The Monster Missions

by Laura Martin

  I turned to look out the window and saw what had caused the whistle. There, falling slowly toward the bottom of the ocean, was the thing that had swallowed us. I blinked hard, trying to understand what I was looking at. It was enormous, probably three times the size of the Britannica, and jet-black. I would have said it was some kind of whale if it hadn’t had so many flippers and such a long tail.

  “Where’s its head?” Garth asked.

  “There,” Max said, pointing to one of the ends. “I think.”

  “How in the world can you tell?” I asked, squinting hard.

  “A lot of practice,” he said with a shrug.

  “Can we stay to study it?” someone asked, and I turned to see Weaver standing with his nose practically pressed to the glass as he watched the thing fall.

  “Not this time,” Captain Reese said with an apologetic smile. “We received a distress call from the Alamo right before we were swallowed. Apparently, they are having some trouble with a couple of giant saw-mouthed skeplars. Swallowing set us back a couple of hours, but if we hurry, we may get there in time to help.”

  “All right,” Mr. Weaver said with a sigh. “Seems like such a waste, though. I’ve never seen one quite like that.”

  “And let’s hope we never see one again,” Captain Reese said. “Everyone return to your normal duties, please. You will be alerted if you are needed again.”

  “You better go find Hector,” Kate said to me. “He doesn’t like it when his helpers are late.”

  “Um,” I said with a glance over at Garth. He grimaced.

  “You honestly still want to do the large-specimen room after that?” he said. “It’s okay. I’ll let you off the hook.”

  I shook my head. “Leave me on the hook. I still want to switch.”

  Garth shot me a baffled look and shrugged but hurried down the hall after Kate. Weaver was talking animatedly on my left with one of the divers about their mission.

  “Two hearts?” he exclaimed. “Well, that’s simply marvelous, isn’t it? Do you think it had more than one stomach, too?” He smiled as I approached. “Are you here to remind me that we have a very hungry crew to feed that doesn’t care one whit that they were a few inches of metal away from being a meal?”

  “Something like that,” I said as Weaver politely disengaged himself from the divers and, together, we headed back toward the large-specimen tanks.

  “So how was your first swallowing?” he asked jovially. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

  “It sure was,” I said.

  12

  For two weeks, my morning duties felt like they consisted of nothing but chopping up dead fish and getting dunked in Elmer’s tank. Switching with Garth was starting to look like one of my stupidest ideas yet, but I just couldn’t shake the idea that if I was going to make a breakthrough when it came to sea monsters, I was going to have to actually be around sea monsters.

  I didn’t spend the entire time gutting fish, though. I also helped the sea-monster-ravaged ship the Alamo, and even got to be part of the diving team that went down to study the two monsters the Britannica managed to kill. They were small as far as sea monsters went, only about twelve feet in length, with no eyeballs and one giant, circular, tooth-studded mouth that looked a lot like the mouth of a lamprey, the eel infamous for latching onto a fish and sucking it dry. The two that attacked the Alamo had decided to give the ship’s metal hull a go, and they’d done some significant damage before we arrived on the scene. Another hour and they’d have managed to bust through, and the entire ship would have gone down.

  After the debacle with the megalodon and getting swallowed whole by the leviathan, I honestly hadn’t had a whole lot of faith in the ability of this sub to do anything but run away from a monster. This encounter proved me wrong. The electrically charged nets were fired, and they distracted the creatures long enough for the hunting team to get four harpoons through each one. Even Garth was impressed.

  Later, when we boarded the Alamo to help them assess and repair their damage, we were treated like heroes. Still, the Alamo, a small fishing boat with only about twenty families on board, was going to have a hard time overcoming the attack. As I worked shoulder to shoulder with our crew and theirs to help mend the ship, I couldn’t help but think that Weaver was right. There had to be a way to prevent things like this from happening.

