The Pulse Read online

  He kept checking the GPS and trying the XM receiver as Larry steered the boat by hand. “Still nothing,” he said. “How long do you think this interference could last?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it, Doc. I hope not much longer, but who knows? I’ve been on boats that were hit by lightning. Sometimes it takes out everything electrical on board, and other times it might just be the radio or nothing at all. Seems like every strike is different. People try all kinds of tricks for preventing strikes—dissipaters on the masthead, grounding everything on board to the keel—but I have my doubts about how effective any of it is, since lighting behaves in such strange ways and is so unpredictable.”

  “But this wasn’t lightning,” Artie reminded him again, as if he suspected his brother doubted what he saw.

  “I know that, Artie. Definitely not lightning. I would have heard the strike if it had been that close. I’m just talking about how power surges affect electronics or do not affect them, depending on unknown variables. And this was obviously a power surge. And if it took out our satellite radio and GPS signals, it had to be powerful. I’ll bet they have no signal on the islands, probably not even on the mainland.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, at least it doesn’t matter to most of those people. Most people ashore aren’t listening to the radio anyway, at this hour, and GPS isn’t necessary on land.”

  “You’d think it was, from what I saw last time I was in Florida,” Larry said. “It looked as if every car on the Interstate had one glowing on the dash just to find the next exit—pretty pathetic if you ask me. Do they not even teach kids to read maps anymore these days?”

  “Maybe not, but Casey can find her way around. She didn’t want the confusion of something else to distract her when she was learning to drive, and she still doesn’t want one. I just hope this weird interference didn’t interrupt her cell phone service, or her Internet access. Now that would be a disaster of epic proportions in her world!”

  Larry laughed. “Yeah, you should have seen their faces that first night she and Jessica were anchored with me at one of the out islands last summer and they found out they couldn’t text their friends back home! It was like I had just told them the boat was sinking or something. I think it was the worst thing either of them could have imagined happening!”

  “Yeah, but Casey talked about that trip for weeks, Larry. Man, you just don’t know how much good it did her.”

  Casey’s raving about what a great time she and her roommate had had spending a week of summer vacation sailing with Larry was in fact the main reason Artie was here now. She had gone on and on about the clear water of the Virgin Islands and how much fun sailing was, but Artie now knew that Casey and Jessica’s trip had been much different than this delivery passage he was on now. Larry had taken them on leisurely day sails among closely spaced islands where they had stopped to eat seafood and sip tropical drinks at beachfront cafés, anchoring every night in protected waters where the boat hardly rocked. It was a universe away from the hellish two days and nights Artie had already spent at sea, when the boat was like a mad carnival ride that never stopped moving, and there was nothing to look at but endless waves as far as he could see. He didn’t think Casey or Jessica would have liked such a voyage either, but then again, you never knew. Larry seemed more content out here than anywhere Artie had ever been with him. When they had started the passage, his brother was nervous and stressed as he went through checklists and inspected the boat one last time. The stress stayed with him as they motored out of the anchorage and finally got the sails hoisted and set, but with each mile they put out to sea, Larry’s smile got bigger until he seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world and the land astern slipped beneath the horizon. This was his world out here, and the place he felt at home. For Artie, the passage was just an ordeal he had no choice but to endure once he was committed to it.

  But now he was free of the awful seasickness for the first time since they’d left the anchorage. He didn’t know why it had suddenly gone away, but Larry had said he’d seen people instantly cured of seasickness before when there was some sudden crisis such as a storm that demanded action and somehow snapped the body out of the throes of nausea. Artie figured it was the shock of seeing the incredible lights as well as the “boat crisis” that had occurred when the autopilot went haywire. Now that he didn’t feel like he had to throw up all the time, he was hungry, and he reached inside the companionway for a bag of pretzels and pulled a soda out of the built-in ice box under one of the seats.

  Larry stayed at the helm as the sky gradually lightened in the east, and soon a new day was breaking, the early light casting a slate-gray sheen on the rolling waves the schooner slashed through on her course to the north. When the sun climbed above the horizon and began to burn away the chill and dampness of the night, Artie felt better than he had on the entire voyage, and offered to spell his brother at the helm so Larry could go below and brew a pot of coffee in the galley.

  When Larry returned with two cups in hand, the sun was already hot, the start of another tropical day that would soon have them both crowded into the scant shade of the small Bimini top that covered the cockpit.

  “Still nothing,” Larry said as he pushed buttons on the GPS unit that was still displaying a flashing SEARCHING FOR SATELLITES message. Larry sat back in the cockpit and made another entry in his logbook, checking the compass as he did so.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “Close enough. We’ll reach St. Thomas in time to enter the anchorage about this time tomorrow morning. We should get a visual by the glow from all the lights there early tonight. At night you can see the more populated islands from a long way out at sea.”

