The Pulse

“It worries me what we will find out,” Artie said. “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of. And I certainly never expected to sail through a plane crash site when I came down here for a tropical vacation. This delivery trip is turning out to be more of an adventure than I had bargained for.”

“You and me both, Doc. All we can do at this point is carry on and get to the anchorage. I don’t think the radio, the GPS, or anything else is going to suddenly start working again, so we won’t get our answers until we get there.” Larry went below and grabbed his logbook and paper charts to work out the approximate position of the crash site, and entered it in the log so they could report it to the authorities when they reached the island. He then hauled in the sheets as Artie steered back on course, and soon the schooner was back up to hull speed, carrying them northeast into the growing darkness as the short tropical twilight faded to night.

Without the formerly familiar glow of the GPS in the cockpit, Artie’s gaze was fixed on the big steering compass. At least its backlight still worked, as it was a simple 12-volt bulb wired through a switch to the vessel’s storage batteries. Larry had said the batteries would continue to provide ample power for a few lights, including the running lights and interior cabin lights, until they reached the anchorage. They couldn’t recharge them because the engineless schooner had no alternator, and the charge controllers and voltage regulators that connected the batteries to the large solar panels mounted on the stern rail had been taken out by the pulse. Larry wished that the owner had allowed the builder to install a small auxiliary diesel engine, but he had stubbornly insisted on keeping Ibis a true sailing ship.

Artie reflected on what his brother had said earlier that day about how men had been crossing oceans in small boats without the benefit of electronics for centuries, and how they were lucky they were on a seaworthy sailing vessel instead of some posh motor-yacht with intricate systems dependent upon technology. The schooner worked now just as her predecessors had, and as long as the trade winds blew, they could depend on her to carry them to their destination. The sight of the plane crash had really unsettled Artie, though, and he longed to be able to contact Casey to make sure she was okay, and to tell her that he was. He knew he had to somehow maintain his patience, but as his four-hour watch dragged by, he had no doubt it was going to be a long night.

When Larry came back on deck at 2200 hours to relieve him, he said that the glow of St. Thomas should be visible by now, but it wasn’t. The skies were clear and stars arced over the masthead in such density they looked like clouds of light, but at the level of the horizon the darkness was the same through a full 360 degrees.

“I was afraid of this,” Larry said.

“So, the power is out on the islands?”

“At least in this part of the Virgins. Who knows where else?”

“Can we find it in the dark?”

“Oh yeah, no problem there. We won’t be close enough to it to hit it before well after daylight even if we couldn’t see it. But with this much starlight tonight, we should see the outline of the mountains from several miles out.”

Artie went below and stretched out in his bunk, trying to get some sleep during his time off watch, but instead he spent most of the four hours tossing and turning, his mind racing with thoughts of the horrors of the plane crash and what it implied about what could have happened since he saw the lights. He thought about Larry saying that all jet airliners would be affected if their electronic controls went out, and he began to wonder how he would get back home. He had a ticket for a flight from St. Thomas to New Orleans by way of a connection in Atlanta, and he had been planning to leave the afternoon after their arrival at the anchorage. What if the power were still out then? What if the strange pulse had damaged the instruments of all the planes sitting at the airport? What if some of them had been in flight when it happened and had crashed? There was no way Artie could get any sleep with all this on his mind. He gave up and went back up on deck. It was two hours after midnight.

“There it is,” Larry said.

Artie looked over the bow and saw the dark silhouette of distant ridges and peaks rising out of the sea. “That’s St. Thomas?” he asked.

“Yes, and a couple of smaller islands that lie just outside of the harbor. Normally, the whole mountainside above Charlotte Amalie Harbor would be lit up like a Christmas tree. The lights were out on St. Croix, too. We passed within about 12 miles of it a couple of hours back while you were below, and there was nothing—no glow or anything. That tells me the power is definitely out in the whole island group. I still haven’t seen any air traffic either, and only a couple of vessel lights. I’ve never seen anything like this as long as I’ve been down here. Even after a hurricane hits, there are helicopters and all kinds of planes flying around.”

“That’s why I couldn’t sleep,” Artie said. “I’ve been wondering just how I’m supposed to get back to New Orleans if my flight got canceled.”

“No use worrying about that right now. We’ll find out more later this morning. I’ve reefed the main and staysail to slow us down some. We’ll take it nice and easy on the approach and should be just outside the harbor entrance when the sun comes up. No use taking a risk running too fast in these blackout conditions. I’m glad you came back on deck, because we both need to keep a good lookout until dawn. You never know, there may be big ships out here steaming with no lights—if they’re able to run at all.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Artie said. “Especially the one week-and-a-half period of my entire life that I decided to take a Caribbean vacation.”

“Hey, you’re on island time now. Not to worry, mon. Everyt’ing gonna be all right.”

“Yeah, I hope you’re right. But you live your whole life on island time. Some of us have to work for a living. I’ve got to be back at the V.A. Monday morning. I have patients to see.”

“I wish you could meet my friend Scully. You think I live on island time? Scully could teach us all something about not worrying.”

“Yeah, I heard all about Scully from the girls after their trip last summer. Casey got on a reggae kick I didn’t think would ever end. At least she and Jessica didn’t start smoking marijuana—as far as I know anyway—but she talked about Scully for weeks.”

“I suppose he was the first real Rasta that either of them had ever met. Scully’s a good guy, definitely one of my best friends in the islands. The Rastas smoke their ganja, all right, but it’s different with them. It’s not about getting high and partying. It’s more of a spiritual experience—part of their religion—a path to enlightenment or something like that.”

“Enlightenment? They seem like just another version of dope-smoking hippies to me. You don’t mess with that stuff, do you, Larry?”

“I’m more into good island rum, especially when I’m anchored in a nice spot for the evening. I’m not saying I wouldn’t take a hit off the pipe now and then, but Scully knows better than to bring it on board a boat when we’re doing a delivery, and certainly not to bring it on my boat. It’s not worth the risk of getting a boat confiscated, and I won’t tolerate it at sea.”

Artie figured drinking rum and taking a toke now and then sort of went with the territory for a yacht delivery skipper. Looking at his lean and tanned younger brother standing at the helm, his full beard and wavy hair bleached blond from the sun, Artie thought maybe Larry had been born two hundred years too late. He was an adventurer at heart, and this sailing life he’d chosen seemed to suit him well, and apparently agreed with him, as he looked much younger than his 38 years. Artie couldn’t imagine Larry in any other setting, as these islands had been his home since he had caught a ride on a boat out of Fort Lauderdale during his first Spring Break, and he never went back to college to finish out the semester.

“It’s too bad Scully won’t be in St. Thomas while you’re here,” Larry went on. “But then again, who knows how long you’ll be here? Maybe you shouldn’t have come to the islands in 2013, Doc. Didn’t you know the world was supposed to end sometime around the end of 2012 or, at the latest, by 2013?”

“Hah, hah; very funny, Larry. So the lights went out, and now it’s the end of the world?”

“It would be for most people up there,” Larry said, referring to mainland America, a place he rarely even visited. “What would they do without their DSL connections? What would they do without TV? Yeah, it would be the end of the world for sure.”

“I know it would be for Casey,” Artie laughed. “But seriously, if this were some kind of weird power surge or electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare, or whatever, and it really did knock out the power grid, it might take awhile to fix it, huh?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I know it takes a while after a hurricane comes through. Happens down here all the time, but they bring in crews from other places with all the stuff to repair the damage. Let’s just hope this is