Trojan Odyssey

Renee's finely defined eyebrows lifted. 'Mispickel?'

'The mineral arsenic is obtained from.'

Pitt looked at Dodge, soberly, speculatively. 'How is it possible that such a heavily concentrated toxic mineral cocktail, as you call it, can multiply, since it's impossible for it to reproduce itself?'

'The accumulation comes from constantly being replenished,' replied Dodge. 'I might add that there are heavy traces of magnesium, an indication of dolomitic lime that has dissolved in unheard-of concentrations.'

'What does that suggest?' queried Rudi Gunn.

'The presence of limestone, for one thing.' Dodge answered directly. He paused a few moments to study a readout from a printer. 'Another factor is the gravitational force that pulls minerals or chemicals in alkaline water toward true magnetic north. Minerals attract other minerals to form rust or oxidation. Chemicals in alkaline water pull other chemicals toward their surface to form toxic waste or gas. That is why most of the brown blob has moved north toward Key West.'

Gunn shook his head. 'That doesn't explain why Dirk and Summer were able to study sections of the blob on Navidad Bank on the other side of the Dominican Republic out in the Atlantic.'

Dodge shrugged. 'A portion must have been carried by wind and currents through the Mona Passage between Dominica and Puerto Rico before drifting onto Navidad Bank.'

'Whatever the cocktail,' said Renee, waving her environmentalist flag, 'it's turned the water harmful and dangerous to all life that uses it — humans, animals, reptiles, fish, even the birds that land in it, not to mention the microbial world.'

'What puzzles me,' muttered Dodge, continuing as if he hadn't heard Renee, 'is how something with the consistency of silt can bind together in a cohesive mass that floats over a great distance in a cloud no deeper than a hundred and twenty feet from the surface.' As he spoke, he made notations in a notebook. 'I suspect sea salinity plays a part in the spread, which might explain why the crud doesn't sink to the bottom.'

'That's not the only odd part of the puzzle,' said Giordino.

'Make your point?' Pitt softly probed.

'The water temperature is seventy-eight, a good five degrees below normal for this part of the Caribbean.'

'Another problem to solve,' muttered Dodge wearily. 'A drop that low is a phenomenon that doesn't go by the book.'

'You've accomplished a lot,' Gunn complimented the chemist. 'Rome wasn't built in a day. We'll collect specimens and let the NUMA lab in Washington find answers to the rest of the enigma. Our job now is to track down the source somehow.'

'We can only do that by following a trail leading to the highest concentrations,' said Renee.

Pitt smiled wearily. 'That's why we came here—' He broke off suddenly, stiffened and gazed out through the windshield. 'That,' he continued quietly, 'and our fun visit to Disneyland.'

'You'd better get some sleep,' said Giordino evenly. 'You're beginning to babble.'

'This is no Disneyland,' said Renee, suppressing a yawn.

Pitt turned and nodded his head and pointed toward the sea beyond the bow. 'Then why are we about to enter the Pirates of the Caribbean?'

All heads turned in unison, and all eyes stared into the dark water that ended where the stars began. They saw a faint yellow glow that slowly increased in brilliance as Poco Bonito moved steadily toward it. They stood there frozen in silence as the glow slowly materialized into a nebulous shape of an old sailing ship that became more defined with each passing minute.

For a moment, they thought they were losing touch with reality, until Pitt spoke in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. 'I wondered when old Leigh Hunt was going to show up.'

21

The mood on board the boat had suddenly changed. For nearly a minute, no one moved. No one spoke as they stared uneasily at the bizarre phenomenon. Finally, Gunn broke the silence.

'The same Hunt the pirate the admiral warned us about?'

'No, Hunt the buccaneer.'

'It can't be real.' Renee stared in awe, refusing to believe what her eyes relayed to her brain. 'Are we really looking at a ghost ship?'

Pitt's lips curled in a vague smile. 'Only in the eye of the beholder.' Then he paraphrased from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 'With never a whisper in the sea, oft darts the Odyssey ship.'

'Who was Hunt?' asked Dodge, in a voice close to a quaver.

'A buccaneer who roamed the Caribbean from sixteen sixty-five until sixteen eighty, when he was captured by a British Royal Navy ship and fed to the sharks.'

Not wanting to look at the phantom, Dodge turned away, his mind not functioning, and muttered, 'What's the difference between a pirate and buccaneer?'

'Very little,' answered Pitt. 'Pirate is a general term that covers British, Dutch and French seafarers who captured merchant ships for prize money and treasure. The term buccaneer comes from the French for barbecue. The early buccaneers used to grill their meat and dry it. Unlike privateers, who had valid commissions from their government, buccaneers preyed on any ship, mostly Spanish, without papers. They were also known as freebooters.'

The ghostly vessel was only a half a mile away now and closing fast. The eerie yellow glow gave the apparition a surrealistic image. As it neared and the details of the ship became more distinct, the sounds of men shouting across the water began to be heard aboard the phantom.

She was a square-rigged barque with three masts and a shallow draft, a favorite vessel of pirates before the seventeen hundreds. The foresails and topsails were billowing in a nonexistent breeze. She mounted ten guns, five run out on the main deck on both sides. Men with bandanas around their head were standing on the quarterdeck, waving swords. High on her mainmast, a huge black flag with a fiendishly grinning skull dripping blood stood straight out as if the ship was sailing against a headwind.

The expressions on the faces of those on the Poco Bonito varied from growing horror to foreboding to academic contemplation. Giordino looked as if he was staring at cold pizza, while Pitt peered through binoculars at the phantasm with the face of a man enjoying a science fiction movie. Then he lowered the glasses and began to laugh 'Are you mad?' Renee demanded.

He handed her the glasses. 'Look at the man in the scarlet suit with the gold sash standing on the quarterdeck and tell me what you see.'

She stared through the lenses. 'A man with a feathered hat.'

'What else sets him apart from the others.'

'He has a peg leg and a hook on his right hand.'

'Don't forget the eye patch.'

'Yes. There's that too.'

'All that's missing is a parrot on one shoulder.'

She lowered the binoculars. 'I don't understand.'

'A bit stereotyped, don't you think?'

An old Navy man who had served fifteen years on the sea, Gunn read the ghost ship's change of course almost before it turned. 'She's going to cross our bow.'

'I hope she isn't planning on giving us a broadside,' Giordino said half in jest, half seriously.

'Lay on the throttles and ram her amidships,' Pitt instructed Gunn.

'No!' Renee gasped, staring at Pitt stupidly, stunned. 'That's suicide!'

'I'm with Dirk,' Giordino said loyally. 'I say stick our bow in the sucker.'

A smile began to creep across Gunn's face as he became aware of what Pitt was silently implying. He stood at the helm and punched the engines, laying on full power and lifting the bow three feet out of the water. The