Текст книги "Atlantis Found"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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14

"Forgive me for asking, but are you Hiram Yaeger?" Fueled by enthusiasm, Pat had made her way through the vast computer network that covered the entire tenth floor of the NUMA building. She had heard computer wizards at the University of Pennsylvania talk in awe of the oceans data center of the National Underwater & Marine Agency. It was an established fact that the center processed and stored the most enormous amount of digital data on oceanography ever assembled under one roof.

The scruffy-looking man sitting at a horseshoe-shaped console pulled down his granny glasses and peered at the woman standing in the doorway of his sanctum sanctorum. "I'm Yaeger. You must be Dr. O'Connell. The admiral said to expect you this morning."

The brain behind this incredible display of information-gathering power hardly fit the image she had of him. For some reason, Pat had expected Yaeger to look like a cross between Bill Gates and Albert Einstein. He resembled neither. He was dressed in Levi's pants and jacket over a pure white T-shirt. His feet were encased in cowboy boots that looked as if they had suffered through a thousand calf-roping contests on the rodeo circuit. His hair was dark gray and long and tied back in a ponytail. His face was boyish and clean-shaven, and featured a narrow nose and gray eyes.

Pat would have also been surprised to learn that Yaeger lived in a fashionable residential section of Maryland, was married to a successful animal artist, and was the father of two teenage daughters who attended an expensive private school. His only hobby was collecting and restoring old, obsolete computers.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," said Pat.

"Weren't you met at the elevator and shown to my domain?"

"No, I simply wandered around until I saw somebody who didn't look like Dilbert."

Yaeger, a fan of the comic strip character by Scott Adams, laughed. "I think I'm supposed to take that as a compliment. I deeply apologize for not having someone meet and escort you."

"No bother. I took a self-guided tour. Your data empire is quite grand. Certainly nothing like the equipment I'm used to working with at the university."

"Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"No, thank you, I'm fine," said Pat. "Shall we get to work?"

"As you wish," Yaeger replied politely.

"Do you have the photographs taken of the chamber?"

"The photo-processing lab sent them up last night. I stayed late and scanned them into Max."

"Dick told me about Max. I'm anxious to see him in action."

Yaeger pulled up a chair next to his but didn't immediately offer it to Pat. "If you'll step around the console and stand in the middle of that open platform just in front of us, I'll demonstrate Max's unique talents."

Pat walked to the platform and stood in the center, staring back at Yaeger. As she watched, the computer whiz seemed to blur before her eyes and then vanished altogether, as she found herself surrounded by what her mind swore was some kind of nebulous enclosure. Then the walls and ceiling became more distinct and she found herself standing in an exact replica of the chamber. She had to tell herself that it was a holographic illusion, but it seemed so real, especially when the inscriptions began forming on the walls in well-defined clarity.

"This is fantastic," she murmured.

"Max has all the symbols from the photographs programmed into his memory, but although we have a monitor the size of a small movie screen, I thought it would be helpful for you to read the inscription lines in their original perspective."

"Yes, yes," Pat said, becoming excited. "Being able to study the entire text in one sweep will help enormously. Thank you, and thank Max."

"Come back and meet Max," came Yaeger's voice from behind the illusionary chamber. "Then we'll get to work."

Pat was on the verge of saying "I can't," because the chamber seemed so real. But she broke the illusion by stepping through the wall as if she were a ghost, and rejoined Yaeger behind the console.

"Max," said Yaeger, "meet Dr. Pat O'Connell."

"How do you do?" came a soft feminine voice.

Pat eyed Yaeger suspiciously. "Max is a woman."

"I programmed my own voice into the original program. But I've made any number of modifications since then and decided that I'd rather listen to a female voice than that of a male."

"She's voice-activated?"

Yaeger smiled. "Max is an artificial intelligence system. No buttons to push. Just talk to her like you would a normal person."

Pat looked around. "Is there a microphone?"

"Six, but they're miniatures you can't see. You can stand anywhere within twenty feet."

Apprehensively, Pat said, "Max?"

On the huge monitor just beyond the platform, the face of a woman appeared. She stared at Pat in vivid color. Her eyes were topaz brown and her hair a shiny auburn. Her lips were spread in a smile that revealed even white teeth. Her shoulders were bare down to the tops of her breasts, which just showed above the bottom of the monitor. "Hello, Dr. O'Connell. I'm pleased to meet you."

"Please call me Pat."

"I shall from now on."

"She's lovely," said Pat admiringly.

"Thank you." Yaeger smiled. "Her real name is Elsie, and she's my wife."

"Do you work well together?" Pat asked facetiously.

"Most of the time. But if I'm not careful, she can get as testy and petulant as the original."

"Okay, here goes," Pat murmured under her breath. "Max, have you analyzed the symbols that were scanned into your system?"

