“But if Swigart is the carrier, he’ll know we know of him; if he informs Forbes, and I am right about Lou, what then? If Alandale’s body is discovered, the creature becomes more cautious, more aware of the danger it faces, and that we represent a greater threat to it. Then again, if the thing infiltrates Forbes… with his being at the controls, giving the orders remotely, Forbes could order anything we find down there brought up.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“And if we disobey, he could engineer an accident from two miles overhead while we are in Titanic.”
“Then it was you who sabotaged the crane shaft, wasn’t it?” he suddenly asked.
“Me? What are you talking about?”
“You’re doing everything in your power to slow this mission, to determine how to put it to an end before it begins. I see that now.”
“David, this mission means nothing if those damnable creatures come up from the deep and are protected by the thing that spawned them. There’re more important things than plundering Titanic here. No amount of gold and fame and achievement will matter if we all end up like Alandale or those victims of 1912.”
“All right, calm down.”
“Calm down? Damn it, David, Scorpio becomes a ghost ship if those things are brought on board.”
They stood silent for a moment, the sea rushing past them as Scorpio continued toward its destination. “As it is, we have one enemy,” she continued, “but we don’t know the incubation period of these creatures, and if it is hours, a day, two… everyone aboard Scorpio is a walking dead.”
“You’re the saboteur!”
“David, damn it, don’t you see that’s not the issue?”
“See? Issue? Kelly, it makes me wonder about your motives—and what’s to say you’re not somehow… well?”
She shook her head and muttered, “Satan may come in a pleasant form, eh? Is that it?”
“Don’t twist what I’m saying.”
“Come on, Dave, think of Alandale… that cheerful, wonderful man we thought we knew… for all the time we knew him—you and I—he may’ve been the carrier; and now someone else aboard, someone he came into contact with is the new carrier.”
“Or it’s slipped back into Forbes to hide until it needs to feed again. And I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“This thing is clever. It has managed to survive for a millennium, I suspect, and to somehow reinvent itself in 1912 by slipping in and out of its host organisms. In ancient times, it likely decimated whole species of animal life, whole populations. Hell, for all we know, it may’ve wiped out the ancient civilizations from Mesopotamia to the Aztec.”
“And now it’s graduated to us—modern day mankind,” David replied, rubbing his chin. “So now you’re saying this… this shape-shifting bastard thing has the capability to leap from one man to another while residing in a third? That it has evolved to the point that it can put its grip on a man—put him on hold, so to speak, via some sort of hypnotic suggestion?”
“Yes, allowing it to roam by mere touch, and if it thinks itself threatened by you or me, it will eliminate us.”
“By feeding on our insides?”
“To gather even more strength.”
David considered this horrifying new revelation atop all the others since boarding Scorpio. “It changes spots like a chameleon.”
Just then someone was shouting and racing past, saying “They’ve found Dr. Alandale!” It was Lena, heading for the nearest deck phone to inform Captain Forbes and Swigart on the bridge.
The ship was half turned about by this time. David caught her and spun her around, asking Lena,“Who’s found him?”
“Will and Jacob. Said they went back to his cabin, pulled apart a wall and found his body. Something awful about the way the body looks—blacker than Bowman. Alandale stuffed behind a wall panel in his compartment! Now I gotta call the bridge.”
Lena rushed off, and Kelly stood beside David, shivering with the news. David wanted to console her, place an arm around her but held himself in check and said, “Well now, Bowman and Mendenhall’ve discovered the body anyway.”
“It would appear so.”
David shook his head. “This leaves us in the same boat as we would’ve been in had we come clean in the first place.”
“We’d best appear as surprised as the next person,” she counseled.
“Sure; what choice do we have?”
“But David, knowing what we know, we can’t let one another out of sight.”
He nodded. “Should either of us be cornered by this alien being, it has the power to take us over, I get that.”
“We might have some residual will power for a short time should you become a victim, like the Pinkerton agent, Tuttle, in the journal, but I fear this thing really has become more complex, able to refine its methods, particularly control of its host.” She started away, but he hesitated, staring at her, wondering how in the name of God anyone could be sure of anyone else under these circumstances.
She turned in the sunlight, her hair flying in the ocean breeze, to stare at him. “Come along; we have to join the others, appear surprised—or else we come under suspicion of sabotage and murder.”
Kelly and David followed the parade of people back down to Alandale’s cabin. More than one of the others rushed away, holding back vomit, and looking terrified. No one could account for the condition of the body or the faintly annoying sulfuric odor emanating from Alandale’s quarters.
Forbes rushed in behind Swigart, aghast at the sight of Alandale’s remains; the man was hardly recognizable. While everyone was alarmed at the sight, Lena and the others were debating what could have so discolored the man’s skin to turn it to the shade of mahogany.
Steve Jens, gasping, put forth the theory, “Perhaps while the body was inside the wall, it somehow was burned to this brown cast.”
“Maybe an electrical fire,” added Mendenhall with a bony shrug. But a glance inside the wall showed none of the tell-tale signs of an electrical fire.
Kyle Fiske had joined them late and on seeing the body, and hearing Jens assessment, he said, “Sounds like you guys are grasping at straws.”
“None of it makes sense, Kyle,” Swigart said, his tone sour. Men such as he did not like a question without answer. But he was right. None of it made sense. Fiske was right too—everyone was drawing a blank.
“What can it mean?” Forbes had gone to his knees over Alandale’s body, showing emotion, which killed Kelly’s theory—unless the monster inside him had learned to use emotion now as another tool of hiding in plain sight.
Swigart grabbed hold of Forbes to steady him and pull him back, warning him in the same instant: “Don’t touch him, Juris. We’ve no idea what this is! Looks like some awful disease if you ask me.”
“It wasn’t any disease that put him behind that wall,” countered Lena.
“You don’t know that,” piped up Will Bowman. “I mean if he was outta his mind, he could’ve climbed in there and see here—” he indicated two tabs on the inside of the panel—“he could’ve hidden himself away.”
“Crazy? You’re calling the most intelligent man I’ve ever known insane?” Forbes attacked Bowman with a flurry of words. “You, a bone-headed diver? You have no say-so here. Get out, all of you!”
“No, Juris,” said Swigart, still holding onto his friend. “No, you go… get away from here. I’ll see to it that Dimitri’s remains are handled with the utmost respect, and you, Bowman, keep your mouth shut—and that goes for all of you, and that’s an order! Kelly—take Dr. Forbes to his cabin. Juris, get some rest.”