Monster: Tale Loch Ness (39 page)

"Affirmative," Conner said haltingly, "but we have no visual contact yet."

"Hold it!" Scotty said, pausing. "Sonar advises target object has now moved under you and is stationary. Do you confirm?"

Aard and Conner checked their instruments.

"We're not picking it up anymore," Conner said. "It must be inside a dead cone for sonic."

"Hold for instructions," Scotty advised.

Captain Harrigan raised the command barge on the comm-phone.

"Mr. Bruce?"

"This is Bruce."

"We've got a strange trace here. Can you verify?"

"What have you got?"

"The target object is pointed up like an arrow, right into the center of the submersible. We have it just floating there as if it were taking aim."

Scotty's voice cracked back. "Affirmative for us."

"We'll continue to monitor," Harrigan said.

Aard and Conner had just received a relay from the command barge when the jolt hit, turning the submersible over on its side.

Sparks erupted from the instruments. The sonar unit and several of the submersible's directional controls shorted out. A small fire ignited. Conner instantly extinguished it while Aard informed the surface that they'd been hit.

"Is your sonar unit working?" Scotty frantically asked.

"No. And some of our stabilizers are out. Though we have our engines and directional and surfacing controls."

The submersible, which had been listing severely, suddenly righted itself. Aard reported the curious recovery.

"Can you see out the portholes?" Scotty asked.

"No," Conner replied. "It's just black out there. Our floods must be out."

Scotty shot back. "Sonar informs us that the target object is directly in front of you."

"What do you mean?"

"Get the hell out of there!"

Aard turned off the vibration broadcast, then hit the thruster controls. The thrusters surged, but the submersible didn't move. He unloaded ballast. Still no movement. He tried several pitching maneuvers. Nothing. He reported their inability to navigate.

"Are your controls inoperative?" Dr. Rubinstein asked, having cut into the circuit.

"No," Conner replied, checking electrical connections. "Everything is working. But we can't move!"

Surface checked sonar again. Aard and Conner regauged their instruments. They listened. The silence was eerie. They exchanged transmissions. Then the submersible began to rock.

They were thrown against the bulkhead. More sparks flashed. Bleeding heavily from a gash on his forehead, Conner passed out. Terrified, Aard called to the surface.

"What is it?" Scotty cried.

Aard tried to answer. His headset popped off. More shorts and small fires flashed. Frantic, he tried to regain control of the craft.

Suddenly, a hideous sound ripped through the cabin, the skirl of metal buckling. The hull started to collapse. Water poured in.

Aard looked up.

There were teeth! Hideously sharp! Extending into the cabin through the shell!

Aard grabbed the headset while jettisoning the sub's cameras.

"It's bitten through!" he screamed. "We're in its mouth!"

Scotty Bruce, Dr. Rubinstein, and Dr. Fiammengo boarded the sonar tug and followed an officer into the bridge cabin.

Captain Harrigan and the chief sonar engineer were huddled over a slew of sonar records.

Harrigan pointed. "Look at those!"

They carefully examined the printouts.

The truth was obvious. The creature had the submersible's nose in its jaws and was dragging the sub down into the deepest loch trench.

They watched the printouts, scans, and holograms. Depth readings continued to advance. The submersible went down,

dragged by the unknown. Then, suddenly, it disappeared.

"Where'd it go?" the sonar engineer asked.

"God knows," Dr. Rubinstein struggled to say.

Scotty slammed the cabin door. "We're going to shut down the
Magellan
and keep her shut," he screamed.

Dr. Rubinstein charged back. "Think, man. Think about the opportunity!"

"I am thinking!" Scotty screamed, shaking. "I'm thinking about the two men who just died. Thinking about the crew of the
Columbus
. I don't want any more corpses."

"Let's wait until we see the pictures," Dr. Fiammengo pleaded.

"I don't need any pictures. Forget it! The
Magellan
is down."

Dr. Rubinstein grabbed Scotty by the arm, turning him face to face. "You can't do this! You can't shut down!"

Scotty looked deep into the man's eyes. He did not like the view, but he should have expected it. "Why not? You have what you wanted. We've found the creature. Identified it. Taken its picture. Obtained enough information to orchestrate the salvation of the
Magellan
and her men. And if I remember correctly, you were going to walk with me into constabulary headquarters. Walk with me en masse!"

