Towers

By Storm

Lt. Commander Chip Morton leaned his elbows on the edge of Seaview’s flying bridge, basking in the early morning sunlight as a slight breeze ruffled his blond hair. It was rare for the huge sub to be proceeding on the surface, but here in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico one hundred miles south of the western Louisiana coast there was little choice - not if they didn’t want to find themselves either scraping barnacles off the boat’s keel or unsnarling the sailplanes from some shrimper’s nets. Add in the plethora of drilling rigs to thread through and Morton was for once glad to be running surfaced. Besides, today was a day of rare calm - little wind and few waves. It made surface running a pleasure, something extraordinary rare on Seaview, since like all submarines, she tended to wallow on the surface in any kind of seas.

Noise behind him diverted him from the horizon ahead; he turned to see Admiral Nelson ascending through the hatch, followed by Dr. Wilton, their guest researcher from Woods Hole. Chip arched his eyebrows, for he’d not expected them to put in an appearance topside, not with a science dive coming up. He and Sojourner would be sitting this one out, for the bottom in the area under investigation was only about three hundred feet deep. It could be reached by free swimming divers, though it was admittedly beyond the depths where using only compressed air was advisable. There had been discussion of using a helium-oxygen mix, but then the dive team would have to decompress - and Dr. Wilton wasn’t qualified to make such a dive. It had then been decided to use FS1 in addition to a team of divers.

Chip suppressed a grin. He knew that Lee was eager to show off his ‘baby’, for while the captain would never admit it, all the attention Sojourner had received lately had been rubbing on him.

The spot they were seeking was totally unknown; it had been accidentally discovered just a few days earlier by fishermen when they’d snagged their nets on what appeared to be some sort of obstruction that rose high above the surrounding sea floor. When the fishing vessel had finally freed her nets and pulled the remnants aboard, the crew had found a chunk of what appeared to be some type of very dense, very hard, dark colored rock entangled in them.

The problem was that the bottom in this area was rock salt overlain by thick muds. There weren’t supposed to be rocks of any kind anywhere near here.

The disgruntled fishing captain had turned the rock over to a Coast Guard cutter that had responded to his call for help. Intrigued by the peculiar nature of the find and wondering if there was an uncharted hazard to navigation present, the captain of the cutter had started pinging the bottom with his sonar and discovered what appeared to be a pair of spires of some sort sticking up from the bottom. Knowing that Seaview was nearby, the cutter’s captain had promptly sent a message describing the find. Intrigued, both Admiral Nelson and Dr. Wilton decided that the area merited investigation. Now Seaview was carefully picking her way through what was for her, very shallow waters, carefully mapping the seafloor along the edge of what passed for the continental shelf.

It was a decidedly strange place, geologically speaking.

The whole chaotic mess looked to Chip’s admittedly untrained (in geology, anyway) eyes like a landslide arrested in mid motion. It was a lumpy landscape, composed of a jumbled assemblage of humps and depressions that cascaded into the depths of the Gulf. He knew from discussions with Admiral Nelson and Dr. Wilton that finding a spire of any kind of rock jutting out of the muddy bottom in the Gulf of Mexico was so unusual as to be unheard of. Finding two in such close proximity bordered on impossible. Yet according to the Coast Guard they were not only present, but towered at least sixty feet above the bottom, coming to a depth of about two hundred feet below the surface. It was a mystery neither Nelson nor Dr. Wilton could possibly pass up.

There was something about it that nagged at Chip though, a hint at the back of his mind that somewhere, somebody had mentioned something about this place. It was impossible, yet the thought circled in his mind.

He couldn’t for the life of him remember who it might have been. Maybe it was just déjà vu.

His puzzlement was interrupted by a squawk on the intercom.

“Mr. Morton,” came the voice of the sub’s skipper, Lee Crane, “we’re starting to pick up our target on the sonar. Notify the admiral.”

“Aye, aye, skipper,” he replied before turning to Nelson.

“I heard,” said Nelson. “I think I’d like to reduce speed and do a complete sonar survey around the site before we dive. Establish some perimeters as it were.”

