It’s a darkness almost unimaginable to a bunch of kids used to seeing the night sky illuminated by neon and streetlights and stars.
It’s a darkness that swallows you. A darkness that makes you wonder if you’re even alive. A darkness that deprives you of sight and - once you get over the freakiness of being totally and completely blind - makes all your other senses somehow more acute.
«Whew! What is that - smell? Taste?» Marco said.
«Fuel?»
«Great. We’re following the equivalent of a fleet of Greyhound buses down here.»
55 «At least it means we’re on the right trail,» I said. «The fuel’s got to be from the Sea Blade.»
«Probably not fuel,» Ax said. «This is not a human submarine. It is very unlikely to be powered by the incomplete combustion of the liquid remnant of decayed vegetation. That smell/taste is most likely coolant.»
«Ah.»
«0r possibly the waste from the onboard sanitary facilities.»
«l vote for coolant,» Marco said.
The tubular passageway seemed to be about nine feet in diameter. Tight. Too tight for the Sea Blade to have come through. But then the cave seemed to be adjustable.
BONK!
«Uh, guys,» I said. «We’ve got a dead end.»
No more tunnel. Just a wall of rock.
And five other hammerhead sharks coming to an abrupt, bumping halt in the dark.
«Greatr» Marco said brightly. «0kay. Party’s over. Closing time. Everybody out. Just turn right around and . . . »
«Marco?»
«Yeah, I know, Rachel. ”Shut up.”»
«Jake?»
«We’re going through that wall,» I said. «Just don’t ask me how.»
56 CHAPTER 10
«Now - any suggestions?» I asked.
BBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
«Yaaahh!» Marco cried. «What is that!»
«l would venture to say there is an electrical field behind this wall,» Ax said.
«Ugh. It feels like biting tinfoil with a mouth full of fillings!»
«Rachel? How would you know what that feels like?» Marco said. «l always assumed you were a perfect specimen of oral hygiene.»
«Never mind,» she snapped. «What do we do now?»
I moved forward and nudged the wall with my •nose.
57 «That, I guess.» .
Amazing.
A thin horizontal line of light appeared in the center of the wall. In that profound gloom the light was almost blinding.
«0oookay. We are so not in Kansas anymore,» Marco said.
The line grew to a rectangle. Then to a square. About four feet by four feet.
And then the square rounded to form a perfect circle.
Brighter greenish squiggles of light pushed out from the flat surface of the circle and formed rotating coils.
«Psychedelic,» Tobias muttered.
«l do not recognize this technology,» Ax observed. «Not Andalite. Not Yeerk.»
«Not human,» I said. «What next?»
Suddenly the coils of green light began to migrate toward the center of the circular panel. When they’d gathered in a bunch, they split.
Opened like a mouth to reveal a tunnel beyond the wall.
«Amazing,» Cassie said.
«Disturbing,» Marco added.
«Single file,» I said. «0n me.»
We swam through the opening in the wall. The mouth shut behind us. Sealed up as if it had never been there.
58 «Well, that’s not comforting,» Marco said.
The water on the other side was marginally brighter. At least there was enough light for me to make out a right and left bank of muddy land along the ”river” of water.
I surfaced cautiously. And yes, there was a surface.
«l’m going to demorph. See if this air is actually air.»
I demorphed. The air was cool and humid but definitely breathable. The others joined me. We scrambled onto the puddled left bank of the watery passage.
After a minute my human eyes began to adjust to the twilight atmosphere. There was a sense of impossible vastness about this space. Far larger than the Yeerk pool complex. Huge. Endless. A cavern that could have contained Manhattan.
I blinked and squinted. The light, such as it was, didn’t seem to have a source. No sun, no stars, no lamps, or stadium lights. It was more like a watery background glow.
I could barely make out the faces of my friends at first. But then my eyes adjusted. They looked tired, scared, but definitely not beaten.
I looked around and saw images appear, slowly becoming visible as my eyes adjusted. But what I saw was impossible.
