Voyage of the Devilfish

Duckett now climbed the final rungs of the ladder leading to the bridge, the frigid wind slipping past his fur parka and pants as if he were naked. As he climbed out of the access trunk into the weather, the storm was a total physical shock… the wind blew by at what must have been 50 knots, flew the gray snow as if shot from a machine gun. Duckett climbed over the coaming of the bridge cockpit, the subfreezing metal of the conning tower sticking to the crotch of his fur trousers as he felt for the foothold with his boot. It was a long trip to the ice below, and with visibility down, the sail seemed disembodied, floating in a gray mass of flying snow. When he finally got to the hull, which was even with the two-foot-thick ice of the polynya, he looked over at Halloway, who was standing on the ice lake and shouting something at him. Duckett signalled he could not hear him over the storm, and Halloway pointed to his own eyes, at the same time yelling, “Captain! Your goggles, put on your goggles!” Duckett nodded, pulled the yellow goggles over his eyes, climbed out onto the ice next to Halloway. The four seamen followed out of the sail and joined them. Duckett scanned the horizon with infrared binoculars.

“Sir, look!” one of the men shouted over the roar of the wind, pointing in the direction of the rudder, which had penetrated the ice far aft of the conning tower. On the other side of the rudder was a hump of ice and snow, a bubble, too perfect to be a chunk of ice. They hurried to the igloo-shaped snowmass and began to scrape the object with their knives. The bubble was made of metal, covered with a layer of ice and snow. Duckett tried to climb on its side, pulling himself up on the handhold.

“It’s some kind of escape pod,” he shouted. Its hatch was open. Duckett cleared the snow away, took a flashlight from one of the seamen and shined the light into the pod.

“No one here,” he said. He stood and again scanned the horizon with the goggles.

“Anything?” Halloway shouted to Duckett. Duckett shook his head.

“Captain, there’s a ridge up on the west side. If we climb it maybe we can see further.” Duckett waved the team on up the ridge, and the six proceeded to climb for what seemed an eternity. At the top of the ridge, the team stopped and looked around. Duckett used the goggles, scanning the horizon for thermal detects. At one bearing he stopped, then continued. But then he scanned again at a bearing northwest of where they stood, looking toward the other side of the ridge.

“You got something?” Halloway asked.

“Not sure, doc. But something looks different over there,” and he pointed in the direction he’d been looking. They walked behind Duckett, who paused every few steps to look through the goggles. Eventually he stopped at a base of a small rise and shook his head, about to turn around.

“Go a little further. Captain,” Halloway said, thinking he saw a clearing in the blizzard to the northwest. They turned around, and Duckett found himself walking into a deep drift rather than the rise of a high point. He was about to turn when his boot, by then deep under the snow of the drift, hit something hard, something that gave slightly with his weight. It felt strange. Not ice, not snow, but something…flexible. When the snow was cleared Duckett found himself looking at a section of plastic. Something man-made.

“It’s for sure a shelter of some kind,” Halloway said.

“Find the damned entrance,” Duckett told him, excited now. It took a while to find the entrance, a double-curtain device.

Duckett led them into the entrance, pulled off his goggles and mask and shook his head out of his hood. The shelter was cold and smelled like a meathouse. He looked around and saw bodies scattered throughout, not one of them moving. They had been too late. Halloway had dumped his pack and gotten out his stethoscope. He bent over each body, checked for any signs of life. He looked up at Duckett and shook his head. Duckett and the others crouched down and began unbundling the faces of the men collapsed at the now quiet diesel. The first five were dead, in a frozen rigor mortis. He unbundled the sixth. It was Michael Pacino, swollen eyes black and blue, lips nearly black, lower face white but skin not yet frozen.

“Doc! Over here!” The corpsman put his stethoscope to Pacino’s chest.

“His heart’s stopped,” the corpsman said.

A moment of silence in the shelter. Duckett stood up and looked around again.

“Jesus.”

SANDBRIDGE BEACH, VIRGINIA