CONTACT LOST: The Navy Experiment That Went Horribly Wrong

A routine radar stealth test in the Pacific takes a catastrophic turn when a lightning strike causes seven warships, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, to vanish from the ocean.

“Contact Lost” by Keith Conrad

Fully Produced Version:

https://www.auditoryanthology.com/2025/06/17/contact-lost-by-keith-conrad/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OD1TsCGHUw

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The following is the story I narrated for the Auditory
Anthology podcast a few months ago. If you'd like to
hear the fully produced version with music and sound effects,
I've pleased a link to the full version in the
episode description. And if you're a fan of classic sci
fi stories from the fifties and sixties, or quirky, short,
creepy stories, you'll want to subscribe to Auditory Anthology, which
you can do at auditoryanthology dot com. Contact lost by

(00:32):
Keith Conrad. The RV sally Ride floated in the open Pacific,
twenty miles northeast of the USS Gerald r Ford. The
early morning haze cast a metallic sheen across the ocean's surface,
and although the sea was unusually calm, a slow, building
tension hung in the air. The sky overhead was a

(00:55):
layered gray, bruised at the horizon by darker clouds. Beginning
to get on the sally Ride's upper deck. Seagulls circled
once or twice before veering away, as if weary of
something unseen below. In the dim light of the control center,
Lieutenant Ethan Morales stood with arms folded, shoulder propped against

(01:17):
a bulkhead, tall and composed, with sharp eyes and a
posture shaped by discipline, Morales carried the calm confidence of
someone used to balancing duty and diplomacy, a necessary trait
as the ship's executive officer and liaison to the DARPA team.
The humma machinery and soft buzz of monitors filled the room,

(01:37):
punctuated by the occasional burst of static from the combs.
At a workstation across the room, Doctor Page Keller sat
in a half swivel chair, one leg tucked under the other.
A field scientist with DARPA, Keller had the worn look
of someone who'd been living on caffeine and adrenaline for days.
Her lab coat was draped over the back of the chair,

(01:59):
and her law on auburn hair was tied into a
functional braid. Despite the fatigue, Her eyes were darting behind
wire rimmed glasses as she flicked through diagnostic panels with
the practiced speed of someone who knew exactly which green
lights mattered. Barometers dropping faster than forecast, Morales said, glancing

(02:19):
toward the tinted window. Weather's going to be a factor,
Keller sipped her coffee. Not if we get this done
on time, which we will. They had worked side by
side for the better part of a week, calibrating instruments,
sinking data relays, and running dry simulations of the test.
In that short time, they developed a rhythm, an understanding

(02:43):
built not on conversation but on the quiet, mutual acknowledgment
of shared responsibility. The silence between them now was neither
awkward nor strained. It was the sound of professionals focused
on something far larger than either of them could control.
How exactly does it work, Morales asked, nodding toward the

(03:04):
distant glow at the Ford, a blip on their external monitor.
No one bothered to fill us in. Think of it
like a big umbrella, Keller said. The device on the
aircraft carrier generates a high intensity field that bends incoming
radar waves around the ships in range, just like a
stream bends around a rock. Ideally, nothing bounces back to

(03:26):
the radar, and the ships would be invisible to radar.
There are a lot of ships out there, Morales said,
We've got the Gerald Ford, USS, Farragut, USS, Forest Sherman,
USS Winston Churchill, and the USS Normandy. I served on
the USS Normandy last year. Is that right, Keller said, yeah.

(03:47):
Morales said, loss, We've got the HMS Queen Elizabeth and
the Kaga. Are you sure that gadget of yours is
going to be able to handle all of those ships
anything within a half mile of the device, Keller said,
all of the ships will have to get pretty chummy,
but it'll work. And you tested this thing in a lab,

(04:08):
Keller gave a wry smile. This sort of We built
computer models and ran a ton of simulations, but this
is the first full power live test during a Tiger cruise.
Morales raised an eyebrow. The ford is crawling with civilians.
Your people signed off on it, not without grumbling, Morales said,

(04:31):
but it was the only window the Brits and Japanese
could spare ships. They helped bankroll the research, their governments
wanted to see it firsthand, so we jammed a secret
weapons test between flight demonstrations and ship tours. The Tigers
don't even know what's happening, Morales said, only a couple
dozen crew members and the brass. Keller chuckled, that's comforting.

(04:57):
They lapsed into silence again, listening to the s tap
of keys and low murmur of technical chatter on the coms.
On the central screen, the USS gerald R Ford loomed
like a floating fortress, her angular silhouette bathed in the
flat gray light of morning. Clustered tightly around her were
an array of guided missile destroyers and missiles, forming a

(05:18):
precision arc, like satellites orbiting a planet. Further out, the
HMS Queen Elizabeth iiO and the JDS Kaga held position
with quiet poise, their decks nearly empty. The whole fleet
sat in uncanny stillness, as if the ocean itself were
holding its breath. Test commencing in two minutes, came a

(05:40):
voice over the ship wide channel. That's our cue, Keller said.
She turned to Morales, watch the screen. When they disappear
from radar, the bridge will turn off our mast head
light to signal to the team on the Ford that
we can't track them. Why flash the lights, Morales said,
they won't be able to hear the radio. Keller said,

(06:00):
the device will block those signals too. Did anyone think
about using two tin cans in a string? Morales asked,
we'dn't eat an awful lot of string, Keller said. The
countdown began from the ford came a deepening mechanical resonance,
like a turbine winding up far beneath the ocean floor.

