Not appearing the least bit affected by Valerian’s passionate plea, Andrei put down the picture on the wardroom table, immediately beside the open chart.
“So you want me to help you steal Seawolf. What makes you think that I could have any more success controlling the device than your own technicians?”
“Come now. Doctor. They are only flunkies. You’re the mastermind behind the project, whose visionary genius will allow us to pull this thing off.”
“And if I decide not to help you?” dared Andrei defiantly.
Valerian squared back his shoulders and answered directly.
“Then not only would you be a traitor to your own people, but you’d be endangering the lives of the brave men and women who are currently living on the sea floor beneath us.”
This comment caused a pained expression to cross the physicist’s wrinkled face.
“Are you trying to blackmail me. Admiral, by threatening to harm my daughter?”
“Why of course not. Doctor,” replied Valerian, with the sincerity of a snake.
“I was just thinking of what could happen to those aquanauts, if we tried to repair the device without you, and it were to malfunction once more. There’s no telling what it could do to them.”
The physicist suddenly looked very old, and very tired.
“Extortion is the way of the criminal, Admiral.
It’s also a clear indicator of how very desperate you and your co-conspirators must truly be. If I were any younger, I’d fight to expose you with every means at my disposal. But I’m old and sick, and only want to live out what little remaining time I have left, with my loved ones beside me. Guarantee the safety of my Ivana, and I promise you that I’ll do what I can to get the device functioning properly.”
Taken aback by the ease with which Petrov capitulated, Valerian felt both relief and joy.
“This is a decision that you will never regret. Comrade. Once our mission is successfully completed, you will be hailed not only as the savior of the Motherland, but also as the greatest scientific genius to walk this planet since Albert Einstein. Your place in history will be assured!”
10
Before leaving for Norfolk, Thomas Moore gratefully took Admiral Proctor’s advice and returned home to get some badly needed rest. He slept soundly for a solid eight hours, and was even able to do a load of laundry before repacking his seabag and hiking across town to the nearest Metro stop. He arrived at National Airport ten minutes later, in plenty of time to catch the noon commuter flight.
The Boeing Canada Dash 7 dual turboprop was crowded with businessmen and military personnel, and Moore took a lone seat in the small plane’s tail.
Their scheduled flight time was an hour, and he waited until after takeoff before pulling out the large, flat envelope that his superior had given him to read.
The envelope had a Priority One security stamp on it, and had been pulled from the files of BUPERS. He was somewhat surprised when he broke its seal and pulled out an original copy of a seven-page report dated September 1, 1943. The paper was brittle and yellow with age, and appeared to have originated at the Norfolk Naval Hospital, from the typewriter of Dr. Charles Kromer, the facility’s chief of staff.
After declining the steward’s offer of a drink, Moore sat back and carefully read the document, which consisted primarily of a patient interview conducted in the hospital’s psychiatric ward. The patient was Petty Officer First Class Lewis Marvin, a machinist assigned to the destroyer USS Eldridge. Marvin had been admitted a week earlier, suffering from paranoid delusions, sleeplessness, and fits of abnormal behavior ranging from depression to uncontrollable rage.
Throughout the interview, he continually made veiled references to an experimental device that had been placed inside the Eldridge. When activated, this device made a loud humming noise. It also produced a greenish haze around the ship’s waterline, for the supposed purpose of camouflaging the warship from the enemy.
Marvin swore that the device had a variety of harmful side effects. It made the crew edgy and nervous, and no one seemed to have an appetite when it was operational.
Yet things really got out of hand when the scientists running the experiment ordered Marvin and his men to prepare the device to accept a vastly increased power surge. A series of large electromagnetic generators were then moved onto the pier, until they all but surrounded the Eldridge on three sides. Marvin was ordered below deck at this point, and his memories of the confusing sequence of events that followed were hazy at best. He remembered returning from the engine room after his watch was completed, deciding to skip chow and head straight for his rack. Yet first he went to the head to shower, and that’s when all hell broke loose.
While he was rinsing the soap off his body, the ship began to vibrate wildly, until he had to make an effort merely to remain standing. Thinking that the Eldridge was about to explode, Marvin managed to exit the shower stall and that’s when he saw one of his shipmates scream out in pained horror while being engulfed in a swirling, green, funnel-shaped cloud.
Strangely enough, when this cloud finally dissipated several seconds later, his shipmate was nowhere to be found, and Marvin headed topside to find out what was going on.
Much to his utter amazement, as he climbed up onto the foredeck, he found his ship anchored beside a new pier. Several white-coated scientists stood, on the wharf, excitedly pointing at him. And it was as they instructed him to join them ashore that he learned the most incredible fact of all. Somehow the Eldridge had been conveyed from its original berth at the Philadelphia Naval Yard to Norfolk, Virginia, in the time it took Marvin to finish his shower.
The document went on to list a detailed description of Petty Officer Marvin’s physical and psychological ailments, that were mainly attributed to psychotic delusions caused by dementia praecox. It was recommended that this dangerous schizophrenic condition be treated by a number of powerful drugs, with the patient to be discharged from the Navy and immediately committed to the hospital’s psycho ward.
Though the report never indicated if this drastic course of treatment had been put into effect, Thomas Moore had no doubt that it had been. His instincts also warned him that the entire incident had all the earmarks of a government cover-up. Yet this would mean that the so-called Philadelphia experiment actually occurred, and that Albert Einstein’s efforts had succeeded. Inwardly, Moore remained a skeptic. As far as he was concerned, a device that could render matter invisible and then teleport it hundreds of miles in seconds belonged in the realm of science fiction. And Moore was all set to dismiss the report as meaningless, except for a single disturbing revelation.
Petty Officer Marvin had been in the shower when the device was supposedly activated. He described a wild vibration, and then hearing his shipmates scream out in pained horror before disappearing. While under hypnosis, Seaman Homer Morgan had described a similar sequence of events aboard the Lewis and Clark, except that instead of being in the shower, the submariner had been covered by seawater, beside the TDU. Had the cover of water somehow protected both sailors from sharing their shipmates’ fate? This certainly appeared to be the case, and Moore made a mental note to share this thought with Admiral Proctor in his next report.
There was a sudden pressure on his eardrums, signaling the plane’s descent to Norfolk. Absently peering out the window, he caught sight of the city below. They were coming in from the east, and as they passed over the James river, he viewed the gleaming glass and steel buildings of the Waterside financial district, and beyond, the dockside loading cranes belonging to the Naval base. A number of grey hulled warships could be seen docked there, two of them aircraft carriers. This would be where Moore’s next means of transport awaited him, and he somewhat anxiously pulled his seatbelt tightly over his lap, in preparation for landing.