“Sir, I have a distress signal from the Indonesian cargo freighter Mentawai.”
The second officer, George Hudson, picked up the ship’s phone, punched a number and waited for an answering voice. “Captain, we’ve picked up a distress signal.”
Captain Jason Kelsey was about to take his first forkful of breakfast in his cabin when the call came from the bridge. “Very well, Mr. Hudson. I’m on my way. Try and get her position.”
Kelsey wolfed down his eggs and ham, gulped half a cup of coffee and walked through a short passageway to the navigation bridge. He went directly to the radio room.
The operator looked up, a curious look in his eyes. “Very strange signal, Captain.” He handed Kelsey a notepad.
Kelsey studied it, then stared at the radio operator. “Are you sure this is what they transmitted?”
“Yes, sir. They came in quite clearly.”
Kelsey read the message aloud. “All ships come quick. Freighter Mentawai forty kilometers south-southwest of Howland Island. Come quick. All are dying.” He looked up. “Nothing more? No coordinates?”
The radio operator shook his head. “They went dead, and I haven’t been able to raise them again.”
“Then we can’t use our radio direction-finding systems.” Kelsey turned to his second officer. “Mr. Hudson, lay a course for Mentawai’s last reported position southwest off Howland Island. Not much to go on without exact coordinates. But if we can’t make a visual sighting, we’ll have to rely on our radar to spot them.” He could have asked Hudson to run the course numbers through the navigation computer, but he preferred working by the old rules.
Hudson went to work on the chart table with parallel rulers, attached by swinging hinges, and a pair of dividers, and Kelsey signaled the chief engineer that he wanted Rio Grande to come to full speed. First Officer Hank Sherman appeared on the bridge, yawning as he buttoned his shirt.
“We’re responding to a distress call?” he asked Kelsey.
The captain smiled and passed him the notepad. “Word travels fast on this ship.”
Hudson turned from the chart table. “I make the distance to Mentawai approximately sixty-five kilometers, bearing one-three-two degrees.”
Kelsey stepped over to the navigation console and punched in the coordinates. Almost immediately the big container ship began a slow swing to starboard as the computerized electronics system steered her onto a new course of 132 degrees.
“Any other ships responding?” he asked the radio operator.
“We’re the only one who attempted a reply, sir.”
Kelsey stared at the deck. “We should be able to reach her in a shade less than two hours.”
Sherman continued staring at the message in bewilderment. “If this isn’t some kind of hoax, it’s very possible that all we’ll find are corpses.”
They found Mentawai a few minutes after eight in the morning. Unlike Polar Queen, which had continued steaming under power, the Indonesian freighter appeared to be drifting. She looked peaceful and businesslike. Smoke curled from her twin funnels, but no one was visible on the decks, and repeated hails through a loudspeaker from the bridge of Rio Grande brought no response.
“Quiet as a tomb,” said First Officer Sherman ominously.
“Good Lord!” muttered Kelsey. “She’s surrounded by a sea of dead fish.”
“I don’t much like the look of it.”
“You’d better collect a boarding party and investigate,” ordered Kelsey.
“Yes, sir. On my way.”
Second Officer Hudson was peering at the horizon through binoculars. “There’s another ship about ten kilometers off the port bow.”
“Is she coming on?” asked Kelsey.
“No, sir. She seems to be moving away.”
“That’s odd. Why would she ignore a ship in distress? Can you make her out?”
“She looks like a fancy yacht, a big one with sleek lines. The design you see moored in Monaco or Hong Kong.”
Kelsey moved to the threshold of the radio-room doorway and nodded to the operator. “See if you can raise that boat in the distance.”
After a minute or two, the radio operator shook his head. “Not a peep. They’ve either closed down, or they’re ignoring us.”
The Rio Grande slackened speed and glided slowly toward the freighter rolling slowly in the low swells. They were very close to the lifeless ship now, and from the bridge wing of the big container ship, Captain Kelsey could look straight down on her decks. He saw two inert figures and what he took to be a small dog. He hailed the wheelhouse again, but all was silent.
The boat with Sherman’s boarding party was lowered into the water and motored over to the freighter. They bumped and scraped alongside as they heaved a grappling hook over the railing and rigged it to pull up a boarding ladder. Within minutes, Sherman was over the side and bending over the bodies on the deck. Then he disappeared through a hatch below the bridge.
Four of the men had followed him while two remained in the boat and motored away from the hull a short distance, waiting for a signal to return and pick them up. Even after Sherman made certain the men lying on the deck were dead, he still half expected some of the freighter’s crew to be waiting for him. After entering the hatch, he climbed a passageway to the bridge and was overwhelmed with a sense of unreality. All hands from the captain to the mess boy were dead, their corpses strewn about the deck where they fell. The radioman was found with his eyes bulging and his hands clasped around his set as if he were afraid of falling.
Twenty minutes passed before Sherman eased Mentawai’s radio operator to the floor and called over to the Rio Grande. “Captain Kelsey?”
“Go ahead, Mr. Sherman. What have you found?”
“All dead, sir, every one of them, including two parakeets found in the chief engineer’s cabin and the ship’s dog, a beagle with its teeth bared.”
“Any clue as to the cause?”
“Food poisoning seems the most obvious. They look like they threw up before they died.”
“Be careful of toxic gas.”
“I’ll keep my nostrils open,” said Sherman.
Kelsey paused, contemplating the unexpected predicament. Then he said, “Send back the boat. I’ll have it return with another five men to help you get the ship under way. The nearest major port is Apia in the Samoa Islands. We’ll turn the ship over to authorities there.”
“What about the bodies of the crew? We can’t leave them lying around, certainly not in the tropical heat.”
Without hesitation, Kelsey replied, “Stack them in the freezer. We want them preserved until they can be examined by—”
Kelsey was abruptly cut off in midsentence as Mentawai’s hull shuddered from an explosion from deep inside her bowels. The hatches above the cargo holds were thrown skyward as flame and smoke erupted from below. The ship seemed to heave herself out of the water before splashing back and taking on a sharp list to starboard. The roof of the wheelhouse collapsed inward. There was another deep rumble inside the freighter, followed by the screeching sound of tearing metal.
Kelsey watched in horror as the Mentawai began to roll over on her starboard side. “She’s going down!” he shouted over the radio. “Get out of there before she goes under!”
Sherman was flat on the deck, stunned from the concussion of the blast. He looked around, dazed, as the deck slanted steeply. He slid into one corner of the shattered radio compartment and sat there in shock, staring dumbly as water surged through the open door to the bridge wing. It was an unreal picture that made no sense to his stunned mind. He took one long gasping breath that was the last he ever took, and tried feebly to rise to his feet, but it was too late. He was buried under the warm, green water of the sea.