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Trojan
Odyssey by Clive Cussler Rating: •• (Mildly
Recommended) |
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Predictable Readers
who love the Cussler formula will not come away
disappointed from reading his latest offering, Trojan
Odyssey. For the rest of us, reading Trojan
Odyssey is like watching a B-movie: sometimes pleasurable, and once is
always enough. Here’s an excerpt, Chapter 3, (pp. 44-52): The NUMA
Headquarters building rose thirty stories beside the
east bank of the The spacious setting was open. Yaeger
felt that, unlike most government and corporate computer centers, cubicles
were a nemesis to efficient work habits. He orchestrated the vast complex
from a large circular console set on a raised platform at its center. Except
for a conference room and the bathrooms, the only enclosure was a transparent
circular tube the size of a closet that stood off to one side of an array of
monitors spread around Yaeger's console. Never
quite making the transition from hippie to pin-striped suit, Yaeger still dressed in Levi's with matching jacket and
very old, worn cowboy boots. His graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail
and he peered at his adored monitors through granny glasses. Peculiarly, the
NUMA computer wizard did not lead the life he exhibited in his appearance. Yaeger had a lovely wife who was an acclaimed
artist. They lived on a farm in Intrigued by the urn that had been air-shipped from
Captain Barnum on Sea Sprite, he
lifted it out of its box and set it in the tubular enclosure a few feet from
his leather swivel chair. Then he punched in a code on his keyboard. In a few
moments the three-dimensional figure of an attractive woman wearing a
floral-patterned blouse with matching skirt materialized in the chamber. A
creation of Yaeger's, the ethereal lady was an
image of his own wife and was a talking and self-thinking computerized
manifestation that had a personality all its own. "Hello, Max," greeted Yaeger.
"Ready to do a little research?" "I'm at your beck and call," Max replied in a
husky voice. "You see the object I placed at your feet?" "I do." "I'd like you to identify it with an approximate date
and culture." "We're doing archaeology now, are we?" Yaeger nodded. "The object was found in
a coral cavern on Navidad Reef by a NUMA
biologist." "They could have done a better job of dressing it
up," Max said dryly, looking down at the encrusted urn. "It was
a rush job." "That's obvious." "Circulate through university archaeological data
networks until you find a close match." She looked at him slyly. "You're coercing me into a
criminal act, you know." "Hacking into other files of historical purposes is
not a criminal act." "I never fail to be impressed with the way you
legitimize your nefarious activities." "I do it out of sheer benevolence." Max rolled her eyes. "Spare me." Yaeger's index finger touched a key, and Max slowly disappeared as though she was in a
state of vaporization while the urn sank into a receptacle beneath the floor
of the tube. In that instant the blue phone amid a row of colored
receivers buzzed. Yaeger held the earpiece against
his ear as he continued typing on his keyboard. "Yes, Admiral." "Hiram," came the voice
of Admiral James Sandecker, "I need the file
on that floating monstrosity that's moored off Cabo
San Rafael in the "I'll bring it right up to your office." James Sandecker, age sixty-one, was doing push-ups when Yaeger was ushered into the office by the admiral's secretary.
A short man a few inches over five feet, he had a thick carpet of red hair
matched by a red Vandyke beard. He glanced up at Yaeger
through cool assertive blue eyes. A health addict, he jogged every morning,
worked out in the NUMA gym every afternoon and ate vegetarian. His only vice
was a penchant for huge custom cigars, rolled to his special order. A
longtime member of the Beltway crowd, he had built NUMA into the most
efficient bureaucracy in government. Though most presidents he had served under
during his long term as director of NUMA did not find him a team player, his
impressive record of achievement and admiration by Congress assured him of a
lifetime job. He literally jumped to his feet as he motioned Yaeger to a chair across from his desk that had once
belonged in the captain's cabin of the French luxury liner Normandie before it burned in They were joined by Rudi Gunn, Sandecker's
deputy director of the agency. Gunn was less than an inch taller than the
admiral. A highly intelligent individual and a former commander in the navy
who had served under Sandecker, Gunn stared at the
world through thick-lensed horn-rim glasses. Gunn's
main job was to oversee NUMA's many scientific
ocean projects operating around the world. He nodded at Hiram and sat down in
an adjacent chair. Yaeger half stood and laid a thick folder in
front of the admiral. "Here is everything we have on the Ocean Wanderer" Sandecker opened the folder and stared at the
plans for the luxury hotel that was designed and constructed as a floating
resort. Self-contained, it could be towed to any one of several exotic
locations throughout the world, where it would be moored for a month until it
was hauled to its next picturesque site. After a minute of studying the
specifications, he looked up at Yaeger, his
expression grim. "This thing is a catastrophe waiting to happen." "I have to agree," said Gunn. "Our
engineering staff carefully scrutinized the interior structure and came to
the conclusion that the hotel was inadequately designed to survive a violent
storm." "What brought you to that conclusion?" asked Yaeger innocently. Gunn stood and leaned over the desk, unrolling plans of
the anchor cables that were attached to pilings driven into the seabed to
anchor the hotel. He pointed with a pencil at the cables where they were
secured to huge fasteners beneath the lower floors of the hotel. "A
strong hurricane could rip it off its moorings." "According to the specs, it's built to withstand
one-hundred-and-fifty-mile-an-hour winds," pointed out Yaeger. "Not
the winds we're concerned about," said Sandecker.
