The Case of the Arctic Anomaly

(September-December 2012)

8-Kraken Up

They had revved up the Stan O'War II's engine before Omen had even climbed back aboard the Kalanautis. "Dig out!" Stan yelled, using the old playground term meaning in adult language, approximately, "Haul ass!"

The sloop leaped forward. Stan, clapping a hand on his watch cap against the suddenly veering wind, turned and gazed ahead. And blinked. Fine salt spray almost at once clouded his glasses and blurred his vision, and squinting, he took off the specs and dried the lenses on a handkerchief. Though straight overhead a mackerel sky showed a white-streaked blue, dead ahead a thick rack of cloud lay over the horizon.

Not friendly, puffy, white, cottony cheerful clouds, mind you. Not like a cumulus bloom that on an idle summer's day you would say looked like a toaster or an elephant violating a giraffe's personal space. This squall line, rolling on like a wave on Noah's flood, had a history in the same way that some people have a rap sheet.

What had happened thousands of miles away was that the polar jet stream had developed a loopy southern kink. Aloft a layer of cold, dry air kept the day partly cloudy as opposed to overcast.

Ah, but the jet stream, like a cheerful stevedore rolling a barrel marked "DANGER NITROGLYCERIN" in a language that he unfortunately could not read, the very high, exceptionally strong winds had shoved a chunk of warm, moist Pacific air along the surface of the water. This air was considerably balmier than the freezing atmosphere up where the jet streams played, and it held about as much water as a bath sponge at the bottom of the Marianas Trench could soak up, cubic inch per cubic inch. Humidity from the ocean surface to about a thousand feet up approached 99 per cent.

This warmish, thrashing, chaotic air had become soggy, sodden, and full of trouble.

And as the band of saturated, warm air drove north by northeast, it met the cooler air through which the sloop was making its best speed under full sail. Warm air is lighter than cold air, and the whole humid, messy mass levered its way over the cool surface layer and up into the really cold layer.

The effect was to condense the vapor into clouds made up of water droplets in the lower levels and ice crystals toward the tops, and the effect of the powerful impetus was to shape the exploding clouds thus produced into towering, dark billows.

Beneath the invading storm front the sky took on a deep purple hue, not the sentimental kind that falls over sleepy garden walls, but an ugly purple, the color of the worst black eye that Stan had ever received as a kid, and brother, he had received more than his fair share.

Up above, the crumpled, wadded-cotton clouds blossomed rapidly, earning promotion from the sheep-like herds of mere fluffy cumulus to gigantic cumulonimbus. The tops were already so high that the jet stream was giving them a comb-out, spreading the now-frozen upper parts of each cloud to an anvil top.

"We're sailin' into a storm front!" Stan yelled in Ford's ear.

"I know!" Ford said. "I think we can ride out a storm better than the Kalanautis! And the sub will lose some speed because Omen will probably submerge to avoid the deadly waves!" He dropped into lecture mode: "Modern submarines are faster underwater, but the Kalanautis is clunkier in design, almost like something from the Victorian era! Captain Omen has failed to keep current in his shipbuilding abilities!"

"Good for him!" Stan shouted. He looked back. The submersible still waited in the distance, lying to, not yet under engine power. "How much of our hour do we got left?"

Ford glanced at his wristwatch, which he wore with the face on the same side as his palm. "Fifty-four minutes. That front is coming on fast!"

"Yeah, and we're headin' into it fast!"

They both gazed ahead. Beneath the squall line, the air condensed not into droplets but into hard rain, looking like a streaky purple curtain. Waves started to gain crests of foam, and the wend blew these into streamers.

Stan looked aft. He looked forward. Then he put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Ford, either Omen's gonna sink us or the storm will. It's been good sailing with you."

"Don't give up hope." Ford pressed his lips together for a few seconds and then added, "Stanley, I'm truly sorry that Omen's men took your treasure chest. I feel responsible."

Stan grinned. "Meh, easy come, easy go. Too bad we can't call up the giant squid to distract Omen."

