“Stop!” Glinn yelled, raising his weapon.
Brambell looked up. “Dr. Glinn. Just the man I wanted to speak to.” He took another swing at the ROV, the sledgehammer clanging off the titanium sphere.
Gideon could see immediately that the ROV had been given a pretty good working over. The propulsion system was in pieces, the mech arm torn away, the basket bashed off, and everything else accessible utterly destroyed.
“Step away from the ROV or I’ll shoot!” Glinn said in an even tone.
“Do you realize just how absurd this whole scheme is?” Brambell cried. “We’ve been visited by an intelligent species—”
“I said, step away from the ROV.”
Brambell let the sledgehammer drop. “It’s wrong to kill it. The creature’s intelligent, probably more so than we—”
Glinn cut him off. “Who took John?”
“I’m glad you asked. Dr. Sax went down to open talks with the creature.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s her firm belief—and mine—that what is needed here is not violence, but communication—”
“When did she take it?”
“About half an hour ago.”
At that moment a shirtless Manuel Garza appeared in the doorway of the hangar. At his heels was Rosemarie Wong, Prothero’s lab assistant, along with a DSV handler.
Glinn continued to speak to Brambell. “Were you part of this?” he demanded, still pointing his gun at the doctor.
“I was indeed. Let me explain.”
“Enough explanation. Get away from the ROV and lie facedown on the floor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You see, the ROV—”
“He’s infected, of course,” said McFarlane loudly.
“Me, infected? Absurd! Has the whole ship gone mad? At any rate, I know what I’m doing—even if you do not.” Brambell picked up the sledgehammer and raised it again.
Glinn pulled the trigger, the report booming through the hangar space. A surprised look appeared on Brambell’s face and he looked down at his chest. Glinn fired a second time and Brambell crumpled to the deck, as if in slow motion.
Glinn stepped back and turned to Garza. “You’ve come from the engine room?”
Garza was breathing heavily, and sweat covered his bare chest. “It’s no good. We’ll never be able to stop the worms—they’re smart, and they’re breeding too quickly.” He jerked a thumb at Wong and the DSV handler. “These two wanted to help. They’re clean.”
“Indeed.” Glinn turned to the man, but before he could speak Wong uttered a loud scream. A worm was sliding out of Brambell’s nose with a long, sinuous motion. Gray, shining with body fluids, it seemed to keep coming forever.
With a grunt of disgust, McFarlane stepped over and ground it into paste with his boot.
Glinn gave this but a moment’s attention. “Assess the damage to the ROV, please,” he told the handler.
The man did a quick survey. “The hatch is still sealed.” He opened the ROV’s hatch, peered in with a flashlight. “The inside appears okay.”
“How long will it take to repair?” Glinn asked.
The handler spent a moment checking the rear propulsion system, looking over the ROV’s hull. He shuffled around and finally looked up, spreading his hands.
“Well?” Glinn asked.
“I’m afraid it’s a total loss.”
“What about the titanium sphere itself?”
“That’s intact. Not much a sledgehammer could do to harm that. But the ROV itself is useless: no propulsion, no autopilot, no communications, and no internal power. It’s just an inert titanium shell.”
“But a shell still able to withstand pressure at depth?”
“Yes.”
“How about buoyancy? With the nuke loaded?”
“Not neutrally buoyant, but it was designed to be only slightly heavy in order to help with ballasting.”
“So the nuke could be put in the titanium sphere, and it could be towed to the detonation point—and it then could be detonated.”
“Towed down?” McFarlane asked. “With what? I thought that stolen DSV was the last.”
“We’ve got a spare,” said Glinn. “Under wraps. The Pete.”
“Pete?”
“Named after Pete Best,” said Garza.
“So…” McFarlane turned to the handler. “Can it really be towed?”
“Perhaps,” said the handler, sounding a little dubious.
“It has to be detonated six hundred feet above the Rolvaag,” said McFarlane. “It’s not likely to work higher or lower.”
“That’s correct,” said Gideon. “The quick-and-dirty simulation I did showed that six hundred feet is the optimal detonation point for a liquid-liquid explosion. The numbers begin to fall off the closer you detonate it to the hulk.”
“In other words, we’re talking a suicide mission,” said Glinn.
A silence.
Glinn continued, “Someone in Pete has to tow the nuke into position six hundred feet above the Rolvaag and hold it there until it goes off.”
“Why not just lower it by cable?” asked McFarlane.
“If it goes off under the Batavia,” Gideon said, “the shock wave will sink the ship. The ship has to be at least six nautical miles away.”
“Isn’t that a sacrifice worth making? So the ship sinks. We’ve got lifeboats.”
“There are many reasons why that isn’t going to work,” said Glinn, “not the least of which is the chaos on board.”
This was followed by another long silence.
McFarlane said: “I’ll do it. I’ll take it down with the Pete.”
Glinn gazed steadily at McFarlane. “No. You’ve never driven a DSV. This will be a tricky operation, towing a dangling, inert load.”
His eyes swiveled on Gideon. “Gideon,” he said, “you’re the obvious choice. You’re now an expert in DSV handling. You’re dying of an incurable disease. You’ll be dead in nine months regardless. You can trade those nine months for saving the world—not to put too fine a point on it.”
He spoke these frank truths in a steady, dull, matter-of-fact voice, not unlike an accountant reciting numbers to a client.
He continued. “A person who is staring death in the face is a special kind of person. A person who can do exceptional things. This will be one of those things.”
Gideon couldn’t immediately find his voice to reply.
The silence was broken by a sudden, sarcastic laugh from McFarlane. Everyone’s eyes swiveled in his direction.
“Well, well,” he said in a bitter tone. “It would appear that sometimes even the most obsessive behavior can bring positive results.” He thumped Glinn on the back—none too gently. “Palmer Lloyd would be pleased.” He turned to Gideon and extended his hand. “Congratulations, pardner.”
63
EYVEN VINTER LEANED back in a chair in a small annex to the rec room. Standing beside him was the other security officer, Oakes, who had joined the mutiny at the same time he had. He felt exhausted by pain and was also suffering from a certain feeling of detachment that he knew must be shock from the gunshot wounds. Neither wound was fatal, at least not if eventually treated. But his injuries had rendered him useless. And their failure to take the bridge had temporarily demoralized the group.
But now the balance of power had shifted in their direction. “Get Masterson in here,” he told Oakes.
“Yes, sir.”
His job now was to put a little fire in the belly of Masterson. He saw that Masterson was key: he had a knack for recruiting people; he was at heart a good man; people trusted him. As second assistant engineer, he knew the intimate workings of the ship and could take the conn if necessary. Many had now flocked to their cause, and those who had not were paralyzed by the growing chaos and terror on board ship. Mission control had been neutralized. Even some of the security guards assigned to keep them bottled up on the crew deck had defected. The only remaining holdouts were the captain and the officers of the bridge, along with the cadre of top EES brass—Glinn and his group. They could literally walk to the bridge, maybe without firing a single shot. The catch was blowing the bridge doors, which had been designed to keep out terrorists and any others who might commandeer the ship.