Jason shrugged at the cold sky and sea. “What could be here? I don’t like this bleak and dreary place, but they wouldn’t let me build a lighthouse anywhere else.”
So everyone decided to go to Helseggen and take a look around. Just as they were about to get into the helicopter, AA suddenly had the idea to go over on Jason’s tiny boat.
“Sure thing, but the waves are powerful today, child. You’ll get seasick,” Jason said.
AA pointed to the mountain across the strait. “This is a really short ride.”
Jason shook his head. “I can’t sail straight across. Not today. We have to go the long way around.”
“Why?”
“The maelstrom, of course. It will swallow up any boat.”
Cheng Xin’s party looked at each other and then turned to Jason as one. Someone asked, “I thought you said there was nothing special here.”
“The Moskstraumen is nothing special for us locals. It’s just part of the sea. You can often see it there.”
“Where?”
“Right there. You may not be able to see it, but you can hear it.”
They quieted, and did hear a rumbling from the sea, like thousands of horses stampeding in the distance.
The helicopter could take them to investigate the maelstrom, but Cheng Xin wanted to go over on a boat, and the others agreed. Jason’s boat, the only one available on the island, could seat five or six safely. Cheng Xin, AA, Bi Yunfeng, Cao Bin, and Palermo got onto the boat while the others took the helicopter.
The boat left Mosken Island, bumping over the waves. The wind over the open sea was stronger and colder, and salty spray struck their faces without cease. The surface of the sea was a dark gray, and appeared eerie and mysterious in the dimming light. The rumbling grew louder, but they still couldn’t see the great whirlpool.
“Oh, I remember now!” Cao Bin shouted.
Cheng Xin also remembered. She had thought that perhaps Tianming had found out something new about this place through the sophons, but the real answer was far simpler.
“Edgar Allan Poe,” said Cheng Xin.
“What? Who?” asked AA.
“A nineteenth-century writer.”
Jason said, “Right. Poe wrote a story about Mosken—‘A Descent into the Maelstrom.’ I read it when I was younger. It’s very exaggerated. I remember him writing that the surface of the whirlpool formed a forty-five-degree angle. That’s absurd.”
Written narrative literature had disappeared more than a century ago. “Literature” and “authors” still existed, but narratives were constructed with digital images. Classical written novels and stories were now treated as ancient artifacts. The Great Ravine had caused the loss of the works of many ancient writers, including Poe.
The rumbling grew even louder. “Where’s the whirlpool?” someone asked.
Jason pointed at the sea surface. “The maelstrom is lower than the surface here. Look at that line: you have to cross it to see the Moskstraumen.” The passengers saw a fluctuating band of waves whose frothy tips formed a long, white arc that extended into the distance.
“Then let’s cross it!” Bi Yunfeng said.
Jason glared at him. “That’s a line separating life from death. A boat that crosses cannot return.”
“How long could a boat circle around the inside of the whirlpool before being pulled under?”
“Forty minutes to an hour.”
“Then we should be fine. The helicopter will save us in time.”
“But my boat—”
“We’ll compensate you.”
“Cheaper than a bar of soap,” AA interjected. Jason didn’t know what she was talking about.
Carefully, Jason aimed the boat at the band of waves and navigated through. The boat swayed from side to side violently and then stabilized. Some invisible force seemed to seize it, and the boat began to glide along in the same direction as the waves as if riding on rails.
“The maelstrom has caught us,” Jason cried out. “My God, this is the first time I’ve been this close!”
The Moskstraumen revealed itself below them as though they stood on top of a mountain. The monstrous funnel-shaped depression was about a kilometer in diameter. The slanting sides were indeed not as steep as the forty-five degrees mentioned by Poe, but they were at least thirty degrees. The surface of the vortex was smooth as a solid. Since the boat was only at the edge of the whirlpool, the spin wasn’t very fast. But as they got closer to the center, the spin would become faster. At the tiny hole down in the center, the speed of the churning sea was highest, and the bone-shattering rumbling came from there. The rumbling expressed a mad power capable of grinding everything into pieces and sucking them out of existence.
“I refuse to believe we can’t force our way out,” said AA. She shouted at Jason, “Follow a straight line at maximum power!”
