Ship of the Damned

by James F. David

  ALERT

  Robert Daly studied his son’s latest creation with dismay. It was a credenza, and like the desk his son had created, it was made of glass and bronze. Each corner of the rectangular structure was held together with twisted brass tubing, each unique, each uglier than the last. The brass continued along the joints of the credenza, holding the pieces of glass together. The large brass corners meant that the credenza couldn’t be pushed flat against a wall like his old one, and it now protruded into his Chicago office. Even more annoying was the fact that it was made of glass. Nothing could be kept inside the piece of art without being seen. The reports that had been removed from his old credenza were stacked on the floor, and Daly wondered where his wife and son expected him to store them. One piece of furniture at a time, his wife and son were slowly turning his office into a museum of modern art. He detested modern art.

  His secretary buzzed and then forwarded a call from New Mexico. This was the second call from New Mexico in the last few hours. The foundation monitored activity at Rainbow from a secret facility just outside Rainbow’s perimeter, intercepting scrambled satellite communications and cellular-phone calls. Also, because the field was imperfect at bending light, they were able to indirectly monitor the electromagnetic field.

  Victor Munoz, one of the young Ph.D.’s hired to work the facility, was on the line and very excited.

  “There is movement in the field again,” Munoz blurted out. “Something is happening.”

  “Is it reshaping again?” Daly asked calmly.

  “No, sir. It’s constricting,” Munoz said.

  Daly understood the implications of a constricting field. Ever since the government had discovered the effect of the field on the men inside, it had tried to destroy the Norfolk and its little separate pocket of space-time. Finally, the government had succeeded, and would kill Dr. Kellum, the Norfolk’s crew, and its own people. Daly wondered about the Nimitz, since his intelligence indicated that the government did not want to destroy Pot of Gold with the carrier and its nuclear weapons inside.

  “How long will the field last?” Daly asked.

  “If the shrinkage remains constant it won’t last more than twelve hours.”

  Daly knew that time in Pot of Gold was perceived differently, and that those inside would live out the last dozen hours of Pot of Gold in what would feel like a couple of hours, or even minutes. He felt responsible for those he had manipulated into entering the Norfolk’s universe, and especially for Monica Kim—but he didn’t feel guilty. Rescuing Dr. Kellum had long been a goal of the foundation. What was happening to the Norfolk was tragic, but out of that tragedy would come the possibility of instantaneous travel from point to point, and even to other worlds. The secret was locked inside the Norfolk with Dr. Kellum, and if it cost lives to recover him, those deaths would be more than compensated for by the new technologies. Now, however, it looked as if they would lose both the technological secrets and those he had sent inside.

  “What do you want me to do?” Munoz asked.

  “Monitor the field until it is gone. Record everything, no matter how trivial.”

  Pot of Gold was doomed, but the game wasn’t over. Ralph was the wild card in the deck. He had escaped from Pot of Gold before. If he did, the Office of Special Projects would intercept him and anyone with him. Daly hung up on Munoz and asked his secretary to get the foundation’s security chief on the line.

  NORFOLK’S SCREAM

  Roberto set a reckless pace through the Norfolk, gambling that the Crazies were behind them. Through Dawson’s body, Elizabeth sensed the desperation and anger of the Crazies, as if the ship itself was vibrating with it, telegraphing the message of their insane desperation to every level. When Roberto led them through the wardroom and outside, they understood the Crazies’ fear. The nothingness that was the edge of their world was getting noticeably closer. Moving like the minute hand of a clock, too slow to be perceived, the opaque wall of force was creeping toward the Norfolk.

  As they climbed through the superstructure toward the conning tower, a sailor stepped from a gun emplacement and fell into step, talking to Roberto.

  “The field’s collapsing,” the worried sailor announced.

  “The generators are dead,” Roberto said.

  The sailor’s face paled.

  “What are we going to do, Dawson?” the sailor said, falling back to walk with Elizabeth. “Without the generators—man-oh-man we’re so dead.”

