Sam ran his hand along the inside of the cylindrical bulkhead at the bow of the gigantic cargo ship. The thing must have been nearly a foot in diameter. Once perfectly straight, it now had a single bend around halfway down. Then at its base, where it was fixed to the ship’s hull with sixteen giant bolts, it had been pushed with such forced that it now popped out through the bottom of the hull, leaving a gaping hole for seawater to flow.
Along the hull a distinct line formed where the sea water had reached. Now drained, everything below that line appeared to have been melted, while everything above looked normal.
“What do you make of that?” Sam asked.
Veyron looked down at the markings on the wall. “Beats me, but it’s hard to refute the evidence — I might have been wrong before.”
“Wrong about what?”
“I thought this must have come from inside the ship. A leak of strong acids stored as cargo, but now this looks like it’s going to disprove that theory.”
Sam glanced between the gash along the bow where the bulkhead broke through and back down towards the main bilge. The markings clearly showed that something had entered at one end and flowed through towards the other. Whatever that was, it caused the damage. “It came from the outside, didn’t it?”
Veyron sighed. “It would appear so.”
“Are you starting to give some credence to this whole plankton was behind everything theory?”
“No.”
“But you said this was caused by whatever came through that gap in the bulkhead?”
Veyron grinned. “Yes, but I never said it was seawater that flowed through there.”
“Of course it was bloody seawater. What else do you get when you make a hole in a ship’s hull out in the open sea?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Veyron climbed down the ladder and squatted over the now empty bilge compartment. “Do you remember when we flew in, how I said that the damage looked like the Global Star was struck by a solid wall, not a rogue wave which the ship would have at least tried to ride over?”
“Yes, but a rogue wave can move like a solid wall of water.”
Veyron put his hands up to tell Sam to give him a second to finish. “What if the Global Star did collide with another ship?”
“She’s one of the largest cargo ships on the planet. She must have hit some pretty big ship for it to this sort of damage.” Sam looked at him. The theory of evil plankton was beginning to look more palatable.
“Think about it. The Law of the Sea states that while underway a watch must be on deck at all times. But we all know with the invention of GPS and Automated Identification Systems, which track the directions of large vessels, most modern cargo ships are entirely automated. Their crew are rarely on deck, let alone at the helm. How many times have you heard of a cargo ship turning up to dock and being advised that a small yacht or motorboat is crumpled in its bow?”
Sam frowned. He’d seen it once himself. It had been a 42 foot Catalina yacht. The captain of the cargo vessel hadn’t even realized he’d struck the vessel and had continued underway, unaware that the crew was drowning beneath his monstrous bow. “Okay, so why would Captain Miller weave such a different story?”
“Because such an event would never be deemed an accident by the Maritime Safety Board. It would be an act of gross negligence and both ship captains would lose their registrations.”
“Okay, so what happened to the other ship?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it sank. Or it was able to limp away?”
“Okay, let’s say we entertain this fanciful concept,” Sam said. “How then would any of this explain why we have this ridiculously damaged metal?”
“Because whatever that other ship was carrying, it was sure as shit highly corrosive.” Veyron pulled on a piece of the hull next to where he stood to demonstrate. An entire section roughly three feet wide by two feet high broke off. The tiny grooves and broken sections of the metal wove deep into the sheet like termites had eaten away at it. “Is it just me, or does this look like the entire ship has been eaten by termites?”
Sam picked the metal up and then squeezed it. His hands broke through the metal. Crushing it like a piece of honeycomb. “Beats me. You’re the engineer — you tell me.”
“You don’t need an engineer. You need a metallurgist. I’m a lot of things, but that I am not.”
“Then find me one.”
Chapter Forty One
Sam broke the hollowed metal into smaller pieces until he could carry one without too much trouble. He and Veyron continued making their way aft of the cargo ship through the bowels of its internal hull.
It involved climbing and descending several series of internal stairs in order to reach over the watertight barriers. Sam noted that at the base of the barriers, where the seawater should have been stopped by the large metal compartments, a hole nearly ten feet wide by half a foot high had been melted through the bottom — as though the seawater had been eating its way to reach the lowest point within the bilge.
The strangest thing, he thought, was why the acid hadn’t simply melted through the outer hull altogether. The hull certainly wasn’t any stronger.
Sam climbed the latest set of stairs to overcome the third watertight compartment. Just as he was about to begin his descent into the next one he noticed four laborers casually removing any wiring from the gangway.
“Hello gentlemen,” Sam said.
He watched as the men scrutinized him. Their eyes displayed respect and also fear. Donald had told them Sam and Veyron earlier that all staff would be willing to help with anything that they required. The men nodded their heads in response and then continued working. Making an obvious show that they were not slacking in their duties.
“Do you have a metallurgist here?” Sam asked.
“Yes Senior,” the shortest of the four men replied.
“Good.” Sam lifted the honeycombed metal he’d pulled off the hull. “I need you to take this to him and have him run an analysis of what caused these holes. Can you do that?”
The man looked frightened.
Sam tried to hand it to him. “It’s very important.”
“Yes, of course Senor.” The Mexican laborer held the metal with the very tips of his fingers and out from his body, as though it might hurt him if he allowed any skin contact.
Sam watched him turn and start running up the steel stairs and through an open hatchway. Sam turned to Veyron as they continued to descend the stairs approximately mid ship. “Is it just me Veyron, or did that man look frightened?”
“That’s an understatement.” Veyron whistled. “Did you see the pupils in his eyes? They were like dinner plates they were so large. The man looked positively terrified of the hollowed metal. It was as though the entire thing was going to come alive and kill him and his family.”
“I thought for a moment he was just going to turn around and walk out on his job, but obviously he thought better of the American dollars that it earns him.”
There was very little new to be learned by examining the rest of the ship. It was very clear that whatever entered the ship at the bow, slowly made its way aft by melting its way through each of the watertight compartments.
Sam and Veyron reached the main bilge by a quarter to five in the afternoon. It was the same one Donald had shown them that had contained the spooky green plankton. A Mexican worker strung a large woven band in the shape of an eye, on to the side of the main viewing platform. There were already another three just like it hung around the massive room. At the same time another person poured something from a large bag into the bilge water.
Sam turned to the foreman who appeared to be planning out the work for tomorrow. “How’s it going?”