Part of the Cross Currents series, this story takes
place approximately two months after Rapture of the Deep and seven
months before Encounter 51.
Iron Ghosts
By T. Storm
Lieutenant Commander Chip
Morton leaned over the charting table in the research submarine Seaview’s
control room and fidgeted with his pencil as he studied the long narrow length
of paper in front of him. They’d been towing a new experimental side scanning
sonar, mapping the sea floor now for nearly two weeks, cruising the south side
of the Hawaiian Ridge, working their way northwest from Pearl Harbor to just
west of Midway. They’d seen a great many things of scientific interest, from
undersea volcanoes to massive landslides off the slopes of those same volcanoes.
They’d also run across what appeared to be the occasional shipwreck, though the
resolution on their sonar wasn’t fine enough to be really certain. He’d wanted
to stop a couple of times and investigate using their small submersible DSV, but Admiral Nelson had adamantly vetoed the
idea on every occasion, saying they didn’t have the time if they were going to
get the mapping project finished on time.
He leaned in closer, tapping
the pencil on the table, deep in thought. They’d taken this scan the day before;
he’d picked it out for closer study because it had a target that profiled like
a large ship. He’d begun searching through old records for possible matches,
which in this stretch of ocean were few. One of the most likely possibilities
though…
“So is it a problem or not?”
The voice of Seaview’s captain, Lee Crane, shattered his contemplation.
Morton reflexively clutched
the pencil and looked up in irritation, a faint flush creeping up his neck at
having been taken by surprise. It wasn’t often that anyone was able to walk up
on him and catch him unaware like that. “Ah, no, Lee, not a problem.” Glancing
around to see what else he might have missed while lost in contemplation, he
suddenly became conscious that there was a great deal of attention focused on
them from the duty crew around them in the control room - he knew he needed to
drop the level of tension that was permeating the air and get the crew focused
back on their duties. “I’ve found a sonar target that I’d like to take Sojourner
down and investigate.” Out of the corners of his eyes he could see the crew
relax all around the control room, reassured that there wasn’t a problem.
The effect on the captain
however, was anything but relaxing. Crane sighed and shook his head at the XO,
prompting Morton to scowl back at him with renewed awareness that the captain
had been privy to the previous denials by Nelson of any trips involving Sojourner.
“Now Chip, you know…” Crane began.
Determined to press his case
this time, Morton leaned closer to Crane and dropped his voice low. “Lee, I
think we’ve found the aircraft carrier Yorktown.”
Crane paused as surprise
flitted across his face. “Yorktown? From the Battle of Midway? Chip, are
you sure it’s her? Are you sure it‘s even a ship?”
The XO gave a fatalistic
shrug of his shoulders. “As sure as I can be without actually diving on the
site. I’ve gone over the navigational fixes from the other American ships that
were involved, plus what little is available from Japanese records. Allowing
for currents and the like, it‘s a real strong possibility. The return is
exactly the right size to be an old flattop if she went all the way down
without breaking up too much. And it‘s within Sojourner‘s reach.”
Crane frowned as he reached
out and pulled the sonar strip around to where he could see it for himself.
“Exactly how deep are we talking here, Chip?”
“16,650 feet.” Morton knew
that Crane had been keeping an eye on the mapping and was as aware as he was of
the depth. It would take Sojourner nearly four hours to dive that deep
and almost that long to return, with a bottom time of only four hours. If it
was any ship but the Yorktown he knew that Nelson’s answer would be an
unequivocal no, but for this one… Morton shook himself out of his thoughts to
catch what Crane was saying.
The captain was shaking his
head. “Okay, you can ask. But if the OOM hands you your head, it’s your own
fault. I’ll hold the fort for a few minutes while you go beard the lion in his
den.” Crane paused and then dryly added, “And if you aren’t back in twenty
minutes, I’ll notify your next of kin. You know what kind of a mood he‘s been
in lately.”
Morton snorted at that as he
picked up the strip of paper and turned to leave, but the look in his eyes
betrayed his trepidation. Nelson had been fairly testy this trip, for two
reasons. The first was that the Admiral had had to deal with ONI over Crane’s
last mission just before they’d left Pearl Harbor. Bad information had come
close to getting not only Crane killed, but Kowalski and Sharkey as well.
Nelson had taken the current head of ONI to task over it, only to discover
Admiral Johnson knew nothing about the mission. An investigation was under way,
but none of them held out any hope of uncovering the truth.