Dr. Rubinstein did not reply.

Dr. Fiammengo stepped forward, glancing out the cabin window at the launch, which had just returned with the submersible's tape cameras.

"Now is not the time to argue this out," she suggested. "There's too much emotion at play. Let's wait. Then talk. Let's allow the emotion to die. Then we can reason. Use logic."

Scotty stared. "Logic?" he asked, his voice dripping with anger.

The examination table came to life with a spray of fluorescent light. Dr. Rubinstein hovered close, waving a pointer. The table was divided into two sections, one containing selected sonar records, the other an extensive series of glossies.

Dr. Rubinstein traced the sonar material chronologically, tying the records to actual communications, which were reflected in the transcripts he held in his hand.Then he turned to the glossies.

"It wasn't until we'd returned to the command barge that we realized the crew had been able to jettison their interior and exterior tape cameras," he was saying, his usually agitated voice pulsating with excitement. In fact, since the loss of the submersible the day before, he hadn't slept or eaten, having spent most of his time poring over notes, command barge records, sonar data, and the recovered prints. "Fortunately, Aard and Conner had their wits about them in the face of almost certain death. Or else we wouldn't have had these fantastic exhibits. Fortunately, too, I chose the MV-7 submersible laboratory, among whose prominent systems were the detachable tape units with flotation jackets." He paused, obviously proud of himself, then forlornly shook his head. "I was well aware there might be considerable danger, and I wanted to make sure there'd be a recoverable record even if something went wrong below."

He glanced at Scotty, who was standing at the end of the table next to Tony Spinelli and Jerry Foster. Scotty glared back, a prophecy of imminent explosion written across his features.

"The pictures on the right were obviously taken by the exterior tape cameras and the ones on the left by the interior system. Let's look at the exterior views first."

Whittenfeld focused his attention on the exhibits. "Go ahead," he said, opening his collar button and loosening his tie.

"Look at this," Dr. Rubinstein said, pointing, "This frame shows part of the creature's body. Notice the scales; they are very reptilian. You can also see part of a flipper. We think the flipper may be vestigial, but of course we can't be sure." He swung the pointer with precision. "This is interesting. The appendage is an upper arm, and if you look behind it, you can see part of a flipper, too. We think it's the same flipper we saw in the previous picture. In fact, the proximity of the two appendages has led us to the vestigial theory."

"And this?" Whittenfeld asked, tapping a glossy.

"That is a claw," Dr. Rubinstein declared. "A huge one. One of several that sit at the end of each armlike appendage." He shifted his eyes, looking into space, almost into another dimension. "What a fantastic creature!"

Dr. Fiammengo slid along the table; she also had a pointer. "Notice these shots," she suggested. "They capture the head. The speck in the corner of this frame is part of the eye. And these blurred white lines were made by teeth moving rapidly by the lenses."

"How big are the teeth?"

"Six or eight inches."

"And the size of the open mouth?"

"Let's say big enough to surround the nose of the submersible, whose diameter was six feet."

Whittenfeld examined several other prints, interior views. "Fascinating," he said.

"We've even been able to determine exactly what Aard and Conner were doing at each interval," Dr. Rubinstein advised. He moved closer to the table, explaining each frame, finally pinpointing the concluding print. "Notice the hull impacting," he said. "You can see the first hint of water entering. And there. The white points. Believe it or not, they're teeth. Coming through the hull. Just thirk of the power in that bite. It's a wonder it didn't bite the
Columbus
's marine riser in two."

"It didn't have to!" Scotty said caustically, his downbeat voice intruding into the euphoria.

Whittenfeld shut off the fluorescent examination, light, glanced at Lefebre, then turned to Scotty Bruce.

"So," he said. "This thing of yours exists."

"Yes," Scotty replied coldly.

"What do you suggest we do?"

"I don't suggest anything. What I have to say is a demand. We're going to stop operations before the
Magellan
is destroyed. Before more innocent men lose their lives."

Dr. Rubinstein squirmed; he seemed near panic.

