The Beast of Cretacea

by Todd Strasser

  Just as Tarnmoor predicted, Starbuck swings the winch handle at the window in the door of the control tower, the crack of breaking glass inaudible against the screeching of flyers and the churning of the ocean. The first mate starts to reach through the opening — then suddenly staggers backward like someone struck by a blow, losing his balance and slamming into a large, mushroom-shaped metal chock.

  “Ouch!” Queequeg winces sympathetically. “That must’ve hurt.”

  “Starbuck or Ahab?” Tarnmoor asks.

  “Starbuck,” answers Ishmael.

  “Aye, there’ll be no stoppin’ the madman now.”

  The winches still turn, the Pequod’s aft section dipping even farther into the ocean while its bow climbs higher in the air. The tender has been lowered not quite to the sea, but already sailors have begun scampering over the rail and down the cargo rope.

  Within minutes the tender is filled with sailors, yet more keep climbing down. Those already in the boat swing oars and kick at those still attempting to board. A sailor loses his balance and falls into the water, having barely enough time to scream before the big-tooths are on him.

  And still Ahab will not stop the winches.

  More screams and shouts fill the air. Up in the bow, a sailor loses his grip and tumbles toward the stern before smashing into the base of a crane. And now, under the weight of so many fleeing sailors, the cargo rope has started to tear away from the Pequod’s railing. Half a dozen sailors lose their grip and plummet into the overcrowded tender below, while others fall straight into the sea and are immediately set upon by big-tooths.

  The tender is now a writhing mass of arms, legs, and bodies, riding so low in the water that every wave crests over the gunwales.

  “They’re going to capsize!” Gwen shouts.

  Feeling like he’s suddenly been shaken from a dream, Ishmael tries to start the chase boat’s RTG, but it stalls. He curses and tries again.

  But the engine still won’t start. Picking up the two-way, he calls over to Tashtego. “I’m dead in the water. Can you help them?”

  “Someone must be watchin’ out for you, son,” comes the harpooner’s pensive reply. “They’ll take us down with ’em if we go anywhere near.”

  In frustration Ishmael tosses the two-way aside. Moments later, when the tender swamps and tips over, he and the others are forced to watch in helpless horror as all aboard fall into the hungry jaws of the frenzied big-tooths.

  The sea around the capsized tender has turned red. Tarnmoor has once again gone quiet; the desperate cries of dying men tell him all he needs to know.

  The winches continue to turn. The ocean now laps at the Pequod’s stern bulwark. If the ship dips only a few feet more, the sea will flood over the aft deck, which is riddled with rust and soft spots.

  A handful of sailors are still clustered in the ship’s bow, literally holding on for dear life.

  “Look!” Gwen gasps. In the Pequod’s stern, Starbuck’s head comes into view as he grips the gunwale and pulls himself up. Ishmael doesn’t need the binoculars to see the blood running from the bright-red gash on the first mate’s forehead. Once again, Starbuck struggles toward the tower, the walkway now so steep that he must climb along the railing, clutching each baluster like a rung on a ladder.

  But the water has breached the stern bulwark and starts to flood the aft deck. The Pequod’s bow rises even higher, the ship now angled more than forty-five degrees.

  Starbuck, on his belly now, crawls to the open booth door and reaches in. An instant later, Ahab comes tumbling out, caught unawares by the hand that grasped his false leg. Both men fall down the walkway, but Starbuck grabs a baluster and stops his descent, while Ahab crashes gruesomely off the bulwark and disappears from sight.

  Blood pouring down his face, the first mate once again begins to drag himself along the walkway, desperately trying to reach the winch booth before it’s too late.

  “What’s happenin’, lad? What? What?” Tarnmoor pleads.

  His eyes pressed to the binoculars, Ishmael tells the old man everything he sees. “There’s still a chance. If Starbuck can stop the winches before too much water goes over the Pequod’s stern . . .”

  “He’ll do it or die tryin’,” Tarnmoor says. “He always dids have heart, that one. Damaged heart, true, buts heart just the same.”