Morton nodded and clicked the mike to relay the request to the control room, the problem of his odd feelings about this place momentarily put aside.

# # # # # # #

Chip Morton stood on the observation deck, looking out the Herculite windows at the surreal scene bathed in light from both Seaview and the Flying Sub’s brilliant spotlights. There were indeed two twin towers of dark rock standing a few hundred yards apart, but they were not alone. A third smaller spire was present, along with a narrow elongated ridge to the east of the spires, though those couldn’t be seen from where the submarine was holding station. Even more puzzling was the relatively light encrustation of coral and sponges on the two spires, a possible indication that the rocks present were relatively young. The problem was, they appeared to be made of basalt - and the nearest basalt outcrops were in central Texas, hundreds of miles away. These three were sitting squarely in the top of a salt dome. It was, according to both Admiral Nelson and Dr. Wilton, unheard of.

Oh, there was basalt basement under the salt, but for these spires to have come from there, they would have had to risen upwards through the less dense salt. Frankly, Chip couldn’t imagine how that was possible, even though he wasn’t a geologist. But as a submariner, he was acutely aware of how density affected things in the oceans, especially submarines. Pass out of a salty zone into one with less salt and suddenly your boat would be too heavy. It would begin to sink - not rise. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the ridge to the east - less than half a mile away and apparently composed of the same basalt - was considerably more eroded looking and hosted a far denser encrusting biological community. It just looked older. Either there was some mineralogical difference between the two or these spires had somehow been emplaced much later than the ridge.

Emplaced. Again a thought twitched somewhere around the edges of his mind. Was it possible, he wondered to himself? He reflected for a moment. Again, marine archeology wasn’t his specialty, but he knew enough to know that during the last ice age sea level had been much lower than it was now - as much as four hundred feet lower. The bottom here on the top of the salt dome was only three hundred feet deep. This area would have been high and dry at the height of the last ice age, becoming an island as the ice sheets melted and sea level rose. That would mean that it was likely still dry land when people began moving into the area.

He frowned. He’d never heard of any of the native people of North America building these types of monoliths - but they were quite common in Europe. Not quite so old perhaps as these would have to be, but the practice had to have started somewhere. He’d heard from one of the admiral’s archeologist friends that places like Stonehenge dated back almost 5000 years. If these spires were indeed something someone had erected, they’d have to be at least twice that old, if not more. He shook his head as if to negate the thought, but couldn’t help remembering another monolith he’d seen many years before in Brittany during a week of shore leave. Carn something… Carnac had been what it was called. And it was sixty three feet tall….

Chip found his frown deepening. It was odd that these spires should have the same shape and almost identical height to those monoliths in Europe. Maybe that similarity was what had triggered the odd notion that these spires were artifacts and not something created by nature.

He sighed and gave his head a small shake. If he was honest with himself, he’d have to admit that wasn’t the case. He’d had an odd feeling about this place even before he’d know what the spires looked like.

But it just wouldn’t come to him. Every time he tried to recall who had told him about this place - and somehow he was sure it was this place - the memory flitted away, just out of his reach. Maybe it was his imaginary Selkies. He laughed a bit self-consciously and took a quick look around to see if anyone had heard. The only one he’d ever confided in about that was Lee. But he’d never been able to find any trace or uncover any reference that described the creatures he pictured as Selkies. He’d come to conclude that perhaps his father had been right, that they were the products of his own imagination. But how could he have imagined this place?

His thoughts were beginning to take him places he didn’t want to go. He took a deep breath and turned away from the view ports, determined to put it out of his mind. Some things were better left buried in the past. He strode determinedly back towards the control room, closing the hatch firmly behind him as he exited the observation deck.

The stones outside seemed to sigh….

Author’s note: The basalt spires are real - the location is called Alderdice Bank - and nobody knows how they got where they are, though as far as I am aware no one has suggested - at least not openly - that somebody might have PUT them there.

Additional note. This takes place just a few days after the story Strangest Places and is set in my Cross-Currents universe. The time is July 1976.