(06:20):
The experimental device, mounted high above the carrier's deck slowly
came to life, its concentric rings beginning to rotate with
a lazy grace that belied the energy crackling through their cores.
As the inner rings accelerated, a faint, bluish shimmer appeared
around the mast. On board the sally Ride, Morales watched
as waveforms jittered on the radar screens, their clean returns

(06:44):
dissolving into a hazy blur. Static whispered through the columns.
Electromagnetic interference surged, as if the air itself had grown
charged and unstable. The sensor feeds strained to track anything
at all, as the outlines of the ships in this
the center of the formation began to smear and fragment,
pixelating like a corrupted image. One by one, the ships

(07:08):
disappeared from the radar screen. That's unnerving. Morales said, they're
still there, right, presumably, Keller said, if they actually disappeared,
I think the people on the bridge would have turned
on a siren or something. The clock ticked down for
thirty seconds. Slowly, the humming resonance began to fade, like

(07:30):
an engine winding down. The concentric rings atop the Ford's
mast decelerated in deliberate stages, their momentum bleeding off with
a quiet mechanical groan. The faint shimmer that had enveloped
the fleet dissipated into the heavy gray air on board
the sally Ride static on the radar feeds began to clear.
One by one, the ships returned to the screen, blinking

(07:54):
into focus, like ghosts, returning to solid form. First the
Ford her escorts, followed by the British and Japanese ships,
each reappearing on sensors with startling clarity. The ocean felt
a little less empty, but the tension in the control
room lingered, as if the sea might still reclaim them.
Without warning. Cycle two commencing came the voice again. Keller

(08:20):
watched the readings field integrity holding better than expected. The
fleet vanished from radar once again. Far to the west,
the sky had darkened into a heavy wall of charcoal gray.
A jagged crackle of lightning split the clouds like a
cracked mirror, its flash illuminating the horizon in an eerie,
white blue strobe. A moment later, a deep, rolling boom

(08:44):
of thunder followed, less like a sound and more like
a shift in the world's foundation, vibrating through the hull
of the sally ride. The storm front wants a distant
smear on the radar, now churned with slow, ominous force,
dragging a veil of rainwath it like a curtain drawn
over the sea, Towering cumulonimbus clouds stacked into the upper atmosphere,

(09:06):
their curling tops lit intermittently by the flicker of distant lightning.
The air inside the control deck felt heavier now, as
if charged with static. Even the sea had begun to change,
no longer glassy, but subtly heaving with the pulse of
what was coming weathers speeding up. Morales said that cell

(09:27):
wasn't supposed to be here for another hour. Let's hope
the last cycle is quick. Cycle three began. This time,
the rings adopted the mast didn't just accelerate, They roared
to life. Their polished surfaces blurred into a metallic whirl
as a deep, thrumbing resonance rolled across the water like
a pressure wave. The faint shimmer that had previously cloaked.

(09:50):
The fleet grew brighter, pulsing at the edges of visibility.
Energy readings spiked violently. The radar and the sally Ride
turned to soup, static pouring across every channel, and then
a brilliant fork of lightning stabbed down from the heart
of the storm, striking the device dead center. The instant

(10:10):
of impact produced a flash so intense it bleached every
screen in the control room to pure white. The ship
seemed to shudder as a cascade of static overwhelmed the combs.
Sparks crackled from consoles, The magnetic field readings pegged the
top of every scale, alarms wailing and displaying strobing, as
if the very atmosphere had been ruptured. For several long seconds,

(10:35):
there was only light, then darkness, then silence. Gradually the
monitors flicked back to life. Morales stared nothing. The ford
was gone, so were the destroyers, the British and Japanese carriers.
Every single ship inside the test perimeter gone. Only two

(11:00):
targets remained on radar, the RV Neil Armstrong and RV
Roger Ravel. The other ships observing the test, is this
part of the test, Morales asked Keller didn't respond. The
control room had erupted into a sudden frenetic storm of
its own. Warning claxons blared a piercing rhythmic alarm from

(11:22):
the bridge that meant only one thing. Visual contact with
the fleet had been lost. Crew Members scrambled between stations,
shouting over the waiale of electronics and the confused squawk
of multiple calm channels. Lights flickered overhead as backup systems
kicked in. Keller hunched over her console, frantically typing commands

(11:42):
and swiping through cascading system failures on her screen. Her
jaw was tight, eyes darting between error codes, and she
fought to stabilize what little was left of their telemetry.
A fine sheen of sweat had formed on her brow.
She wasn't ignoring Morales, She simply couldn't spare the bandwidth
to answer him. This has to be a malfunction, he pressed,

(12:04):
they're spoofing us, right. Keller shook her head. I don't
think so. They looked again at the empty ocean. Oh
what do we do now, Morales asked. Keller was silent
for a long moment, then finally she said, we call
it in outside the sea rolled on indifferent The three

(12:29):
remaining ships drifted on the edge of a mystery no
one was prepared to explain.