Calypso's Mast

Chapter 13 - Discovered

Hatfield leaned forward in the right hand seat, careful not to touch the yoke in front of him, to look out to the front right hand side of the Aero-Commander 690B, as it banked and came around toward the east over the ocean north of Lockhart River.

"This is the area." The pilot's voice was slightly muffled over the background noise of the aircraft's engines and he pointed down.

Hatfield noted that each time the pilot spoke into the microphone, the voice activated circuitry – he remembered the pilot had called it the VOX circuit - always seemed to cut off the first part of the first word of his speech. Still it was better than shouting above the roar of the engines.

Hatfield had met him for the first time, that morning, at the Lockhart River airfield. The pilot had flown the plane up from Cairns, early in the morning and was fuelling the aircraft with Jet A1 fuel from the tanks at the edge of the taxi apron, when he shook his hand. He had said his name was Harrington.

"Dave, this is where we start looking," replied Hatfield into his own headset microphone which was almost touching his lips. "Let's do an east-west grid search here and work our way south."

Harrington nodded and punched some information into his GPS, then flicked the autopilot on.

"How high are we?" asked Hatfield.

"Five hundred feet," replied the pilot.

"Should we go lower? It will make it easier to see."

"We're not allowed to unless we get special clearance before we come. Besides if we're too low, we restrict our field of view considerably," said Harrington.

"Ok."

They started criss-crossing the ocean. Every twenty kilometres, the plane would bank steadily and turn 180° and track a path down parallel to the previous path. After several turns, Hatfield's eyes and mind were becoming fatigued from concentrating on the ocean.

There wasn't much reef here. The water was deeper and slightly darker than the sandy areas closer to shore where the coral bommies were. This was slow, boring searching.

The engines of the plane droned monotonously and it had a hypnotic effect. Hatfield started to wonder whether he would miss his target because of the micro-sleeps his brain was having. What he was searching for could easily be there and he would miss it because his eyes would shut for a few seconds while his head leaned against the window looking out.

He took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. His boss wouldn't be happy with him paying eight thousand dollars of the department's money for a day's plane hire and not finding anything because he felt sleepy.

After three hours of searching without finding anything, he was well and truly over it. Harrington tapped the fuel indicator.

"We're going to have to head back shortly."

Hatfield welcomed the departure from the monotony. "Ok. Do we come back again today or wait until tomorrow?

"I'll be out of flying hours shortly. It'll have to be tomorrow."

"Right," said Hatfield.

The plane left the grid, turned south and began to climb. They had only gone about two or three minutes when Hatfield spotted a large shadow in the water between them and the distant coastline.

"Is that reef or a whale? Or a big shark?" he called into the intercom.

Harrington leaned forward slightly to look out of Hatfield's window.