Farley held the dog on its leash; Alastair suggested letting Varmint off the leash, that they needed a fast resolution to this scavenger hunt before Titanic should gain another mile at sea.
“But we need to be cautious, boss,” replied Farley. “For one thing, if he gets too far ahead of us, we could lose Varmint on this monster ship. Another concern is them fellas chasing us. If they see Varmint and throw a net over him, we’ve lost this game—whatever it is.”
“As Sherlock would say, ‘Watson, the game’s afoot!’” quoted Declan with a half smile curling his lip.
Ransom took Farley aside, “All right… we keep him on a tight rein for now, but if he alerts on something, we have to let ’im go and do his—his—”
Farley smiled. “Magic.”
“Yes, his nose-magic, right.”
“Deal then,” began Farley, taking each of these men in one at a time with his jaundiced eye. “Now can you blokes tell me what in the name of creation you’re really after?”
“In due time, Mr. Farley… in due time.”
Nodding, Declan remarked, “Our most precious commodity now… time itself.”
TWENTY NINE
David Ingles had read on in Declan Irvin’s journal while waiting for everything to be sorted out, and he’d gained a great deal of startling details that seemed to rush at him from the past and corroborate so much of what Kelly Irvin had said that first night she’d teased him to her cabin not for a romantic interlude, not even for unabashed sex, but to lure him into being her co-conspirator against the unknown killer aboard Scorpio.
According to all that David Ingles had read in Declan’s journal, whatever this unknown creature was, it had planted its seed in multiple human hosts on board Titanic. It had also spawned eggs discovered during autopsies secretly performed by the medical men of 1912 in the sealed compartment of a deep freezer, and now Kelly was certain the creature had somehow survived Titanic and had returned for its progeny—and that it knew precisely where its young lay dormant and waiting.
This portended badly for them all; it meant anyone infected now could conceivably carry viable eggs capable of hatching within a deceased host body to infect other people on Scorpio as it had on Titanic. While Kelly believed otherwise, who was to say that Alandale and Ford had not become breeding grounds for more of these things? Where the creature had once been weak, it had grown in strength. It meant that the two bodies on ice on Scorpio could well be nourishing viable young creatures that meant to explode on the world unless destroyed—but perhaps not; perhaps Kelly was correct in saying the creature had only so many opportunities to replenish itself, and that the frozen embryonic creatures inside Titanic represented its last hope.
The great fear that had brought Titanic’s captain on board with the idea—according to his having leapt ahead in his reading—that Titanic must go down was born somewhere below where David now found himself.
It has to be in one of the freezer compartments.
David realized he must relay information to Captain Forbes about the possible dangers lurking within the bodies he had on board Scorpio, and he meant to do so now. He spoke directly to Forbes and Entebbe through the open lines of the com-link, telling them in a compelling voice that they must locate and read the journal he’d hidden in the wall of his cabin, and after that they must autopsy Ford’s and Alandale’s mummified remains. “Pay particular attention to the viscera and determine if there’s anything unusual, any danger to you from an unknown disease.”
They immediately suggested that the pressures at which David was working had begun to work on his mind.
Others hearing the transmissions tried to cheer David on, some from as far away as the other section of Titanic, but not a word from either Kelly or Swigart.
David pushed for the men on Scorpio to listen to him. “As soon as you can, crack open the dead men’s chests! Please, you gotta listen and do what I tell ya!” No sooner than he’d said it, David realized he sounded like a maniac.
No one on board Scorpio was taking him seriously.
“As soon as we dispense with the pressing business at hand,” Mr. Ingles,” Forbes ‘humored’ him, “we’ll get right on it.”
Things felt all wrong. He didn’t like Forbes’ snarky reply followed by Entebbe telling him to calm down and that his blood pressure was racing skyward. Nor did David like Swigart’s sudden, last minute change of plans down here. It didn’t make sense. It went against who Lou Swigart was. First the separating of the original team assignments, then allowing even the reserve diver along, and finally the whole bit with the photo op of the entire group. It was so unlike Lou. Now this, David sent off with Jacob in one direction, Lou taking Kelly off in another, endangering the group and the mission by splitting up.