  “We’ll find a way out,” Elizabeth said through Dawson’s body.

  “Is Anita still with you?” Wes asked.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “She’s a strong little girl, but I don’t know how much more she can take. Her body is exhausted, and a person can only operate at a crisis level for so long.”

  Wes knew that everything Elizabeth said about Anita applied to her, too.

  “Have Shamita and Len reestablished contact?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said.

  It was a race now to find a way off of the ship before the Crazies caught them or the field collapsed. As Roberto and Ralph led them through combinations that took them to new levels of the ship, they picked up more sailors left behind to guide Jett and his people. As the group grew, their pace slowed.

  Jett moved forward to walk with Ralph.

  “When we get out of here, let’s go get some gum,” Jett said.

  “How about that pink stuff?” Ralph said, a smile spreading from ear to ear.

  “Not that stuff that stinks?” Jett said, smiling back.

  “Pee-yew!” the men said together, Ralph snorting and grinning.

  It wasn’t funny, and Wes couldn’t understand why Jett was playing along with Ralph.

  “Jealous?” Elizabeth said.

  It was Dawson’s deep voice, but the taunting tone was familiar to Wes.

  “Of course not,” Wes said.

  Now they came out on deck again and were horrified to see the opaque wall within arm’s reach of the railing.

  “How much further?” Jett called to Roberto.

  “Soon,” Roberto shouted over his shoulder.

  “Are we going to make it?” Elizabeth asked Jett.

  “We have a chance,” Jett said evenly. “I’m betting on my friend Ralph to find us a way out of here.”

  “I’ll do my best, Nate,” Ralph said.

  “Well okee-dokee then,” Jett said.

  Ralph snorted, smiling wide enough to show his wisdom teeth.

  Wes frowned, concerned that Jett was using Ralph.

  “I can feel something,” Elizabeth said.

  Jett was instantly business, gun in his hand.

  “Crazies?” Jett asked.

  “I don’t think so. There are a lot of people ahead.”

  They found seventy or eighty people gathered. The group was a mix of sailors, civilian women, and children, all dressed in a bizarre variety of clothes representing the last five decades. As Jett moved to the lead, the people parted for him, looking to him with hopeful faces. Jett ignored them, heading directly to a middle-aged man peering over the side of the ship and hanging onto his glasses to keep from losing them. When he saw Jett, he looked relieved.

  “We found three new levels and dozens of new branches,” the man announced.

  “But no exits,” Jett finished for him.

  “I have scouts out now, but we have very little time.”

  Wes stared at the man who was speaking with Jett, recognizing him from somewhere. He was balding, with what little hair he had spread thin across his scalp. As he struggled to recognize him, Monica pushed her way through.

  “Doctor Walter Kellum,” Monica said, holding out her hand. “I’ve been sent to bring you home.”

  Then Wes recognized him. Walter Kellum had died fifty years before. A confidant of Einstein, he had participated in early theoretical work on the atom bomb before splitting off to work on another classified weapon system. He had died mysteriously during the Second World War; his estate endowe
d the foundation. Now all the pieces came together. The Philadelphia Experiment, the Kellum Foundation’s involvement, and his own role. Monica had brought the dreamers to Wes in order to manipulate him into helping to find Dr. Kellum.

  “You were sent?” Kellum asked, confused.

  “The trustees—” Monica began.

  “Can the foundation get us out?” Jett asked, cutting her off.

  “No, we’ll have to get out on our own,” Monica said, looking to Ralph.

  Jett turned to Ralph, who smiled broadly.

  “Find us a way out,” Jett said.

  “I don’t know, Nate,” Ralph began.

  “For a banana split,” Jett said.

  “Well okee-dokee then,” Ralph said. Then, to Dr. Kellum, he said, “Do you gots your ship with the spaghetti in it?”

  Kellum shouted orders, and the ship model was brought forward.

  “Can I hold it? I won’t break it or nothing, I promise.”

  Dr. Kellum handed it over to Ralph who held it like a newborn baby while he stared into the maze of wires. Instantly, his face went blank.

