'Deception Point Page 87\r'

'â€Å"Anything?” Rachel asked.\r\nThe pilot film let the arm practise several complete rotations. He adjusted some controls and watched. It was exclusively clear. â€Å"Couple of sm any t onetime(a) transports mood slay on the periphery, further theyre heading away from us. Were clear. Miles and miles of yield sea in all directions.”\r\nRachel Sexton sighed, although she did non savor particularly relieved. â€Å"Do me a favor, if you see anything approaching- boats, aircraft, anything-will you let me see immediately?”\r\nâ€Å"Sure thing. Is everything authorise?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah. Id just equivalent to hump if were having company.”\r\nThe pilot shrugged. â€Å"Ill watch the radio detection and ranging, maam. If anything blips, youll be the first to k without delay.”\r\nRachels senses were tingling as she headed for the hydrolab. When she entered, corked and Tolland were standing simply in front of a computer monitor and c ud sandwiches.\r\n bad called give away to her with his let loose full. â€Å"Whatll it be? Fishy chicken, comical bologna, or fishy egg salad?”\r\nRachel b atomic number 18ly heard the question. â€Å"Mike, how solid can we get this tuition and get absent this post?”\r\n104\r\nTolland paced the hydrolab, waiting with Rachel and corked for Xavias return. The news to the highest degree the chondrules was approximately as discomforting as Rachels news ab bring out her attempted contact with Pickering.\r\nThe music director didnt answer.\r\nAnd someone tried to pulse-snitch the Goyas location.\r\nâ€Å"Relax,” Tolland told everyone. â€Å"Were safe. The bank Guard pilot is notice the microwave radar. He can pop off us plenty of type if anyone is headed our way.”\r\nRachel nodded in agreement, although she still looked on edge.\r\nâ€Å"Mike, what the hell is this?” bad asked, pointing at a Sparc computer monitor, which displayed an menacing psychedelic stunt man that was pulsating and churn as though alive.\r\nâ€Å"acoustical Doppler Current Profiler,” Tolland state. â€Å"Its a master section of the currents and temperature gradients of the ocean underneath the ship.”\r\nRachel stared. â€Å"Thats what were anchored on top of?”\r\nTolland had to admit, the image looked frightening. At the surface, the water appeared as a swirling bluish green, besides tracing vanquishward, the colors late shifted to a menacing red-orange as the temperatures heated up. Near the bottom, everywhere a mile down, h all overing in a higher place the ocean floor, a blood-red, cyclone spin raged.\r\nâ€Å"Thats the megaplume,” Tolland said.\r\nCorky grunted. â€Å"Looks like an semiaquatic tornado.”\r\nâ€Å"Same principle. Oceans are normally icyer and more dense costly the bottom, but here the kinetics are reversed. The deepwater is heated and lighter, so it rises toward the surface . Meanwhile, the surface water is heavier, so it races downward in a massive spiral to take in the void. You get these drainlike currents in the ocean. awful whirlpools.”\r\nâ€Å"Whats that big bump on the seafloor?” Corky pointed at the plain expanse of ocean floor, where a large dome-shaped peck blush wine up like a bubble. Directly above it swirled the go.\r\nâ€Å"That pile is a magma dome,” Tolland said. â€Å"Its where lava is pushing up beneath the ocean floor.”\r\nCorky nodded. â€Å"Like a huge zit.”\r\nâ€Å"In a way of speaking.”\r\nâ€Å"And if it pops?”\r\nTolland frowned, recalling the famous 1986 megaplume point off the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where thousands of tons of twelve light speed degrees Celsius magma spewed up into the ocean all at once, magnifying the plumes intensity almost instantly. Surface currents amplified as the maelstrom expanded rapidly upward. What happened conterminous was something Tolland had no intention of manduction with Corky and Rachel this evening.\r\nâ€Å"Atlantic magma domes dont pop,” Tolland said. â€Å"The cold water circulating over the mound continually cools and hardens the earths crust, guardianship the magma safely under a thick layer of careen. at last the lava underneath cools, and the spiral disappears. Megaplumes are generally not dangerous.”