“As Sherlock would say, ‘Watson, the game’s afoot!’” quoted Declan with a half smile curling his lip.
Ransom took Farley aside, “All right… we keep him on a tight rein for now, but if he alerts on something, we have to let ’im go and do his—his—”
Farley smiled. “Magic.”
“Yes, his nose-magic, right.”
“Deal then,” began Farley, taking each of these men in one at a time with his jaundiced eye. “Now can you blokes tell me what in the name of creation you’re really after?”
“In due time, Mr. Farley… in due time.”
Nodding, Declan remarked, “Our most precious commodity now… time itself.”
TWENTY NINE
David Ingles had read on in Declan Irvin’s journal while waiting for everything to be sorted out, and he’d gained a great deal of startling details that seemed to rush at him from the past and corroborate so much of what Kelly Irvin had said that first night she’d teased him to her cabin not for a romantic interlude, not even for unabashed sex, but to lure him into being her co-conspirator against the unknown killer aboard Scorpio.
According to all that David Ingles had read in Declan’s journal, whatever this unknown creature was, it had planted its seed in multiple human hosts on board Titanic. It had also spawned eggs discovered during autopsies secretly performed by the medical men of 1912 in the sealed compartment of a deep freezer, and now Kelly was certain the creature had somehow survived Titanic and had returned for its progeny—and that it knew precisely where its young lay dormant and waiting.
This portended badly for them all; it meant anyone infected now could conceivably carry viable eggs capable of hatching within a deceased host body to infect other people on Scorpio as it had on Titanic. While Kelly believed otherwise, who was to say that Alandale and Ford had not become breeding grounds for more of these things? Where the creature had once been weak, it had grown in strength. It meant that the two bodies on ice on Scorpio could well be nourishing viable young creatures that meant to explode on the world unless destroyed—but perhaps not; perhaps Kelly was correct in saying the creature had only so many opportunities to replenish itself, and that the frozen embryonic creatures inside Titanic represented its last hope.
The great fear that had brought Titanic’s captain on board with the idea—according to his having leapt ahead in his reading—that Titanic must go down was born somewhere below where David now found himself.
It has to be in one of the freezer compartments.
David realized he must relay information to Captain Forbes about the possible dangers lurking within the bodies he had on board Scorpio, and he meant to do so now. He spoke directly to Forbes and Entebbe through the open lines of the com-link, telling them in a compelling voice that they must locate and read the journal he’d hidden in the wall of his cabin, and after that they must autopsy Ford’s and Alandale’s mummified remains. “Pay particular attention to the viscera and determine if there’s anything unusual, any danger to you from an unknown disease.”
They immediately suggested that the pressures at which David was working had begun to work on his mind.
Others hearing the transmissions tried to cheer David on, some from as far away as the other section of Titanic, but not a word from either Kelly or Swigart.
David pushed for the men on Scorpio to listen to him. “As soon as you can, crack open the dead men’s chests! Please, you gotta listen and do what I tell ya!” No sooner than he’d said it, David realized he sounded like a maniac.
No one on board Scorpio was taking him seriously.
“As soon as we dispense with the pressing business at hand,” Mr. Ingles,” Forbes ‘humored’ him, “we’ll get right on it.”
Things felt all wrong. He didn’t like Forbes’ snarky reply followed by Entebbe telling him to calm down and that his blood pressure was racing skyward. Nor did David like Swigart’s sudden, last minute change of plans down here. It didn’t make sense. It went against who Lou Swigart was. First the separating of the original team assignments, then allowing even the reserve diver along, and finally the whole bit with the photo op of the entire group. It was so unlike Lou. Now this, David sent off with Jacob in one direction, Lou taking Kelly off in another, endangering the group and the mission by splitting up.
It’d been difficult to watch her swim off with Lou; more difficult still to helplessly see them slip through the gaping, tattered end where Titanic had ripped herself apart, watching Kelly disappear from sight.
The debris field here looked like the remnants of an explosion, giant, toppled over smoke stacks, enormous boilers askew, and whole slabs of the deck literally blown apart by the uncontrolled, two and a half mile dive at enormous speed which Titanic had taken. The bulkhead at mid-ship having come apart, resulting in a huge gaping hole—the entire framework was ripped from port side to starboard as if Poseidon himself had ripped it open with his bare hands.
In short, this was likely the most dangerous place for Kelly and Swigart to have entered the ship—loose dangling wires, sharp edges, six to fourteen foot-long rust fingers looking like tree branches anxious to snag a passing diver. A single rent in their liquid air paks or Cryo-suits could cause a leak or a loss of pressure or loss of the OPFC, which meant certain death at these depths. It seemed to David that Lou was taking dangerous chances with all their lives. This came in the form of his random choices plucked from the air, and in his taking unnecessary risks. For one, he should have located a safer point of entry or remained with David and Jacob.
Then, too, there were the sudden last minute changes in assigned dive partners. Kelly was originally to be with Mendenhall, and David with Bowman, but they’d been shuffled at the last minute without explanation. Nothing rational there, a break in logic and planning and organization—as if to prime them for the unexpected perhaps? Or was it something more sinister?
But for the moment, David’s immediate fear was getting himself snagged on some object, losing suit integrity and losing the liquid breathing medium. A Styrofoam ice chest at these depths would be turned into a cube the size of his thumbnail and as dense as granite—and he imagined his body reacting the same way. Should a diver lose his or her liquid air, he or she would implode before any chance of getting to another breath of the life-sustaining liquid medium could be inhaled.
He turned to follow Mendenhall who signaled that he was going down the Grand Staircase, entering the foyer ahead of David. This was the safest, widest entry to the ship, and from Ballard’s earlier robotic investigations, they had all learned that it would take them to B-Deck at very least, and quite possibly even further into the bowels of the wreck. As strange as it was for David to admit, diving Titanic had quickly become like making any wreck dive—assume danger and death awaited at every turn, and acknowledge that going into any interior was dangerous in and of itself. Any diver who had been inside a wreck knew that a ship might openly invite you in, but it might not let you leave. Something about Titanic only amplified this fear and made him relive the exact moment he lost his friend Terry Wilcox.