"I have." Max's voice answered in tones that sounded positively human.

"Could you decipher and translate any of the symbols into the English alphabet?"

"I've only scratched the surface, but I have made progress. The inscriptions on the ceiling of the chamber appear to be a star chart."

"Explain." Yaeger ordered.

"I see it as a sophisticated coordinate system that is used in astronomy to plot the positions of celestial objects in the sky. I think it might suggest changes in the declinations of stars visible in the sky over a particular part of the world in past epochs."

"Meaning that because of deviations in the earth's rotation, the stars appear to shift positions over time."

"Yes, the scientific terms are precession and nutation," Max lectured. "Because the earth bulges around the equator from its rotation, the gravitational pull of the sun and moon is heaviest around the equator and causes a slight wobble to the earth's spinning axis. You've seen the same phenomenon in a spinning top, due to gravity. This is called precession, and it traces a circular cone in space every 25,800 years. Nutation, or nodding, is a small but irregular movement that swings the celestial pole 10 seconds away from the smooth precessional circle every 18.6 years."

"I know that sometime in the distant future," said Pat, "Polaris will no longer be the North Star."

"Exactly," Max agreed. "As Polaris drifts away, another star will move into position above the North Pole in approximately 345 years. A hundred years before the time of Christ, the vernal equinox– Excuse me, are you familiar with the vernal equinox?"

"If I remember my junior college astronomy," said Pat, "the vernal equinox is where the sun intersects the celestial equator from south to north during the spring equinox, making it a reference direction for angular distances as measured from the equator."

"Very good," Max complimented her. "Spoken like a college professor putting her class to sleep. Anyway, before Christ, the vernal equinox passed through the constellation Aries. Because of precession, the vernal equinox is now in Pisces and is advancing toward Aquarius."

"What I think you're telling us," said Pat, elation beginning to grow in her chest, "is that the starlike symbols in the ceiling in the chamber display coordinates of the star system from the past."

"That's how I read it," Max said impassively.

"Did the ancients have the scientific knowledge to make such accurate projections?"

"I'm finding that whoever carved that celestial map in the ceiling of the chamber was superior to the astronomers of only a few hundred years ago. They calculated correctly that the celestial galaxy is fixed and that the sun, the moon, and the planets revolve. The map shows the orbits of the planets, including Pluto, which was discovered only in the last century. They discovered that the stars Betelgeuse, Sirius, and Procyon remain in permanent positions, while other constellations move imperceptibly over thousands of years. Believe me, these ancient people knew their stuff when it came to stargazing."

Pat looked at Yaeger. "If Max can decipher the star coordinates as engraved in the chamber when it was built, we might be able to date its construction."

"It's worth a try."

"I deciphered a small part of the numbering system," said Pat. "Would that help you, Max?"

"You shouldn't have bothered. I have already interpreted the numbering system. I find it quite ingenious for its simplicity. I can't wait to dig my bytes into the inscriptions that spell out words."

"Max?"

"Yes, Hiram."

"Concentrate on deciphering the star symbols and put aside the alphabetic inscriptions for now."

"You'd like me to analyze the celestial map?"

"Do the best you can."

"Can you give me until five o'clock? I should be able to get a handle on it by then."

"The time is yours," Yeager responded.

"Max only requires a few hours for a project that should take months, even years?" Pat asked incredulously.

"Never underestimate Max," said Yaeger, swinging around in his chair and sipping from a cup of cold coffee. "I spent the better part of my prime years putting Max together. There isn't another computer system like her in the world. Not that she won't be obsolete in five years. But for the present, there is very little she can't do. She is unique, and she belongs heart and soul to me and NUMA."

"What about patents? Surely you must turn your rights over to the government."

"Admiral Sandecker is not your average bureaucrat. We have a verbal contract. I trust him, and he trusts me. Fifty percent of any revenue that we make on patent royalties or charges for the use of our accumulated data to private corporations or government agencies is turned over to NUMA. The other fifty percent comes to me."

"You certainly work for a fair-minded man. Any other employer would have given you a bonus, a gold watch, and a pat on the back, and taken your profits to the bank."

"I'm lucky to be surrounded by fair-minded men," said Yaeger solemnly. "The admiral, Rudi Gunn, Al Giordino, and Dirk Pitt, they're all men I'm proud to call my friends."

"You've known them for a long time."

"Close to fifteen years. We've had some wild times together and solved any number of ocean riddles."

"While we're waiting for Max to get back to us, why don't we begin analyzing the wall symbols. Perhaps we can find a clue to their meaning."

Yaeger nodded. "Sure thing."

"Can you reproduce the holographic image of the chamber?"

"Wishing will make it so," Yaeger said, as he typed a command at his keyboard and the image of the interior walls of the chamber materialized again.