"Yes, if only we had the nightmarish creature on our—wait a minute." Ford frantically scanned the deck. "Did they leave that big plastic tub we use to wash dishes?"

"Yeah, it's on the deck over where the spare fuel drums used to be—"

"Please get it!"

Stumbling along the pitching deck, Stan brought the container back to Ford. "It's got about an inch of water in it—"

"Can you take the wheel?"

"Uh, yeah, but—"

"But me no buts! There, you have the conn! Steer! Keep her on her present course!"

Ford grabbed the plastic container in both arms and vanished into the deckhouse. "Whatever," Stan said. His grin turned fierce, as it did when he confronted zombies or a triangular interdimensional demon. He yelled, "OK, Pacific. Bring it on if you think you're, uh, a big enough surging sea of salty water!"

And a few minutes before that . . ..

In the conning tower of the Kalanautis, Omen inspected the scene topside through the periscope. "There they go. One could almost feel sorry for them. One of them, anyway. The other is rude and arrogant. Mate, on my mark, start counting down the hour I promised."

"Yes, sir."

"Begin . . . now."

"Countdown started, sir."

Omen glanced downward. "Mr. Hands, what luck with the chest?"

Unlike the other crew members, who all wore natty uniforms of deep blue, double-breasted jackets and round white sailors' hats with a trailing length of black ribbon*, the machinist wore scuffed boots, jeans, and a long-sleeved undershirt, all of them the same color, a waxy gray. In fact the machinist's color was the same; his complexion was "oil" rather than black, brown, olive, pink, or tan. Out of the way of the captain, the machinist sat on the deck, hunched over the box. He looked up. "Captain, I be not even sure it is a chest. If it didn't rattle when I shakes it, I'd think it were carved out of some extra-hard wood."

"Let me hear the rattle," Omen said, looking mildly interested.

"Yessir." The machinist hefted the box and with effort tilted it from side to side. Sure enough, it produced clunks and muffled clicks.

"It obviously has something inside it," Omen said. "Therefore it is not solid. The obvious conclusion is that one must somehow be able to open it. Inspect it closely for seams. Use a magnifying glass."

"Yessir." Hands set the box down and rose to go in quest of a double convex lens.

A hesitant voice asked, "Captain?"

"Yes, Mr. Sharkey?"

The navigator, a thin, nervous man afflicted with claustrophobia, shivered, cleared his throat, and said apologetically, "Sir, we've spotted a squall line south and west, approaching our position at a speed of about twenty-five knots. The sounder shows no bottom at five hundred fathoms. Perhaps the craft should dive."

Omen took another turn at the periscope. The horizon had changed in a startling way. Now he saw the ominous squall line, the clouds seeming to lean toward him in their hurry. Between sky and sea lay a heavy deep gray rain curtain. He even made out a spiky bolt of cloud-to-ocean lightning.

"Mr. Hands!"

"He's coming, sir."

Hands ducked through the hatch and into the conning tower, holding a magnifying glass that, for size, even Sherlock Bleeding Holmes himself could not have equaled. "Here, sir, with the magnifying—"

"You oversaw our emergency repairs," Omen said. "Are we sure the loose midships plates have been made sound?"

Hands swallowed. When the captain asked "are we…" it usually meant, "We're all jolly sailors together, right, but if you give me the wrong information about which I shall shortly ask, we shall revise that pronoun 'we' to read 'you, you unfortunate lump of decaying blubber!"

The captain was waiting for a response. Hands nodded. "Yessir, I mean my boys and me, we mended her up as best we could, bein' at sea an' all." Hands gestured with the magnifying glass, which had been a shining thing of bronze and glass when he'd picked it up but now was smeared with a layer of dirty oil. "I think she'll do within reason, sir."

"Clarify, Mr. Hands. What do you mean by 'within reason?'"

Hands gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Well, I mean to say, sir. That bleedin' monster squeezed the old boat like a drunk sailor squeezin' a peach, you might say. Which I mean she's watertight, the hull plates that old poulp crunched is welded, but some of them is more crumpled than I'd like to see. Truth is, sir, she needs a spell in drydock after all these—"

Captain Omen looked politely bored. "Yes, thank you. We will submerge to periscope depth, then. In the turmoil of wind and sea, we can approach the sloop at speed and ram her. Time, Mate?"

