The QE2 Is Missing

“Good morning. This is your Captain speaking. We have now reached our cruising altitude of thirty-one thousand feet. The outside air temperature is fifty degrees below zero, but the weather in Bogota is better than that. Clear and sunny and the temperature is now twenty degrees, seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Our arrival time there will be slightly later than you were told because this aircraft, like many others, is cooperating in the search for the passengers of the QE2. Therefore, we will be going slightly west of our planned route to report on any ships in that area. I will tell you when we are there in case you want to look out the windows yourself. Who knows — one of you may be the person who finds the missing passengers and crew of the Queen. Have a pleasant flight and thank you for flying Western.”

“A master of psychology.” Trubey said.

“Naturally. If we are getting in late you might as well let them know. And they’ll be busy staring out at the ocean.”

The cabin attendants were just clearing away after luncheon when the loudspeakers crackled to life once more.

“This is Captain Bush again. We are now passing over the invisible boundary of the area within which we have been asked to make observations. We are logging any ships that we may sight and this information will be relayed to the authorities when we land. Thank you.”

“A lot of empty ocean out there,” Trubey said. “And not a ship on it that I can see.”

“We’re away from the normal sea lanes, that’s why. But the visibility is still unlimited, so, who knows. Call back and get us some coffee, will you?”

For the next half hour there was nothing below them but empty sea, empty of ships of any kind. A few light clouds appeared which cut their visibility slightly, but did not really interfere with it. Trubey, peering ahead, saw a dark smudge on the horizon.

“Looks like some clouds coming up.”

Bush checked the compass heading, then the chart. “Not clouds, an island, Clipperton Island. It’s the only land we’re going to see until we are over Central America.”

“Clipperton? Really?” Trubey ran his finger over the chart. “It certainly is. I read an article about that island in Crotch.”

“Wonderful. And just what words of geographical wisdom could you possibly find in a girly magazine?”

“It was pretty good, a real serious article. I even remember the title. The Mad White Queen of Cannibal Island____”

“Tremendous. That really sounds serious.”

“No, listen, it was. Maybe the writer jazzed up the idea to sell it to the magazine but the facts were bright, honest. Because I looked it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I had a bet on with this guy in the hotel.”

“Oh, sacred font of wisdom, who can doubt your pale white pages!”

“It’s true, Ernie, honest. This island used to belong to Mexico and it’s just a hunk of rock out here in the ocean with nothing growing on it and no water or anything. Only it used to be covered yards deep in guano…. “

“I knew it! It’s turning into a shitty story!”

“Not that way at all. They still mine guano in South America for fertilizer. So it seems that the Mexicans had a camp on Clipperton, in the last century, where they used to dig out the bird guano and ship it back home for fertilizer. It wasn’t a popular job—”

“You can say that again!”

“But they needed the stuff. They used to bring all of the food and water in by ship, then take the guano out. Which was OK until there was a revolution and during the war and everything, why, they forgot about the people on Clipperton. By the time a ship stopped by there months later a lot of them were dead and the survivors had been reduced to cannibalism to stay alive.”

“You mean that?” Bush looked out at the solitary pinnacle of rock growing out of the ocean ahead, and touched the wheel to turn them in its direction. “It must be true. I don’t think you have the imagination to make up a story like that. It must have been pretty gruesome.”

“You bet it was. Hundreds of miles out in the ocean, alone, no way off, no food — and waiting for a ship that never came.”

Clipperton was a mountaintop in the sea ahead, a gray pinnacle of rock jutting up out of the blue sea. Utterly alone. Trubey had the high-power binoculars to his eyes now and was examining the island.

“Now that’s what I call a grim place,” he said. “No trace of green, trees or plants or anything. The rock is streaked white all over, guano in the making I guess. A sort of natural bay. Lot of rock formations in it, I can just make them out. Rows of rocks along the shore.”

He lowered the glasses and rubbed his sore eyes. The 747 tore on through the empty sky and past the island at a steady six hundred and fifty miles an hour. It began to shrink into the sea behind them.

“It couldn’t be,” Bush said. “It just couldn’t be — but it could be as well.”

“Going to let me in on this?” Trubey said.

“A wild idea, that’s all. Really wild. Those rocks you saw. Could they be boats?”

“Looked a lot like rocks to me….”