They were deep into the weed now, into the ship’s graveyard like Cushing and the others. Although the fog was thicker than oatmeal and night had come on, black and eternal, they had seen things out there. The overturned hulls of ships, wreckage, an occasional glimpse of some old-time schooner or modern cutter rigged with fungus and weed, things like rotting old ghost ships. But never more than a glimpse. Just enough to make them realize that they were in a place of legend.
“Sooner or later, maybe when the night ends,” Saks said, “we’ll find us a decent ship. Something that hasn’t been here too long. And when we find that, we’ll call it home.”
“Home,” Menhaus said. “I like that. Home. Jesus.”
“Shut your hole,” Saks told him. “The point being we can’t drift around in this goddamn boat for the rest of our merry lives. We need something better. Something that might have a store of food and water, maybe some weapons or a good motor launch on her.”
“A base of operations,” Fabrini said.
“Exactly. That’s our first order of business. Find a place that’s dry and safe, then we can spend our time getting the lay of this place and weighing our options.”
Nobody argued with any of that. One thing at a time.
Menhaus and Fabrini began debating what kind of place this was, to have all those ships trapped in the weeds.
“Sargasso Graveyard,” Saks told them. “That’s what the old salts called this place. The Sargasso Graveyard. Even the big steamships and diesel jobs end up here… they run out of fuel and drift into this cesspool. No way out. Then the weed grows all over ‘em. But some of these ships, well, they have to have motorboats on ‘em. That’s what we want.”
“Graveyard,” Crycek said. “That’s exactly what this place is: a graveyard.”
“Lots of dead ships out there,” Menhaus said. “And lots of dead crews to go with them, I’ll bet.”
The idea of that paled Fabrini somewhat.
But that wasn’t what Saks wanted to talk about. He wanted to mention that other craft they had seen. The very thing that had prompted this entire line of conversation. Because they had seen something jutting from the weed and it was like nothing any of them had ever seen before.
“What the hell was that?” Saks put to them.
No bullshit, no insults, no bullying, he honestly wanted their opinion on what it was they had seen before the fog swallowed it again. Because, he knew one thing, he hadn’t liked it. Just looking upon it for those few fleeting seconds had made something in him close up like an oyster. Made something else in him begin to shiver. For there were some things you honestly never wanted to see and particularly not in a place like this.
“It was a spaceship,” Fabrini said, finally framing it into words for all of them. “Some kind of spaceship.”
“Spaceship,” Menhaus said. “My ass.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Saks said.
Menhaus just shook his head. “Oh, come on, you two. A fucking flying saucer? You hear what you’re saying?”
They heard what they were saying just fine. Whatever it had been, it was sticking up out of the weed, the edge of something circular and streamlined. Blackened-looking like it had burned up. And it had been making a low, muted humming that was barely there. But they’d heard it, all right.
It was crazy stuff, to be sure. The stuff of pulp fiction and late-night movies. But when they’d seen it, they’d all been thinking the same thing. The monsters in the mist were bad enough and the slimy things in the Dead Sea, but this was something else entirely. This was the last thing they wanted to see. The last thing anybody ever wanted to see, despite all the claims to the contrary. For the sight of something like that made your guts turn over and your head fill with a funny kind of noise. Because things like that were not supposed to be. Not really. And when you saw them, something in you cringed, the way a healthy cell might cringe at the idea of an invading alien microbe.
Particularly when you started wondering if there had been a crew aboard.
“I’m not buying that flying saucer shit,” Menhaus said, about as stubborn as they’d ever seen him. “I don’t believe in any of that shit. We only saw it for a few seconds. Could have been anything.”
“Like what?” Fabrini wanted to know.
“Like… like maybe a hovercraft. They’re round, right? Could have been one of those.”
“A hovercraft?” Saks said, laughing now. “A fucking hovercraft? Didn’t look much like a hovercraft to me.”
“You know damned well what it was,” Fabrini said. “We all do. I knew the minute I’d saw it and I didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all. And you know why?”
Menhaus looked at him. “You tell me.”
“Because it scared me, same as it scared all of you. And don’t you goddamn try and deny it, any of you. It scared the shit out of all of us. Those dead ships are one thing, but-”
“That’s enough,” Menhaus said. “That enough already.”
So that was it. They all knew something was eating him and here it was. He knew what it was they had seen, he just wouldn’t admit to it and the reason for that was it had him scared silly.
“Yeah, that’s enough,” Saks said. “Menhaus isn’t buying it, are you Menhaus?”
“I certainly am not.”
“See, Fabrini? Menhaus don’t believe in little green men from Mars. He’s too damn sensible for that.”
“Damn right I am,” Menhaus said.
“It’s all a big stupid joke and Menhaus isn’t buying it.”
Menhaus swallowed. “Well…”
“Sure, it’s just a joke.” Saks looked amused. “A big, stupid, silly-assed joke. All right, Fabrini, let’s come clean already. This has all been a joke. The fog, the sea, all those big ghost ships out there. We set the whole thing up just to fuck with you, Menhaus. Candid Camera, right? Fabrini? Tell Alan Fundt to turn off that pissing fog machine and bring the lights up. We’re not fooling Menhaus with this shit, he saw right through it. I told you that flying saucer would tip him off. Menhaus, he’s just too smart for shit like this. Isn’t that what I said? Isn’t that what I told-”
“Fuck you,” Menhaus said.
“Yeah, fuck me is right.” He turned and looked at Fabrini. “Break them oars out, we’ll row back there. I wanna show Menhaus how I made that prick out of coat hangers and old garbage bags. He’s going to love this. Hey! Somebody turn the lights on already, enough is enough. Menhaus has had his fill.”
Menhaus looked like maybe he wanted to cry.
“Take it easy,” Fabrini told him. “So it’s a fucking dead flying saucer and there’s a couple little green men floating in the weeds. So what?”
“So what?” Menhaus shook his head. “What if they’re not dead? What if they’re alive right now and watching us? What then?”
Saks laughed. “Then you’ll get that anal probing you’ve always been wanting.”
“Fuck you, Saks. Just fuck you-”
“I think I saw it.”
They were all looking at Crycek now who had kept out of the entire discussion thus far. He was still gazing out into the fog, but apparently he had been listening. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that thing come down.” He turned and looked at them. “Before we picked you guys up… when it was just me and Cook and Hupp… I saw this sort of glowing blue light pass over us. It was up high, kind of hazy in the fog. I could only see that blue glow, nothing else. I been thinking… I been thinking that maybe it was that flying saucer coming down. Why the hell not? This goddamn place might have a hundred doors to it. Maybe that ship got sucked through one of ‘em, same way we did.”
“But if they can build a ship like that, something that jumps around from star to star like in those shows,” Fabrini began, “then they’d have to be real smart. That kind of technology is about a thousand years or a hundred thousand from where we are. You wouldn’t think a race like that could get sucked in here and even if they did, you’d think they’d know how to fly back out.”
Saks said, “Maybe the thing was damaged. It looked kind of burnt or something. Crusty.”