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Four days out of Bayonne, the Phineas Cartwright was still several hundred miles short of the planned search area---a turtle pace that exasperated Sterling Lancaster.
He was the only unhappy person on the ship. The weather was perfect and the voyage silky-smooth, thanks not just to the gentleness of the Atlantic's swells but to the fact that Prester had installed liner-type stabilizers on the old minelayer. The atmosphere was that of a pleasure cruise, not an expedition; the sight of Thaddeus Blackwood jogging on the deck each morning, Riker smelling the sea breezes, and Barnes's daily sunbath on the fantail---they all might as well have been carefree tourists.
Not Sterling Lancaster.
"Prester told me this scow could do eighteen knots," he complained to Captain Knight. "We've been averaging ten."
The skipper shifted the ever-present corncob from one side of his mouth to the other. "She'd do eighteen knots easy before she had to carry all the weight you've added---winches, cranes, and damn near eleven miles of steel cable," he said placidly. "Not to mention that sub; you're lucky she's making ten knots. You'll just have to be patient."
Lancaster grinned. "It's impossible to be patient when you're crawling ten knots toward a thirty-million-dollar legend."
Knight said seriously, "Sterling, if I ask these engines for any more speed, we're going to break down considerably short of that pot. The head temps already are running higher than I like. We're asking a lot of this old girl."
"Yes, I know," Lancaster said. "Sorry, Alex, I'm bitching like an old woman. It's just that I can't wait to get there."
"There is nearly fifteen hundred miles from Bayonne. And we don't know where there is located, do we?"
"Ever the skeptic, Al. At any rate, all except me seem to be having a good time."
"They're sure as hell eating well," Knight observed.
That they were, thanks to Bertie Prester's proclivity for seagoing luxury. He'd brought along---over his wife's objections---the family cook, which in itself was something of a misnomer. Travis Hertzog could more properly be called a chef, the kind of culinary wizard who could work magic with the simplest ingredients. Hertzog was pencil-thin, in his early fifties, and looked as if he never ate anyone's cooking, including his own. He came aboard the Phineas Cartwright five days before they sailed; up to then, they had sampled virtually every restaurant in Bayonne.
"I hired him right off an Israeli cruise ship," Prester explained after the first dinner at sea drew raves---a succulent beef Wellington. "He thinks I'm a savage because I'm strictly a meat-and-potatoes man, but he'll fix anything I ask. The guy knows herbs and spices like Union Carbide knows chemicals."
Lancaster noted with interest that Prester insisted on the crew being served the same meals as everyone else, although they had their own dining quarters. Only Captain Knight ate with the key expedition members, and sometimes he preferred to join the crew, usually at breakfast.
There was only one other officer aboard, a pudgy, baby-faced recent graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy named Tim Buckley. Ostensibly, he was second-in-command; on a naval vessel, his role would have been that of the executive officer, or the first mate on a civilian freighter. In either case, he would have served as the captain's link to the crew, transmitting his orders and rules, at the same time b being the men's conduit to the captain.
On the Phineas Cartwright, he was neither. Buckley was a crack ship handler, almost as good as Knight himself, but he was oddly shy and nervous. This was his first post-graduation job, and he was in awe of Prester. He ate in the main dining room, at Bertie's invitation, exactly once, but he hardly spoke a word and was so ill at ease that Knight suggested privately to Prester, "I think Tim'd rather eat with the crew from now on." Buckley seemed happiest when he was conning the ship alone, usually late at night so Knight---who gave the impression he practically lived on the bridge---could get a few hours of sleep.
Knight had tried to avoid the frictions of a divided command, not an easy task on a ship carrying its volatile owner, a veteran skipper, and an expedition leader who liked giving orders more than taking them---not to mention a pair of independent-minded scientists who weren't used to taking orders. Yet he couldn't help the fact that his natural air of authority had enveloped even the crew, to a point where he realized they were giving him equal status to Knight.