The rest of Nelson’s
irritation came from having a pack of civilian technicians aboard to oversee
the tests of the new sonar. That was why he didn’t want any delays - the
project manager had managed to rub Nelson the wrong way from the very start,
treating Seaview and her crew as if they existed merely to serve as a
platform for his creation. However, knowing the source of Nelson’s
irritation didn’t make it go away. While the Admiral was considerably calmer
than when they’d left Pearl Harbor two weeks earlier, he still had a tendency
to snap at his officers whenever something didn’t quite go right. Morton knew
he’d be risking having his head handed back to him on a platter by approaching
Nelson with a request to take a day out to make a dive in Sojourner. On
the other hand, Nelson did have a personal interest in the Yorktown.
While it wasn’t common knowledge, Morton knew that Nelson had followed a much
admired cousin on his mother’s side into the Navy, much to the dismay of his
father‘s family. That cousin, James Sullivan, had been an aviator on the Yorktown
who’d been among the American casualties at the Battle of Midway.
Morton found that the walk to
the Admiral’s lab was far too short. Stopping in front of the closed door, he
took a deep breath before knocking.
“Enter,” growled Nelson’s
voice from within.
Morton opened the door and
stopped short. Nelson was in the middle of an assemblage of photocopies of
pages from some of the collection of old ship’s logs that lined the shelves of
his private library off of his office back at the Institute. The papers were
spread across the table tops, had overflowed onto the floor and up the walls.
“Sir?” Morton looked on in
bafflement, wondering what on earth the Admiral was up to.
Nelson glanced at him with a
scowl, clearly in a testy mood. “This better be important, Mr. Morton.”
“Yes, sir.” He took a deep
breath. It was clear that he‘d best get right to the heart of the matter. “I
think we may have located the Yorktown.”
Nelson froze for a split
second, the slowly turned to face him. “Show me the evidence.” Morton silently
held out the section of the sonar strip that showed the target. Nelson
practically snatched it out of his hand and spread it out on the table on top
of the other papers. Picking up a magnifying glass, the admiral leaned over and
carefully scrutinized the sonar strip. Morton waited silently, instinctively
holding himself at attention.
Finally Nelson straightened
back up, his scowl gone, replaced by a thoughtful expression. “It certainly
does look like a carrier,” he commented. He refocused attention on Morton, who
had let out an unconscious sigh of relief and relaxed once it became obvious
that Nelson wasn’t going to pitch him out of the lab on his ear with body parts
missing. “How sure are you it’s actually the Yorktown?”
“I looked up the logs for the
other American ships that were there and checked their navigational data.
According to the figures and allowing for currents and the like, Yorktown
is the most likely candidate. The Japanese carriers would all be a couple of
hundred miles west of here. The only other thing that big would be a
supertanker or a passenger liner - and there’s been none lost anywhere near
here.”
Nelson slowly nodded. “It
could just be a rocky outcrop.”
“Yessir. I was hoping you’d
give permission to come about and see if we can’t refine the sonar scan to get
a better picture of the target. Perhaps that would tell us more certainly
whether or not it’s actually a ship. Then we could decide where to go from
there.”
Nelson looked sharply at him
before allowing the corner of his mouth to twitch upwards into a half-smile.
“Of course, if it is a ship you’ll want to take Sojourner down.”
Morton shifted uneasily, not
sure if Nelson was going to agree to the plan or if this was the point where
he’d get handed his head. “That would be the most logical thing, if we want to
confirm what ship it actually is,” he said slowly.
“How long would a dive take?”
Nelson looked again at the strip of paper.
“Ah, with a crew of two and
max bottom time of four hours - about twelve hours in all.”
“So we’d lose at least half a
day, not counting prep time.”
Morton sighed. “Yessir.” What
else could he say? The admiral was only speaking the truth.
Nelson looked again at the
sonar strip and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “How far are we now from this
location?”
“If we run at full speed
instead of quarter speed like we are now, six hours.” Morton’s hopes cautiously
rose.
“So you found this
yesterday?”
“It took a while to do the
data research and check everything. I wanted to make as sure as I could before
I even mentioned it.”
“Hmmm.” Nelson looked again
at the strip of paper as he thought of his cousin James. He’d been five years
older than Nelson, having graduated from the Naval Academy in 1941 - about six
months before Pearl Harbor. Seventeen year old Harriman Nelson had idolized his
cousin - and James had tolerated with good humor all of his endless questions about
the Navy, the ocean and even flying. James had also been one of the few people
in the family who could even begin to keep intellectual pace with the young
Nelson, so his loss had been devastating. To have found James’ ship…. “Okay,
you can come about and take a closer look at this thing. Then I’ll decide
whether or not the dive is a go.”
