“We weren’t on the bottom that long.”
“Nope. This is the time dilation effect Paul was talking about. Time is moving slower, relatively speaking, the closer we get to the Moon stone. Now that it’s on the ship with us, we’re all caught in the effect.”
Jade squinted at the horizon. She could actually see the sun moving through the sky like a time lapse sequence or a video playback on fast forward. “Is that something we should be worried about?”
A deep gonging noise reverberated through the entire vessel as the Moon stone was lowered to the deck. Jade waited for the vibrations to subside, but instead of dying down, the faint tremors seemed to increase in frequency until the deck plates felt almost electric under her feet.
“I think,” Professor said gravely, “it might be.”
Brian Hodges stared at the black stone sphere, still partially concealed by mesh slings and the deflating airbag, and felt an overwhelming sense of destiny. This artifact was an insult to everything he believed, mocking the tragic loss he had suffered with its very presence, and yet now he understood that he had made the correct decision in allowing Ophelia to proceed with her plans to recover it from the ocean floor. Now that it was aboard, he could deal with the threat it represented permanently.
When he had joined the Norfolk Group, he had imagined that he would be striking a pre-emptive blow against fundamentalists and extremists who would use ancient relics to draw true believers to their jihads and holy crusades, the way Roman soldiers rallied around their battle standards. He never would have believed that some of those artifacts might actually possess supernatural attributes. Yet, here before him, was something infinitely more dangerous than a mere symbol, and he was the only person on earth who could do something about it. He slung the AR-15 rifle he’d taken from the ship’s locker across his back and headed for the stairs that led up to the bridge.
Ophelia must have divined his intent. “Where are you going?”
He ignored her, taking the steps two at a time, and burst into the control room where Lee and two other crewmen were huddled over a console. The master of the ship, his alcoholic flush deepened to a dark magenta by anxiety, looked up as if he had been expecting the intrusion.
“Set a course for deep water,” Hodges said. “It doesn’t matter where. Just get us somewhere where we can deep six that thing.”
“No!” The protest came from behind him. Ophelia had followed him to the bridge.
“Believe me,” Lee said. “I’d like nothing better. But the GPS is completely screwed. Worse than last night. I have no idea where we are and no way to tell where we’re going.”
Contrary to what Chapman and the others had no doubt believed, the previous night’s technical difficulties had not been an act of sabotage. Hodges had been informed of the malfunction, and now he realized that, even at a distance, the ship’s hardware had been affected by the artifact that now sat on the deck below. This time, a simple reboot would not suffice to fix the problem.
“Just point us in the right direction,” he snarled. “It’s a big ocean and I’m not asking you to be picky.”
Lee chewed his lip. “Deepest spot that’s close to us is Little Abaco Canyon. More than two miles deep in some places. It’s about a hundred nautical miles from here. We could be there in about twelve hours.”
His forehead drew into a furrow as he glanced at the wall clock. It read 12:15 p.m. and yet beyond the large windows, the setting sun was clearly visible. Time and the ability to measure it had ceased to have any meaning.
“Can you steer us there by dead reckoning?”
“No,” Ophelia shouted. “You can’t do this.”
Hodges rounded and struck her a vicious backhand blow. The impact stung his hand, but the sensation was deliciously satisfying, as was the sight of Ophelia crumpling senseless to the deck. Then, as if what he had done was of no more consequence than swatting a fly, he turned back to Lee. “Can you?”
The captain nodded. “I can wing it. It’s east-by-southeast. If we veer off course, we’ll see Abacos and be able to correct.”
Lee’s drunken slur did not fill Hodges with confidence, but what alternative was there? “Do it. We may not have much time.”
Lee straightened and addressed one of the crewmen. “You heard the man. Take the helm. Bring us about. Engines at one-quarter until I give the word.”
Hodges felt the ship begin to move. Through the window, the blood orange orb of the sun, which was just beginning to kiss the flat line of the horizon, seemed to slide sideways and then disappeared altogether. Lee stepped over Ophelia and stuck his head through the door in order to continue tracking the sun’s position. “On my mark, straighten the rudder and all ahead full.”
“Aye, sir. On your mark.”
Hodges craned his head around and caught a glimpse of the sun, flattening out against the horizon as day slipped into night.
“Now!” Lee cried.
Hodges felt the ship lurch as the engines revved up and the Quest Explorer surged forward like a racehorse out of the gate.
Lee stepped back inside and peered through the window into the deepening twilight. A few seconds later, a slim fingernail of silvery light appeared in the gloom. “There,” the captain said. “Head for the moon.”
The moon.
Ophelia and Dorion had called the black orb “the Moon stone” and hadn’t the physicist talked about tidal forces and gravitational anomalies?
Without saying another word, he stepped over Ophelia and headed for the deck. He wasn’t sure what it was about the rising moon that was nagging at his consciousness, but he had a feeling Dorion would know.
Jade felt the subtle shift at her center of gravity as the ship began moving, turning. Before she could frame the obvious question, Professor stiffened in alarm.
“What the hell are they doing?”
Jade shared his concern, but did not understand the reason for it. “What’s wrong?”
“Think about it. That thing they just brought on board is probably the source of all the weirdness that’s been attributed to the Bermuda Triangle for the last four hundred years. And that was when it was just sitting there, buried under tons of sand and doing nothing. Moving it has clearly upset the natural equilibrium and exacerbated the effect. It’s obviously screwing with space-time, and something tells me that what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of iceberg.”
“Okay. So?”
“Bermuda Triangle?” His voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “Ships and planes vanishing without a trace. You really think we should be trying to go anyplace with that thing on board?”
“Oh. I see your point. So what do we do about it?”
He frowned, but it was a look of concentration. “The Phoenicians found a way to move that thing across the Pacific three thousand years ago. Maybe the field is more massive now, but it must equalize after a while. Maybe there’s some kind of trigger that…” His eyes widened and he turned to peer into the darkest part of the sky. “Oh, no.”
Jade followed his gaze and spied the full moon, bloated and yellow just above the black line of the horizon. Before she could say anything, the glowing disk seemed to grow even larger, until it filled her vision. She thought she heard Professor’s voice reaching out to her, but his words, if indeed there were any, were swallowed up in the sudden rushing sound that filled her ears.
TWENTY-NINE
Jade looked up and saw Dane Maddock standing over her, a bottle of Dos Equis in each hand. One for him, one for her. She reached out and took the proffered bottle, feeling the cool glass against her palm and beads of moisture — condensation drawn out of the humid tropical air — trickling across the back of her hand, He smiled at her and Jade felt a surge of emotions well up in her heart.