Beyond the Ice Limit

54

MANUEL GARZA PAUSED at the bottom of the engine room stairs and wiped his face with a cloth. He was exhausted from the tedium of searching the ship and finding nothing. It was maddening: they knew the worms were on board. They had attacked several crew members, coming out of nowhere and then disappearing. But how do you find a six-inch, pencil-thin, gray worm on a research vessel packed with a million miles of wires and cables? And the engine room promised to be one of the worst places of all.

Frederick Moncton, the ship’s chief engineer, a dapper French Canadian with a pencil mustache, was waiting for them, along with the first assistant engineer, two junior engineers, and a fireman. Garza had four guys in his immediate crew, Deputy Security Chief Eyven Vinter and three other security personnel. He had disarmed them; he didn’t want pistols being fired in the confined spaces belowdecks, where rounds could ricochet all over and vulnerable equipment abounded. Instead, they carried heavy tools, hatchets and crowbars, as weapons.

Garza had not had occasion to visit the engine room before. It was a large, hot, stuffy room smelling of diesel fuel and oil lubricants, but on the plus side it was at least a walk-around space, with steel floors kept spotlessly clean. The main diesel engine ran half the length of the room and was painted light gray, and it stood alongside three synchronized diesel generators, painted blue and yellow, that provided the ship with electric power, primary and backup. The rest of the room was a forest of pipes carrying fuel, seawater coolant, oil, and internal engine coolant. Running along the ceiling was a massive amount of ductwork.

It looked well maintained and organized. The personnel who had gathered, in uniform, to help his team go through the engine room appeared steady and professional. They had not succumbed to the hysteria that had been spreading topside. For this Garza was truly grateful.

He plucked the radio from his belt. “Eduardo, do you read?”

A moment later the clipped voice of Bettances, the chief of security, replied. “Roger.”

“Your teams find anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“Very well. Keep me informed. Garza out.”

He replaced the radio. “Mr. Moncton,” he said, bringing out several photographs of the worm, “we’re looking for these. Any spaces where they might be hiding have to be opened and searched.”

Moncton took the photos, flipped through them, and passed them around. “Yes, sir. We’re at your service.”

“You and your team know the ins and outs of this area. We’d like to start at the far end and sweep back to this point. It seems most efficient if your crew were to take the lead, opening every possible space where these things might be hiding.”

“Yes, sir.”

Moncton gestured to his men to follow him, and they filed to the back of the engine room via a narrow alleyway among pipes and the throbbing engines. “Most of what you see here,” Moncton said, “the engines, the piping, those generators—those can’t be opened. Or rather, opening them up would mean stopping the ship and shutting off power. But they’re totally sealed environments, so I don’t think the worms could get in, and they’d prove a very hostile environment anyway. Most of these pipes are carrying fuel and coolant under high pressure, the engines running at a hundred and sixty degrees.”

“Understood,” said Garza. “We won’t deal with those now. Maybe later, if necessary.”

They reached the rear wall, a riveted bulkhead of painted steel. “Chief, let’s start with that row of control panels,” Garza said. “We’ll need to take off the covers and search each one.”

“Very well, sir.”

One of the junior engineers swiftly produced a large toolbox and they unscrewed the first panel and set it aside, exposing a close packing of wires and circuit boards. Moncton’s engineers stepped aside as Garza’s team came forward. They pulled on heavy leather gloves and face shields borrowed from the ship’s metal shop. Garza watched closely as they poked around, sorting through various bundles of wires, pulling them aside, making sure all of them were real. They followed this up with dental mirrors and pencil lights to peer into the nooks and crannies.

“It’s clean,” Garza said. “Next.”

There was an entire series of panels, switches, and control consoles. They went through them methodically. All were clean.

“Let’s move on to the ductwork,” Garza said, glancing up. This was going to be a bitch. “Where do those ducts go?”

“They’re for engine air and ventilation. The engine air ducts go straight up to the deck. The ventilation ducts are supply and return from HVAC. You want to examine them?”

“You bet we do. Let’s start up there, with that square ductwork on the ceiling.”

The upper ductwork was accessible via a narrow ladder leading to a precarious catwalk. It consisted of a single large, square duct running the length of the engine room, spaced with oval, swinging gaskets that emitted air when ventilation was needed, but swung shut when off. It ended at a large T with an axial fan.

“Stick the video cam into each of those openings,” said Garza. “Let’s take a look.”

Vinter and another security officer climbed the ladder, the second carrying a small camera and a light on a telescoping pole. Vinter pushed open the first gasket with a gloved hand while the other eased the camera in.

A video image appeared on the iPad Garza was carrying, transmitted via Bluetooth. The duct was empty—at least, as far as the light could reach.

