Beyond the Ice Limit

61

GARZA GAZED AT the video image on his iPad, coming from the camera that had been lowered forty feet through the vertical engine air duct.

“Oh, Jesus, that’s the mother of all breeders,” he said, passing the iPad to Moncton.

Moncton gave a low whistle. “I’m not surprised. That’s just where the flue makes a ninety-degree turn from vertical to horizontal. It’s flat, protected, and particularly warm from the engine.”

He passed the iPad back. “I suggest we go in from the side. Maybe we don’t even need to cut a hole. But that means going back through the engine room and into the alcove holding the compressor and turbocharger.”

Garza turned to the two remaining men on his team. “What do you say?”

“Let’s do it.”

Once again they descended into the bowels of the ship, Moncton leading the way. Garza was mightily impressed with Moncton. He was a rather odd fellow, with a curiously precise way of walking, almost like a dancing master: small and neat, but damn near unflappable. Garza could hardly believe how tough the guy was. Over the past hour, Garza had started to feel they might actually be able to overcome the worms, after all. While the things were still everywhere, they had killed three giant breeding masses and zapped countless loose worms, and that seemed to have put the fear of God into the things. They seemed less aggressive and more prone to run and hide than attack en masse.

He hadn’t been able to raise the security chief, Bettances, on the radio since their last communication twenty minutes before. He hoped to God that didn’t mean what he feared it meant.

A short trip brought them to the closed door of the engine room. While the ship was not under way, the engines were still throbbing gently, the main engine keeping the ship in position using dynamic positioning, and the synchronized generators supplying electric power.

Garza felt a twinge as they gathered at the steel hatch into the engine room. After their first encounter, Moncton had jerry-rigged a heavy-duty zapper on a long pole, which they had plunged into the jelly-like breeding mass. It had worked well. Electricity was deadly to the worms and it didn’t take much of it to kill them.

“I’ll go first,” said Moncton.

Garza stood to one side, his two team members behind. They lowered their face shields and tugged on heavy gloves, poor protection though they were. Garza eased the hatch open. Moncton stepped inside, zapper at the ready, and he followed. It was hot and close. Bits and pieces of smashed worms lay about.

“The bodies are gone,” said one of his men.

“Yeah. They sleep two hours, then wake up and act normal. They’re probably walking around the ship as we speak.”

“Right, right. Maybe we should’ve…” The man hesitated.

“Put them out of their misery?” said Garza. “Maybe.”

The men fell silent. The engine room seemed normal, aside from the dead worms on the floor. The vent dangled open, and a dark liquid was dripping from it and streaking part of the main engine. The liquid, Garza realized, was draining from the breeding mass they had killed farther up the vent.

“The air supply, along with the turbo and compressor, is in the back,” Moncton said.

Garza and the other two followed the ship’s chief engineer down the main aisle of the engine room. The room was brightly lit and there was no additional sign of worms. Moncton reached the end of the giant main engine, ducked under a pipe, turned a tight corner, then stopped. There, in front of them, was a large galvanized flue, which came down through the ceiling and made a ninety-degree turn. It yawned open in a huge, mouth-like vent, six feet tall, looming over a mass of pipes and tubes—the compressor, turbo, and aftercooler. It lay behind a forest of pipes and valves.

Moncton whispered: “The mass is inside and below the elbow. I think we ought to try zapping it right through the galvanized flue.”

“Won’t there be a Faraday cage effect, the charge dissipated?”

“No, because the mass itself is a better conductor than the steel. The majority of the charge will go right into it.”

“There’s only enough room for one person to squeeze in there,” Garza told him. “I’ll go.”

Moncton shook his head. “No. My turn.”

Garza wasn’t about to argue. He gestured for his two to stay back, their zappers ready. He followed Moncton into the tight space as far as he could.

“Get ready to run,” Moncton whispered into his ear as he crouched, zapper pole in hand, working his way still farther into the jungle of colored pipes. Garza began to lose sight of the man in the knitted shadows. He waited. At any moment he would hear the crackle of the zapper as Moncton shot the side of the steel duct, along with the high-pitched screams of the worms inside as they were electrocuted.

Instead, he heard a rustling, whispering, scritching noise—from behind—followed by the sounds of things hitting the ground.

He turned. Both of his men were down—down without a sound—their heads covered with writhing worms, their arms waving feebly before flopping to the ground.

“Moncton!” he cried. “Get back—we’ve been ambushed!”

But there was no sound from ahead—except more rustlings and whisperings. And now he saw it: worms were gliding everywhere through the pipes, coming for him.

Garza jammed his zapper on a metal pipe and pulled the trigger; a sudden chorus of squealing arose as the worms jumped and jerked, falling off the pipe. He plunged backward, hitting several more pipes, zapping worm after worm, slapping and pulling them off him as they rained down from above. He was yelling at the top of his lungs, tearing off his shirt as the worms got inside; he leapt over the worm-infested bodies of the two men, and then—feeling the worms all over his body—he turned the zapper on himself, jabbing it into his chest and pulling the trigger in desperation.

It was like being hit by a truck: an immense jolt and flash of light, and he lost the use of his legs and fell to the ground. But even as he crashed to the floor, barely conscious, he realized the worms had dropped from his body. Crawling, trembling all over, he zapped himself again. Then he collapsed.

He wasn’t unconscious; merely unable to use his muscles. He felt like an immense stone was on his chest, retarding his breathing. But the worms—the worms were crawling away. Fleeing him.

He lay there, trying to breathe, trying to clear his head of the millions of stars. After a moment, with an immense act of will, he managed to pull himself to his knees and crawl the length of the engine room, get to the door, climb over the metal lip, and seal it behind him.

Then he fell back on the cold steel decking and tried to get his jumping, tingling muscles back under control. It was in that moment he realized they had failed: they were never going to clear the ship of worms.

Because the worms were adapting.