They were a good lot, of that he was sure. Not enough of them, Knight thought, but this was one area in which Prester had exercised his will. "Not one man more than we need," he had decreed. "I could afford to sign on fifty guys, but we're sailing with three more than I usually use on a cruise, and that's enough." The ten-man complement had been the compromise they worked out, with Knight doing the selections, and Lancaster was satisfied with all of them.
He particularly liked the two topside frogmen who would help in the launch and recovery operations of the Explorer. One was a husky black man, Derek Ortt, with an infectious laugh and bulging muscles of an Olympic weight lifter. Lancaster had known few blacks in his life, but he came to respect this one as much for his intelligence and humor as his awesome strength. At first, Lancaster addressed him a bit officiously as "Mr. Ortt," but quickly changed to "Ortt," as did the rest of the crew.
The other frogman was Brandon "Tattoo" Powe, an obvious nickname for a man whose arms and chest were covered with a gallery of needled artwork---if two anchors, a battleship, and three nude women could be classified as such. Both Ortt and Powe had worked for Prester on previous diving trips, yet they, too, had gravitated toward Lancaster as the dominant figure on the ship. It was an instinctive response that extended even to Travis Hertzog. Lancaster remembered one night in Bayonne when Lancaster was away, the chef had asked him, not Knight, to suggest a menu for the evening's dinner.
Knight's attitude toward Lancaster puzzled the latter. The captain liked him, and he seldom voiced criticism, yet Lancaster was uncomfortably aware that he disapproved of the expedition. Knight seldom joined in the lively mealtime conversations; he just sat quietly, puffing on his corncob, and looking for all the world like a grouchy schoolmaster listening to the prattle of children.
Most of those conversations involved Lancaster's training sessions on the submarine.
"Technically speaking," he had lectured, "a submarine is a surface vessel that can travel underwater. It dives by filling ballast tanks with water and ascends by expelling the ballast. The angles of descent and ascent are controlled by diving planes. What we're operating are submersibles that dive and rise through a combination of their thrusters and the use of diving planes, like the ailerons and elevators on an aircraft. Explorer is more like a submersible, a wingless aircraft that swims instead of flies, using the water instead of the air."
The training sessions were thorough, Lancaster emphasizing t hat each one had to be intimately familiar with all controls and instruments----camera operation, and use of floodlights; how to read the fathometer and translate its numbers into feet; how to interpret the psi dial; how to monitor the instruments linked to the life-support equipment; how to handle communications and activate EAS, the emergency ascent system, which Prester insisted on christening "Popeye" because of Captain Knight's contributions.
Lancaster gave Riker only the most cursory training, knowing he would be accompanying Lancaster himself on any dive. The others absorbed instructions quickly, even Prester. Blackwood was the most adept student, followed by Leclair, who also was the most curious. Billy wanted to know how everything worked, why it worked, and what would happen if it didn't work. Typical was a session in which Lancaster was explaining the operation of valves that controlled the flow of oxygen into the sub.
"It's not pure oxygen, of course," Lancaster mentioned. "Oxygen is too combustible. A chance spark from a short circuit and boom!"
"So what will we be breathing?"
"A mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium, the correct proportions measured by a computer that feeds the data to the emissions valves."
"What would happen," Leclair asked, "if the computer failed to measure the mixture properly? Too much helium or nitrogen, say, or too little oxygen."
"If you fed the wrong data into the computer, you'd surely end up with various unpleasant symptoms, their severity depending on the extent of the error. Headache, nausea, diminished coordination, and grogginess are all possible. We tested the effects on volunteers during the design stages. One chap said he felt rather euphoric. Nothing lethal would result, but you'd want to abandon a dive if any of those symptoms appeared; it should be very obvious something's wrong. Of course, the life-support gauges would warn you of any malfunction before those symptoms appeared. That's why I keep emphasizing how very important it is to monitor life-support instruments."