It’d been difficult to watch her swim off with Lou; more difficult still to helplessly see them slip through the gaping, tattered end where Titanic had ripped herself apart, watching Kelly disappear from sight.
The debris field here looked like the remnants of an explosion, giant, toppled over smoke stacks, enormous boilers askew, and whole slabs of the deck literally blown apart by the uncontrolled, two and a half mile dive at enormous speed which Titanic had taken. The bulkhead at mid-ship having come apart, resulting in a huge gaping hole—the entire framework was ripped from port side to starboard as if Poseidon himself had ripped it open with his bare hands.
In short, this was likely the most dangerous place for Kelly and Swigart to have entered the ship—loose dangling wires, sharp edges, six to fourteen foot-long rust fingers looking like tree branches anxious to snag a passing diver. A single rent in their liquid air paks or Cryo-suits could cause a leak or a loss of pressure or loss of the OPFC, which meant certain death at these depths. It seemed to David that Lou was taking dangerous chances with all their lives. This came in the form of his random choices plucked from the air, and in his taking unnecessary risks. For one, he should have located a safer point of entry or remained with David and Jacob.
Then, too, there were the sudden last minute changes in assigned dive partners. Kelly was originally to be with Mendenhall, and David with Bowman, but they’d been shuffled at the last minute without explanation. Nothing rational there, a break in logic and planning and organization—as if to prime them for the unexpected perhaps? Or was it something more sinister?
But for the moment, David’s immediate fear was getting himself snagged on some object, losing suit integrity and losing the liquid breathing medium. A Styrofoam ice chest at these depths would be turned into a cube the size of his thumbnail and as dense as granite—and he imagined his body reacting the same way. Should a diver lose his or her liquid air, he or she would implode before any chance of getting to another breath of the life-sustaining liquid medium could be inhaled.
He turned to follow Mendenhall who signaled that he was going down the Grand Staircase, entering the foyer ahead of David. This was the safest, widest entry to the ship, and from Ballard’s earlier robotic investigations, they had all learned that it would take them to B-Deck at very least, and quite possibly even further into the bowels of the wreck. As strange as it was for David to admit, diving Titanic had quickly become like making any wreck dive—assume danger and death awaited at every turn, and acknowledge that going into any interior was dangerous in and of itself. Any diver who had been inside a wreck knew that a ship might openly invite you in, but it might not let you leave. Something about Titanic only amplified this fear and made him relive the exact moment he lost his friend Terry Wilcox.
Even swimming as cautiously as possible, David and Jacob found their movement cracked away decades of rust, creating a cloud of particles around them as they went. The wooden stairwell on which they stood quivered like a gelatin surfaces under their feet, as wood-boring organisms had reduced the once glorious stairwell planking to a thin, weak apparition of its former beauty.
As they worked their way downward, their lights revealed the path ahead, where scattered debris tigh
tened the space, making it impossible to turn or maneuver. David watched as Mendenhall repeatedly pointed to their feet at what was once the beautiful stained glass doorway granting entry to the First Class Ballroom and from there to the First Class Saloon, which in 1912 was the term for the dining area. They were in fact gliding over top of the spiraling staircase inside the ballroom. Arm-sized statutes lay like discarded children’s toys about the stairs beneath them, and an enormous wall clock with a pair of Grecian goddess statues lay in ruins at the bottom of the staircase.
“We should continue down the main stairwell and get below—to the lower decks, Jacob,” said David over the com-link.
“If we can get to the other side of the Grand Saloon, David, we are likely to have a clear shot at the cargo hold without having to duck and weave through so much debris.”
“Makes sense, except we don’t know what kind of debris lies ahead in either direction.”
