He was staring across now at the officer’s quarters where he and Jacob had entered the Grand Staircase. Beyond this, through a tattered series of worm-eaten boards, David saw Max’s lights where the sub hovered above the deck precisely where Lou had placed the sub on automatic. He thought of the sub’s safe confines, and he whispered to himself, “Lou hasn’t gotten away yet.”
David could hardly believe his luck. He snatched up his laser cutter again, keeping the safety on, holding his breath and his position, searching for signs of life other than the albino crab just over the doorway to the Marconi Room.
“Get to the sub, David.” Forbes ordered, his voice more commanding than ever. “Save yourself. Your four hours on the pak is nearly up. Inside Max, you can breathe, re-circulate the liquid air.”
“So you have someone to point the finger at. I get it, Captain.”
“Don’t be foolish, David.”
“Read the damn journal, Captain.”
“I have Dr. Entebbe doing that right now, son.”
Son, David thought. They start calling you son when they’re worried about your state of mind. “Look here, Captain, have you had any contact, visual or otherwise with Lou or Kelly, sir?”
“None, and you?” Judging from his voice, Forbes’ agitation was increasing by the moment. “David, first Mendenhall dies within inches of you, and now your other two dive partners are missing? Then you fucking incinerate part of the ship’s interior? Violating the dead? Turning bodies in ashes! Do you know how this’ll play in the press? How it sounds, David?”
“I had no choice; it’ll all come clear later! For now, I have to find Kelly and Lou.”
“They may well have gotten trapped or turned around inside the ship,” suggested Dr. Entebbe.
“Lou’s an experienced diver, and Irvin’s no slouch, Doctor.”
“You of all people, David, you have to know—”
“How easy it is to get lost down here, yes, of course but—”
“You get turned around, go in circles! Happened to you and Mendenhall. At least you’re still alive,” said Forbes. “Now do as I say. Get back to the sub.”
“Still don’t know how I managed to make it to out of the ship. Almost like this hole in the rotted out flooring in the Marconi Room just opened up for me.
“Ahhh… so that’s what we are seeing behind you—the wireless room from where McBride sent out the SOS.”
“Hold on, I see movement over there. Yes, there they are,” David whispered into his com-link. “Are you getting this? They’re alive! But wait… it’s Kelly, and she’s alone.”
“It would appear she’s collected some items from the ship,” said Forbes, watching intently from above.
“Yeah, so I noticed. Net’s full to bursting, and I’d swear something’s squirming inside it.”
Forbes agreed. “It’s filled with something alive, yes, but then she’s the biologist, and she has orders to retrieve any biological specimens.”
“Of course,” muttered David. “She’d be the one to show up with specimens.” David realized the specimens Kelly was carrying were the select ones, the most likely to survive—the chosen ones.
“How does she look from your perspective?” Forbes asked. “She’s still not on com-link.”
“She looks strong and well, but I’m concerned about her.”
“I want a full report, David, as to what’s happened to Lou, and why’d their vital signs and cams went down? You get her talking soon as you two get back to the sub.”
David felt a sick feeling stirring in his heart. Had the thing in Swigart gone over to Kelly down here behind the shield of Titanic’s walls? Had the creature decided to risk everything, or had it been residing in Kelly for some time now? Had she somehow convinced Lou against his better judgment to make the dive prematurely—just as she had convinced him to come along? Plucking at his vanity, using her feminine wiles on him as she had on David?
“Can you zoom in on the net, Forbes, and tell me what you see?” All David knew for certain was that the other two divers—or at least one of them—had been to the freezer compartment and now this.
Kelly had appeared at the lip of the sheared off aft section of the bow. She was moving fast now, skimming along the top deck, going straight for the sub, her net full of slug-like creatures with her. She had emerged from the wreckage at precisely where she and Swigart had led her down into Titanic earlier. So where was Lou or Lou’s remains? But for now, he must concentrate on the thing inside Kelly’s body, and the things iniside Kelly’s dive net.
“Forbes, sir, have you any sign of Lou?” David persisted.
“No sign of Lou whatsoever, no.”
“And the net? What’s she dragging?” Entebbe’s voice came over.
“Appears… looks like some form of sea life,” reasoned Forbes, “but nothing we can categorize—perhaps tube worms, but there’re no black smokers down there, so who knows? Nothing else lives at these depths save crabs. Is it crabs?”
“It’s those damnable freaking eggs, Captain. Like those you witnessed me burning; the ones that I turned to ash in the bodies in the freezer.”
“All we saw you burning, Ingles, were bodies.”
David realized that Forbes had not had the time to zoom in on the bodies in the freezer to have seen the egg sacs as David had acted so quickly. “Inside the bodies, these things Dr. Irvin is carrying to the sub! They’re dangerous disease organisms! I destroyed them. Zoom in closer on the net she’s carrying to see them clearly!”
“See these eggs you’re talking about?” Forbes sounded far from convinced.
“You can’t let them aboard Scorpio! You didn’t see the eggs I fried down in the freezer compartment below the flames?”
“All we saw were flames.”
“But you have to see what’s in the net!”
“Net?’”
“The net Kelly’s carrying! It’s filled with the same egg sacs.”
“Nothing coming clear, David.”
David realized that he’d acted so quickly in burning the egg sacs that the sacs could scarcely have been seen, despite the feed to Scorpio, and that Kelly was so far away that again the sacs could not be made out for what they were. If he could only get a closer view, but this was agonizing being the only one to know the truth of the matter.
David had indeed acted so quickly to destroy the nest of eggs he’d found that no one could see them due the grainy feed. He urged Forbes to replay the video of his torching the bodies, to zoom in on the bodies, to see the egg sacs. “It’s the same as the alien life form in Kelly’s net,” David shouted into his com-link.
“Does appear fleshy and moving, yes,” said Forbes now of the sacs in the bodies that David had torched.
Entebbe added, “Possibly a collection of ball-like membranous… eggs, yes.”
“Kelly’s harvesting them! Taking them to the sub!”
“She’s our biological officer here to do biological studies; we’re well equipped for it.” Forbes was clearly upset with David. “What kind of trouble are you cooking up down there, Ingles?”
David heard Entebbe in the background, trying to explain about something he’d learned from having scanned Declan’s journal, but David hadn’t time to wait around.
He swam out of the Marconi Room and directly for Kelly, waving, so glad to see her alive, rationalizing that her bringing out this parcel of eggs was due to Swigart’s forcing her to help transport them to the sub. He didn’t want to believe his eyes; besides, where was Swigart? He still had not emerged from the ship.
“Are you all right?” he hopelessly shouted into his com-link to Kelly. “Where’s Lou? What’s in your hand?” But Kelly failed to reply. Instead she whipped out her laser cutting knife and sent a beam in an arc sweeping toward David, intending to slice him in half. Having anticipated the attack, David realized his danger in time to drop through a hole in the deck, risking his life in the quick move on the one hand, but on the other saving himself from the laser that tore into the Marconi Room and out the other side, the deadly beam going off into the infinity of sea.