  With that thought in mind I started spending my hour of free time each night sitting with my tablet in front of one sea-monster oddity or another, studying the notes Weaver had had me transcribe on the creature and racking my brain about how in the world you could use that information to defend a ship. One thing I did know was that captains like Captain Brown of the Atlas needed to change their practices when it came to informing their crew about the sea-monster threat. It wasn’t fair to anyone, especially the scavenging crew, to send them out into the ocean without all the facts. Although, I reasoned, there might not be a scavenging crew if they knew the whole story.

  “What do you do in here all the time?” Max asked one evening after stumbling upon me staring down a rather ugly bat-winged eel monster we’d captured just that afternoon.

  “Think,” I said simply.

  “You make it look painful,” he said.

  I shrugged. “It is sometimes.” I noticed then that his arms were full, and I scrambled to my feet. “What is all that?”

  Max glanced down at the oversized bucket he held, which was crammed full of bits of rusted metal, wire, screws, a broken face mask, and some shards of glass. “Junk,” he said. “Is Weaver around?”

  I shook my head. “He said something about talking to the captain and left about a half hour ago.”

  Max sighed. “Shoot. I was hoping to hand this off to him.”

  “Why are you handing him junk?” I asked.

  “He likes to pick through everything before we throw it out,” he said. “He thinks we’re wasteful. He’s got a whole storage closet full of this stuff. Who knows what he plans to use it all for?”

  “Really?” I said, perking up. “I haven’t seen that yet.”

  “You aren’t missing out,” Max said. “It’s just junk. I heard a rumor once that Weaver used to store it all in the ceiling before Captain Reese caught him and made him pull it out. Fire hazard.”

  “I’ll give it to him,” I said, holding out my hands. Max was happy enough to hand over the bucket, and turned to leave.

  “Hey, Max,” I said, glancing up from the bucket.

  “Yeah?” he replied, turning around.

  “Your limp’s gone,” I said.

  Max glanced down at his foot and shrugged. “I guess,” he said, turning to go again.

  “Max?” I said again, and he huffed and turned around, eyebrow raised. “I’m glad it’s gone,” I said. “I don’t know what happened with your friend, the one who left, but I do know that having a physical reminder of it every day must have been really hard.” My own guilt for the danger in which I’d put my family and the rest of the Atlas crew often felt like a weight around my neck, and I didn’t have the constant reminder of it like Max had had. He studied me a second, opened his mouth as though he was going to say something, and then changed his mind and closed it again before walking out of the large-specimen room.

  I waited until his footsteps had disappeared down the hall before upending the entire bucket onto the floor. Max was right, a lot of the stuff was junk, but I pulled out a few bits of twisted metal and screws and placed them carefully in a pile by my knee. Elmer watched me through the glass of his tank, and I held up a bent and rusted wire to show him.

  “See this?” I said. “This is how I create a lock that you can’t pick!” Elmer flicked one of his large tentacles up and out of his tank, where it slapped noisily against the outside of the glass. “Just wait, old man,” I said, smiling as I pulled out a few more pieces that I might be able to use. My brain was already churning, and even though this wasn’t the problem I’d camped out here to figure out, it was a p
roblem I might actually be able to fix. Besides, I knew from experience that sometimes I got my best ideas when I was working on something else. Who knew, maybe this smaller problem would help me figure out the one that felt heavier by the day. If nothing else, I’d figure out a lock that kept me from taking a swim in Elmer’s tank.

  “I figured I’d find you in here,” Garth grumbled a few days later as he plopped down next to me in the large-specimen room. We’d ended up with a free hour before lunch thanks to Weaver getting called away by Captain Reese, and I’d decided to use my time wisely. Today I’d situated myself with my back against a tank holding a large sea turtle with a damaged shell we’d rescued two days ago. The tank I sat against varied, but I always made sure I was well out of Elmer’s reach, since I hadn’t figured out a working lock yet. I had my four failed lock prototypes laid out in front of me, each one slightly mangled from Elmer’s rough handling.