59 A few dozen yards away was a ship, A wooden ship. It had three tall masts. A single deck of gunports, eighteen in all, all open, all revealing the blunt snouts of old brass or iron cannon. The sails hung limp from most of the yards. The ropes and cables sagged. But nothing was as rotted as it should be. After all, no ship of this type had sailed in almost two hundred years.
It rested in dry dock, on a massive cradle made of carved coral.
”Coral?” Cassie said. ”There’s no coral near here.”
Marco gave her a look. ”That’s what bothers you? The coral? There’s a whole three-masted frigate sitting there like it just floated in from the War of 1812.”
«And a crew,» Tobias said.
”Say what?”
«My night vision’s not great, but I see men in the shrouds. And up on the yards.»
”What do you mean, men?” I snapped.
«l mean men. Dead men. Not moving. Not breathing. Just frozen in place.»
”Okay, we’re leaving,” Marco said.
”Weird,” Rachel said.
”Weird?!” Marco shrilled. ”Weird?! There’s a whole ship with a bunch of dead guys getting ready to raise sail and sing, ‘yo ho, yo ho, a pi-
60 rate’s life for me,’ in an underwater cave the size of Lake Erie, and your feeling is that’s weird?”
”Look down there,” Rachel said, pointing downstream, past the frigate.
Another shadow loomed. We walked toward it, under the lee of the frigate, oppressed by the sense of those tall masts and the shadowed, unseen dead who tended them.
We moved on toward a ship different yet similar to the first. This, too, was a sailing ship. But older. It was rounder, the masts shorter. There was a sort of ornate castle built up on the stern.
«Spanish galleon?» Tobias speculated.
Here, too, the ropes were slack, the sails hung like sheets on a clothesline on a dead calm day. And here, too, Tobias reported on bearded faces, empty eyes.
”Look, I don’t know about anyone else, but I believe in listening to my instincts. And my instincts are saying, ’You’ve done enough, Marco. Go home. Play with the stupid poodle. Do some homework.’”
”I get the same feeling, Marco,” I said. ”But we almost got killed trying to take out the Sea Blade. I don’t want a rematch. I want it sunk. I want to know it’s sunk.”
«And this is certainly a fascinating phenomenon» Ax added.
61 We walked past the galleon. And yet another ship waited for us. Smaller, sleeker.
«PT boat,» Tobias said.
And on we walked, feet thick with mud, hearts beating in slow, leaden rhythm.
”That’s not a ship, that’s a wall or something,” Rachel said.
”It curves outward toward the top,” Cassie pointed out. ”But it’s too big to be a ship, isn’t it?”
”Tobias?” I said.
He flapped up and kept flapping. Out of my sight. I waited anxiously. Then he swooped back into view and settled on Rachel’s outstretched arm.
«lt’s an aircraft carrier. It’s an entire aircraft carrier. Japanese. There’s a Japanese flag. That is an entire, World War Two, Japanese aircraft carrier. lmpossible!»
”They’d have flares. We could use some light. Also weapons,” I said. ”Might be worth taking a look. Is there an easy way up?”
«Around the far side. There’s an actual staircase. Weirdly proportioned steps, but definitely steps. »
”Let’s go.”
We crossed beneath the overhang of the bow, as tall as an office building. And there, as Tobias had said, was a staircase.
62
”Think we need to buy a ticket?” Cassie wondered idly.
I led the way up the steps. It was a long climb. But then, at last, I stepped out onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Two Japanese planes waited. Looking like they could take off for Pearl Harbor at any second.
The pilots grinned.
Dead.
The flight deck was as long as a football field. Almost as wide. 1 led the way to the superstructure. I didn’t want to see what was inside. I felt vulnerable in human morph, but we were all exhausted from multiple morphing. And we had Ax. The reassuring, delicate clop clop clop of his hooves was loud in the dense silence. And though he was probably as exhausted as us, his tail could handle most threats.
I opened an oval hatchway. Swung it outward. Jumped back.