“I’m going this way; you do as you wish.”
David wasn’t about to let Mendenhall out of his sight, not deep inside the wreck. He recalled from the final chapters of the journal how the heroics of April 14th, 1912 had kept the creature at bay.
At least David had more weapons at his disposal than Ransom and the young interns had that fateful night; David had his laser knife strapped to his hip.
For the moment though, he lifted a loose pipe the size of his forearm, pretending to use it to tap his way along and push away any threatening debris that might tear his protective suit. In fact, the pipe could put a hole through Mendenhall’s Cryo-suit or tear rents into his breathing pack, thus killing Mendenhall and the thing within him instantly if need be.
Mendenhall swam on, looking like a long, lean eel ahead of David. Reassuringly for David, Jacob had made no move to get in behind him and likely felt no need to. If he wished to attack David under these circumstances, at these depths, he risked also killing himself in any struggle. At this depth, any sort of altercation could go either way. David felt relatively safe from the beast possibly residing inside Mendenhall, knowing it to be shrewd and calculating, that it would choose its moment with care. So close to its goal, it would take few to no risks. It wouldn’t dare attempt a migration of souls here. There was the Cryo-suit to consider, the liquid air filling both their lungs, not to mention the enormity of the water pressure on their bodies as well as the bitter cold which it had to be terrified of. What might have worked so efficiently against Alandale and Ford on the surface, didn’t stand a chance here.
David strained to see over Jacob’s back at what lay ahead of them. He saw that Mendenhall now pounded at a door that refused to open. He suddenly looked like a trapped animal, searching for alternative paths. He went left, right, overhead where he stood, and then down to where his feet had been, all to no avail. He then grabbed up a small beam the size of a man’s leg and began pounding away once more at the doorway that refused to budge as it was near impossible to get anything resembling a powerful swing going here under water.
“Jacob! It’s no use this way!” David warned him, trying to show the danger of what he was doing. “Are you nuts? Something comes down on you! Or tears your suit, man, you’re dead faster than a Titanic minute. You want this to be your deathtrap and mine?”
Mendenhall acted like a man possessed, as he kept pounding at the doorway. David rushed him and in one swift move, yanked the beam from his hands, shouting, “Stop it! You’ll bring the whole place down on us.”
“You just watch me!” he shouted back as if oblivious to the danger.
David wondered if the pressures here were not getting to them all.
The sound of metal straining to maintain what little integrity remained in these iron walls seemed to reply to David’s silent question. The huge rivets on the interior walls were slowly creaking and moaning, ghost-like. This bit of eeriness and Mendenhall’s rash action, which had sent up a sandy shower of spores, made the creepiness so much more nerve-wracking. At the moment, David felt as if someone was indeed plucking at his nerves as if they were banjo strings.
Suddenly and without warning, as if Titanic were protecting herself from these intruders, the boards below Mendenhall gave way beneath his feet, and suddenly he was snatching at the water overhead.
Both divers managed to avoid being sucked into the sudden gaping vortex Mendenhall’s carelessness had created. As the silt settled, the lights from their masks broke through the darkness to reveal the next level below; more of the same—utter darkness.
Mendenhall immediately made a move to dive below, but David grabbed his arm and using gestures and words cautioned him, speaking into his com-link, “It needs to be larger; you don’t want to rip your suit or your pack, Jacob.”
David had dropped the pipe he’d earlier picked up, and using the beam he’d taken from Mendenhall, he struck the spongy boards and loose piping at their feet. He did so somewhat blindly, unable to clearly see with all the silt, plankton, and spores floating before their masks, filling their vision, when suddenly a third voice cut in on their com-link.
It was the startled voice of Captain Forbes from Scorpio two and a half miles above. “You two need to be far, far more careful, Ingles! Mendenhall!”
“All we can see up here is the cloud you’ve created!” added a startled Dr. Entebbe.
“Never mind about us,” replied David. “We’re fine so far, but how’re Lou and Kelly Irvin doing? Are their vitals OK?”