"Very," Lancaster agreed. "Now show me the computer itself. Remarkable machines, computers. They've always intrigued me. And then, if you don't mind, Sterling, I'd like to go through that simulated dive again."
Since Bayonne, they had settled into a nightly routine of an after-dinner bridge game with a starting foursome of Riker---expert enough to be classified as a tournament player---Leclair, Prester, and Barnes. Lancaster himself hated the game. Knight always went to the bridge after eating and stayed there until midnight. Nobody thought of inviting Thaddeus Blackwood to play, although Riker was the first to notice that the big man enjoyed silent kibitzing; he'd stand behind each bidder, quietly observing but saying nothing. Then he would move around the table as the hand was played.
On the fifth night out, Prester had found up an easily makeable bid, and Riker, his partner, patiently tried to explain where Bertie had gone wrong. He was too solicitous, for the billionaire suddenly tossed down his cards.
"I quit!" he announced. "I'm through with the goddamned stupid game. I never liked bridge, anyway. I'm ruining it for everybody."
Barnes tried to mollify him. "You're not any worse than I am, Bertie. Besides, we can't play with only three people, so don't take the game so seriously.
Prester hesitated but looked miserable. In his rumbling voice, Blackwood unexpectedly said, "Can't force a guy to play if he doesn't wanna. I'll sit in for a few hands if nobody minds."
Leclair said, rather nastily, "I would think poker was more like your game."
"Like poker, too. Rather play bridge, though....too much fu-uh, too much luck in poker. Haven't played bridge in a long time." He chuckled in a self-deprecating way that was touching. "There ain't a helluva lot of bridge players in my social circles."
He stood there, trying to look indifferent and failing miserably. It was Barnes who beat Riker to making the invitation. "Park in Bertie's chair, Thaddeus. You're Billy's partner; you've got one leg on the rubber and you're vulnerable."
He looked at her gratefully and sat down, almost engulfing the chair. Then he glanced up at Prester. "That last hand, pal-----you gotta remember to draw the trump out first, or you're gonna be hangin' out to dry with nothin' but your jockstrap. And when you tried that finesse, you shoulda known where the king was..."
They looked at him in amazement. After two more rubbers, they were staring at him in awe. He was almost as good as Riker, lacking some of Billy's technical skills but possessing incredible card sense.
The final round involved a difficult bid of six diamonds. Blackwood had forced the bidding to a small slam, played the hand, and made it. Riker shook his head.
"I can't believe you took it to six, he remonstrated mildly. “You and Kim had only seven diamonds between you, and if you hadn’t made that fitness, you would have gone down like the Leviathan herself.”
”I figured on an even trump split. That and the finesse were the only chance I h ad.”
”But Thaddeus, depending on the trump split is like playing Russian roulette.”
”Hell, I know it. But the point count was there. I figured if I had a shot at it, I’d better take it.”
”Well”——Riker sighed——“I suppose success is an adequate answer to my question. In the previous rubber, when you opened with four spades—-a most unusual bid——-wouldn’t a preemptive bid of three spades have been preferable….?”
They were off on an animated discussion of the night’s play, in which Barnes joined briefly before leaving for a nightcap with Prester and Leclair. Lancaster, as was his custom during bridge games, was topside with Knight.
”Aren’t you two joining us?” she asked.
”We’ll be along in a few minutes,” Riker told her. “I’m still fascinated with that opening four bid….”
Blackwood, looking at Barnes, said shyly, “Hope my cussin’ wasn’t too bad tonight, Kim.”
”Well within reasonable bounds,” she assured him, then added mischievously, “and I must admit that was, indeed, one beautiful goddamn finesse.”
Everyone laughed, except Jacques Leclair. He said abruptly, “Let’s go have that drink,” and took Barnes’s arm possessively, an untypically macho gesture that went unnoticed by all but its target. She felt more pity than annoyance, but she was upset enough to mention it to Lancaster later that night.