  The Pequod juts up unnaturally from the seething sea, portholes along the hull blowing open as trapped air forces its way out. Flyers shriek, but the screams of the sailors have ceased. The tender floats upside down, the only sign of life in the bloody sea around it the red-tipped dorsal fins still slicing hungrily to and fro.

  Through the binoculars Ishmael can see the agonized grimace on Starbuck’s bloody face as he hauls himself hand over hand toward the control booth.

  He’s . . . almost . . . there . . .

  “He made it!” Ishmael exhales with relief as the first mate heaves himself into the control booth. A moment later, the huge winches stop, then begin to spin freely in reverse as the Great Terrafin escapes, stripping the green lines off the massive drums in a blur.

  An instant later, the lines pull free of the winches and disappear into the deep.

  Stillness again descends. Flyers circle but have ceased to cry. The big-tooths glide smoothly through the water, calmer now that their feast is over.

  The forward section of the Pequod stands almost perpendicular to the ocean.

  “How’s that possible?” Queequeg asks.

  “What now? What?” Tarnmoor begs.

  Ishmael tells him, and the old man blinks his unseeing eyes. “Aye, she’s been breached, then.” He speaks glumly. “Taked in too much a’ the sea. She’s in the ocean’s unmerciful grip. It’s hell and high water fer all.”

  Even as Tarnmoor speaks, more portholes burst, trapped air hissing out, and the upright ship begins to sink slowly almost straight down. Foot by foot, the hull disappears beneath the surface — reluctantly at first, but then gradually accelerating as seawater pours in through every rusty hole, burst porthole, and unsecured hatch. As the ship fills with water, the air swells with the clangs and groans of rending metal.

  The few remaining sailors in the bow leap desperately into the ocean, thrashing frantically to get as far away from the ship as possible. But they don’t stand a chance: Big-tooths slash through the water, and once again the chase-boat crews watch in helpless horror as men and women flail and scream and are pulled under. Flyers cry and reel above, and through them now plunges a great green winged beast, claws outstretched until it plucks a sailor from the sea and carries him off, wailing, into the sky.

  With a deafening hiss of steam escaping the flooded nuclear reactor, the Pequod drops deeper and deeper into the sea, until finally only the forecastle with its mighty harpoon cannon protrudes above the waves.

  It pauses there for an instant, as if gasping for one last breath.

  And then it’s gone.

  Where the Pequod was, there now is a gruesome calm. Nothing remains except torn, empty PFDs, floating debris, and pink-tinted bubbles bursting at the surface. The big-tooths have disappeared. The cries of the flyers diminish as they cease circling and begin to settle down.

  In the chase boat, Tarnmoor breaks the silence. “She gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahab with her?”

  “I think so.”

  “Starbuck?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Big-tooths got the rest?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The old blind man turns his face away. “However mans may brag a’ his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet forever and forever, to the crack a’ doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can makes.”

  Ishmael is still staring at the spot where the Pequod was only moments before, finding it difficult to believe that the ship truly is no more.

  Suddenly a box pops back up to the sur
face.

  Then a barrel.

  Then, two gasping sailors in PFDs!

  Ishmael reaches for Chase Boat Four’s controls, but the RTG sputters and stalls. He curses and tries again. Meanwhile, Tashtego’s chase boat has started toward the floating men, hoping to get to them before the big-tooths do.

  Ishmael is still trying to start the engine when the white-and-gray flyers dotting the surface abruptly begin flapping their wings. They take off all at once, squawking loudly.

  “What is it?” Tarnmoor asks urgently. “What’s spooked ’em?”

  “Probably Tashtego’s boat,” answers Queequeg. “He’s going for two sailors in the water.”

  Just then Chase Boat Four’s RTG catches and starts.

  “No! Don’t!” Tarnmoor cries. “Don’t go near ’em! Don’t!”

  “If we don’t get them, the big-tooths —” Ishmael doesn’t have time to finish the sentence. Two hundred yards away, the ocean erupts as the Great Terrafin bursts out of the sea, water streaming off its huge wings, still trailing half a dozen green harpoon lines from its back.

  For an instant Tashtego’s chase boat and the two sailors in the water are covered by an ominous shadow as the enormous beast blocks out the sun.

