“Stay on your toes,” Ellis cautioned. “We might run into just about anything.” Even as he spoke, his eyes were drawn to a number of large wooden crates still chained to the deck. They were about forty feet long, ten feet high, and maybe six feet wide. The paint had flaked off of most of them, and the wood underneath was black with mold. Other than the weights, around eight thousand pounds apiece, and faded arrows pointing up, the crates were unmarked. “Chack,” he said, motioning the ’Cat to take two Marines and begin searching the ship. Isak and one of the Marines paced him as he approached the crates, looking around for something to crack one open.
There was a slight vibration, barely discernible through the leafy carpet and questing roots beneath their feet. Ellis paused, listening, feeling. “Heads up, Chack!” he called as the three Lemurians peered into the darkness beyond an open hatch. “Did you notice something?” Three heads nodded. “Either that was an earthquake or somebody… some thing is running around down below. Try to make torches or something. Don’t go where it’s dark without a light! Something might get you!”
“Somethin’ might get us,” Isak grumbled. He glanced nervously at the bulwark. “Somethin’ that eats giant ducks with ten-foot legs!”
“Shut up. Just look around. Find a fire ax or wrecking bar or something!” Jim ordered.
Chack ran up the mushy ladder to the pilothouse. All the windows were gone and the whole space was badly overgrown. He wrenched open the door to what he assumed was the charthouse or the captain’s ready quarters. On Walker and Mahan, the only two human ships he’d ever been aboard, the two had been one and the same, as well as serving other purposes. The compartment had survived severe invasion, and he snatched up a few rags that had probably been clothes. Shelves held moldy, insect-eaten books. He was beginning to read English a little, but not enough to tell what the books were about. No matter. All books contained precious information and his friends would want them. He kicked over the cot he expected to find and discovered the bottom of the mattress cover was intact. Wrapping up the books and grabbing some other fragments of the mattress cover, he descended back down to his Marines. One was holding a kerosene lantern he’d found by venturing a short distance into the darkness. He shook it with a grin and it made a sloshing sound.
“Kind of beat-up, but almost as good as the ones we make in Baalkpan now, to burn gri-kakka oil. If we use your scraps for torches, we’ll be in the dark before we go ten tails-if we don’t burn up this dead ship!”
Chack chuckled and, removing his tinderbox from his pack, tossed it to the Marine. “You found it; you light it. Just remember, that’s not gri-kakka oil! If it is like the stuff they use for aar-planes, it might burn you up!”
The Marine’s grin faded, but soon he had the lantern lit and they entered the darkness beyond the hatch. They moved slowly, two facing forward and one walking backward behind them, all their spears out-thrust. Something was in the ship; Chack knew it. It might take forever to search the ship like this, but with its proximity to shore, it was probably unreasonable not to expect some kind of threat, whether they’d noticed the vibration or not. They descended a companionway with care and entered a dank passageway. Nothing grew in the darkness, but the deck was mushy and clammy beneath his sandaled feet. It stank and there were occasional large heaps of what might have been excrement.
He stopped and considered. The funnel was aft, so the engineering spaces were as well. Maybe the engine and boilers were salvageable, maybe not. Chances were, the spaces were flooded. He’d spent most of his life aboard massive Salissa, and if he’d learned to discern the subtle sensation of buoyancy aboard her, the utter lack of it now convinced him the water level within the ship was probably almost as high as without. That meant they wouldn’t be immediately firing up her boilers and steaming out of here. That realization moved her possible cargo to the top of his list of priorities.
“Forward,” he said, “to the hold.”
He didn’t know the layout of the ship, but some things were obvious. The main forward cargo hatch was ahead of them and one deck up. They should find an entrance to the forward hold if they continued down the corridor. There was another heavy vibration, longer this time, and accompanied by a shifting, sliding sound. He glanced at his Marines and saw them exchange nervous blinks in the lantern light. Whatever had infested the ship was big. They couldn’t tell where the motion came from because it seemed to resonate through the vessel’s very fibers. He handed his short spear to the Marine beside him and unslung the Krag. A hatch gaped before them and they eased slowly toward it. He nodded at the Marine with the lantern, who shone it through the opening. Chack poked his head around the lip and looked inside.
The hold was the largest iron chamber he’d ever seen. Nothing compared to the holds on Salissa, which held provisions, barrels of gri-kakka oil, and other necessities of the Home’s long, solitary sojourns, but it was far larger than anything Walker could boast. In the meager light of the lantern he couldn’t even see how far the space extended, but he imagined one could pile all the cannons yet made by the Alliance in the place. He looked down. There was water, but it didn’t look too deep, maybe two tails by the curve of the hull. There were also many more huge boxes, just like the ones they’d seen on deck. He wondered what was in them. Smaller boxes, or crates, were stacked outboard on either side of the larger ones. Some were underwater, others partially so, but most seemed high and dry.
“Should we go down?” asked the Marine he’d handed his spear to. She was a female, young and attractive. Her real name was Blas-Ma-Ar, he suddenly remembered, after spending most of the day trying to recall it. He could never forget how and when she’d become a Marine, or the ordeal she’d once endured, but the name that always stuck in his mind was the one Chief Gray had given her: Blossom.
“I think not, for now,” he answered softly. “Most of what is here looks to be much the same as what is on deck. Let Cap-i-taan Ellis discover what it is. If it is a good thing, we will know we have more of it.” He shook his head. “I dislike moving any nearer the dark water below until we know what manner of creature dwells within this… human grave of a ship.” The others nodded eager agreement and they retraced their steps. A trip through the engineering spaces seemed appropriate now, as they worked their way to the aft hold. In the corridor, they passed staterooms filled with decaying matter. Some doors were shut, and when they forced them open, they were gratified to see far less damage within the compartments. They found a few more books, in much better condition, and one such room even held a modest armory of unfamiliar weapons and rectangular tins of ammunition. These they carried up to the deck in two trips, along with their booty of books, before proceeding aft.
The boiler room was partially flooded, as Chack had suspected, but a meager light filtered through the grungy, vine-choked skylights, making visibility slightly better. They worked their way carefully along the highest catwalk. A sudden flurry of probably nocturnal lizard birds, disturbed by the lantern, frightened them, but Chack quickly recovered. He wanted to see where they went. They swooped around the space shrieking and flapping until they found a large gap between two twisted plates not far above the waterline. Like sand poured from a cup, they burst through into the daylight beyond.
“So she was sunk here,” he surmised. “Or damaged elsewhere, and this is where she came to rest. Curious.”
Unlike the boiler room, the engine room was relatively dry. There was water, but not much more than might be accounted for by a year and a half of seepage through riveted seams. They wouldn’t be steaming her out of here, but the sight of the rusty but intact machinery was encouraging. Finally, they reached the aft hold and here they found their greatest surprise. More crates like those forward, and many smaller crates filled the space. Everything was a jumble, but Chack recognized hundreds of wooden boxes-maybe thousands-spilling rectangular, green metal cans like those that held ammunition for the big Amer-i-caan machine guns. Enough light diffused into the compartment through the murky water to indicate a substantial hole below the waterline.