  “What if this power surge, or whatever it was, caused their electricity to go out?” Artie asked.

  Larry chuckled at the thought. “Not likely. That would take one hell of a powerful event—though it doesn’t take much for the lights to go out anyway on those islands. But this wouldn’t have anything to do with that, I wouldn’t think. My best guess is that it was just some kind of space interference or solar flare-up or something that messed up the satellites. Although I’m surprised it would affect local VHF radio reception, unless it somehow disrupted the big transmitter stations on the islands. We don’t know if we can talk to other vessels or not, since we haven’t seen any. But there’s usually some boat-to-boat chatter going on even this far out, and I should be able to get the NOAA weather radio channel in St. Thomas, so that’s kinda weird.”

  “I just wish I could call Casey and ask her what’s going on up there in the Big Easy. I guess she’s getting dressed for class by now,” Artie said as he looked at his watch.

  Despite all the caffeine, Artie was exhausted from being awake and sick for so long, so when Larry told him he didn’t need any help steering, he stretched out on the cockpit seat and slept through the morning. When he woke shortly after noon he felt even better, and the nausea still had not returned. As he stretched his arms and stood against the cabin bulkhead, he asked Larry if they were still making good progress and glanced at the GPS to see if it had started working again.

  “I guess not, huh? You decided to just turn it off?”

  “No,” Larry said. “It looks like we’ve got an even bigger problem than the lack of satellite reception. The whole chartplotter unit just went off as if it had been powered down about two hours ago. I can’t get it to do anything when I push the power button. The VHF radio did the same thing. Without the autopilot to hold course, I didn’t want to go below and check the 12-volt circuit panel, but if you’ll take it a minute, I’ll go do that now.”

  Artie got another cold Coke out of the ice box and moved into position behind the helm. Larry disappeared down the companionway steps and reappeared five minutes later.

  “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, Doc. The VHF is dead as a doornail. The stereo is dead. The single-sideband radio receiver is dead. Even my personal handheld GPS rece
iver that was turned off and stuck in the locker under my bunk is dead. Not only is the autopilot disabled because it can’t communicate with the chartplotter, but the unit itself won’t even power on. I tried to power up my laptop and it won’t come on either; ditto for my cell phone. But we still have ship’s power. The batteries are apparently still working, and the LED cabin lights still come on, but there’s nothing to that but a simple 12-volt circuit and a single switch from the breaker panel. It’s apparently everything with sensitive electronic circuitry that’s shut down.”

  “What could have caused that to happen? That stuff didn’t shut down right after I saw the lights last night. It was just the signals that were lost. Did you see anything else this morning?”

  “No,” Larry said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It was daylight and you can see how bright the sun is. If whatever caused those lights to appear last night had happened in the daylight, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have seen them at all. For all we know, this could have been an even stronger second surge.”

  Artie’s Blackberry was still in the pocket of his foul-weather jacket that was now bunched in a corner of the cockpit. He was reaching for it as Larry pondered the cause of the strange shutdowns. He took it out of the Ziploc and pressed the power button. It normally took a couple of seconds before it would light up when it had been turned off, but press as he might, nothing happened this time. The expensive smartphone was an inert object in his palm. He removed the back cover and took out the battery, waiting a few seconds before replacing it and trying again. Nothing—the phone was dead.

  “What in the world?” Artie asked as he stared at his dumbfounded brother.

  “I can’t imagine what could cause this,” Larry said. “Like I told you before, I’ve been in electrical storms on boats and seen everything on board fried. A good lightning strike could do this—and even take out stuff like the handheld GPS and computer that were not connected to the vessel’s electrical system. But I’ll be damned if I know what could do it on a clear sunny day like today.”

  “I don’t see how even lightning could affect a device that’s not plugged into something. Isn’t that why they tell you not to leave the TV and stuff like that plugged in during a thunderstorm at home? Remember how Dad used to run around unplugging stuff every time a summer rain came up back when we were growing up?”

  “In a lot of cases, unplugging stuff does save it. But sometimes if a sailboat like this takes a direct hit to the mast, it can send enough of a power surge through the whole boat to fry everything. I’ve heard of strikes melting all the 12-volt wires in the vessel. Hell, there have even been cases of lightning running down the mast and blowing a chunk out of the bottom of the hull—sinking the boat!”

  “I guess I can see how that could happen with a really powerful bolt of lightning. But as you said, the sky is blue and clear. What could cause a power surge like that on a day like this? It has to be something to do with those lights I saw, but how?”

  “It had to be some kind of electromagnetic pulse thing,” Larry said. “I don’t know enough about the science of it to know what’s possible. But I have read something about how solar flares could disrupt radio signals and such on Earth. I couldn’t imagine one powerful enough to short out electronic circuits though—but that could be what happened.”