  CRASH!

  The Great Terrafin smashes back down.

  Waves roll away from the huge creature. On the only craft left afloat, Ishmael, Queequeg, Gwen, and Tarnmoor — all aware that escape is impossible — wait to see if it will turn on them next.

  The monster floats, motionless. Perhaps it’s Ishmael’s imagination, but he could swear that the Great Terrafin is looking at them with one of its huge, fathomless black eyes.

  “What’s it doing?” Gwen asks softly.

  It’s Tarnmoor who has the answer: “Deciding.”

  Ishmael’s vision is blurry and his mind foggy, but he knows he’s not aboard a ship because the floor beneath him does not rock. He’s lying on a cot in some kind of tent. From behind him, clear liquid runs down a thin tube and through the infuser attached to his arm. A band around his left wrist holds a sensor to his registry, no doubt feeding a constant stream of medical information to a monitor somewhere.

  Fragments of memories emerge from the mist in his mind:

  Drifting for days on a calm sea under the blistering hot sun. Parched, starving, dying of thirst. Lying with the others on the bottom of the chase boat, their heads under seats to keep their faces from being severely burned.

  Then a strange, pulsing storm from above. Wind and spray whipping around them while some roaring airborne thing hovered overhead. One by one they were lifted into the belly of the mechanical flying beast.

  Next a shadow over his face amid the roar, and a gentle hand behind his neck, tilting his head forward. Something hard and cool pressed against his lips. The fantastic sensation of fresh water in his mouth and against his tongue.

  “Try to drink,” a voice had said. “You’re badly dehydrated.”

  Strangely, the voice had sounded like Pip’s.

  Ishmael opens his eyes.

  “He’s awake,” someone says.

  Two unfamiliar people come into view and look down at him. One is a lanky man wearing a dark suit. His face is grave and lined, and his sandy gray hair falls onto his forehead. The other is a woman with a polished, egg-shaped head who is wearing a silver-gray suit. A man in the pale-blue jumpsuit of a medic removes the sensor from Ishmael’s left arm and scans his registry, purple light illuminating the elaborate gold filigree.

  “He’s stable,” the medic says, then leaves.

  The man in the dark suit and the bald woman gaze at each other.

  “It’s undoubtedly him,” the man says in a stern and authoritative manner. “The filigree, the lineage, the STR core loci. . . . It all corresponds perfectly.”

  “But look at him.” The bald woman sounds repulsed. “It’s not possible.”

  “You doubt the registry? The testing?”

  “Well . . . what do you imagine Mr. Bildad will do when he learns of this?”

  Ishmael listens with half an ear. He’s worried about Tarnmoor, Queequeg, and Gwen. Where are they? He props himself up and sees that his is the only bed in the tent, and there are two uniformed guards at the entrance. To his surprise, the effort to sit up leaves him breathless.

  “Easy, now.” The man gently presses him back onto the cot.

  “Where am I?” Ishmael asks.

  “In a medical tent,” the woman answers.

  “Yes, but where?” Overhead, daylight filters in and the sun is a glowing yellow spot against the gauzy tent material.

  “Please relax,” the man tells him, then looks at the woman. “To answer your question, I’m not sure that what Mr. Bildad thinks is our concern.”

  “I’d love to hear you tell him that,” the woman says abrasively.

  The medic in the pale-blue jumpsuit returns and holds a straw to Ishmael’s lips. He takes a sip. The liquid is sweet, thick, and chalky. . . . It’s Natrient!

  “Yuck.” Ishmael turns his head away.

  “You have to drink it,” the medic says in a soothing tone. “You’re severely malnourished, and you’ve been further weakened by a parasitic infection. This is easy to digest. It’ll help you get your strength back.”

  Ishmael reluctantly takes the straw between his lips. The thick glop makes him shiver with memories of life back on Earth. Archie. Petra and Joachim. Old Ben. The dark dustiness of Black Range. Not even a year since he left, and yet it feels like a lifetime ago.

  “If you’re finished, you may go, Nazik.” The woman flicks her hand as if shooing away an annoying insect. “Please inform the guards that they are not to let anyone else in.”

