Adler nodded. “It would have meant billions in retrofitting and redesign. The potential for an economic disaster spurred more research. The attention focused on the coast off South Africa where many mariners had encountered freak waves. When scientists plotted ship accidents off the African cape, they found that they lay on a line along the Agulhus current. The big waves seemed to occur primarily when warm currents ran against cold currents. Over a ten-year period in the 1990s, twenty ships were lost in this area.”

“The shipping industry must have breathed a big sigh of relief,” Austin said. “All a ship had to do was steer clear of that neighborhood.”

“They learned it wasn't that simple. In 1995, the Queen Elizabeth II encountered a ninety-foot wave in the North Atlantic. In 2001, two tourist cruisers, the Bremen and the Caledonian Star, were slammed by ninety-foot waves far from the current. Both ships survived to tell the tale.”

“That would imply that the Agulhus current isn't the only place these waves occur,” Austin said.

“Correct. There were no opposing currents near these ships. We paired this information with the statistics and came to some unsettling conclusions. More than two hundred supertankers and containerships longer than six hundred feet had been sunk around the world over a twenty-year span. Freak waves seemed to play a major role in these losses.”

“Those are pretty grim statistics.”

“They're horrendous! Because of the serious implications for shipping, we have set out to improve ship design, and to see if forecasting is possible.”

“I wonder if the research project the Trouts are working on has anything to do with these steroid waves,” Zavala said.

“Paul Trout and his wife, Gamay Morgan-Trout, are our NUMA colleagues,” Austin explained to the professor. “They're on the NOAA ship Benjamin Franklin, doing a study of ocean eddies in this area.”

Adler pinched his chin in thought. “That's an intriguing suggestion. It's certainly worth looking into. I wouldn't rule anything out at this point.”

“You said something about forecasting these freak waves,” Austin said.

“Shortly after the Bremen and Caledonian Star incidents, the Europeans launched a satellite that scanned the world's oceans. In three weeks' time, the satellites picked out ten waves like the ones that nearly sank the two ships.”

“Has anyone been able to figure out the cause of these killer waves?”

“Some of us have been working with a principle in quantum mechanics called the Schrödinger equation. It's a bit complicated, but it accounts for the way things can appear and disappear with no apparent reason. 'Vampire wave' is a good name for the phenomena. They suck up energy from other waves and, voilà, we have our huge monster. We still don't know what triggers these things in the first place.”

“From what you've said, every ship whose hull is built to withstand seas based on the Linear Model could suffer the same fate as the Southern Belle.”

“Oh, it gets better than that, Kurt. Much better.”