There were lights on inside!
”Ax? Up front.”
I felt cowardly putting Ax forward, but he did have four eyes. He could see in all directions and react faster than I could.
He stepped gingerly through. «lt appears deserted^
1 followed him. Down a narrow hallway. Pipes clustered thickly on the ceiling and occasionally
63 plunged down the walls. The floor was steel, the walls steel.
Ax pushed open a second hatch and stopped. He said nothing. Just stared with all four eyes.
I leaned over him.
It was a fairly large room. At one end a low, raised platform. A map was on the wall. A chart of some sort.
Facing the platform were seats, like the seats of an old theater. Several rows. Perhaps two dozen seats in all. And in each seat, facing forward, dead men.
64 CHAPTER 11
“They’re dead,” I said unnecessarily.
”Are you sure?” Rachel said in an oddly small, thin voice.
«They’d have to be. How could they ...» Tobias’s logic trailed off.
«lf you like, I will examine the bodies, Prince Jake.»
”Good idea,” I said. ”You do that, Ax.”
”Ax is the man,” Marco mumbled.
His hooves ka-klunking on the painted metal deck, tail blade angled forward, poised for attack, Ax stepped through the narrow doorway.
Cassie went with him. I guess this was a medical situation, to her.
Ax leaned one of the bodies forward gently,
65 respectfully. Cassie looked at what he was showing her and gasped.
The two of them came back.
«They are dead humans,» Ax stated. «They have been preserved. Stuffed with a substance I cannot identify without further, more detailed examination, and sewn up the back with a stringy vegetative materials
”I am so out of here,” Marco said. ”Jake, we have to go. Now.”
”Marco? Shut up,” Rachel said, but more like she was trying to quiet her own fears.
”Mummies? Like, what? Like Egyptian mummies?” I asked, feeling stupid.
”Sewn up the back,” Marco muttered. ”Who cares what style? Dead is dead.”
”The bodies are in remarkable condition,” Cassie said, sounding like she was talking from some other place, not connected to her own body.
«l am unable to identify the culture or people responsible for this, Prince Jake. This is so irrational and strange that I assume it must involve humans.»
Two dozen Japanese pilots gazed sightlessly at a briefing map. Ready for the attack. Where? Pearl Harbor? Midway? Some forgotten battle?
They’d been the enemy then. Didn’t look or feel like the enemy now.
66 ”Let’s get out of here. Back out on deck.”
I felt marginally better outside.
SCREEEEECCCHHH!
Instinctively, I ducked.
A seagull! The bird swooped only inches above our heads and landed on the metal railing bordering the deck.
”Look at the eyes on that thing!”
The creature I thought was a seagull was not a normal seagull.
Its eyes were enormous. They covered the entire sides of its head and touched over its beak. And unlike a normal seagull’s eyes, this bird’s eyes were bright blue.
«Eyes adapted to a perpetually dim environment?» Tobias guessed.
As if in response the bird squawked, spread its wings, and took off.
”Are we certain the Sea Blade came through this Museum of Lunacy?” Marco said. ”Cause I, for one, am all for bailing.”
I frowned. ”No, we’re not sure. But we have to assume it did. And our mission’s still the same.”
”Destroy the Sea Blade before Visser Three finds the Pemalite ship,” Rachel said.
”And avenge Hahn’s death,” Cassie added softly.
”Let’s go airborne,” I said. ”It’s probably safer
67 and we can cover more ground. Tobias, stay hawk. Everyone else, go owl.”
Owl. A morph I hoped would allow us to see more clearly in the dim light.
To explore silently.
To defend ourselves if we had to against mutant seagulls and whatever other odd creatures we might find.
Whatever other live odd creatures.
A few minutes and we were off again. We followed the river further into this macabre underwater world.
Hundreds of ships for countless square miles!
German U-boats. A 1930s vintage tramp steamer. Pieces of junked motorboats. A Polynesian raft.
