Chap. 122 The Surprise on the Strait

Western Continent. The team is very near the northern end of the Strait.

Chap. 122  The Surprise on the Strait

"This was not at all what I was expecting," Greta said. 

The team, standing atop a windy bluff, was looking across the strait that separated the two islands of Western Continent. 

The wind was strong enough to make it an effort to stand. One had to shout if you were more than a few meters from the other.

"What were you expecting?" K'ndar said. He was sketching the sea birds and wherries that were literally standing in the wind, not needing to flap their wings to stay aloft. D'nis was photographing and D'mitran filming.

"Something a little…little less windy! And closer to sea level. I'd actually thought it might be dry, something we could have landed on. Not now! We must be, what, several hundred meters above the water line."

There was no way down without being dragon back. The side of the island was a sheer cliff, falling to the surface of the sea.  K'ndar could see hundreds of birds and wherries, roosting on the cliff face. More circled over their heads, some swooping on the dragons behind them. When a bird turned to windward, it was carried away in a split second. 

Siskin and Roany, the two blue fire lizards, kept a tight hold on their owner's shoulders. 

Neither of them was comfortable with the speed of the wind. 

"I wouldn't want to get down there," she said, "the current looks ferociously fast. I'd be afraid to take a boat down that strait, and I bet it's almost impossible to make one's way against the current."

K'ndar had thought to bring his binoculars, this time. He scanned upstream of both sides of the islands for a spot that looked at least solid and large enough for a dragon to land. He could see nothing, and said so. 

D'mitran could, though. "This new datalink, it should be able to link to the Yokohama with enough detail," he said, scrolling through it. He was quiet for several moments. Surprise crossed his face, and he enlarged a portion of the satellite photo as large as it could.

"Whoa," he said, drawing their attention with the tone. "That can't be what I'm seeing. How old is this data?" he said, more to himself than to the others. He shook his head. "It's current. I can even see us and the dragons." 

"Maybe I'm addled, but…D'nis, look at this, here, and tell me if you see what I think I see," he said, pointing to a spot on the datalink's screen.

D'nis looked at it…and looked harder. 

"It looks like, well…something man made."

"Can I see?" K'ndar and Greta both said at once.

The datalink was handed over. K'ndar looked at it with his younger eyes. It DID look like something man made. He handed it to Greta and then looked through his nocs at where he thought the thing might be. He couldn't see it, even at maximum range.

"It looks like…well, a rectangular  bulwark," Greta said.

D'nis looked at them as she handed it back to D'mitran.

"Let's go find out," he said.

This is like flying without being in the air  Raventh said, as K'ndar mounted.

That's because you're big. Siskin isn't too happy 

I know. He is afraid of the wind speed

Could he be hurt?

I don't think so, but he's more easily tossed around by the wind. I've never felt it so strong. It's a lot more work than I expected. But we can do it. 

They flew north for about fifteen minutes before they found the spot.

The force of the wind was only slightly less than from their original spot. It was much lower, too. There were large outcroppings that one could take cover from it. Greta hammered on one for samples.  The dragons shuffled behind them, out of the wind. The humans pushed their way against the wind to the spot.  

The thing was a giant block of concrete, rhomboidal in shape, the windward edges blunted by the unrelenting wind. It was obviously used as a roost for the many birds and wherries, their guano striping the green moss that grew on the lee side. That side was still relatively un-eroded.   There was no question it was man made. It was a huge bulwark, a caisson that, at first, made no sense to them. 

"This was made to support something," D'nis called, after photographing it. K'ndar sketched it. It was made of the mixture of plastic and concrete the Ancients had used.  "Something BIG," he said. His mind began to throw out ideas and he had to shut it up, to allow himself to think.

D'mitran was thinking, too. He looked across the strait, and called up the datalink's current location. He noticed that this spot was the narrowest spot between the two islands. Ah.

"A bridge," he said.

"What?"

"A bridge. They wanted to put a bridge here. But they didn't," he said.

"Yes," D'nis instantly agreed, a bridge. Put here by whom? When? Why didn't it get built?

He let his engineer's mind do the work while he took down readings and data. 

K'ndar could not believe how strong the wind was, despite their being quite a bit lower in altitude at this point. He looked down at the frothing water below. 

Something was coming down stream. He pointed it out, then looked through his binoculars. 

"A tree," he called out, "coming FAST."

D'mitran said, "Got it!" with his datalink.

He video'ed it as it passed beneath him. 

The tree wasn't just being carried by the current, it was also being tossed half out of the water, rolled over and over lengthwise, with a violence that was silent testimony to the power of the sea. It had a battered appearance, telling of it being rammed into the cliff walls till it was blunted on both ends.

Then he looked at the data and shook his head. "I can't believe this," he said.

"What?"

"If this thing is right, and I've got no reason to doubt it, that tree is going just under 100 kilometers per hour." 

Someone whistled. Even a green dragon couldn't fly that fast. 

"And, I think, that's just the current, not the wind. Although the wind is just a little below that."

"I'd be scared to death to take a boat down that strait," Greta said, watching the tree riding the waves as it was carried downstream. There was no place, on either side of the strait, that wasn't cliff face. It was a chute…a giant, geological half pipe of stone, funneling a bore of water down without a thing to stop or even slow the current.  Shards, she thought. I was hoping I could have done a little more than just stand here gaping. But I'll not risk trying to get down there. It's not worth it. 

D'nis voiced it, too.

"I don't plan on going down there, but I bet the reason no bridge was built was because of this wind. The thing would have to be enormous, and, let's see, how far are we from the other side?"

two

K'ndar looked at the data in his binocular. "This says…just over three kilometers," he said. 

His eyes were watering from the wind. He dug around in his jacket and pulled out his riding goggles. There. That was better. Can't see so well through the binos, but at least I can see now.

"Three kilometers, then, and the wind loading? It's howling.  I can't do the math here, but this wind, which I have to believe is constant, and the length of the bridge would have made it almost foolish to even try. Better to just go around by ship." 

"And hope to the sky that you didn't get sucked in at the top of this strait," D'mitran said, thinking of the northern opening. "All it would take is one smashup on the sides of these walls, if you survived the impact, you'd probably drown anyway." 

K'ndar shivered at the thought. Just the idea of being on a ship made him queasy, he couldn't imagine trying to make it through the strait. That tree had been bouncing up and down in huge, almost airborne arcs. 

"Or they finally had dragons big enough to make it useless to try," D'mitran said.

"Not everyone had dragons, and this must mean, too, that at some time in the past, a determined effort was made to one, live here and on the other side, and two, keep from having to cross the gap by water. "

"You know who can tell us more about this strait?" K'ndar asked. Before the others could say a thing, he said, "The dolphins. I bet they know all about this strait. Maybe can even tell us about the people who tried to build it."

"That's a good idea, K'ndar." D'nis said. "Let's do the data collection on this, then cross over and see if there's anything more or similar on the other side. Then we can turn south and return to the original survey line and continue. We have more science to do," D'nis said. "The Sea Dragon should be meeting us on the far side of that island in a few days, and I'm sure the dolphins will be able to tell us more."