They were on the deck having a smoke. Nothing had been prearranged, it just happened that way, both gravitating to the spot on the deck where they had conversed that last night in Bayonne.”
”It was the way he took my arm,” Kim recounted. “There was almost a…..a kind of anger behind it. I think he was jealous of Thaddeus.”
He allowed. “Well, that’s understandable. Blackwood's a rather dynamic man....remarkably intelligent, considering that he's had little formal schooling. Smooth off those rough edges and you'll find a very decent guy."
She said defensively, "Billy's a decent guy, too."
"Righto, but I'm trying to look at this situation through a woman's eyes. All Billy's got going for him is a brain and that mustache of his. I'm afraid he's not very attractive to women and he knows it. That's his problem."
She looked over the deck railing, flicking the remains of her cigarette into the dark water, the sparks glowing briefly like a little spent rocket. "I think he's getting to be my problem, Sterling, I can sense it. The last thing I need is for someone on this ship to have a crush on me, especially someone like Billy, whom I adore but not in the way he'd like."
He observed gravely, "You might have the same trouble with Blackwood, y'know."
"Thaddeus? Don't be silly; that big gorilla's scared to death of me. Sometimes I think he even resents the fact that I'm here. Maybe he believes in that chauvinistic superstition: A woman on a ship brings bad luck."
"Thaddeus Blackwood isn't afraid of anyone or anything on this planet, Kim. He did resent you initially, but I daresay you're the first woman in his life he ever respected, and for a man like Blackwood, respect is a very powerful emotion, so powerful that it's almost a kind of love because it's the only emotion he feels. At times, there's an uncanny similarity between the way he looks at you and that cocker-spaniel expression on Billy's face."
She laughed. Billy's eyes did have a slight downward slant that made him look mournful even when he smiled. Laughter had become a frequent part of those conversations, just as the conversation itself had become a kind of wall they had constructed together, a bulwark against the threat of physical involvement. They were talking again on this clear, calm night and, as always, it was a pleasant stroll down a varied conversational path that ranged from light banter to serious discussion. Pleasant, that is, until Lancaster----looking down at the glass-smooth sea and then up toward a sky alight with stars---remarked, "She was a weapon, that ship. A tool meant to manipulate the very fabric of the heavens. Who knows what kind of… residues it might still harbor?"
Without warning and for no logical reason, Barnes felt a chill. It was not truly an appropriate thing for him to say, yet somehow it had parted a curtain that led to the past. The plodding old minelayer had become a time machine, carrying them relentlessly toward a dead ship, a thing of mystery, sleeping undisturbed and inviolate in the black depths of a grave 12,500 feet down. And suddenly, she was afraid.
She could not control an inadvertent shudder. Lancaster said solicitously, "You cold, Kim?"
"No," she said without looking at him, she asked, “Sterling, how long have you been a sailor?”
The way she asked the question told him her mood had changed abruptly. He was puzzled, but his reply was casual.
“Since I was twenty. I’ve already told you my father was Navy, too. So was his father. A great-great uncle of his was a lieutenant on Dewey’s Olympia at Manila Bay, and family legend has it that one of my ancestors served under Jean Lafitte when the rascal was harassing the Mexicans. So I guess it’s safe to say that I have centuries of saltwater genes.”
The last was said jocularly, but she was frowning, and for the first time he realized something was wrong. “Kim, I have a strong hunch you didn’t ask that question to learn about my genealogy.”
”No, I didn’t, but your answer leads me to the next question: Do you believe in that sailor’s superstition….a woman on a ship means bad luck?”
”It’s bullshit,” he scoffed. “Sailors are the most superstitious breed on earth.”
”San Diego’s a sailor’s town and I’ve talked to a lot of Navy men. I’ve asked them the same question. They always laugh and deny it, but sometimes they’re lying. I can see it in their eyes. They’re just afraid to admit it. Thaddeus felt that way, too….at least at first. Maybe he still feels it, no matter how much he wants to accept me.”