“Yes, sir!” Nelson noticed
the quick look of relief that flashed across Morton’s face and sighed to
himself. He knew that he’d been a real bear this trip and had harshly quashed
the XO’s requests to investigate odd and sometimes puzzling sonar targets on
several occasions - unfair to Morton, who after all was only trying to do his
duty as he saw it. Even the normally unsquelchable Sharkey had been walking on
eggshells around him. Picking up the sonar strip, Nelson indicated to Morton
that he was dismissed. Morton promptly took himself back to the control room.
Nelson pulled up a stool once
Morton had left and sat down to contemplate the paper in his hands - and his
feelings. The idea that the squiggles on the paper could actually represent the
Yorktown stirred emotions he’d thought long dead and buried. He recalled
his cousin with fondness and the old pain of his loss resurfaced. Did he really
want to subject himself to the turmoil of actually diving on Yorktown if
this was her? Could he stand not going? He finally admitted to himself
that he had a need to make the attempt, for personal closure if nothing else,
since James’ body had never been recovered. This might be the only opportunity
he ever got to actually say goodbye in a way that had real meaning.
Leaning back on the stool, he
gazed off into nothingness as he let his mind travel back to the shocking day
when they’d gotten the news of James’ loss at sea. Missing in action and
presumed dead. It had been devastating to the entire family of course, but the
loss for Nelson had been far more personal. It was also the event that had
prompted him to find the courage to tell his father that he wasn’t going to go
to Harvard that fall and study law - by God, he was going to enlist in the Navy
and finish the job for James. His father had been furious and his mother
hysterical. Nelson smiled ruefully as he remembered the fight that followed.
“No,” shouted his father,
turning red in the face, his hands clenched in fists, “I absolutely forbid it!
You’re going to Harvard this fall, then to law school and that’s final!”
Seventeen year old
Harriman Nelson stood his ground, glaring back at his father. “You can’t stop
me,” he said with an outward calm that was deceptive, “Once I’m eighteen, I can
legally do whatever the hell I want to. And I’m joining the Navy.” In the
background he could hear his mother wailing, hanging onto his eldest brother.
That made him quail inside, but he wasn’t about to let it show. Their father
had finagled a desk job in Washington for Arthur Junior, making sure to keep
him out of harm’s way. Well, he wasn’t having any of it. James hadn’t been
afraid to go - he’d told Harry while he was still in the academy that war was
coming, so it wasn’t like he’d gone in expecting a peacetime career.
“Why on earth do want to
do something so goddamn stupid as turn yourself into cannon fodder?!” His
father was shouting at the top of his lungs, as if by sheer volume he could
counter any arguments Harry might make.
“Because it’s the right
thing to do,” growled Harry, “because it’s the patriotic thing to do.”
That statement brought
Harry’s father to a troubled, silent halt. He knew his father loved his country
as much as any man, but like any father he didn’t want to risk his own sons,
especially one with as much potential as himself. But the choice wasn’t Arthur
Nelson’s - it was his. Harry had thought long and hard about the choice he was
making. His own conscience wouldn’t allow him to sit the out war behind a desk.
It had been an eye-opening
experience for his parents - oh, they’d known he had a stubborn streak, but it
wasn’t until then that they were brought face to face with the reality of just
how stubborn he could be. It took nearly two weeks, but Arthur Nelson Senior
finally realized that his son wasn’t backing down on this issue. Since Harriman
would turn eighteen in a matter of weeks, he’d switched tactics and urged him
to go to the Naval Academy and become an officer. That way, his father had
argued, people would be more likely to listen to what he had to say. His
arguments had fortunately fallen on fertile ground, so when Harriman had
reluctantly agreed, his father had called in favors and got him an appointment
for that fall. The Navy, upon seeing what they had gotten, had been ecstatic.
The curious thing was, no one, least of all him, had ever expected that it
would turn into a life-long career that would lead to him holding flag rank.
Nelson smiled ruefully. He
had expected to do a single tour of duty to avenge James - if the war lasted
that long, which with no knowledge of the existence of the atomic bomb he truly
expected - and then seek a career in science. He’d already discovered that was
where his real interest and talents lay, something his father had definitely
not wanted to hear. Science lacked the social status that law or politics did.