“We’re unsure about Swigart and Irvin,” replied Forbes. “Lost contact early on with Lou, then her. Frantically trying to reach them! Hoping you might rendezvous with them—check up on ’em.”
“Can’t contact them? What the hell does that mean? Keep trying!” David was sure that the others must hear the depth of his concern for Kelly.
“We’re doing all we can to re-establish contact. Might be due to a magnetic field in that part of the ship. Not sure.”
“Guide us toward them then. We’re just below the Grand Saloon and I think we’re in what appears to be the First Class Smoking Room.”
“It’s definitely the smoking room,” Mendenhall added, pointing out familiar looking décor down to the floating divans, the shattered chandeliers—crystal still shimmering like glass beads all round. Judging from the diagrams and photos they had all studied, David knew as well as Jacob precisely where they were. Still, David wondered if Mendenhall—or the thing within him—had once, a hundred years ago, been in this room.
“Hold on, Jacob! This has to be the Third Class Smoking Room,” shouted David. “There were three, First, Second, and Third. Judging from where we entered, this has to be Third Class, and let’s hope so; if it’s First Class, we’re turned around and going in the wrong direction.”
“Yes… yes, of course, we must be certain of our direction,” Jacob ceded. “It’s freakin’ easy to get turned around down here.”
“Easy on a map but the real thing is difficult! No Google directions are gonna work down here.”
“Google? What’re you talking about?” Mendenhall sounded confused. David wondered if the pressures weren’t affecting his mind, and if not the pressures then the creature. David, one hand on his laser knife in its scabbard, could only wait and watch; he must study every nuance he saw in Jacob’s behavior to be sure, before he killed the man.
THIRTY
Captain Forbes remained unhappy with them and with Lou Swigart’s last minute decisions. He was ranting about Swigart’s being silent too long, along with Kelly; this worried David even more, creating a powerful anxiety that had begun to register with those above who were monitoring his vital signs. He called out to them, “Are you saying you have lost vital signs for Irvin and Swigart as well as coms?”
“That’s affirmative!” shouted Forbes. “And as for you two, we cannot see you. Our best technology and all we can see is silt—thick as snow on a TV screen.”
“For the moment, we’re enveloped in micro-organisms! Nothing we can do to improve your picture.”
/> “We’re all right, Captain,” Mendenhall assured those monitoring from above. “Everything you touch down here creates a cloud.”
“Go cautiously, you two. We’re monitoring your vital signs. So far, so good—but Ingles, you’re getting erratic. Calm down; go easy but go fast toward where Irvin and Swigart entered the ship. I fear Lou’s last decision was ill conceived—and I hope you are getting this, Lou!”
“Lou’s the boss!” shouted Mendenhall.
“That’s right, Captain,” added David, giving thought to his earlier suspicions of Swigart.
Forbes ordered, “Clear your cameras of debris when you get out of the spore fog, please.” Captain Forbes’ voice came over like a robot due to the electronic filters.
As quickly as that, they were inside Titanic’s gymnasium and what was once the adjacent pool area. Turning through a blown open doorway, moving as gracefully as a pair of swordfish, they found themselves in an elevator, its once ornate filigree rusted with age.
“This doesn’t look too promising,” muttered Mendenhall, his voice masked by the metallic signal.
“There’s got to be one, maybe two dead-zone areas at the bottom of Titanic, Ingles,” Mendenhall said as if to convince himself of it. A dead zone would insure that anything within its influence will not have deteriorated as no life existed in such and area.”
“All the literature says so,” David replied.
“Shall we take the elevator?” joked Mendenhall, something David had never encountered before now. A lot of firsts going on fast down here, he thought, even as the rush of excitement of at last being here filled his mind.
Instead of the ease of riding a working elevator car down, they instead had to take the elevator apart, bending back the ornate door far enough so they could get through without ripping their suits.
Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 38
