Zeus and Io - Book 3
Copyright© 2014 by Harry Carton
Chapter 30
Io
Main Processing Thread
This waiting thing is for the birds!
I'm impatient. It's been more than a full day since Zeus, Artemis and Zhengfu were taken aboard that submarine; 28.24793 hours to be exact. At the Missouri's maximum speed of 25 knots, or 28 standard miles per hour, it should have taken them 18.2524 hours to cover the 510.8721726 standard miles distance from their last known position at 31.3952617, 121.5592786 to Nago, Okinawa, Japan.
I've made an error in stating my calculation. The figure is 18.2454 hours. How could I have transposed numbers like that? I am at the most basic level, a computer. I don't make mistakes with numbers.
Perhaps I am going mad.
THEY ARE 10 HOURS OVERDUE.
9.754571428571429 to be more exact.
And I have been out of touch with Arti for more than 20 hours. I do not know Zeus' condition. When I heard from them last, Zeus was laid out over the table in the 'operating suite' with the doctor from the submarine and a pediatric surgeon cutting his head open. I have since come to discover that the 'operating suite' on a submarine is just the wardroom. An office for heaven's sake! There is no room on a submarine for a properly arranged and equipped 'operating suite.'
So Zeus' head was being cut open by two people who didn't know what they were doing in a cramped, inadequate, converted office, on board a nuclear attack submarine in the middle of the ocean.
And I can't get a status update. The last update I got was listening in on the doctor's call to the Mayo Clinic's Dr. Hertzfeld, at 6:37.49 China time. Apparently, the emergency surgery had progressed 'nominally, ' in the words of the ship's doctor, and there had been 'some' movement of the head plate to a more normal position.
Just how much was 'some?' Don't they understand that precision is important?
I was distressed to learn that, while he was an accredited M.D., he was also the sub's fourth-in-charge navigator. It seems that everything is double tasked on the Missouri; just as they didn't have an 'operating suite, ' they couldn't afford the spare manpower to have a dedicated doctor on board.
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