But early on at the Academy he’d fallen under the siren spell of the ocean -
and submarines. Of course back then they weren’t true submarines, since the
boats spent far more time on the surface than submerged. But even then he knew
that wouldn’t always be so. By the time he’d graduated and done his first tour
of duty on a sub, he’d begun to dream of a boat dedicated to exploring the
oceans instead of war. He only wished he could have told his dream to James,
for he was one of the few people who always told him to reach for his dreams
and not let other people’s negatives stop him. James would have appreciated the
daring in Seaview’s design and he would have absolutely loved the Flying
Sub.
They made it back to the
location in just under the six hours Morton had estimated. Nelson had even
swallowed his irritation with the civilian techs and consulted with them for
the best way to determine if the target was indeed a ship and not a rock pile.
In turn, they had been thrilled that he was actually going to make the dive if
the target continued to profile like a ship, for it would give them the
opportunity to see if the sonar was really as accurate as they believed it to
be.
Once back in the approximate
vicinity of the initial contact Seaview had begun a back and forth sonar
sweep of the sea floor, in a pattern reminiscent of mowing a lawn. It took
about four hours to find the site again. It continued to profile like a carrier
- long when they paralleled what seemed to be the long axis, narrow when they
cut perpendicular across it and seemingly square at the ends. Both the length and
width of the target were right as well. After several more hours of probing,
Nelson finally admitted that they’d gotten as much out of the sonar as they
could. It was time to either dive or walk away. He gave Morton permission to
prep Sojourner for a dive at his convenience. Since it was already late
afternoon by ship’s time, Morton scheduled the dive for early the next day,
leaving Seaview to continue to restlessly prowl the area, probing with
her sonar.
**********
Sojourner sank slowly through the inky void of the deep sea.
Now at 16,000 feet, she was deeper than she’d ever been before except on her
certification test dives. Morton peered out the porthole from time to time, but
mostly kept his eyes on the instruments. Unlike any of their previous dives,
there was little to see outside, though the water was astonishingly clear.
Nelson had been oddly quiet this trip, simply staring out the porthole beside
him, apparently lost in thought. During the entire four hours, he’d not said
more than a dozen sentences.
Morton cleared his throat,
breaking into the Admiral’s pensive mood. “Bottom in five hundred, sir.”
Nelson stirred, bringing
himself back to alertness as he acknowledged Morton’s warning.
The bottom came into sight -
mud, carpeted with manganese nodules, very different from their two dives on a
hydrothermal vent, where the sea floor had been glassy looking pillow lava.
Morton brought Sojourner to a stop, adjusted to neutral buoyancy and
took bearings to pinpoint their location - and the direction to the target.
Switching to the forward-looking sonar, the DSV began to pick her way carefully
across the sea floor. It didn’t take long for the sonar to begin picking up a
series of small objects ahead. Both men leaned forward to see if they could
discern the nature of the targets that the sonar was detecting. The first thing
they saw was a huge clod of bottom sediment that had been kicked up by
something.
The two men traded puzzled
looks. As they proceeded there were more of these scattered balls of mud, but
they rapidly gave way to a wide area of bottom that looked like it had been
scraped clean of manganese nodules. Nelson looked thoughtful as he studied the
landscape. The only time he’d ever seen anything similar was when he had
command of the Nautilus and had been fortunate enough to witness the
impact of a moderate sized meteor in the Caribbean off the Yucatan. The water
where it had struck had been shallow enough to scuba dive in, so he’d taken a
team down to investigate. The modest impact crater that the car-sized object
had left had been ringed by ejected mud clumps similar to these - except that
they’d been much smaller.
Impact crater… Nelson began to realize that something much larger
than his car-sized meteor had struck here. Something say - the size of an
aircraft carrier that had fallen three miles from the surface of the ocean? He
belatedly realized that a water filled ship free-falling that far, even through
a medium as dense as sea water, would pick up a fair amount of speed. If this
was indeed the Yorktown, there was no telling what kind of shape she
would be in after that kind of an impact.
The sonar pings became more
or less continuous, almost an electronic wail. Something very large loomed in
front of them as Morton brought Sojourner to a halt and hovered. Playing
the searchlights over the vertical wall in front of them, both men realized at
almost the same instant that they were looking at the stern of a ship. Grey
paint still clung to the steel plate - there was little of the marine growth
that they’d seen before on wrecks in shallower waters - and under the paint
they could just barely make out the raised relief of the vessel’s name, covered
by paint. Yorktown.
They’d found her.