Rows of periscopes. Broken hulls. Propellers. Ships’ wheels. Rudders and radar equipment. Deck furniture from luxury ocean liners.
And bodies.
Preserved pilots and passengers. Eighteenthcentury European crew and twentieth-century tourists. Whalers. Fishermen.
«lt looks like a collection^ Cassie said. «AImost orderly. Deliberates
«Yeah. Mr. Psycho’s Nautical Toy Box and Graveyard,” Marco added grimly.
«0r a sicko director’s movie set,» Rachel
68 ti.iid. «is anyone else expecting to run across, s.iy, the Titanic?»
«These ships and boats are from everywhere^ Marco pointed out. «Atlantic, Pacific. Ihousands of miles away. That galley has to be from the Mediterranean. This is impossible.»
With my keen owl’s eyes I detected a slight glow a few hundred yards ahead. As we got closer to the light I saw that it was coming from the far end of a narrow tunnel.
A tunnel into which the nautical graveyard and the river was rapidly narrowing.
«What now, Jake?» Rachel asked.
I hesitated again. But only for a moment.
To go on was to lead my team - my friends further into the unknown. And from what we’d just seen on the Japanese carrier, there was a good chance the unknown was seriously weird.
And probably very dangerous.
Or go back. Turn around.
Forget the search for the Sea Blade. Leave it to chance whether Visser Three ever found the Pemalite ship. Stole its secrets. Used those secrets to further the Yeerk invasion of Earth.
The visser. The Abomination responsible for the sickening recent torture and murders of Hahn and forty-nine other innocent Hork-Bajir.
«Keepgoing,» I said.
69
Twenty-five feet from the light. Fifteen. Ten.
«What the - !»
«Whoa!»
WHHHOOOSSSHHH!
Sucked through to the other side!
70
CHAPTER 12
«AAAHHH!»
Tumbling through the air, feet over head, flapping frantically to regain control!
Five owls and one hawk slapping each other with wings, scratching each other with outstretched talons, awkwardly bumping and twirling.
«AAAHHH!»
I righted myself. Blinked.
«Whoa. Everybody okay?»
«That was kinda fun.» Marco.
«Right,» Cassie said. «Like being caught in a clothes dryer. Or a tornado.»
«Yeah, we’re fine, Jake,» Rachel answered.
«0kay. What fresh hell is this?» Tobias said dryly.
71
It took me a minute to focus. To see the differences between this place and the hideous ship museum we’d just left.
It was a city. Sort of. A series of interlocked buildings. Like one of those ancient Indian cliff dwellings made of adobe. Only this city was made from various parts of ships and boats. Massive prows jutted out, tankers, battleships, passenger ships, sailboats. Lifeboats were hoisted up the sides of ships to become terraces. Ships’ propellers turned slowly, drawing air into monstrous steel fortresses.
The entire back half of an oil tanker had been planted vertically, so that the ship appeared to have sunk bow downward in the ground. There were gun barrels welded together to form pipes leading from this bizarre water tower into the city.
Several dozen World War I and II vintage submarines were stacked three high. The conning towers and sterns had been sliced off and now revealed only oversized doorways. Maybe they were some sort of storage. A warehouse made of dead subs.
From the center of the city rose a fantastic tower. It was a visual trip through the history of technology. At its base it was constructed of massive iron cannon, welded and bolted upright deck upon deck, rising perhaps thirty feet. All of
72 it was covered in hammered gold and silver, a billion-dollar skin. After that the building materials began to change. Heavy iron plate. Smoke stacks. Massive guns. Steel pipe. Another twenty or thirty feet. And then lighter construction: aluminum sheathing, wire, computer consoles, the tubes of burned out missiles.
The city hummed with the sound of engines. Dim lights burned, here and there. And the air smelled of oil and smog.
«Just when we thought things couldn’t get any weirder,» Rachel muttered.
«This is amazing,» Marco said.
«lt’s like a set for that movie, The Island of Lost Children,» Cassie said. «0r like - Peter Pan or something.»
The Mutation Page 4