“I don’t wish to see you behind bars, or under Reahall’s thumb, sir.”
“Oh come now, Tommie, so melodramatic!” Declan interrupted. “Once Dr. Bellingham sees what we’ve done here—our sacrifice, the authorities will applaud us all.”
“My God, Kelly—you’ve got them running around in circles; they’re turning the ship around to search for Alandale,” Ingles whispered in her ear as the others rushed along the corridor, going topside. “We’ve got to inform the captain of what we know.”
“No, we can’t!”
“Why in God’s name not?”
“We don’t know that the captain isn’t the carrier, David.”
“Juris Forbes? That’s crazy. Forbes has dedicated his life to this search mission and… and science.”
“Exactly… exactly what that thing would do—learn how to get back to
“Hold on. When Bob Ballard found the
“I did.”
“You did?”
“You bet, and for all I know someone on Bob Ballard’s team may well have been the carrier at that time; however, there was no way to get inside
“And the French team that came after Ballard?”
“Checked out and cleared. No one was killed among them, same as Ballard’s expedition.”
“That’s your measurement? No one died?”
“Afraid so. Remember we’ve only recently seen the development of dive technology that can get the carrier inside
“I… the—the thing that killed Alandale has been just waiting all these decades… waiting in the wings for technology to catch up?”
“Not waiting; continuing to survive… feeding.”
“I see.”
“It’s left a trail, but the trail hasn’t been one of reproduction but destruction—always obscured because it takes on another human form with each mutation—getting stronger with each feeding.”
“But it finally got it right—aboard
“Yes, and now its final hope at reproduction—to retrieve those eggs frozen in time… frozen inside
“Whoa… what eggs? You lost me. I know nothing about any eggs.”
She took a deep breath of air. “To be exact, they are egg-sacs, hatchlings first discovered during the Fiore autopsy.”
“Hatchlings?”
“The creature’s initial attempts at reproduction failed. The earliest attempts, aborted or rather miscarried, if you will—stillborn, but later attempts proved quite successful.”
“You’ve completely lost me now!” David closed his eyes and shook his head.
“You haven’t read far enough along in the journal, David! You have to read on!”
“Damn, if this thing can reproduce—lay eggs, you say! Then why doesn’t it just reproduce again rather than kill good men like Alandale?”
“I’ve surmised that after so many attempts, it can no longer reproduce. I mean, apparently, it has the ability to reproduce without a mate like a lot of creatures in nature, but it has only so many shots at it. At least that’s what I’ve surmised, and what my ancestor began to believe near the end.”
“Near the end? Did Declan Irvin die on board
“You know how many died aboard
“By most counts it falls somewhere between 15-to-1600.”
“And Thomas Coogan? And Alastair Ransom?”
“Read on in the journal.”
“One of them—Thomas, Declan, or Ransom had to carry the journal off the ship; one of them survived.”
“And so too did the creature, unfortunately.”
“Damn… were they on the same lifeboat?”
“Possibly, yes. Really, no way to know. Mr. Ismay, the owner, was among the survivors—and while he was depicted in the press as having dressed in women’s clothing to get a seat aboard a lifeboat, perhaps that was not such an exaggeration after all.”
They each took a deep breath and held their silence for a time. She finally said, “I am sorry about Alandale— the real man, that is. But what is worse than allowing that thing to take out individuals, David? Imagine what might—no, what will happen— should it return to free its disease-spreading, awful progeny upon the masses.”
“Egg-sacs… Jesus help us. How many eggs are we talking about here?”
“Hundreds, maybe thousands. I don’t know for certain.”
“Each… each of which has the potential to infiltrate a human host?”
“No one aboard
“Presumably each would find a host…”
“Lay its own eggs.”
David quaked inwardly with the image. “This is all so freaking Stephen King.”
“No David, King deals in fantasy; try Crichton. There’s science in this, not supernatural but natural. This thing lived on Earth long before mankind arrived. You’ve got to believe me… and you have to read on in the journal.”
“I intend to… seeing Alandale like that… like Fiore’s body… like McAffey and O’Toole.”
“God, I have lived with this bottled up inside me, and all alone for so long.” A tear formed in her eye, but she quickly wiped it away, turning her face from him. “You must read on,” she insisted. “It’s so important that you understand the entire picture, David.”
“You’ve read all our files, haven’t you?” he asked.
“And I picked you because you went back for Terry Wilcox. Risked your life for a friend. I want you as my friend, David.”
“But you know Forbes; you’ve known him for years,” countered David. “How can you suspect him of such horrors as this? Of killing his colleague and friend, Alandale?”
“This thing has no friends or colleagues. Yes, I knew Forbes years ago, but even then he was aloof. Cold even, a real loner. He could be the carrier. I couldn’t confide in him. What if—”
“He has been stand-offish, true.” David replayed moments in his head. “But… but there could be many reasons for that.”
“I don’t want to sound like a TV psychiatrist, but David, how much do we really know about anyone?”
“You could say the same of me, and I might say the same of you, Kelly.”
“Whatever do you mean?” she asked, shocked.
“First time you came aboard… you fawned over Alandale, remember, and me beside him—not a word to me.”
“But I knew precisely who you were; I thought—”
“You managed to make me feel like a member of the crew. A high school dropout, you know?”
“Yes well but… I know men. I knew you would pursue me only if I seemed unobtainable.”
