“The carrier is a side bonus,” explained Molly. “My primary thought was a recollection of an assignment at a satellite information collection center on the Hawaiian island of Lanai.”
“I didn’t know Lanai had a satellite facility,” said Yaeger. “My wife and I honeymooned on Lanai and drove all over the island without seeing a satellite downlink facility.”
“The buildings and parabolic reflector are inside the extinct Palawai volcano. Neither the natives, who always wondered what was going on in there, nor the tourists could ever get close enough to check it out.”
“Besides tuning in on passing satellites,” asked Ames, “what was its purpose?”
“Passing Soviet satellites,” Molly corrected him. “Fortunately, the former Soviet military chiefs had a fetish for guiding their spy satellites over the military bases on the Hawaiian Islands after they orbited the U.S. mainland. Our job was to penetrate their transponders with powerful microwave signals and foul up their intelligence photos. From what the CIA was able to gather, the Russians never did figure out why their satellite reconnaissance photos always came back blurred and out of focus. About the time the Communist government disintegrated, newer space communications facilities made the Palawai facility redundant. Because of its immense size, the antenna was later utilized to transmit and receive signals from deep-space probes. Now I understand that its dated technology has made the facility’s equipment obsolete, and the site, though still guarded, is pretty much abandoned.”
Yaeger jumped right to the heart of the matter. “How large is the parabolic reflector?”
Molly buried her head in her hands a moment before looking up. “I seem to recall that it was eighty meters in diameter.”
“More than the surface area we require,” said Ames. “Do you think the NSA will let us borrow it?” asked Sandecker.
“They’d probably pay you to carry it away.”
“You’ll have to dismantle it and airlift the pieces to’ Pearl Harbor,” said Ames, “providing you can borrow the carrier Roosevelt to reassemble and lower it on the convergence area.”
Sandecker looked squarely at Molly. “I’ll use my powers of persuasion with the Navy Department if you’d work on the National Security Agency end.”
“I’ll get on it immediately,” Molly assured him.
A balding man with rimless glasses, sitting near the end of the table, raised a hand.
Sandecker nodded at him and smiled. “You’ve been pretty quiet, Charlie. Something must be stirring around in your brain.”
Dr. Charlie Bakewell, NUMA’s chief undersea geologist, removed a wad of gum from his mouth and neatly wrapped it in paper before dropping it in a wastebasket. He nodded at the image of Dr. Ames in the holograph. “As I understand this thing, Dr. Ames, the sound energy alone can’t destroy human tissue, but enhanced by the resonance coming from the rock chamber which is under assault by the acoustic mining equipment, its frequency is reduced so that it can propagate over vast distances. When it overlaps in a single ocean region, the sound is intense enough to damage human tissue.”
“You’re essentially correct,” admitted Ames.
“So if you reflect the overlapping convergence zones back through the ocean, won’t some energy reflect from Gladiator Island?”
Ames nodded. “Quite true. As long as the energy force strikes the submerged level of the island without surfacing and is scattered in diverse directions, any prospect of carnage is dramatically decreased.”
“It’s the moment of impact against the island that concerns me,” said Bakewell conversationally. “I’ve reviewed the geological surveys on Gladiator Island by geologists hired by Dorsett Consolidated Mining nearly fifty years ago. The volcanoes on the opposite ends of the island are not extinct but dormant. They have been dormant for less than seven hundred years. No human was present during the last eruption, but scientific analysis of the lava rock dates it some time in the middle of the twelfth century. The ensuing years have been followed by alternating periods of passivity and minor seismic disturbances.”
“What is your point, Charlie?” asked Sandecker.
“My point, Admiral, is that if a catastrophic force of acoustical energy slams into the base of Gladiator Island it just might set off a seismic disaster.”
“An eruption?” asked Gunn.
Bakewell merely nodded.
“What in your estimation are the odds of this happening?” inquired Sandecker.
“There is no way of absolutely predicting any level of seismic or volcanic activity, but I know a qualified vulcanologist who will give you a bet of one in five.”
“One chance of eruption out of five,” Ames said, his holographic image gazing at Sandecker. “I am afraid, Admiral, that Dr. Bakewell’s theory puts our project into the category of unacceptable risk.”
Sandecker did not hesitate a second with his reply. “Sorry, Dr. Ames, but the lives of a million or more residents of Honolulu, along with tens of thousands of tourists and military personnel stationed at bases around Oahu, take priority over 650 miners.”
“Can’t we warn Dorsett Consolidated management to evacuate the island?” said Yaeger.
“We have to try,” Sandecker said firmly. “But knowing Arthur Dorsett, he’ll simply shrug off any warning off as a hollow threat.”
“Suppose the acoustic energy is deflected elsewhere?” suggested Bakewell.
Ames looked doubtful. “Once the intensity deviates from its original path, you run the risk of it retaining its full energy and striking Yokohama, Shanghai, Manila, Sydney or Auckland, or some other heavily populated coastal city.”
There was a brief silence as everyone in the room turned to face Sandecker, including Ames, who was sitting at a desk thirty-two hundred kilometers to the west. Abstractedly, Sandecker toyed with an unlit cigar. What most did not know was that his mind wasn’t on the possible destruction of Gladiator Island. His mind was saddened and angered at the same time over the abandonment of his best friends in a raging sea by Arthur Dorsett. In the end, hate won out over any humane consideration.
He stared at the image of Sanford Ames. “Compute your calculations, Doc, for aiming the reflector at Gladiator Island. If we don’t stop Dorsett Consolidated, and stop them in the shortest time possible, no one else will.”
Arthur Dorsett’s private elevator in the jewelry trade center rose noiselessly. The only evidence of ascent was the progression of blinking floor levels over the doors. When the car eased to a gentle stop at the penthouse suite, Gabe Strouser stepped out into an entryway that led to the open courtyard where Dorsett stood waiting to greet him.
Strouser did not relish his meeting with the diamond maverick. They had known each other since they were children. The close association between the Strousers and the Dorsetts had lasted well over a century, until Arthur cut off any future dealings with Strouser & Sons. The break was not amicable. Dorsett coldly ordered his attorneys to inform Gabe Strouser that his family’s services were no longer required. The axe fell, not with a personal confrontation but over the telephone. It was an insult that badly stung Strouser, and he never forgave Dorsett.
To save his family’s venerable old firm, Strouser had switched his allegiance to the cartel in South Africa, eventually moving his company headquarters from Sydney to New York. In time he rose to become a respected director of the board. Because the cartel was barred from doing business in the United States due to national antitrust laws, they operated behind the coattails of the respected diamond merchants of Strouser & Sons, who acted as their American arm.
He would not be here now if the other board directors had not panicked at the rumors of Dorsett Consolidated Mining’s threat to bury the market in an avalanche of stones at sharply discounted prices. They had to act decisively and fast if they were to avert a disaster. A deeply scrupulous man, Strouser was the only cartel member the board of directors could trust to persuade Dorsett not to shatter the established price levels of the market.