\r\nCorky pointed toward a tattered powder store sitting near the computer. â€Å"So youre saying Scientific American publishes fiction?”\r\nTolland saw the screenland, and winced. individual had obviously pulled it from the Goyas archive of old science magazines: Scientific American, February 1999. The cover showed an artists rendering of a supertanker swirling out of control in an wide funnel of ocean. The heading enunciate: MEGAPLUMES-GIANT KILLERS FROM THE DEEP?\r\nTolland laughed it off. â€Å"Totally irrelevant. That name is talking about megaplumes in earthquake zones . It was a touristed Bermuda Triangle hypothesis a few years back, explaining ship disappearances. Technically speaking, if theres some class of cataclysmic geologic event on the ocean floor, which is unheard of around here, the dome could rupture, and the vortex could get big large to… well, you know… â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"No, we dont know,” Corky said.\r\nTolland shrugged. â€Å" commencement to the surface.”\r\nâ€Å"Terrific. So glad you had us aboard.”\r\nXavia entered carrying some papers. â€Å"Admiring the megaplume?”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, yes,” Corky said sarcastically. â€Å"Mike was just coitus us how if that trivial mound ruptures, we all go verticillated around in a big drain.”\r\nâ€Å"Drain?” Xavia gave a cold laugh. â€Å"More like getting flushed down the worlds largest toilet.”\r\nOutside on the dump of the Goya, the Coast Guard meat cleaver pilot vigilantly watched the EMS radar screen. As a render pil ot he had seen his parcel of land of fear in peoples look; Rachel Sexton had definitely been unnerved when she asked him to keep an eye out for unexpected visitors to the Goya.\r\nWhat kind of visitors is she expecting? he wondered.\r\nFrom all the pilot could see, the sea and air for ten miles in all directions contained nothing that looked out of the ordinary. A fishing boat eight miles off. An occasional aircraft slash across an edge of their radar field and then disappearance again toward some unfathomed destination.\r\nThe pilot sighed, gazing out now at the ocean rush all around the ship. The whizz was a ghostly one-that of sailing full speed scorn being anchored.\r\nHe returned his look to the radar screen and watched. Vigilant.\r\ncv\r\nOnboard the Goya, Tolland had now introduced Xavia and Rachel. The ships geologist was looking increasingly baffled by the distinguished entourage standing onwards her in the hydrolab. In addition, Rachels acuity to run the test s and get off the ship as immediate as possible was understandably making Xavia uneasy.\r\nTake your time, Xavia, Tolland willed her. We adopt to know everything.\r\nXavia was talking now, her division stiff. â€Å"In your documentary, Mike, you said those little gold inclusions in the rock could form only in space.”\r\nTolland already felt a tremor of apprehension. Chondrules form only in space. Thats what NASA told me.\r\nâ€Å"But fit in to these notes,” Xavia said, holding up the pages, â€Å"thats not entirely true.”\r\nCorky glared. â€Å"Of move its true!”\r\nXavia scowled at Corky and waved the notes. â€Å"Last year a young geologist named Lee pollock out of Drew University was victimisation a new pains of marine robot to do Pacific deepwater crust consume in the Mariana Trench and pulled up a loose rock that contained a geologic make he had never seen before. The sustain was quite similar in appearance to chondrules. He called them ‘ plagioclase stress inclusions-tiny bubbles of metal that apparently had been rehomogenized during deep ocean pressurization events. Dr. pollack was amazed to find metallic bubbles in an ocean rock, and he formulated a laughable theory to explain their presence.”\r\nCorky grumbled. â€Å"I suppose he would have to.”\r\nXavia ignored him. â€Å"Dr. pollack asserted that the rock create in an ultradeep oceanic milieu where extreme pressure metamorphosed a pre-existing rock, permitting some of the different metals to fuse.”\r\n'