  “Still no luck with this?” Garth said, picking up the closest one and turning it in his hand. I’d used the rusted remains of an old fishing reel, five pieces of wire, four screws, and a seashell, but Elmer had made short work of it. After Max had delivered the bucket of junk, I’d asked Weaver about his personal stash, and he’d been more than happy to show me the storage closet jammed from floor to ceiling with all the cast-off bits and pieces that went into keeping a sub like the Britannica running. I’d been given free rein to use what I wanted, and I’d taken full advantage. I was surprised to see Garth, though, since the large-specimen lab was one of his least favorite places on the sub.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Gee, thanks,” he said, dropping the lock so it clanged loudly, making a few of the monsters jump inside their tanks. He went to stand up, and I shot a hand out to stop him.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “You know I didn’t. It’s just that I know you aren’t a huge fan of this particular room.”

  Garth sank back down and picked up another one of my failed locks, fiddling with it absentmindedly.

  “Well, it’s not like you come looking for me,” he said. “I’ve barely seen you since we got swallowed.”

  “Now there’s a sentence I bet you thought you’d never say,” I said in a vain attempt to lighten my friend’s mood. Garth just grunted and kept fiddling with the lock as he stared across the room at Elmer’s tank. I let him stew, knowing he’d spit out whatever was bothering him eventually if I just left him to it. I picked up my newest lock attempt and tightened down a bolt with my fingers.

  “Why do you think he wanted to stay?” Garth finally said, breaking the silence.

  “Huh?” I said, looking up.

  Garth jerked his chin at Elmer. “Think it’s because he wanted to make my life miserable?”

  I snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I don’t get it,” Garth said. “If I had a choice, you can bet I’d be back on the Atlas yesterday.”

  “We had a choice,” I reminded him. “We could have taken our chances with the work ship.”

  “I’d say that at least on the work ship we wouldn’t get swallowed, but that might not even be true,” Garth said glumly.

  “I miss the Atlas too,” I said. “But I think we’re here for a reason. I think we can figure this sea-monster thing out.”

  “You really think we can figure out a problem that’s been stumping the Coalition and their top-secret fleet of submarines for years?” Garth said. I winced—when he put it like that, it really did sound dumb.

  “I don’t know,” I said, chucking the half-finished lock in my hand back into the bucket of potentially useful junk I’d accumulated from Weaver’s stash and had taken to bringing with me on my visits to the large-specimen room. “Probably not. I mean, I can’t even make a stupid lock to keep an overgrown octopus in his cage.”

  “If anyone could figure it out, it would be you,” Garth said after a long moment of silence had lapsed between us. He shifted uneasily as Elmer circled his tank. “Is his tank locked now?” he asked.

  I nodded. “One of my most recent attempts.”

  “Then why are you still working on locks?” He gestured to the one I’d just thrown in the bucket.

  “Just wait—you’ll see,” I said with a glance over at Elmer.

  “Okay,” Garth said, and we both sat there and watched as Elmer’s tentacles probed the lock I’d created. After a minute, he said, “You don’t feel, I don’t know, trapped down here? Claustrophobic?” I looked away from Elmer to blink at him in surprise. If anything, that was exactly how I’d felt aboard the Atlas, although I’d never quite been able to put it into words. It was a feeling I hadn’t had since coming aboard the Britannica. Before I could figure out how to respond, I heard a now-familiar rattling sound coming from Elmer’s tank.

  “Duck!” I said to Garth, shoving his head toward the floor.

  “What?” he said, but a second later the lock I’d put on Elmer’s tank went whizzing overhead and hit the tank behind us with an earsplitting clang.

  I sat up, taking my hand off the back of Garth’s head.

  “Ha!” I said to Elmer. “You missed me again.” Garth sat up and was just retrieving the newly mangled lock when Weaver bustled in, appearing flustered.

  “Ah!” he said, spotting us, relief on his face. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you two. Come on. We have to get suited up.”

  “Suited up for what?” Garth said.

  “To dive,” Weaver said, flapping his hands at us impatiently. “I’ll explain later—just hustle.”

  Together Garth and I clambered to our feet and rushed out of the large-specimen room. By the time we made it to the dive room, Kate and Max were already geared up and tapping their feet impatiently.

  “Where have you two been?” Max said, running a finger around the neck of his wet suit. “I’m sweating buckets in this thing.”