"I'm sorry," Whittenfeld said. "I told you nothing stops operations. Ever. And your demands mean nothing to me. This thing has killed. We will kill it."

"You can't," Dr. Rubinstein implored, interrupting, moving back and forth along the table, eyes pleading.

Whittenfeld ignored him. "We will kill it," he repeated.

"We have no right," Dr. Rubinstein argued.

"The thing is a killer!"

"Yes," Scotty suddenly said, realizing so far he was speaklng to deaf ears. Didn't Whittenfeld fear the information he possessed? Did Whittenfeld's fixations make him immune to reality? "It's a killer. It killed my best friend. But we invaded its home. We've invaded its spawning grounds. The thing doesn't have a logical mind. It can't think. It can only defend itself. So we're going to shut down the ship."

Dr. Rubinstein burst between them, frantic, jerking his head from side to side. "Listen to me! You must listen." He thrust his hands outward through the air, a vision of constant motion. "We can't shut down the drill ship, and we can't kill the creature. We must try to catch the creature and show it to the world." His eyes blazed. "Think of it. The past reborn. Legend come to life. We can't let this opportunity go to waste. We can't avoid our responsibility." He looked to one man, then the other, desperate. "Think of what we could learn. This thing survived the destruction of every other member of its species. Why? How? We get the answers; we solve the riddle of the past and might very well unlock the key to the future. Think what this could mean to Geminii! Think of the international furor if you killed it. No, it must be caught. I've waited an eternity for this. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime to so few men. You must let me catch it."

Scotty watched Dr. Rubinstein beg and plead. Obsession!Whittenfeld was obsessed with the loch. With what lay beneath it. Dr. Rubinstein was obsessed, too. With what lived in its waters. The creature was obsessed with defending its home. Mary MacKenzie was obsessed with the politics of nationhood. MacPherson had been consumed with the drill ship and the beast. And Sutherland had been obsessed with violence. It was almost incomprehensible, all this intensity fueled by the loch. Almost every person involved except, paradoxically, the men who had died had been sucked into Loch Ness's gut and had been spit out, cancerized with dizzying passion.

He could only ask himself where it would lead if he didn't stop it in its tracks.

"We may not have to kill it," Whittenfeld suddenly said. He turned to Tony Spinelli. "Does anyone on board the drill ship know what happened?"

"No," Spinelli said. "They were all told the submersible had surfaced further west, near Fort Augustus, and had been removed at that point."

"Harrigan?"

"Harrigan and his crew passed stringent security checks which were conducted by the Ministry of Defence and ourselves. They are totally trustworthy. No, they have not revealed what happened, and they won't."

Whittenfeld stepped back from the table. "No one in this room will say anything, either, including you, Mr. Bruce, and I'm sure we can count on the cooperation of the submersible's base company if we can couch the submersible's destruction and the men's death in terms of a national emergency. I'll handle the priorities. There's the insurance problem, but that can be sidestepped momentarily." He turned to Foster. "Can you close off any possible leaks?"

Foster filled his puffy cheeks with air. "If I can't, no one can."

"I don't mean just the submersible thing. But we'll need a cover."

"If we come up with a convincing cover, I can make it stick."

"What are you talking about?" Scotty asked, incredulous.

"We're talking about Geminii Petroleum. The company good. The Loch Ness project. You want us to stop operations. That is impossible. I want to kill the thing. That might be counterproductive. But Dr. Rubinstein may have something." He turned to the researcher. "Suppose I say all right. Suppose I let you try and catch this thing. Tell me how. Tell me how you would do it without interrupting well progress and without endangering the drill ship."

Dr. Rubinstein jumped awkwardly away from the table and returned with a briefcase, which he opened.

"I always knew I would find
Nessiterus Rhombopteryx
,"

he said, removing a handful of documents. "I knew when I

did that I might have an opportunity to try to catch it. I knew I would have to be prepared. The institute commissioned a team of naval architects, structural engineers, and NASA docking and computer specialists to work out and program a method of entrapment." He spread two huge blue-prints across the table, covering the glossies. This is the fruit of their labor. An undersea snare, a metal venus fly trap, floated to depth by ballast tanks and actuated through surface controls."