanks, Giordino calculated that he would only have an extra hour and a half of flying time for the journey back to Cape Town. It wasn't enough to ensure a mentally soothing flight, but Giordino was never one to play a safe game.
Thirty minutes later, as he reached 12,000 feet and banked southeast over the Indian Ocean, he set the throttles at the most fuel-efficient cruise setting, watching the airspeed indicator hover at slightly under three hundred miles per hour. Then he turned to the small man sitting in the copilot's seat.
"If you have any regrets about joining this madcap venture, please be advised that it's too late to change your mind."
Rudi Gunn smiled. "I'll be in enough hot water for sneaking off with you when the admiral finds out Fm not sitting behind my desk in Washington."
"What excuse did you give for disappearing for six days?"
"I told my office to say I flew to the Baltic Sea to check on an underwater shipwreck project NUMA is surveying with Danish archaeologists."
"Is there such a project?"
"You bet your life," replied Gunn. "A fleet of Viking ships that a fisherman snagged."
Giordino passed Gunn a pair of charts. "Here, you can navigate."
"How big is St. Paul Island?"
"About two and a half square miles."
Gunn peered at Giordino through his thick glasses. "I do pray," he said placidly, "that we're not following in the footsteps of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan."
Three hours into the flight, they were in good shape fuel-wise after picking up a tailwind of five knots. The Indian Ocean slowly vanished as they entered overcast skies that came from the east, bringing rain squalls and turbulence. Giordino climbed to find smooth air and blue skies again, rising above white puffy clouds that rolled beneath them like a stormy sea.
Giordino had the uncanny ability to sleep for ten minutes, then pop awake to check his instruments and make any course alteration suggested by Gunn before dozing off again. He repeated the process more times than Gunn bothered to count, never varying the routine by more or less than a minute.
Actually, there was no fear of becoming lost and missing the island. The tilt-rotor carried the latest Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation equipment. With the GPS receiver measuring the distance to a string of satellites, the precise latitude, longitude, and altitude were calculated, and the data programmed into the aircraft computer so Gunn could determine course, speed, time, and distance to their destination.
Unlike Giordino, he was an insomniac. He was also what Giordino often called him- a worrywart. Gunn couldn't have relaxed if he was lying under a palm tree on a Tahitian beach. He constantly read his watch and checked their position in between studying an aerial photo of the island.
When Giordino came awake and scanned the instrument panel, Gunn tapped him on the arm. "Don't drift off again. You should begin your descent. I make the island forty miles dead ahead."
Giordino rubbed water from a canteen on his face and eased the control column a slight inch forward. Slowly, the executive tilt-rotor began to descend, thrown about as it dropped through the turbulence from inside the clouds. With nothing to see, Giordino could have simply watched the altimeter needle swing counterclockwise, but he kept his eyes fixed on the white mist swirling past the windshield. Then, suddenly, at 5,000 feet they emerged from under the overcast and saw the ocean again for the first time in three hours.
"Nice work, Rudi," Giordino praised him. "St. Paul looks to be about five miles ahead, less than two degrees off to starboard. You as good as hit her right on the nose."
"Two degrees," Gunn said. "I really must do better next time."
With the turbulence behind them, the wingtips stopped fluttering. Giordino eased the throttles back, the roar of the engines falling to a muffled hum. The heavy rain had subsided, but rivulets of water still streaked across the windshield. Only now did he turn on the wipers, as he aimed the bow of the plane over the high cliffs that shielded the island from the relentless onslaught of the sea.
"Have you picked out a spot to set down?" asked Giordino, staring at the little island and its single mountain that seemed to rise up out of the sea like a giant cone. There was no obvious sign of a beach or open field. He saw only 360 degrees of steep rock-covered slopes.
Gunn held up a magnifying glass in front of his eyes. "I've gone over every inch of this thing, and have come to the conclusion that it's the worst piece of real estate I've ever seen. It's nothing but a rock pile, good only for supporting a gravel company."
"Don't tell me we've come all this way only to turn back," Giordino said sourly.
"I didn't say we couldn't land. The only flat area on the whole island is near the base of the mountain on the west side. Looks like little more than a ledge, maybe fifty by a hundred feet."
Giordino looked downright horrified. "Not even in the movies do they land helicopters on the sides of mountains."
Gunn pointed through the windshield. "There, on your left. It doesn't look as bad as I thought."
From Giordino's angle, the only level site to be found against the mountain looked no larger than the bed of a pickup truck. His feet finessed the rudder pedals as his hands stroked the wheel on the control column, correcting his angle and rate of descent with the elevators and ailerons. He thanked heaven that he had a head wind, even if it was only four knots. He could see the rocks scattered across his tiny landing site, but none looked large enough to cause damage to the aircraft's undercarriage. One hand came off the column and began manipulating the levers operating the prop rotors, tilting them from horizontal to vertical until the aircraft was hovering like a helicopter. The large-diameter propellers began sending small stones and dust swirling in damp clouds below the landing wheels.
Giordino was flying by feel now, head turned downward, one eye on the approaching ground, the other on the sheer side of the mountain not more than ten feet beyond the starboard wingtip. And then there was a slight bump as the tires struck the loose rock, and the tilt-rotor settled like a fat goose over her unhatched eggs. He let out a great sigh and pulled back on the throttles before shutting down the engines.