Meg: Origins Read Online Free Page B
Author: Steve Alten
Tags: Carcharodon megalodon --Fiction., Pacific Ocean --Fiction., Sharks --Fiction., Deep diving --Fiction.
the lagoon—the privacy makes the girls less inhibited—plus the sound of the rotors blocks out their screams.”
“A flying bordello, huh? What about the wind?”
“Ginger and Mary Ann prefer a bumpy ride.”
The admiral grinned. “Let’s do it.”
3
Aboard the Tallman
26 miles north-northeast of the Challenger Deep
PROPELLED BY DUAL 653-horsepower engines, the 275-foot research vessel Tallman continued its erratic southwestern course. Privately owned by Agricola Industries, the ship and its crew were routinely leased out by the Canadian company to the oil industry for completing pre- and post-dredge surveys, pipeline inspections, and wreck imaging prior to salvage operations. While these jobs helped pay the bills, what the ship’s owner preferred were the more challenging academically-oriented assignments—like the one they were now close to completing.
An international science expedition had brought the Tallman to its present location in the Philippine Sea, hiring Paul Agricola, the CEO’s son, to gather data on NW Rota-1, a deep submarine volcano. Since its discovery three years ago, the erupting volcano had added another eighty feet to its already imposing cone, which now towered twelve stories off the bottom of the world’s deepest trench.
Surveying the deepest sea floor in the world required a sophisticated sonar array. Fastened to the Tallman ’s keel like a twelve foot remora was a gondola-shaped device that housed a Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES), its dual frequency deepwater sonar pings designed for mapping the abyss. The bigger challenge was penetrating the hydrothermal plume which played havoc with the sonar signal six miles down. The solution was the Sea Bat , a winged, remotely-operated vehicle. Tethered to the MBES, the Sea Bat dropped below the plume like an underwater kite, using on-board sonar to relay signals back to the mother ship, identifying every object within acoustic range.
For three months the Tallman had circled the area above the undersea volcano, gathering water samples while imaging a thriving ecosystem feeding off the heated bottom. Clouds of shrimp and crab would flee each eruption, then return to feast on the fast-growing bacteria, begetting a unique food chain that enticed massive schools of giant albino cuttlefish and the occasional giant squid.
Having completed its mission, the crew of the Tallman were recalling the Sea Bat when a large object suddenly appeared in the sonar array’s field of vision. There was no doubt the blip was a biologic. The question: what was it?
Sonar painted the picture of a very large animal, with a length exceeding fifty feet and a girth that would place its weight between fifteen and twenty-five tons. That ruled out even the most giant squid, and the sheer depth of the blip—26,332 feet—eliminated a sperm whale or any other mammal from the list.
The consensus among the three oceanographers on-board was that it was most likely a very large whale shark.
The lead scientist disagreed. And he intended to prove it.
Paul Agricola was not a capitalist like his father, Peter, or his sister, Sabrina, but like his other family members, the thirty-two-year-old biologist rarely allowed an opportunity to slip through his fingers. Delaying the ship’s departure, he ordered the captain to circle while he conducted a few experiments with the Tallman ’s sonar, using the Sea Bat as bait.
Actively pinging the ROV’s sonar at 24 kHz had no effect on the mysterious creature, however the lower 12 kHz sound waves sent the monster charging up from the depths—a behavior not observed among whale sharks. To Paul, the biologic was clearly a carnivore and not a krill feeder, and yet, as aggressive as it was, it refused to ascend beyond the hydrothermally-warmed bottom layer of the hadalpelagic zone.
“It’s definitely not a whale shark, but it is a shark. Sensitivity to the array’s bio-electric fields suggests a biologic possessing an ampullae of
“A flying bordello, huh? What about the wind?”
“Ginger and Mary Ann prefer a bumpy ride.”
The admiral grinned. “Let’s do it.”
3
Aboard the Tallman
26 miles north-northeast of the Challenger Deep
PROPELLED BY DUAL 653-horsepower engines, the 275-foot research vessel Tallman continued its erratic southwestern course. Privately owned by Agricola Industries, the ship and its crew were routinely leased out by the Canadian company to the oil industry for completing pre- and post-dredge surveys, pipeline inspections, and wreck imaging prior to salvage operations. While these jobs helped pay the bills, what the ship’s owner preferred were the more challenging academically-oriented assignments—like the one they were now close to completing.
An international science expedition had brought the Tallman to its present location in the Philippine Sea, hiring Paul Agricola, the CEO’s son, to gather data on NW Rota-1, a deep submarine volcano. Since its discovery three years ago, the erupting volcano had added another eighty feet to its already imposing cone, which now towered twelve stories off the bottom of the world’s deepest trench.
Surveying the deepest sea floor in the world required a sophisticated sonar array. Fastened to the Tallman ’s keel like a twelve foot remora was a gondola-shaped device that housed a Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES), its dual frequency deepwater sonar pings designed for mapping the abyss. The bigger challenge was penetrating the hydrothermal plume which played havoc with the sonar signal six miles down. The solution was the Sea Bat , a winged, remotely-operated vehicle. Tethered to the MBES, the Sea Bat dropped below the plume like an underwater kite, using on-board sonar to relay signals back to the mother ship, identifying every object within acoustic range.
For three months the Tallman had circled the area above the undersea volcano, gathering water samples while imaging a thriving ecosystem feeding off the heated bottom. Clouds of shrimp and crab would flee each eruption, then return to feast on the fast-growing bacteria, begetting a unique food chain that enticed massive schools of giant albino cuttlefish and the occasional giant squid.
Having completed its mission, the crew of the Tallman were recalling the Sea Bat when a large object suddenly appeared in the sonar array’s field of vision. There was no doubt the blip was a biologic. The question: what was it?
Sonar painted the picture of a very large animal, with a length exceeding fifty feet and a girth that would place its weight between fifteen and twenty-five tons. That ruled out even the most giant squid, and the sheer depth of the blip—26,332 feet—eliminated a sperm whale or any other mammal from the list.
The consensus among the three oceanographers on-board was that it was most likely a very large whale shark.
The lead scientist disagreed. And he intended to prove it.
Paul Agricola was not a capitalist like his father, Peter, or his sister, Sabrina, but like his other family members, the thirty-two-year-old biologist rarely allowed an opportunity to slip through his fingers. Delaying the ship’s departure, he ordered the captain to circle while he conducted a few experiments with the Tallman ’s sonar, using the Sea Bat as bait.
Actively pinging the ROV’s sonar at 24 kHz had no effect on the mysterious creature, however the lower 12 kHz sound waves sent the monster charging up from the depths—a behavior not observed among whale sharks. To Paul, the biologic was clearly a carnivore and not a krill feeder, and yet, as aggressive as it was, it refused to ascend beyond the hydrothermally-warmed bottom layer of the hadalpelagic zone.
“It’s definitely not a whale shark, but it is a shark. Sensitivity to the array’s bio-electric fields suggests a biologic possessing an ampullae of
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