So does Leclair, Lancaster thought. His instinct was to reassure her, however. “Kim, Craig’s current attitude is far more important than any prejudice. “Kim, Thad’s current attitude is far more important than any prejudice he might have felt in the past. For God’s sake, you’re a scientist; science and superstition are mortal enemies.”
”Not always. Some superstitions rest on scientific fact.”
”Name on.”
”Well, the superstition that plane crashes always occur in groups of three. Billy says there’s statistical evidence supporting that belief.”
“Billy?”
”Yeah. We were discussing old myths and legends and superstitions, and he brought up the one about crashes. He said when the airlines go for a long time without an accident, they get complacent about safety. Then all of a sudden there’s a series of fatal crashes——usually three right in a row—-and then they tighten up and go without one for another long period.”
”That’s not superstition. It’s industrial psychology….nothing but pure logic.”
”Superstition derived from logic.”
”Yes, but you’re talking about a relatively modern superstition. I’m talking about old superstitious beliefs: Friday the 13th, a black cat crossing your path, walking under ladders, break a mirror and you’re guaranteed seven years of bad luck——all nonsense! You might as well tell me you believe in the legend of the Flying Dutchman. Look, the sea is vast, lonely, intimidating; you might as well be on a different planet. But it’s treacherous enough without dreaming up jinxes that have absolutely no foundation.”
She tried to smile at him, but the result was so feeble, he could almost smell her fear.
”Kim,” he asked softly, “what are you afraid of?”
”I don’t really know.” Her voice was so low, he could barely hear her. “It’s what you said—-about the residues the Leviathan might harbor—-it…..it seemed to touch something off. A vague feeling of uneasiness, like something bad was going to happen to all of us. I can’t even explain it, Sterling, but all of a sudden I felt——fear. A kind of dread about going on.”
He stared at her, trying to decide whether scolding or simple reassurance would be best. He took the middle road: an attempt at light humor.
”What you just describe sounds like woman’s intuition, and I don’t believe in that, either.”
He wanted badly to put his arms around her, knew that the touch of her body against his would be a dangerous ignition source, and was just about to do it anyway when Knight’s deep voice came out of the night above them.
”Lancaster——is that you down there?”
He wasn’t sure whether to welcome the interruption or curse the captain, but Lancaster answered, with obvious eagerness for him.
”We’re both down here, skipper. Come join us.” The last was said in a tone that sounded almost desperate. She didn’t want to talk about fear anymore.
”On my way.” They heard his heavy steps on the steel stairs leading down from the bridge. Kim said, “Sterling, don’t say anything to Thaddeus about my qualms. He’ll think I’m nuts. And probably so do you.”
He had no time to reply before Knight’s stocky figure hove into view.
”Hi, you two. Sorry for barging in, but I wanted to tell Sterling something.”
”You’re not barging in,” Lancaster assured him. “But don’t you ever sleep? It’s after one and you’ve been conning all day.”
”Nothing else to do. Besides, Tim’s pretty inexperienced. I don’t like leaving him alone on the bridge too long with just Finch to help him.” The last was a reference to Joel Finch, the night helmsman and oldest crew member. He wore a perpetual smile that seemed to have been glued to his mouth. Knight, like so many veteran sailors, was capable of functioning at full efficiency with only two or three hours sleep at night.
Lancaster asked, “What’s on your mind?”
”Think I can give you an ETA. By this time tomorrow morning, we should be within fifteen miles of the search area. We’re picking up a little speed as the fuel load lightens. If we’re getting this close, I figure we should start dropping that sonar array tomorrow morning and see how it does.”
Barnes said, “And I’d better get some sleep. I want to be here when you test the sonar returns, and I assume it’s going to be very early in the morning.”
The two men said good night to her. Knight sighed as he receded from sight. “I don’t mean to sound like a dirty old man, but that woman is absolutely gorgeous.”
