Towers
By Storm
Lt. Commander Chip Morton
leaned his elbows on the edge of Seaview’s flying bridge, basking in the
early morning sunlight as a slight breeze ruffled his blond hair. It was rare
for the huge sub to be proceeding on the surface, but here in the shallow waters
of the Gulf of Mexico one hundred miles south of the western Louisiana
coast there was little choice - not if
they didn’t want to find themselves either scraping barnacles off the boat’s
keel or unsnarling the sailplanes from some shrimper’s nets. Add in the
plethora of drilling rigs to thread through and Morton was for once glad to be
running surfaced. Besides, today was a day of rare calm - little wind and few
waves. It made surface running a pleasure, something extraordinary rare on Seaview,
since like all submarines, she tended to wallow on the surface in any kind
of seas.
Noise behind him diverted him
from the horizon ahead; he turned to see Admiral Nelson ascending through the
hatch, followed by Dr. Wilton, their guest researcher from Woods Hole. Chip
arched his eyebrows, for he’d not expected them to put in an appearance
topside, not with a science dive coming up. He and Sojourner would be
sitting this one out, for the bottom in the area under investigation was only
about three hundred feet deep. It could be reached by free swimming divers,
though it was admittedly beyond the depths where using only compressed air was
advisable. There had been discussion of using a helium-oxygen mix, but then the
dive team would have to decompress - and Dr. Wilton wasn’t qualified to make
such a dive. It had then been decided to use FS1 in addition to a team of
divers.
Chip suppressed a grin. He
knew that Lee was eager to show off his ‘baby’, for while the captain would
never admit it, all the attention Sojourner had received lately had been
rubbing on him.
The spot they were seeking
was totally unknown; it had been accidentally discovered just a few days
earlier by fishermen when they’d snagged their nets on what appeared to be some
sort of obstruction that rose high above the surrounding sea floor. When the
fishing vessel had finally freed her nets and pulled the remnants aboard, the
crew had found a chunk of what appeared to be some type of very dense, very
hard, dark colored rock entangled in them.
The problem was that the
bottom in this area was rock salt overlain by thick muds. There weren’t
supposed to be rocks of any kind anywhere near here.
The disgruntled fishing
captain had turned the rock over to a Coast Guard cutter that had responded to
his call for help. Intrigued by the peculiar nature of the find and wondering
if there was an uncharted hazard to navigation present, the captain of the
cutter had started pinging the bottom with his sonar and discovered what
appeared to be a pair of spires of some sort sticking up from the bottom.
Knowing that Seaview was nearby, the cutter’s captain had promptly sent
a message describing the find. Intrigued, both Admiral Nelson and Dr. Wilton
decided that the area merited investigation. Now Seaview was carefully
picking her way through what was for her, very shallow waters, carefully
mapping the seafloor along the edge of what passed for the continental shelf.
It was a decidedly strange
place, geologically speaking.
The whole chaotic mess looked
to Chip’s admittedly untrained (in geology, anyway) eyes like a landslide
arrested in mid motion. It was a lumpy landscape, composed of a jumbled
assemblage of humps and depressions that cascaded into the depths of the Gulf.
He knew from discussions with Admiral Nelson and Dr. Wilton that finding a
spire of any kind of rock jutting out of the muddy bottom in the Gulf of Mexico
was so unusual as to be unheard of. Finding two in such close proximity
bordered on impossible. Yet according to the Coast Guard they were not only
present, but towered at least sixty feet above the bottom, coming to a depth of
about two hundred feet below the surface. It was a mystery neither Nelson nor
Dr. Wilton could possibly pass up.
There was something about it
that nagged at Chip though, a hint at the back of his mind that somewhere,
somebody had mentioned something about this place. It was impossible, yet the
thought circled in his mind.
He couldn’t for the life of
him remember who it might have been. Maybe it was just déjà vu.
His puzzlement was
interrupted by a squawk on the intercom.
“Mr. Morton,” came the voice
of the sub’s skipper, Lee Crane, “we’re starting to pick up our target on the
sonar. Notify the admiral.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” he
replied before turning to Nelson.
“I heard,” said Nelson. “I
think I’d like to reduce speed and do a complete sonar survey around the site
before we dive. Establish some perimeters as it were.”