  She looks back down at Ishmael. There is something odd about her eyes, but he can’t figure out what it is. “I am Chief Compliance Officer Valente, and this gentleman is Bartleby. There’s much we need to know about what happened to the Pequod. Especially pertaining to the matter of —”

  Ishmael cuts her short. “There were three others with me. Are they okay? Do you know where they are?”

  The bald woman appears annoyed that he’s interrupted her.

  “Why don’t you give him the HMD?” Bartleby suggests.

  “I thought I could ask some questions first,” she protests.

  Bartleby remains firm. “The HMD.”

  She sighs and hands Ishmael a head-mounted display. “From a friend of yours.”

  Ishmael puts on the HMD. It’s a private Z-pack, which must be activated by his registry. The next thing he knows, he’s in a large room dominated by a long, polished oval table. The walls are paneled with dark wood, and the heavy maroon curtains that frame the windows are held by thick gold ropes. The air feels cool and smells slightly of fresh paint.

  “Greetings!” Ishmael finds himself facing Pip, dressed in an ornate gold-embroidered tunic. He’s smiling. “I’m so absolutely delighted that you’ve survived. After the initial reports, we thought that everyone on board the Pequod had perished. I know you must be worried about Gwen and Queequeg, but be assured that they’re being treated well and are not far from you.

  “You’ll probably learn a lot in the coming days that will be surprising. I had hoped to be the one to brief you on the situation, but I’m afraid things are rather chaotic at the moment and I’ve had to entrust the task to others. For now, please answer all of CCO Valente’s questions about the destruction of the Pequod. Your cooperation will be greatly appreciated.”

  The scene morphs, the room fading away, leaving Pip’s head and shoulders against a shimmering silver background. “I always knew you were someone special, my friend. I’m glad to be proved right about that.”

  The Z-pack ends and Ishmael takes off the HMD, feeling even more confused. What was Pip talking about? And where is Pip, anyway? He can’t have gone back to Earth. Is he still here on Cretacea? Or has he gone to one of the other feeder planets?

  The good news is that Gwen and Queequeg are alive. Bu
t Pip said nothing about Tarnmoor. “There was an old blind man with us,” Ishmael says. “Tarnmoor, the Pequod’s swabbie.”

  Valente and Bartleby cast questioning looks across the cot. Then Bartleby says, “There were only three of you in the chase boat.”

  Ishmael’s memory may be foggy, but he thinks he’d remember if something had happened to Tarnmoor. “Could you please check?”

  Valente frowns. “There’s a great deal of more pertinent information I have to gather. This really isn’t the time —”

  Bartleby breaks in. “Considering this young man’s acts of heroism, I suggest you look into it.”

  Ishmael isn’t sure what acts of heroism Bartleby is referring to, but he’s not about to argue.

  The bald woman sighs. “What was the name again?”

  Ishmael tells her, and she speaks to her tablet: “Find Tarnmoor, swabbie on the Pequod.”

  While they wait for the results, Bartleby has the faraway look of someone listening to something through an earbud. Valente’s impatient scowl grows deeper with each passing moment. Finally, the tablet reports back: “Tarnmoor, rank of first mate, perished in the Essex disaster.”

  Bartleby clears his throat. “Approximately a hundred and seventy-five years ago, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “No, he survived the Essex disaster,” Ishmael insists. “He was a swabbie on the Pequod and was with us in the chase boat when the Pequod was pulled under.”

  Valente’s carefully manicured eyebrows jump. “‘Pulled under’? Don’t tell me you’re also going to claim the ship was destroyed by a mythical enormous white three-tailed terrafin?”

  Ishmael is shocked by the accusation. “There’s nothing mythical about it,” he says. “It’s as real as you and me. Ask anyone who was on —” He was going to say “on the Pequod” but remembers that Pip said everyone else had perished.

  “The only ones left are you and your two friends,” Valente replies. “And the three of you were found in a state of delirium. If it’s any consolation, you’re not the first sailors to experience collective delusions under extreme duress. The brain is a remarkable and often confounding organ.”