”A remarkable mix of beauty and brains,” Lancaster said almost wistfully. They talked for another half hour, their pipes glowing in the dark. After the captain left, Lancaster remained on deck briefly, thinking about Kim.
This time not with longing, however, but with a twinge of guilt. Indirectly, he had lied to her, or at least misled her. Until he acknowledged to himself that he was falling in love with Kim Barnes, down very, very deep in his seaman’s heart, Sterling Lancaster himself always believed that a long woman on a ship was nothing but a jinx.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNV5ApVH3Pt
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“It’s like tolling for safety pins,” Lancaster grumbled to Leclair.
They were bent over the sonar-reception unit in the Phineas Cartwright’s darkened radio room just behind the bridge, peering at the television like screen and listening to the “ping-pong” acoustical returns coming from the 12,000-foot array trailing under the ship. The converted minelayer had been crisscrossing the search area in a grid pattern for four and a half days without success, commencing the probe at the perimeter of the five-mile radiu established by Leclair and Barnes as the Leviathan’s likely position.
The sonar-search unit at the end of the array was housed in a tube shaped like.a miniature airship, and painted the same gunmetal gray as the sub. The towing process was laborious, for every foot of the ocean floor in each grid pattern had to be searched. Knight likened the process to mowing a huge lawn. There had been several visual false alarms, each showing a large mass below them and each setting off temporary excitement that died when the acoustic returns and the anomaly readings were negative for man-made objects. All they continued to hear were the pings. Leclair was the only. One who remained undisterubed by the successive disappointments.
“It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon,” he explained calmly. “We’re over that submarine canyon with God knows how many tributaries. There are all kinds of subterranean ridges, hills, and valleys and any one of them can give us a false sonar image. Sonar cannot really distinguish between an undersea hill and a ship in terrain like this. You have to be patient.”
”Maybe we’re going too fast,” Lancaster said to Kniight.
The captain shrugged. “She’s doing only three knots, John. That’s a knot slower than we tried yesterday.” He paused, sneaking a cautious glance in the direction of the two oceanographers, as if he was hesitant to challenge their calculations. “Billy and Kim, may I make a suggestion.”
”Of course,” Leclair said.
”I think we should swing a bit south, maybe a couple of miles beyond the perimeter where we started this grid pattern, and do another grid search below that point.”
Billy nodded thoughtfullly, but Barnes said rather tartly, “Alex, we didn’t use Kentucky wind age to establish this search area. Computers don’t make mistakes on the order of two miles.”
”They can be wrong if the data they’re fed is wrong,” the captain reminded her. “And it wouldn’t take much of an error to throw you way off. One squares mile of ocean is the equivalent of almost 700 acres, which is a hell of a lot of real estate.”
”What wrong data?”she asked indignantly. “All factors were taken into consideration, including currents and…”
Knight interrupted. “Current might be your problem, from the way the array is streaming. I have a hunch it’s running stronger than you figured. That’s a mighty small hunk of wood down there in a mighty big ocean. Only God himself knows where that ship really is. I still say let’s try farther south.”
The only sound in the room was the soft, intermittent pinging of the sonar. For once, Lancaster was reluctant to make a command decision, knowing Kim was on guard, and it was Leclair who finally made it for him. “I think the captain may be right,” he admitted. “A lot of what we threw at the computer amounted to variables that could have been off a fraction one way or another. Sterling, you’re the boss; she we move south?”
”Let’s try it,” Lancaster said flatly. He saw the hurt look in Barnes’s face and added, “Kim, if it hadn’t been for you, we would have spent the last five and a half days groping like blind men miles to the north. You and Jacques always told us to look farther south; we just haven’t gone far enough south.”
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They were manning sonar on a 24-hour basis, dividing the duty among them into three-hour shifts. Knight, a sonar expert, had given each one a crash course on how to read the display, and he proved to be an excellent teacher, because they had all become reasonably proficient by the 2nd day. Prester had purchased a newly developed unit that not only produced acoustical returns but visual blips, like targets on a radar screen.