“Next vent.”

The men moved down the catwalk and repeated the procedure, looking into each vent in turn. Nothing.

They continued to the end of the duct, where it connected to a large horizontal T-fitting. An access opening was fixed into the underside of the duct, on hinges but screwed shut. The axial fan was humming at the vent’s terminus. Below them, the ship’s main engine throbbed, the heat rising from it in waves.

“Can we switch that fan off?” Garza asked.

“No problem.” The fan was turned off.

“Okay. Swing the vent open and stick the camera in there.”

The catwalk was tight, forcing Vinter, in the lead, to crouch underneath the ductwork in order to unscrew the vent door above his head. Two screws came out, which he tucked in his mouth, and then he reached up, grasped the vent flange, and wiggled it from side to side, loosening it from the grip of age. It opened with a screech of dirty hinges; a thin shower of soot came out, sprinkling his head and shoulders. Vinter wiped away the soot with his gloved hand.

The man behind him, carrying the camera on a stick, knelt and positioned himself underneath as well, easing the camera through the opening.

For a split second Garza was bewildered at what he saw pop into life on his screen: a tangled, gray, writhing mass. “Worms!” he cried. “Get back!”

It happened instantly: a sudden burst of scrabbling inside the galvanized ductwork, and then a mass of wriggling, squealing worms came spilling out of the open vent, falling onto the heads and shoulders of the two security officers. They screamed, flailing and twisting, frantically trying to slap and brush the things off them. In the process they fell against the thin railing of the catwalk and it gave way, sending them crashing to the engine room floor, the worms raining down along with them and skittering in every direction.

Garza leapt back, horrified. He could see several worms already squirming into the clothing and wriggling underneath the face protectors of the men on the floor, who were trying to beat them off in a panic. Vinter had torn off his face protector to pluck away the worms underneath, but even more worms converged and his face grew obscured by a solid, writhing mass trying to get at his nose.

“Son of a bitch!” Garza yanked a small hatchet out of its sheath on his belt and began chopping at the worms on the floor, trying to crawl toward the struggling men. The remaining two men of his team pulled out their weapons, a crowbar and a heavy wrench, and began beating at the worms. They came fast, making a keening, whining noise, like wounded rats.

“Fall back, there’s too many!” Garza shouted, but nobody needed urging; every man was already retreating in the face of the onslaught.

Garza scrambled back himself, chopping at worms left and right as they wriggled toward him. This was clearly a fight they were not going to win.

“Get the hell out of here!” he cried. “Seal the engine room door!”

He retreated with the engineers, the fireman, and the two security officers single file, chopping and beating back the worms, which slashed and struck at them like maddened snakes. Moncton, the chief, grabbed a fire extinguisher and blasted the worms, to no visible effect. As they retreated, Garza could tell that Vinter and the other security officer were already in bad shape, apparently unconscious, twitching worms hanging out of their nostrils; a junior engineer lay on the floor as well, covered with worms, screaming and rolling around, trying to pull worms off his clothing. It was too late—several slipped into his nose despite all he could do, and in a moment he went still, as if suddenly asleep.

Even as they retreated, more worms were dropping out of the ductwork above their heads, falling down on them. They reached the door and Garza stood his ground, smashing at the worms as the others got out. Then he stepped back and the chief slammed the bulkhead door and dogged it down. Several worms, cut in half in the doorway, wriggled about in pieces before Garza beat them to a pulp.

“Christ!” Moncton said, as the others searched their clothing frantically.

“We’re clean,” said Garza after a moment. “God, those poor guys.”

“We can’t leave them in there,” said Moncton.

“They’re already done for.”

A trembling silence fell on the group.

“What about the engine room fire-suppression system?” Garza asked. “Can we set that off—kill the worms that way?”

“The system uses FM-200,” said the fireman. “Nontoxic.”

“Okay, so how do we seal the engine room? Is there another door?”

Moncton shook his head. “These bulkhead doors are all watertight, but the air ducts go straight up to the deck. We can’t seal them.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Without engine air, the ship would be dead in the water. No propulsion, no electrical power. And the ventilation ducts go everywhere to and from HVAC—they reach into every corner of the vessel.”

Garza shook his head. He wiped his face again. “Moncton, can you get me diagrams of all the ductwork on the ship?”

“The digital schematics are all loaded into the ship’s network.”

Garza nodded. “They’re apparently breeding in that ductwork. There are many, many more worms just in that one space than we brought aboard with the specimen. This is our new priority. I’ll be redeploying all sweep teams to clean out the ductwork, pinpoint their breeding source. And, Chief Moncton, you’re going to mastermind the operation for me.”