"To decipher an unknown alphabetic writing, the first trick is to separate the consonants from the vowels. Since I see no indication that they represent ideas or objects, I'm assuming that the symbols are alphabetic and they record sounds of words."

"What is the origin of the first alphabet?" asked Yaeger.

"Hard evidence is scarce, but most epigraphists believe it was invented in ancient Canaan and Phoenicia somewhere between 1700 and 1500 B.C., and is labeled as North Semitic. Leading scholars disagree, of course. But they do tend to agree that early Mediterranean cultures developed the awakenings of an alphabet from prehistoric geometric symbols. Much later, the Greeks adapted and refined the alphabet, so the letters we write today are related to theirs. Further developments came from the Etruscans, followed by the Romans, who borrowed heavily to form the written language of Latin and whose later classic characters eventually formed the twenty-six-letter alphabet you and I use today."

"Where do we begin?"

"We'll be starting from scratch," said Pat, referring to her notes. "I'm unaware of any other ancient writing systems whose symbols match those inscribed in the chamber. There seems to be no influence either way, which is most unusual. The only remote similarity is to the Celtic Ogham alphabet, but there any resemblance ends."

"I almost forgot." Yaeger handed her a small batonlike shaft with a miniature camera at one end. "Max has already coded the symbols. If you want me to help you from my end with any calculations, just aim the camera at the symbol and its sequence in the inscriptions you wish to study, and I'll work at developing a decipher program."

"Sounds good," said Pat, happy to be back in the harness again. "First, let's list the different symbols and get a count on how many times each is represented. Then we can try working them into words."

"Like the and and."

"Most of the ancient script did not include words we take for granted today. I also want to see if we can detect the vowels before tackling the consonants."

They worked through the day without a break. At noon, Yaeger sent word down to the NUMA cafeteria to send up sandwiches and soft drinks. Pat was becoming increasingly frustrated. The symbols looked maddeningly simple to decipher, and yet by five o'clock she had had little or no success in untangling their definitions.

"Why is it the numbering system was so easy to break, but the alphabet so impossible?" she muttered irritably.

"Why don't we knock off until tomorrow," Yaeger suggested.

"I'm not tired."

"Neither am I," he concurred. "But we'll have a fresh outlook. I don't know about you, but my best solutions always come to me in the middle of the night. Besides, Max doesn't require sleep. I'll put her on the inscriptions during the night. By morning, she should have some ideas on the translation."

"I have no sensible argument."

"Before we knock off, I'll call up Max and see if she's made any progress with the stars."

Yaeger's fingers didn't have to play over the keyboard. He simply pressed a transmit button and said, "Max, are you there?"

Her scowling face came over the monitor. "What took you and Dr. O'Connell so long to get back to me? I've been waiting for nearly two hours."

"Sorry, Max," said Yaeger, without a deep sense of regret. "We were busy."

"You didn't spend but a few hours on the project," said Pat naively. "Did you strike out?"

"Strike out, hell," Max snapped. "I can tell you exactly what you want to know."

"Start with how you came to your conclusions," Yaeger commanded.

"You didn't think I was going to calculate movement of the stars myself, did you?"

"It was your project."

"Why should I strain my chips when I can get another computer to do it?"

"Please, Max, tell us what you discovered."

"Well, first of all, finding the coordinates of celestial objects in the sky takes a complicated geometric process. I won't get into boring detail on how to determine the altitude, azimuth, right ascension, and declination. My problem was to determine the sites where the coordinates engraved in the rock of the chamber were measured. I managed to calculate the original sites where the observers took their sightings within a few miles. Also the stars they used to measure deviations over many, many years. The three stars in the belt of the constellation of Orion, the hunter, all move. Sirius, the dog star, who sits near the heel of Orion, is fixed. With these numbers in hand, I tapped into the astrometry computer over at the National Science Center."

"Shame on you, Max," admonished Yaeger. "You could get me into big trouble raiding another computer network."

"I think the computer over at NSC likes me. He promised to erase my inquiry.

"I hope you can take him at his word," grunted Yaeger. It was an act. Yaeger had tapped into outside computer networks for unauthorized data hundreds of times.

"Astrometry," Max continued unperturbed, "in case you don't know, is one of the oldest branches of astronomy, and deals with determining the movements of stars." Max paused. "Follow me?"

"Go on," Pat urged.

"The guy in the computer over at NSC isn't up to my standards, of course, but since this was an elementary program for him, I sweet talked him into working out the deviation between positions of Sirius and Orion when the chamber was built with their present coordinates in the sky."

"You dated the chamber?" Pat murmured, holding her breath.

"I did."

"Is the chamber a hoax?" Yaeger asked, as if afraid of the answer.

"Not unless those old hard-rock Colorado miners you're worried about were first-class astronomers."

"Please, Max," Pat begged. "When was the chamber built and the inscriptions engraved on its walls?"