  Suddenly there was an ear-piercing scream. Wes clapped his hands over his ears to stop the pain. Then the Norfolk shuddered, sending those on deck stumbling and grabbing each other to keep from falling.

  “The field is touching the ship!” someone shouted when the nerve-wracking scream had died down.

  Wes could feel the ship vibrating from the pressure of the collapsing field. Jett stepped to Ralph, touching his arm.

  “Ralph, we’re out of time. Take your best shot.”

  Ralph’s eyes came to life again and his grin returned.

  “For a banana split?” he said. “Follow me.”

  Wes watched amazed as eighty people fell in behind Ralph, trusting their lives to him. Wes followed, too, as confident in Ralph as he had ever been in anyone.

  BYSTANDERS

  “Let’s go back in,” Len said.

  “We can’t help,” Shamita argued. “There’s no point.”

  “I want to know what’s happening.”

  “They’re dying,” Shamita said. “Does it really matter how?”

  Shamita was standing by Anita’s cot, stroking the unconscious girl’s hair. Anita’s respiration was rapid, her blood pressure and heart rate falling. Her body had fought the good fight, but now it was wearing out. Len stood by Elizabeth’s cot, noticing that her red hair had lost its normal sheen. Her face was gaunt, the skin baggy under her eyes. Like Anita’s, her vital signs had peaked an hour earlier, her blood pressure high rising enough to cause a stroke if there been any weaknesses in her vessel walls. Her sympathetic nervous system was in overdrive, adrenaline flooding her circulatory system. With no blood sugars to metabolize, and the sugar reserves in her liver exhausted, Elizabeth’s body had defaulted to metabolizing proteins—Elizabeth’s body was digesting itself.

  Studying Elizabeth’s haggard face, Len agreed silently with Shamita. It didn’t matter how they died, only that they would.

  “It matters a whole hell of a lot how you die,” Wanda said suddenly, as if she read Len’s mind.

  Wanda was sitting on her cot, legs dangling, cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.

  “Your friend Elizabeth is trying to save that little girl and her friends, and that’s what I call death with dignity,” Wanda said. “I’d take her death over mine any day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

  Shamita started to speak, but Wanda talked over her.

  “Know how I’m going to die? Alone in a nursing home, being cared for by strangers. Dying alone, without friends or family, that’s a terrible death. Take the advice of an old woman and be there with your friend when it happens.”

  Shamita stroked Anita’s hair another minute, thinking.

  “I’ll begin the integration,” she said.

  “Anita’s mother should be here,” Len said.

  As Len walked to the door, he pointed at Wanda.

  “If you’re such a smart old lady, then why are you still smoking?”

  “Because it annoys the hell out of people like you,” Wanda said. “Ha!”

  RALPH’S LEAD

  Ralph stopped suddenly, and Elizabeth ran into him. Instantly, there was a traffic jam spreading back through the compartment they had just left. They had just made another of the space-bending connections that characterized the interior of the Norfolk, leaving the deck near midships, and entering the superstructure just behind one of the gun emplacements. Now they found themselves in a long corridor lined with crew berths.

  “What’s wrong?” Jett asked Ralph.

  “It’s the same only different,” he replied.

  “This must be one of the new levels,” Kellum said, holding the ship map out to Ralph. “The scouts found this line branched, and went here and here,” he added pointing inside the model.

  Ralph took the ship model and stared at the multicolored wire strung through its interior, his face blank, his lips puckered.

  Elizabeth looked down at Anita, who now resembled one of the stick figures in her drawings. The little girl had suffered so much, personally and empathically, that she had repressed all feeling and was nearly catatonic.

  Breaking his trance, Ralph said, “I’ll be right back.”

  Jett started after him, but Elizabeth held him back.

  “We’ve trusted him this far,” she said.

  Jett stayed, his hand resting on his gun, his eyes on Ralph.