  “Sorry,” I said, jamming my feet into my own wet suit. “How were we supposed to know we were diving today?”

  “You weren’t,” Weaver said from directly behind us. “No one knew.”

  “What’s out there?” Garth asked warily. We all turned to stare at the hatch. It had been fixed since the megalodon attack, but it was still pretty banged up.

  “Do you remember the hydra that attacked your ship?” Weaver said.

  “Yeah,” Garth said dryly. “Rings a bell.”

  “The diving crew found one of their nests unexpectedly while looking for traces of a kappa spotted in the area. A nest is a rare find, and I want to bring the eggs into the Britannica for study and observation.” He rubbed his hands together in excitement. “Here.” He handed each of us a large mesh bag.

  “Um, not to be disrespectful or anything, but is swimming into a hydra’s nest the safest idea?” Garth said, practically taking the words out of my mouth.

  “Not to worry,” Weaver said. “The dive team is trailing the parents to attach trackers. So we know for a fact that they are over a mile away. They’ll be able to give us ample warning of the parents’ return, allowing us to get safely back to the Britannica.” Even as he reassured us, he was handing out some of the lethally sharp spears I’d seen the dive team take on missions. I tried to shake off the uneasy feeling the spear gave me as I carefully strapped it to my back.

  “No harpoon gun?” Max said, looking disappointed.

  “Do you remember what happened the last time you used a harpoon gun?” Weaver replied, eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Max grumbled.

  “What happened the last time he used a harpoon gun?” I whispered to Kate.

  Kate grimaced. “Let’s just say that if Mr. Weaver hadn’t been paying attention . . . there probably wouldn’t be a Mr. Weaver anymore,” she said as water began spilling rapidly into the hatch.

  We emerged into the blue of the ocean, and I felt my heart soar as I momentarily forgot why we were diving today. Weaver didn’t forget, though, and began quickly paddling away from the ship and towar
d a large rock outcropping directly in front of us.

  “These particular monsters like to live in dark caves,” Weaver told us, forever the teacher. “They are very territorial and don’t like other creatures invading their space.”

  “Berkley could have told you that one,” Garth chimed in. “For the record, they also don’t like having things dropped on their heads.”

  “Does anyone like having things dropped on their head?” Kate said.

  Weaver paused outside the entrance to a large dark cave and flicked on his headlamp, motioning for us to do the same. We followed his orders, and he quickly disappeared into the cave. I gave one final look behind me before following. I knew Weaver had said that the hydra parents were far away, and that the dive party was tracking them, but I still felt twitchy. It reminded me yet again of the time bomb ticking until the day the monster I’d accidentally unearthed was able to track down the Atlas.

  I forced myself to shake off thoughts of my family for the moment as all my attention was currently needed to navigate the rocky interior of the cave. Weaver told us to stop about twenty feet in, his headlamp throwing the clutch of sea-monster eggs into the light. Each oblong-shaped egg was about a foot and a half long with light turquoise flecks, and Weaver immediately scooped one up and deposited it in Kate’s outstretched bag.

  “Remember, as soon as you have your egg, swim for the sub,” Weaver said. “We don’t have long, and these are much heavier than they appear and are going to slow you down.” He wasn’t exaggerating. When my own egg plunked into my bag, I almost lost my grip on the thing.

  “Don’t drop your egg,” Max said, a bit of the old snark back in his voice. No sooner had the words left his mouth than the rocks he’d been bracing his flippers against shifted, and he threw his arms out to steady himself. The egg Weaver was handing him fell, and I lunged for it along with Mr. Weaver, Max, and Garth. The result was an uncoordinated jumble of arms and diving equipment that accomplished nothing but jarring Mr. Weaver’s face mask clear off his face. Blinded by the salt water, he fumbled for a second as he struggled to replace the mask and clear it of the excess water. The egg, meanwhile, slipped through all of our grips and hit the rocks. A thick crack opened along the top of the shell, and a second later a high-pitched whistle reverberated through the water. I clapped my hands over my ears as the squeal finally came to a stop a few moments later.