Dead Sea

Gosling checked the satellite imagery on one of the computer screens where the ship was fed continuous atmospheric info. He read through the forecast on the weather fax receiver. Yeah, like Iverson said, there was nothing of concern there. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Still, Gosling wasn’t satisfied. The ship had two Kelvin radar units and Inmarsat B and C Satnav, Electronic Chart System. Everything checked. They were on course. What the hell was it then? The more he couldn’t find the glitch here, the ghost in the machine, the more it ate at him.

“Calm tonight, eh?” Iverson said, flipping through pages.

Calm before the storm, Gosling thought morosely.

Iverson set his magazine down. Looked nervous and picked it up again. “You ever seen a calm like this, Mister Gosling?”

Gosling ignored him. He checked the communication systems. The ship had standard radiotelephone, VHF, SSB, MF/HF stations. It had voice, data, fax, and telex connectivity via Inmarsat Satcom. Gosling scanned all the channels. Everything. Commercial, marine, aviation, even the distress frequencies. There was nothing but static and a shrill white noise he’d never heard before.

“You had activity before?” he said.

Iverson nodded. “Shit, yeah. I had chatter all over the place.”

“Nothing now.”

“Gotta be.”

Iverson scanned the channels himself. He checked the components over. Everything looked good. “I don’t get it.”

But Gosling was beginning to. Because whatever was coming, he figured, it was coming now, swooping down on them out of the night. It was crazy thinking, still it persisted. His guts were roiled like stormy waters, his throat tight, his scalp itchy.

“You all right, Mister Gosling?”

Gosling looked at him hard and for the first time in his life, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Nothing that would make sense anyway.

Satnav was still operational. Radar was blank… oddly blank, not so much as a cloud out there. They were still online, operational. But audio and radar were down or seemed to be… now why was that?

Lights out, Gosling found himself thinking. The lights are being turned out on us one at a time. Lights out.

He was imagining a tall building at night, all the windows lit.. . then, one by one, the lights going out. Lights Out. That was also the name of an old spooky radio show. And what did the announcer say at the beginning while that distant bell was gonging? It… is.. . later… than… you… think…

Iverson kept scanning channels. “Something funny here,” he said.

And, yeah, it was funny, all right. Gosling was thinking it was funny, too. Because something was building here, something was happening incrementally and he didn’t honestly know what it was. Only that he could feel it gathering momentum. Like some negative electrical charge in the air gaining impetus.

There was a shrill beeping.

Iverson said, “GPS says we’re off-line… interference or something…”

There was a hint of panic to his voice and Gosling knew it wasn’t just his imagination now: Iverson was feeling it, too. Maybe one system would go to hell, but all of them? One after the other?

Together, they walked over to the binnacle. The magnetic compass was spinning around in circles. The gyrocompass was rolling, trying to find a bearing.

“Jesus,” Iverson said.

7

“You see?” Fabrini said when Menhaus and he were in their cabin with Cook snoring away. “I knew there was a catch to this shit. I just fucking knew it. Didn’t I tell you that night that there had to be a catch?”

Menhaus nodded. With sleepy eyes, he studied the clouds of smoke he was exhaling. “You did indeed. You surely did.”

“And I was right, goddammit. Fifteen-thousand for what? Three weeks’ work? Yeah, that’s what he said. He left out the crap about poisonous snakes and leeches and man-eating alligators.”

“Crocodiles. Caimans. Cushing said-”

“Who gives a damn what you call ‘em. They eat your ass all the same.”

Menhaus chewed his lower lip, stroked his mustache. “Saks said it wouldn’t be like that where we’re going.”

“I don’t care what he said.”

“But we’re not working on a bridge. We’re not even by water, he said. Not too close, anyway.”

Fabrini’s dark skin went red. “Listen to yourself, would ya? For chrissake, you dumb shit, he’ll say anything. Didn’t you notice how he didn’t mention any of this shit until we were in the middle of the Bumfuck Sea? If he’d said it before we sailed, nobody in their right mind would’ve went.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Damn straight I’m right” He pulled off his shoes and threw them against the bulkhead. A few flakes of gray paint chipped free. “Sometimes, man, I wish I was still in stir”

Menhaus said nothing. He was thinking about Talia, his wife. She’d never bore him any children. Had a vicious tongue and an ass the size of a bus. He was thinking about that ass, thinking how he’d miss it if anything went wrong. Right now he wanted more than anything to hear her call him a lazy good-for-nothing slob. The idea of it made him want to cry.