Nelson let out a breath he didn’t
know he’d been holding; it was almost a sob. The stern of the carrier, though
listing to starboard, was remarkably intact, given how deeply it appeared she’d
been driven into the mud. Now to see if the rest was the vessel was in one
piece. “Let’s go up and see how she looks topside,” he said quietly to Morton.
Morton nodded and maneuvered Sojourner
up to clear the railing on the port side, passing over a tangle of catwalk and
decking. The flight deck stretched out before them, looking remarkably undamaged
except at the very end - the only obvious hole within their view was that of
the aft elevator, which was in the down position. A remarkably thin layer of
silt covered the ship, considering that she’d been here for over thirty-four
years. A consequence, Nelson surmised, of being far from any sizeable landmass
and thus any source of sediment. He was also amazed that the wooden decking on
the flight deck hadn’t been devoured by worms. In shallow waters it didn’t take
long for the marine life to find and consume any wooden parts of a vessel not
buried in mud. A part of his mind wondered if all deep sea wrecks would be as
well preserved as this one.
As Sojourner glided
down the deck, it became readily apparent that the ship had survived her plunge
in extraordinarily good shape and he found himself wondering why they had been
unable to salvage her. After all, it wasn’t until two days after the battle,
when she was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, that she finally sank. Which
reminded him. There was an American destroyer, the Hammann, that had
been torpedoed and sunk along with Yorktown. She was somewhere close by;
they’d need to keep their eyes open for any signs of her as well, though she
was far less likely to be intact.
As Sojourner
approached the ship’s island, she came across a bomb hole in the deck; just
beyond they could see the opening of the midships elevator. Like the aft one,
it was in the down position, leaving a square hole in the deck. Remembering a
photo of a wall mural that James had sent him, Nelson spoke. “Chip, can you
stop here for a bit and see if we can see down into the number two elevator
shaft?”
“No problem, Admiral.” Nelson
could tell that Morton was relieved he was finally speaking; apparently his
uncharacteristic brooding silence on this dive had begun to unnerve him.
Bringing the DSV to a hover, Morton pivoted her around, since they’d already
passed over the opening. Canting her bow slightly down, he focused the
searchlights downward as he worked the sub around so that they could see all
four sides of the shaft. As the lights played over the walls, they caught a
glimpse of something. Bringing Sojourner to a halt, Morton refocused the
lights on what they’d glimpsed. It appeared to be a painting on one wall of the
elevator shaft. Giving Nelson a totally baffled look, he asked, “What is that,
sir?”
“A wall mural,” said Nelson
sadly, gazing out the porthole at the scene before them. “My cousin James sent
me a picture of it. I wanted to see if it was still here.” In the letter that
had accompanied the picture, James had written that the midships elevator had
also functioned as the Yorktown’s ‘community center’, a place where they
had Sunday services, showed movies and the ship’s band practiced and performed.
Even though James had been an aviator and thus somewhat apart from the
carrier’s regular crew, he’d written that she was a happy ship and how thrilled
he was to serve on her. In his mind’s eye Nelson could see the other pictures
that James had sent along with it, showing the crew engaged in various
activities. The pristine condition of the ship herself seemed to roll back the
years to where he could almost imagine the crew still going about their tasks.
He finally shook himself out
of his reverie and told Morton, “Let’s move on. I want to see how much damage
there was to the island. The reports I’ve read said the bomb that came through
the flight deck exploded in the boiler uptakes and started a fire.”
Morton leveled Sojourner
and brought her around to continue on their previous course. As they neared the
island, he slowed to DSV to almost a hover, allowing the searchlights to play
over the bridge and stack. They seemed relatively intact, though the ship’s
tripod mast was missing and there were scorched looking areas where the paint
was gone. Both men were amazed that the structure was even still attached to
the ship - it was reported that she’d rolled over on her port side as she sank.
Nelson could only surmise that it meant that she’d somehow righted herself on
the way down before she’d picked up much speed and that she’d struck bottom on
nearly an even keel. Otherwise the force of the water would have most likely
swept much of her superstructure away. Still, it must have been a violent
impact - likely the muddy bottom was the reason she’d survived in one piece
instead of bursting like an overripe watermelon dropped off a roof.
Sojourner continued her trek towards the bow of the ship. Once
there, Morton dropped the DSV down to discover that the bow was not buried as
deeply as the stern. Coming back down Yorktown’s starboard side to see
if they could find the damage done by the torpedoes that finally sank her
proved a fruitless quest. Much to their disappointment, the mud was piled
almost to the flight deck on that side, completely obscuring the damage. Coming
around the stern to the other side of the ship revealed that the port side was
not covered nearly so deeply with mud, leading Nelson to theorize that she must
have been moving slightly sideways and down at the stern when she struck.