  “What if it was something intentional? Some kind of terrorist attack or something?”

  “I suppose that’s possible too, but I don’t know how. Unless maybe if it was a nuclear attack, but the way you described those lights, it seems more like some freak of nature event to me.”

  “Whatever it was, I just wonder how far-reaching the effects were? I sure hope it hasn’t done the same thing back home where Casey is.”

  “Well, South Louisiana is a long way from the eastern Caribbean. I guess we’ll find out more when we get to St. Thomas in the morning. Surely it will be in the news.”

  “I’ll just be glad to get to a working phone so I can call Casey and make sure she’s all right.”

  Artie took another turn at the helm as Larry worked out their approximate position on the paper charts and made detailed entries in his logbook. The steady trades continued to bear Ibis to the north-northwest along the rhumb line that Larry plotted on the chart. He said they were making good progress and should arrive as predicted shortly after daylight the next morning. The afternoon wore slowly on under the tropical sun as the two brothers separately pondered reaching land again and finding out the source of the strange electrical pulse.

  They passed one ship sometime around mid-afternoon but it was so far away on the horizon they could not distinguish any details other than that it was a freighter of some type and that it was moving slowly, if at all. The sea was otherwise devoid of traffic and they saw nothing but the occasional breaching dolphin until nearly sunset, when Artie noticed several objects floating in the waves several hundred yards ahead, and just slightly east of their course. He assumed it was floating garbage or debris of some sort until they sailed closer and saw how much of it there was. Many of the floating objects were shiny, reflecting the light of the late afternoon sun. Pointing it out to Larry, Artie asked what he thought it could be.

  Larry stepped up to the cabin roof and leaned against the mast to get a better view through his binoculars. After a few seconds he told Artie to steer for the debris.

  “What is it?” Artie asked, “Can you tell?”

  “Some kind of wreckage. I can’t be sure, but maybe parts of a boat—or an airplane. We’d better check it out. There could be someone in the water. Head up a bit so I can ease the sheets. I want to slow down and be ready to heave to if we see anyone.”

  As they closed the gap, it became obvious what the floating objects were. “Oh my God, it was a plane,” Artie said, astonished, looking at a clearly recognizable wing tip floating, half awash, dead ahead of the schooner. He steered past it as Larry scanned the water for any sign of survivors.

  “Looks like it was a small private jet, maybe a corporate aircraft of some type…. Definitely not a commercial airliner,” Larry said as they passed more recognizable pieces of fuselage and a tail section.

  “You think it broke up like this when it hit the water, or could it have exploded first in the air?”

  “Hard to say, but since there’s more than one piece here in the same place, it probably hit the water first. A lot of the parts may have sunk.”

  “Maybe whoever was on it was already rescued,” Artie said hopefully, as they both scanned every wave for any sign of life, half-expecting to see the bobbing heads and waving hands of life-jacket-wearing survivors any minute now. “How long ago do you think this happened?”

  “My guess is not all that long, considering that these pieces are still floating together. It wouldn’t take but a few hours with this much wind to scatter them miles apart. I’ll bet it happened when all the electronics shut down this morning.”

  “You mean that you think that power surge or pulse or whatever it was that shut down our electronics could have also caused the plane to crash?”

  “Absolutely. It might not have affected an older prop plane with manual controls, but this was obviously a late-model, high-tech jet. Aircraft like this have so many computer-operated controls and instruments that a total loss of on-board systems would have doomed it, no matter how good the pilot was.”

  Larry grabbed the helm as he was talking and brought the bow of the small schooner through the wind to change tacks. “We had better crisscross through the area a few times and look carefully. If this plane crashed because of the pulse, no one has been here to look for survivors, and no one likely will, at least any time soon. They would not have been able to make a radio call before they went down, and anyway, air traffic control on the islands may be down too.”

  Artie was stunned at the implications of what his brother had just said. “What about commercial airliners? Would they crash too if they were close enough to the source of the pulse to be affec
ted?”

  “Yes,” Larry said. “Let’s hope this thing was just local, but if not, I’d hate to think of how many jets would have been flying just in and out of the island airports in the area. St. Thomas is especially busy, with all the tourists connecting to the cruise ships there. You know, come to think of it, I haven’t heard any jets overhead at all today, or seen any vapor trails. There are usually so many you don’t give ’em any thought, but I know I haven’t seen any.”

  Artie climbed to the cabin top and began desperately scanning the waves for any sign of life among the floating wreckage. “You’d think we would see them if they were still here, even if they were dead. Wouldn’t the bodies float for a while?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. The waves could have carried the wreckage at a faster speed than floating bodies. But from the looks of these pieces and parts, I honestly don’t see how anyone could have survived the impact. Then there are plenty of sharks in these waters too. You know that from the ones we’ve already seen.”