"Because the hotel is moored out to sea instead of firmly embedded on
hard ground, it's at the mercy of high waves that could build up as they
approach shallow water and beat the structure to pieces, along with all the
guests and employees inside." "Wasn't any of this taken into consideration by the
architects?" asked Yaeger. Sandecker scowled. "We pointed out the
problem to them, but were ignored by the founder of the resort corporation
who owns it." "He was satisfied that an international team of
marine engineers pronounced it safe," added Gunn. "And because the Sandecker put the specifications back in the
file and closed it. "Let us hope the hurricane building off "I've already alerted Captain Barnum," said
Gunn, "who is supporting the Pisces coral investigation not far
from the Ocean Wanderer, to keep a wary eye on any hurricane
warnings that might put them in the path of a coming storm." "Our center in "Keep me informed as well," advised Sandecker. "The last thing we need is a double
disaster in the making." When Yaeger returned to his computer console, he found a green
light blinking on the panel. He sat down and typed in the code that prompted
Max to put in an appearance, along with the urn that rose from inside the
floor. When she fully appeared, he asked, "Have you analyzed
the urn from PiscesY' "I
have," Max answered without hesitation. "What did you find out?" "The people on board Sea Sprite did a
poor job of scouring away the growth," Max complained. "The surface
still had a calcareous scale adhering to it. They didn't even bother to clean
the interior. It was still filled with accretions. I had to apply every
imagery system I could tap to get a relevant reading. Magnetic resonance
imaging, digital X rays, 3-D laser scanner and Pulse-Coupled Neural Networks,
whatever it took to obtain decent image segmentation." "Spare me the technical details," Yaeger sighed patiently. "What are the
results?" "To begin with, it is not an urn. It is an amphor because it has small handles on the neck. It was
cast from bronze during the Middle to Late Bronze Age." "That's old." "Very old," Max said confidently. "Are you certain?" "Have I ever been wrong?" "No," said Yaeger.
"I freely admit, you've never let me
down." "Then trust me on this one. I ran a very meticulous
chemical analysis of the metal. Early hardening of copper began about
thirty-five hundred B.C., with the copper enriched with arsenic. The only
problem was that the old miners and coppersmiths died young from the arsenic
vapors. Much later, probably through an accident sometime after twenty-two
hundred B.C., it was discovered that mixing ninety percent copper with ten
percent tin produced a very tough and durable metal. This was the beginning
of the Bronze Age. Fortunately, copper was found throughout Europe and the "So tin was an expensive commodity." "It was then," said Max. "Tin traders
roamed the ancient world buying ore from the mines and selling it to the
people who manned the forges. Bronze produced a very advanced economy and
made many of the early ancients rich. Everything was forged, from
weapons—bronze spearheads, knives and swords—to small necklaces, bracelets,
belts and pins for the ladies. Bronze axes and chisels greatly advanced the
art of woodworking. Artisans began casting pots, urns and jars. Taken in proper
perspective, the Bronze Age gready advanced
civilization." "So what's the amphor's
story?" "It was cast between twelve hundred and eleven
hundred B.C. And in case you're interested it was cast using the lost-wax
method to produce the mold." Yaeger sat up in his chair. "That puts
it over three thousand years old." Max smiled sarcastically. "You're very astute." "Where was it cast?" "In Gaul by ancient Celts, specifically in a region
known as " "Three thousand years ago the land of the pharaohs
was not called "I didn't know the Celts went back that far,"
said Yaeger. "The Celts were a loose collection of tribes who were
involved with trade and art as far back as two thousand B.C." "But you say the amphor
originated in "Invading Romans gave Celtic lands the name "I suppose you can tell me the name of the sculptor
who cast it." Max
gave Yaeger an icy stare. "You didn't ask me to
probe genealogical records." Yaeger thoughtfully soaked in the data Max
reported. "Any ideas how a Bronze Age relic from Gaul came to be in a
coral cavern on the Navidad Bank off the "I was not programmed to deal in generalities,"
answered Max haughtily. "I haven't the foggiest notion how it got
there." "Speculate, Max," asked Yaeger
nicely. "Did it fall off a ship or perhaps become scattered cargo from a
shipwreck?" "The latter is a possibility, since ships had no
reason to sail over the Navidad Bank unless they
had a death wish. It might have been part of a cargo of ancient artifacts
going to a rich merchant or a museum in "That's probably as good a guess as any." "Not even close, actually," Max said
indifferently. "According to my analysis the encrustation around the
exterior is too old for any shipwreck since "That's not possible. There were no shipwrecks in the
Max threw up her hands. "Have you no faith in
me?" "You have to admit that your time scale borders on
the ridiculous." "Take or leave it. I stand by my findings." Yaeger leaned back in his chair, wondering
where to take the project and Max's conclusions. "Print up ten copies of
your findings. Max. I'll take it from here." "Before you send me back to Yaeger looked at her guardedly. "Which
is?" "When the glop is cleaned out from the interior of
the amphor, you'll find a gold figurine in the
shape of a goat." "A what?" "Bye-bye,
Hiram." Yaeger sat there, totally lost, as Max
vanished back into her circuits. His mind ran toward the abstract. He tried
to picture an ancient crewman on a three-thousand-year-old ship throwing a
bronze pot overboard four thousand miles from He reached over and picked up the amphor
and peered inside, turning away at the awful stench of decaying sea life. He
put it back in its box and sat there for a long time, unable to accept what
Max had discovered. He decided to run a check of Max's systems first thing in
the morning before sharing the report with Sandecker.
He wasn't about to take a chance on Max somehow becoming misguided. Readers
come back to Cussler because of his familiar
characters, and fast-paced plot. The heroes and villains in Trojan
Odyssey behave as expected, and those readers who enjoy predictability
will appreciate Trojan
Odyssey. Steve
Hopkins, January 22, 2004 |
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ă 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Trojan
Odyssey.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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