Morton nodded and clicked the
mike to relay the request to the control room, the problem of his odd feelings
about this place momentarily put aside.
# # # # # # #
Chip Morton stood on the
observation deck, looking out the Herculite windows at the surreal scene bathed
in light from both Seaview and the Flying Sub’s brilliant spotlights.
There were indeed two twin towers of dark rock standing a few hundred yards
apart, but they were not alone. A third smaller spire was present, along with a
narrow elongated ridge to the east of the spires, though those couldn’t be seen
from where the submarine was holding station. Even more puzzling was the
relatively light encrustation of coral and sponges on the two spires, a
possible indication that the rocks present were relatively young. The problem
was, they appeared to be made of basalt - and the nearest basalt outcrops were
in central Texas, hundreds of miles away. These three were sitting squarely in
the top of a salt dome. It was, according to both Admiral Nelson and Dr.
Wilton, unheard of.
Oh, there was basalt basement
under the salt, but for these spires to have come from there, they would have
had to risen upwards through the less dense salt. Frankly, Chip couldn’t
imagine how that was possible, even though he wasn’t a geologist. But as a
submariner, he was acutely aware of how density affected things in the oceans,
especially submarines. Pass out of a salty zone into one with less salt and
suddenly your boat would be too heavy. It would begin to sink - not
rise. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the ridge to the east - less
than half a mile away and apparently composed of the same basalt - was
considerably more eroded looking and hosted a far denser encrusting biological
community. It just looked older. Either there was some mineralogical
difference between the two or these spires had somehow been emplaced much later
than the ridge.
Emplaced. Again a thought
twitched somewhere around the edges of his mind. Was it possible, he wondered
to himself? He reflected for a moment. Again, marine archeology wasn’t his
specialty, but he knew enough to know that during the last ice age sea level
had been much lower than it was now - as much as four hundred feet lower. The
bottom here on the top of the salt dome was only three hundred feet deep. This
area would have been high and dry at the height of the last ice age, becoming
an island as the ice sheets melted and sea level rose. That would mean that it
was likely still dry land when people began moving into the area.
He frowned. He’d never heard
of any of the native people of North America building these types of monoliths
- but they were quite common in Europe. Not quite so old perhaps as these would
have to be, but the practice had to have started somewhere. He’d heard from one
of the admiral’s archeologist friends that places like Stonehenge dated back
almost 5000 years. If these spires were indeed something someone had erected,
they’d have to be at least twice that old, if not more. He shook his head as if
to negate the thought, but couldn’t help remembering another monolith he’d seen
many years before in Brittany during a week of shore leave. Carn something…
Carnac had been what it was called. And it was sixty three feet tall….
Chip found his frown
deepening. It was odd that these spires should have the same shape and almost
identical height to those monoliths in Europe. Maybe that similarity was what
had triggered the odd notion that these spires were artifacts and not something
created by nature.
He sighed and gave his head a
small shake. If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that wasn’t the
case. He’d had an odd feeling about this place even before he’d know what the
spires looked like.
But it just wouldn’t come to
him. Every time he tried to recall who had told him about this place - and
somehow he was sure it was this place - the memory flitted away, just
out of his reach. Maybe it was his imaginary Selkies. He laughed a bit
self-consciously and took a quick look around to see if anyone had heard. The
only one he’d ever confided in about that was Lee. But he’d never been
able to find any trace or uncover any reference that described the creatures he
pictured as Selkies. He’d come to conclude that perhaps his father had been
right, that they were the products of his own imagination. But how could he
have imagined this place?
His thoughts were beginning
to take him places he didn’t want to go. He took a deep breath and turned away
from the view ports, determined to put it out of his mind. Some things were
better left buried in the past. He strode determinedly back towards the control
room, closing the hatch firmly behind him as he exited the observation deck.
The stones outside seemed to
sigh….
Author’s note: The basalt
spires are real - the location is called Alderdice Bank - and nobody knows how
they got where they are, though as far as I am aware no one has suggested - at
least not openly - that somebody might have PUT them there.
Additional note. This
takes place just a few days after the story Strangest Places and is set
in my Cross-Currents universe. The time is July 1976.