being hit by a carefully calculated dose of the rays, although the instruments monitoring the frog had clearly registered a disturbance in its electrical field. The pattern of its brainwaves had been masked, and the effect had lasted for a few minutes before the frog had hopped off again, unperturbed.
Could the molecular scrambler shield his own brainwave pattern, at least long enough to get past the person identifier?
The admiral hurried to his laboratory. For a quarter of an hour he worked on the settings of his new toy to adjust it to his own body mass and physical structure. He had to do all the intricate calculations without the aid of U6, and he could only hope that they were accurate. What made it more difficult was the fact that his atoms were permanently in an unstable state because of his accident – he had no idea how they would react to the molecular scrambler!
At last he was ready to try his experiment. The molecular scrambler was too big to carry around, and he knew he would have to reach Section 16 before its effect wore off. Fortunately his lab was just down a short corridor, and he calculated that it would take him a minimum of ninety-six seconds to get back to Sector 16.
Admiral Atom focused the molecular scrambler on himself, and with a shaky finger he pressed a command on the control screen. He felt something like a warm glow as the rays penetrated his body. Two minutes later, the instrument indicated that the process was complete, and he immediately kicked himself off towards Sector 16.
He felt odd and heavy. There was a strange humming sound in his ears, and it was suddenly more difficult to move. Instead of floating like usual, he was hopping along the floor of the Space Ark like an ordinary man would in the weak gravitational pull of the Space Ark as it orbited Earth. The door of Sector 16 loomed before him.
The door was unlocked. He reached for its handle and opened it.
It had worked! He had fooled the person identifier! And even more importantly, the molecular scrambler had somehow stabilised his atoms into a solid state. But before he had time to rejoice, the effects of the instrument began to wear off. The humming in his ears subsided, and he felt himself becoming lighter as his molecules loosened up again.
The reversal was too much for his system. He was overwhelmed by a wave of dizziness, and then he passed out.
Weightless again, his unconscious body drifted off the floor and into the “classified” section of the Space Ark.
Chapter 18
DEATH IN THE OCEAN
The thick blanket of reddish-brown algae spread steadily over the South Pacific Ocean. Towards the east, it encountered shallow open seas rich in oxygen – ideal for the growth of hyperactive algae.
It engulfed the sea surrounding Easter Island, and soon reached the western shores of South America. Towards the west, the algae had now spread across to French Polynesia, and onwards to the Cook and Solomon Islands. It reached Papua New Guinea and the east coast of Australia early on the same morning that Anna was setting out in the Submarine Explorer.
The slick of algae quickly disturbed the delicate balance of the oxygen in the water, causing a dense shadow that blotted out the sunlight. Zooplankton, that invisible soup of microscopic animals and plants drifting in the great currents of the ocean, was the first to suffer – the tiny life forms soon suffocated and died. The bacteria feeding on the dead algae and plankton rapidly multiplied and depleted the oxygen that was normally dissolved in the water.
Before the fish and other creatures feeding on the plankton could begin to miss their food source, the lack of oxygen caught up with them and they too started dying in large numbers.
Underneath the blanket of spreading algae, the sea became a dead zone.
Meanwhile, the gulls and other sea birds patrolling the shores were having a field day, with dead creatures washing up on the beach with every wave. They didn’t know that there would eventually be nothing left to scavenge and that they too would then begin to starve.
The Pacific Ocean was rapidly turning into a dark and lifeless place.
From her seat hovering over the Environator, Professor Sabatina was watching in desperation. It was night-time now over the stricken parts of the globe. The Pacific Ocean was in shadow, as if Earth wanted to hide its expanding sorrow from the sun’s light. The figures on the datascriber told her that the damage to the ecosystem was probably permanent already, and that the algae would soon reach across to Patagonia on the southernmost tip of South America. From there it would be a small step to reach the Atlantic Ocean. It had already invaded the Indian Ocean from the direction of Indonesia, and in Tasmania, dusk began settling against an unnatural dull-red sea.
Humans have been destroying their environment for centuries, but the effect of deforestation and the poisonous gases released by their cars and factories had been easy to ignore. This destruction of a large part of the world’s oceans was immediate.
And panic was spreading.
Tons of dead creatures had started washing up on the shores of California. People were beginning to evacuate their homes because of the overwhelming smell of rotting fish. The global news networks were running reports on nothing else. Even in the remotest outposts of the world, people were listening to transistor radios aware that a catastrophe was threatening the earth. They shouted the news to their neighbours, and drums of warning were beating in the furthest forests.
Many people seemed to believe that the end of the earth had come. There was a mad rush in the world’s supermarkets, as families tried to stockpile as much food as possible. The price of canned sardines tripled in an instant.
Mr Amsterdam was so caught up in trying to manage the crisis that he didn’t have a moment to check in on Sabatina.
That’s something to be grateful for, the professor thought.
“I has now worked out the exact frequency, wave amplitude and duration of a counter-wave that will signals the algae to stops growings,” Max suddenly announced.
The datascriber in front of Professor Sabatina beeped as its display revealed these calculations.
“Are you sure this will work, Max?” she asked.
The supercomputer groaned. If Max had had eyes to roll, he would have.
“I’m sorry,” Sabatina said. “I trust you. Where would we need to generate the wave from, Max?”
“Anywhere in an ocean where the algae be growings,” Max replied. “Acoustic waves can travels great distances without losing their essential characteristics.”
“Still no results of your search to locate a suitable instrument to generate the wave?”
“I do not understands,” the computer stated in a worried voice, “why U6 be not answerings me. I hopes she can helps. She be well connected to Uranus Drake’s oceanic facilities.”
“And my husband?”
“We has no contact with him since last night.”
Sabatina punched in a code on the keyboard in front of her. This connected her to the personal communicator