"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.

"We're home," he said thankfully.

Gunn's owlish face crinkled into a smile. "Was there ever a doubt?"

"I've got the mountain on my side. What's on yours?"

During the landing, Gunn's attention had been focused on the side of the mountain, and only now did he look out the starboard window. Not more than four feet from his exit door, the ledge dropped off at a steep angle for nearly eight hundred feet. The wingtip hung far out over empty air. The smile was gone and his face pale when he turned back to Giordino.

"It wasn't as expansive as I thought," he murmured sheepishly.

Giordino threw off his safety harness. "Do you have a route to the chamber figured out?"

Gunn held up the aerial photo and pointed to a small canyon leading up from the shore. "This is the only way a hunting party could have penetrated the island and made their way up the mountain. Pitt said that according to the ship's log, the colonel and his party climbed halfway up the mountain. We're about at that level now."

"What direction is the ravine?"

"South. And to answer your next question, we're on the west side of the mountain. With a little luck, we won't have to hike more than three-quarters of a mile, provided we can stumble onto the ancient walkway the colonel mentioned."

"Thank God for small islands," Giordino murmured. "Can you detect the old road on your photo?"

"No, I can't see any sign of it."

They proceeded to untie the straps containing the survival gear and donned their backpacks. The rain returned in sheets, so they slipped foul-weather gear on over their clothes and boots. When ready, they threw open the passenger door and stepped to the rocky ground. Beyond the ledge was the sheer drop, and beyond the drop, nothing but the Indian Ocean and gray pewter waves. As a safety precaution, they tied down the aircraft to several huge boulders.

The threatening sky made the island seem all the more drab and desolate. Gunn squinted through the rain and motioned for Giordino to lead, pointing in the direction he wanted to follow. They set off diagonally across the slope of the mountain, staying inside the larger rocks where the ground was flatter and firm beneath their feet.

They struggled across small ledges and narrow crevices, trying to walk upright without resorting to mountain-climbing gear, a skill in which neither was proficient. Giordino seemed impervious to fatigue. His thick, powerful body took the climb over the rocks in stride. Gunn had no problems, either. He was wiry and far tougher than he looked. He began to fall back from the unyielding Giordino, not from weariness but because he had to stop every twenty yards to wipe the moisture from his glasses.

About midway across the west side of the mountain, Giordino came to a halt. "If your reckoning is right, the stone walkway should be a short distance above or below us."

Gunn sat down with his back to a smooth lava rock and peered at his photo, which had become dog-eared and soggy from the damp. "Assuming the colonel took the path of least resistance from the ravine, he should have worked his way across the mountain about a hundred feet below us."

Giordino crouched, placed his hands on slightly bent knees, and stared down the slope. He seemed entranced for several moments before he turned back and looked Gunn full in the face. "I swear to God, I don't know how you do it."

"What do you mean?"

"Not thirty feet below where we sit is a narrow road paved with smooth rocks."

Gunn peered over the edge. Almost within spitting distance, he saw a road, a path really, four feet wide, laid with stones long aged by the weather. The path traveled in both directions, but landslides had carried much of it down the slope. In the cracks between the stones, a strange looking plant was sprouting. It had lettuce-like heads and grew close to the ground. '

"It must be the road described by the British colonel," said Gunn.

"What's that weird stuff growing in it?" asked Giordino.

"Kerguelen cabbage. It produces a pungent oil and can be eaten as a cooked vegetable."

"Now you know why the road was indistinguishable on the photo. It was hidden by cabbages."

"Yes, I can see that now," said Gunn.

"How did it get established on such a godforsaken island?"

"Probably by its pollen that was carried across the water by the wind."

"Which direction do you want to follow the road?"

Gunn's eyes scanned the flat-laid stones as far as he could in both directions until they were lost to view. "The colonel must have stumbled onto the road down to our right. Below that point it must have been destroyed by erosion and slides. Since it makes no sense to start at the top of the mountain and work down, the chamber must be hidden farther up the slope. So we go to the left and climb."

Stepping cautiously on the loose lava rock, they quickly reached the neatly laid stones and began ascending the road. The flat passage was a welcome relief, but landslides were another matter. They had to cross two of them, each nearly thirty or more yards wide. It was slow going. The lava rock was jagged and knifelike. One slip and their bodies would tumble down the slope, gathering momentum until they bounced over the cliffs far below into the sea.

After negotiating the last hurdle, they sat and rested. Giordino idly picked a cabbage and flipped it down the hill, watching it bounce and shred on its erratic journey. He lost sight of it and did not see the splash as it shot into the water like a cannonball. Instead of lessening, the atmosphere chilled and thickened. The wind gusts strengthened and whipped the rain against their faces. Though they were protected by foul-weather gear, the water found ways of seeping in and around their collars, soaking their inner clothing.