It was 2:55 A.M., the morning of the second day in the new search area. Riker entered the radio room, where dim red bulbs provided the room’s only illumination apart from the green-tinged sonar screen. Blackwood was hunched over the screen, half-asleep and kept awake only by its monotonous pinging; without the competition of the ship’s noisy daytime activities, the transmissions sounded even louder.
Just before they had sailed, Riker had seen Blackwood bring an armful of paperback books aboard and assumed they were literary trash, at best mystery novels. One night, he happened to find Thaddeus alone in the cocktail lounge, reading one of them.
”Murder mystery” he inquired.
”Nope. Haven’t read this for a long time, and felt like readin’ it again.” He held up the book for Riker to see.
It was Moby Dick.
Riker succeeded in hiding his surprise. “A great novel,” he commented. “One of the classic stories of the sea.”
Blackwood had surprised him again by looking disappointed at his appraisal. “Well, I kinda figured it’s more than just another sea yarn. It’s——it’s about something else.” He stopped, groping for words. “About a guy’s gettin’ f iced on one thing, one target, maybe, so it drives him batty and destroys him.” He hesitated again, embarrassed. “I can’t think of the word that fits.”
”Obsession,” Riker said.
”Yeah, that’s the word. Obsession. This Captain Arab, he reminds me of someone on this ship.”
Riker was shocked. “Captain Knight?”
”Nope. Sterling Lancaster.”
From that night on, he had spent more and more time conversing with Thaddeus. Found himself telling Blackwood about his own life, about Inez and the void she had left. And Thaddeus confided in him, too: that he was illegitimate, never knew his father and hated his alcoholic mother who abandoned him to the unloving care of a series of indifferent foster parents; that he never got beyond the sixth grade but loved to read—-when he found the time, because he went to work full-time from the age of sixteen, literally educating himself.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡygOzrDsX98
Riker was thankful for their growing friendship. Once the sonar monitoring began, the process of finding an 800-foot needle in a 3,200-acre haystack, he had deliberately arrived for his trick ahead of schedule because it gave him more time to chat with Blackwood. Tonight, however, he had run late, and if Thaddeus was hungry—-which he invariably was after his shift—-there’d be no prolonged conversation.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRMSIQSr1O3
”Thaddeus, here to relieve you,” he announced.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOMgv1elTWX
The giant yawned and stretched his huge arms. “Thank God. This goddamned sonar’s like a sleeping pill that makes noise.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIKsmMbZwsA
”Anything stirring?”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡivaXmjKdMU
”Nothin’ down there but fish.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7VlZXcnoec
”Go get some sleep.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBo99Y4GoVH
”I will after I hit the galley. Gonna rustle me up some ham and eggs.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoPgriO2kK5
He had just started for the door, Riker waving him good night, when a harsh new sound came from the sonar’s speaker.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGvc3xguWN8
POING….POING….POING….78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqhfBdSDuMo
Blackwood stopped. Riker took one look at the sonar screen and swallowed hard. “Thaddeus—-come here, quick!”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfJ6J7eZD63
They stared at the screen, and the loud poings went up in volume.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4zKCbZNp87
Riker muttered, “Well, it’s definitely a sunken ship, but the dimensions don’t match any known wrecks in the area.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMacDnvkadP
”Yeah, and look at those sonar image returns. It’s 800 feet long and it’s got a distinct shape that resembles an old sailing vessel, right down to the multiple masts.78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡn47tpn47bp
”It looks like a ship out of time,” Riker said. “A relic from a bygone era.”78Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlVdW65dGBN
“Holy shit!” Blackwood muttered.
”Holy shit is right, buddy. Go get up Lancaster and the captain, fast. Get some crew member to rouse everyone else. I think we’ve found the goddamn Leviathan!”
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