"Fifty-four minutes, thirty-eight seconds, sir."

"Keep the engines at slow ahead. Tell me the instant the hour is up. Be prepared for all ahead full at that point."

"Aye, sir."

"This," muttered Hands, sinking down to sit on the deck again, "is the confoundedest chest I ever run across, an' that's gospel true." He started to scrutinize the box through the hazy lens of the glass.

"Keep at it," Omen said. He scanned the area again through the periscope. Yes, to the south and perceptibly closer already, loomed the ugly horizon-stretching mass of cloud, the kind that held lightning and gale winds in its belly.

In his head he simultaneously calculated how long it would be until the storms blasted the two crafts, while at the same time puzzling over how the devil Semyon Andreievich Romanov had contrived such a perfectly-sealed device. There had to be a secret to it. Of course, they could take an axe to the thing, but though he would with hardly a flutter of regret send a warship and all her crew straight to Sairy Johnson's lockup,** Omen disliked destroying historical artifacts.

Especially those coming from "Russia," a country that in his opinion was imaginary, a mere fantasy, at least as far as he knew—and he knew pretty damn far, having roamed the world from the frozen Beringia to the balmy Halei'ei Isles, from the civilized tea-drinking shores of the Brettaigne Islands to the stormy ice-clogged seas south of the Cape of Doom, from the sunny Gredoshino Sea (ah, the cathedrals of Truscany! The brown-eyed temptresses of Peleponnia!) to the distant shores of Cathay.

Yet the captain recognized the double-headed eagle symbol burned into the lid, if it was a lid, of the chest, if it was a chest. It represented Rusland, more specifically the ruling family of that huge expanse, the line of imperators named the Nikolas.

Russia. Rusland. It was almost as if there were two realities, he thought. His Amorika, Ford's America. Rusland, Russia. If only he and Ford had enjoyed more time to discuss such things, he might have learned—

At that point the first mate announced, "Periscope depth, sir."

Omen tore himself from his idle musings. "Count me down the time from thirty seconds before we engage full forward drive. Wait for my orders."

It's a pity he was distracted at that moment because he stood just on the edge of a great discovery that, had he made the connections, he would have discarded anyway as too frivolous to believe.

Meanwhile, the storm, not caring, came roaring on.

"Ford!" Stanley yelled through the hard lash of rain, "He's started up his engines! What do we do?"

Ford came out, said, "My word!" and hunched his shoulders against the storm. "I can't even see the Kalanautis," he said, shielding his glasses with one broad hand.

"You have to wait until there's a little break in the storm."

"You're sure you saw it?"

"Yeah, like way on the horizon and almost all the way under water, but the what do you call it, the sticky-up thing—"

"The conning tower?"

"OK, I saw it clear, 'cause it was throwin' up a big white wave. I think he's coming on fast."

"I'm almost ready," Ford said. "I'm going to try something rather desperate."

"Oh, good, I thought we were givin' up."

"It may or may not work."

"Try it, Brainiac, try it, and explain it to me later!"

"I'll have to spend an estimated twenty-one minutes below deck. Head into rough water and zig-zag but bear gradually to port."

"That's left?"

"Right."

"Wait, wait, right as in right, or right as in correct?"

"Good point! As in correct. Just give me twenty-one minutes before he gets close enough to fire on us. Oh, and I'll bring up the quantum destabilizer. Don't fire it unless it's a desperate situation, and remember it's set to stun."

Ford hurriedly brought Stan the weapon, Stan lashed it to the steering console with a bungee cord, and Ford vanished into the deckhouse again. "Zig-zag, he says," Stan muttered. "How big a zig, how long a zag? And gradually work to the left. OK, I can do this. I zig while I count to fifty, then zag while I count to seventy-five. That should zig my zag to port. Maybe."

Stan turned the wheel so the sloop made about a ten-degree turn to the right, catching the seas slightly on the port side of the bows, and the little vessel wallowed. "Great," groaned Stan. "Just when I ain't got time to puke! One, two, three . . .."