They prowled slowly down the
port side, taking in the torpedo damage on that side from the first day of the
battle. All but one of Yorktown’s five inch guns were trained outwards
and her anti-aircraft guns still pointed skyward; amazingly the rubber
eyepieces were still in place on many of the guns. The cleanness of the wreck
produced an eerie feeling of having stepped back in time, of having arrived
just after the sediment had settled back down from the impact.
The alarm sounding the end of
bottom time resonated through the DSV, jarring both men back to the present.
Nelson sat back from the porthole, rubbed his eyes and sighed. Loathe though he
was to leave, he knew they couldn‘t stay any longer. Perhaps they could come
back again someday, now that they knew where she was - though in his heart he
knew that was unlikely. Seaview was a very busy vessel and it would be
tough to find the time for something so personal. “Let’s get underway, Mr.
Morton.”
“Aye, sir.”
As the long ascent began,
Nelson leaned again to look out the porthole, watching Yorktown fade
slowly from view. He found himself saying a prayer for his cousin and those who
had died with him so long ago. Once the ship had been swallowed up by the
darkness of the abyss once more, he bowed his head, silent, but with some small
peace for his cousin James finally in his soul. As painful as it had been, he
was glad he’d come, for seeing the proud old ship with his own eyes had finally
given him the closure he hadn’t even known he’d needed.
********
Nelson sat at his desk in his
cabin, sorting through the photographs of the Yorktown taken the day
before. It still amazed him just how well preserved the ship was. They’d sent
copies of the pictures to the Department of the Navy, who’d decided for now not
to release the information that Yorktown had been found - they were
concerned that treasure hunters might disturb the vessel if they knew where she
was. Nelson was inclined to agree with them, though for different reasons. Yorktown
was sacred ground now, a tomb and memorial to those who’d perished with her
in her last battle. More specifically, it was sacred ground to him, because it
was a place he could come and get close to James.
Rising and going to his wall
safe, Nelson opened it and pulled out a small metal eight by nine by two inch
box from the shelf. Carrying it back to his desk, he sat down and for a moment
simply held the box in his hands before reverently setting it down and opening
it to reveal a stack of old black and white photographs and a handful of
letters. Lifting out the photos one by one he sorted them into neat stacks - as
he came across the ones of the Yorktown, he laid them down beside the
photos that Sojourner had taken, comparing them. When he came to the
bottom of the box he paused, the color draining from his face in shock.
The last picture was a five
by seven of him and James - the last one they’d had taken together before James
left on what would prove to be his final voyage. The problem was - Nelson
didn’t have a copy of it - no one did. James hadn’t had the roll of film that
it was on developed yet when the Yorktown went down - and his camera had
gone down with the ship. Not to mention that it certainly hadn’t been in the
box when he’d gone through the photos the night before the dive.
It was with a sense of
trepidation that he picked up the photo to study it more closely. There was no
doubt about it. It was definitely the photo that his elder brother Arthur had
snapped of the two of them on the last day of James’ last leave. That day had
been particularly memorable, because upon reaching the edge of the sidewalk
behind himself and James, the elderly priest that was crossing the street in
the background of the photo had collapsed. Nelson, Arthur and James had all
rushed to his aid, flagging down a passing car to rush the man to the hospital.
Father Brendan had survived thanks to them, though he’d been forced to retire
from his duties as parish priest. The three of them had been hailed as heroes,
which had embarrassed all of them.
Hands trembling, Nelson
gingerly turned the photo over to see if there was anything on the back. His
breath caught, for there, written in his cousin’s familiar hand, was a message.
So, squirt, I see you
followed me to sea. I guess that’s no surprise, but I’d never have taken you
for flag officer material - a mad scientist, maybe. By the way, I’m impressed
by your Grey Lady, but where on earth did you get the idea to build a submarine
that could fly? Not that I‘m criticizing, mind, I love the idea, but I‘m
curious. - James
The only sound in the room
was a soft sob as Harriman Nelson ran his fingers over the writing on the back
of the photo. The scientist in him wanted to be skeptical and analyze the event
from every angle, looking for evidence that it was an elaborate hoax, but his
Irish blood sang with the certain knowledge that his cousin James had found a
way to reach out from beyond and communicate. It was balm to his soul. Wiping
a suspicious dampness from his eyes, he looked heavenward and said with
heartfelt sincerity, “Thank you.”