Steen turned from the radio, his eyes avoiding the mutilated body in the chair. He felt a cold shudder grip him. He half expected to see the spectral captain of the Flying Dutchman pacing the bridge. There was nothing as morbid as a deserted ship, he thought grimly.
He ordered Sakagawa to hunt up and translate the ship’s log. The two remaining seamen he sent to search the auto decks while he systematically went through the crew’s quarters. He felt as though he was walking through a haunted house.
Except for a few bits of scattered clothing, it looked as if the crew might return at any minute. Unlike the mess on the bridge, everything seemed lived in and ordinary. In the captain’s quarters there was a tray with two teacups that had miraculously failed to fall on the deck during the storm, a uniform laid out on the bed, and a pair of highly polished shoes side by side on the carpeted deck. A framed picture of a woman and three teenage sons had dropped flat on a neat and clean desk.
Steen was hesitant to pry into other men’s secrets and their memories. He felt like an uninvited intruder.
His foot kicked something lying just under the desk. He leaned down and picked up the object. It was a nine-millimeter pistol. A double-action Austrian Steyr GB. He pushed it into the waistband of his pants.
The chiming of a wall-mounted chronometer startled him, and he swore he felt his hair rise. He finished his search and beat a quick path back to the bridge.
Sakagawa was sitting in the chart room, his feet perched on a small cabinet, studying the ship’s log.
“You found it,” said Steen.
“In one of the open briefcases.” He turned back to the opening pages and began to read. ” ‘ Divine Star, seven hundred feet, delivered March sixteenth, nineteen eighty-eight. Operated and owned by the Sushimo Steamship Company, Limited. Home port, Kobe.’ On this voyage she’s carrying seven thousand, two hundred and eighty-eight new Murmoto automobiles to Los Angeles.”
“Any clues as to why the crew abandoned her?” Steen asked.
Sakagawa gave a puzzled shake of his head. “No mention of disaster, plague, or mutiny. No report of the typhoon. The last entry is a bit odd.”
“Read it.”
Sakagawa took a few moments to be sure his translation of Japanese characters into English was reasonably correct. “The best I can get out of it is: ‘Weather deteriorating. Seas increasing. Crew suffering from unknown illness. Everyone sick including Captain. Food poisoning suspected. Our passenger, Mr. Yamada, a most important company director, demands we abandon and sink ship during hysterical outburst. Captain thinks Mr. Yamada has suffered nervous breakdown and has ordered him placed under restraint in his quarters.’ “
Steen looked down at Sakagawa, his face expressionless. “That’s all?”
“The final entry,” said Sakagawa. “There is no more.”
“What’s the date?”
“October first.”
“That’s two days ago.”
Sakagawa nodded absently. “They must have fled the ship shortly after. Damned funny they didn’t take the log with them.”
Slowly, unhurriedly, Steen walked into the communications room, his mind trying to make sense out of the final log entry. Suddenly he stopped and reached out to support himself in the doorway. The room seemed to swim before his eyes and he felt nauseous. Bile rose in his throat, but he forced it down. Then, as quickly as the attack came, it passed.
He walked unevenly over to the radio and hailed the Narvik. “This is First Officer Steen calling Captain Korvold, over.”
“Yes, Oscar,” answered Korvold. “Go ahead.”
“Do not waste time on a search effort. The Divine Star‘s log suggests the crew left the ship before they were struck by the full force of the typhoon. They departed nearly two days ago. The winds would have swept them two hundred kilometers away by now.”
“Providing they survived.”
“An unlikely event.”
“All right, Oscar. I agree, a search by the Narvikwill be useless. We’ve done all that can be expected of us. I’ve alerted American sea rescue units at Midway and Hawaii and all vessels in the general area. Soon as you regain steerageway we’ll resume course for San Francisco.”
“Acknowledged,” Steen replied. “I’m on my way to the engine room to check with Andersson now.”
Just as Steen finished transmitting, the ship’s phone buzzed. “This is the bridge.”
“Mr. Stem,” said a weak voice.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Seaman Arne Midgaard, sir. Can you come down to C cargo deck right away? I think I’ve found something—”
Midgaard’s voice stopped abruptly, and Steen could hear the sounds of retching.
“Midgaard, are you sick?”
“Please hurry, sir.”
Then the line went dead.
Stem yelled at Sakagawa. “What button do I push for the engine room?”
There was no reply. Stem stepped back into the chart room. Sakagawa was sitting there pale as death, breathing rapidly. He looked up and spoke, gasping the words with every breath.
“The fourth button… rings the engine room.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Steen asked anxiously.
“Don’t know. I… I feel… awful… vomited twice.”
“Hang on,” snapped Steen. “I’ll gather up the others. We’re getting off this death ship.” He snatched the phone and rang the engine room. There was no answer. Fear flooded his mind. Fear of an unknown that was striking them down. He imagined the smell of death pervading the whole ship.
Stem took a swift glance at a deck diagram that was mounted on a bulkhead, then leaped down the companionway six steps at a time. He tried to run toward the vast holds containing the autos, but a nausea cramped his stomach and he weaved through the passageway like a drunk through a back alley.
At last he stumbled through the doorway onto C cargo deck. A great sea of multicolored automobiles stretched a hundred meters fore and aft. Amazingly, despite the buffeting from the storm and the list of the ship, they were all firmly in place.
Stem shouted frantically for Midgaard, his voice echoing from the steel bulkheads. Silence was his only reply. Then he spotted it, the oddity that stood out like the only man in a crowd holding aloft a sign.
One of the cars had its hood up.
He staggered between the long rows, falling against doors and fenders, bruising his knees on the protruding bumpers. As he approached the car with the open hood, he shouted again. “Anyone here?”
This time he heard a faint moan. In ten paces he had reached the car and stared frozen at the sight of Midgaard lying beside one tire.
The young seaman’s face was festered with running sores. Froth mixed with blood streamed from his mouth. His eyes stared unseeing. His arms were purple from bleeding beneath the skin. He seemed to be decaying before Steen’s eyes.
Steen sagged against the car, stricken with horror. He clutched his head between his hands in helplessness and despair, not noticing the thicket of hair that came away when he dropped them to his sides.
“Why in God’s name are we dying?” he whispered, seeing his own grisly death mirrored by Midgaard. “What is killing us?”
3
THE DEEP-SEA SUBMERSIBLE Old Gerthung suspended beneath a large crane that sat on the stern of the British oceanographic vessel Invincible. The seas had calmed enough to launch Old Gertfor a scientific probe of the seafloor 5,200 meters below, and her crew were following a tight sequence of safety checks.
There was nothing old about the submersible. Her design was the latest state of the art. She was constructed by a British aerospace company within the past year and was now poised for her maiden test dive to survey the Mendocino fracture zone, a great crack in the Pacific Ocean floor extending from the coast of Northern California halfway to Japan.