At fifty, Stan wrenched the wheel back the other way, and now for a moment the Stan O'War II met the waves head-on before working around so the starboard side of the prow took the hammering. Stan gulped, turned his face away from a stinging shower of salt spray and started counting again.

The waves had swelled. Now running up one of them was like climbing a living hill, and then the sloop was over the crest and swooping down into the trough. Stan had an eerie feeling—when the sloop was in the trough, momentarily the surrounding roar lessened, the steady growl of the engine came through, and he could even hear the breath whistling in his nostrils. Then the trough seemed to incline and once again the sloop struggled up the slope of the next wave.

Stan zigged and he zagged and lost count of the counting. Then Ford burst out of the cabin. "Ready!" he said. "I'll take the wheel. I'm going to cut the engine—"

"Say what?" Stanley shouted.

"Listen, this is our best chance—"

"What's second best?" Stan asked. "Jumpin' overboard while huggin' a freakin' anchor?"

"Stanley, pull yourself together. Raise the mainsail and jib. I'm going to bring her about and tack to port as soon as the sails draw. And stand by for a lot of noise."

"Like this typhoon ain't noisy enough? OK, I'm hoistin' sail. I guess I'm ready to meet Davy Jones!"

The sails rose and took the wind with a whomp! The Stan O'War slewed seriously, the deck tilting. Then she ran close-hauled, the wind hitting her at about a forty-five-degree angle from her forward course. The engine stopped, not to silence, but to the scream of wind and the crash of toppling waves, now too high to avoid stumbling over themselves.

And then—

AugGGH-eeee-OOO-wahhh!

"Oh crap!" Stan's gloved hands flew to his ears, but they shut out very little of the strange noise, which looped again, and again, and again.

Wincing, Stan grasped the rail. "What the fluff, Ford!"

Ford yelled, but Stan couldn't hear him above the uproar. How in the heck could a tiny little video camera—though admittedly an expensive one that Fiddleford McGucket had got his hands on—produce this much earsplitting, brain-mushing volume? Ford was pointing, seemingly at Stan. Then he twirled his fingers.

Oh. Turn around.

"Whoa!" Stan reached for one of the stay lines. A rubbery gray form, enormous, reared from the water not four feet from him. A tentacle lashed. A horrible, baleful yellow eye glared at him.

Without even thinking, Stan punched the eye as hard as he could, putting all his old boxing skill in as powerful a left hook as he could.

It was like punching a slimy, evil, oversized beachball, if a beachball had a slitted black pupil and little crooked red blood vessels in the sclera. The whole kraken body convulsed, and with a thrash of tentacles it sank—

The sound of a powerful engine rumbled over the clamor of the storm and the ululating, eldritch*** call of the kraken—

"Yikes!" The Kalanautis heaved into view only thirty yards astern, the water flooding off her deck as she rose to ride awash in the surging waves—

"Yes!" Ford's voice.

The submersible, on an obvious collision course with the Stan O'War II, shuddered and lurched. Tentacles thrashed, seizing it amidships.

Oh, yeah, the kraken hated the sound of engines.

And while the sloop was under sail, the Kalanautis was running its engines full out.

Rain intervened.

Then the sloop ran clear, and for an instant they saw Captain Omen's submarine clasped in the grip of the marine monster.

An unearthly blue light flickered over both of them, like an electrical discharge.

"Stan!" Ford yelled so loud that his brother heard him at last.

"Take the helm!"

"Huh? What are you gonna do?"

Ford freed the destabilizer from its bungee cord. "Take the shot."

*OK, the crew all looked like Donald Duck fans, all right? To be fair, their dimension had no Donald Duck.

**Similarly, in Omen's dimension no one had ever heard of Davy Jones. Instead, Sarah Johnson, a legendary sea spirit that was half beautiful woman, half fish, half octopus, and ten per cent nonfat dried milk, ruled the sea depths and the souls of all sailors eventually had to spend penitential time in her lockup.

***Oh, you knew it was coming sooner or later.

To be announced