  Ralph walked left down the corridor that normally led through crew berths and below the aft eight-inch gun emplacement, ending at the hangar. Jett paced restlessly while he was gone. A minute later Ralph was back, walking past them and down the narrow corridor in the other direction. This time Ralph took longer. Just when Jett was ready to go after him, there was another high-pitched scream of metal buckling under enormous pressure, and the ship shuddered again, hard enough to stagger them and elicit cries from the crowd.

  When the noise stopped and the vibrations died, Elizabeth realized that the ship was tilting.

  “We’re listing to starboard,” Kellum said. “It was the ship’s symmetry that allowed the poles to orient forward and aft, keeping the ship perfectly balanced on her keel. If we’re listing, it means part of the hull has been crushed, distorting the lines of force.”

  “Does that give us more time, or less time?” Jett said, cutting to the real issue.

  “Less, but even worse, it means some passages may be impassable.”

  “Okee-dokee, let’s go,” Ralph said, coming back with a big grin and motioning them toward the stern.

  “Go, go, go,” Jett shouted, hurrying everyone after Ralph.

  Elizabeth was horrified to see the corridor ahead filled with body parts. Arms protruded from bulkheads with hands clenched, legs hung from the deck above so low that they had to duck to pass. A half man in the deck forced the crowd to flow around him the way a mountain stream flows around a rock. There were more body parts here than in any other corridor she had seen.

  “I want to go home,” Anita told Elizabeth. She was still invisible to everyone but her.

  “We’re trying, Anita. Remember, this is just a dream and it will be over soon.”

  “It’s not a dream. It’s real.”

  “Yes. It’s real,” Elizabeth admitted.

  Elizabeth held Anita’s hand. Ralph led with Kellum right behind, cradling his model ship in his arms like a mother holds her baby. Monica kept no more than a step or two behind Dr. Kellum at all times, eyes busy, body alert, moving much like Jett and Peters.

  Elizabeth and Wes were in the lead group, too, along with Jett and Roberto and a half-dozen armed men who flanked them whenever there was room. Peters was in the rear with another armed group. The women and children had gathered in the middle.

  Suddenly someone shouted from the rear, and the message was carried forward.

  “Crazies coming,” a relay yelled.

  Kellum immediately turned to Elizabeth, se
eing her as Dawson.

  “Do you feel them, Dawson? Where are they?”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, giving more of herself over to the Dawson part. She could feel the anger and the desperation of the Crazies, and the one common thought they all shared.

  “They’re coming for you, Dr. Kellum,” she said.

  “Are they close?” Jett demanded.

  “I can feel them everywhere,” Elizabeth said.

  “They must be behind us,” Wes said.

  “We have to keep moving. Go, Ralph,” Jett shouted.

  The ship vibrated constantly now, its tilt noticeably worse. Like a squad of marines infiltrating hostile territory, they hurried, staying close to one another, checking every berth and compartment they passed.

  A flash of light announced the attack; that was followed by panicky screams and shouting. The sputter of Peters’s gun sounded over the grunts and groans of hand-to-hand combat. Armed men rushed to the rear as the women herded the children forward, jamming the corridor.

  Jett took charge, telling a third of the men to guard Ralph and Dr. Kellum at the point and ordering the rest into side compartments so that the women and children could get through. Once the corridor cleared, he sent reinforcements to the rear, and then positioned the rest of the men in hatches to leave the central corridor free for retreat. Kellum had three powerful Specials in his group; a fire thrower, the old woman who created illusions, and a psychokinetic. Jett held these in reserve.

  “Elizabeth, can you hear me?” Shamita said.

  “Yes, Shamita,” Elizabeth said.

  “Tell them to try shutting down your entire cortex,” Wes said from behind her. “Block all higher functions. Anita, too.”

  “We’ll be unconscious,” Elizabeth said.

  “Yes.”

  “But we’ll still be linked to this body—to Dawson.”

  “It might break the link.”

  “But if the link isn’t broken, then what happens to this man?” Elizabeth said.

  Elizabeth sensed that Wes was holding something back. His love for her was distorting his thinking, causing him to overlook Dawson.