Dream Thing

The captain grabbed the throttle controls and turned on the power. The engines struggled and the ship vibrated. The captain could feel the screws turning sluggishly, then they churned to life with a lurch. The captain knew what the problem was. He could picture the giant, boneless squids tangled in his propellers.

He had to keep the props turning hard, to plow through any further jamming. He increased the power, but then came the thick and sickening feeling of the screws tangling again and coming to a halt. The engines struggled to make them turn but couldn’t budge them.

How was this happening? Where had they come from? He’d never heard of anything like this happening. The squid on the deck below were bigger than any squid he knew of except for the half-mythical giants that showed up in the stomachs of whales every once and a while.

He felt the ship move in the gentle waves, against the incoming tide. What was moving the ship?

He released the anchors and felt the clanking of the chains as they plummeted to the sea floor.

He felt alone on the bridge. The only other person in the room was the communications man, who was trying hard to reach anyone who would listen.

“Help’s not coming—there are fifteen ships under attack in this vicinity,” the communications man said.

“Does anybody know what’s going on?”

“Squid attacks everywhere,” the communications man blurted.

“Ridiculous,” the captain declared.

“Tell the squid,” the communications man replied.

The anchor chains were grinding against the hull in an unfamiliar way. The captain realized his mistake as the ship moved away from the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa. The squid were using the anchor chains to tow the Moorea Explorer.

He tried to retract, the anchors, but they only moved a few feet before they were jammed to a halt.

There were squid in the anchor bays. Squid were flopping in through the glass doors of the Sea Level Viewing Lounge and into the halls. They were gasping and heaving and dying in the public parts of the ship. They were water breathers, on suicide missions to incapacitate those aboard the ship. The struggling, screaming passengers in the lounge were imprisoned in the tentacles that refused to yield even after the squid had asphyxiated. More squid had given up their lives to foul the props and jam the anchors.

“What’s making them do it?” the communications man asked. “Somebody has to be controlling them, right?”

“Somebody, yeah,” the captain agreed. “Somebody I don’t want to meet. What’s the rescue status?”

“There is no rescue.”

“What about the Navy?”

“A couple of Navy ships responded to the first report of attacks and now they’re disabled just like us. They can’t move.”

The captain nodded, picturing mangled squid remains in the props of a powerful U.S. Navy vessel.

“Air rescue?”

“Under way on the other ships. We’re one of ten ships being towed northeast in these waters. We’re the farthest away and the last on the list for air rescue. More Navy ships are en route.”

En route, the captain thought, didn’t sound very definite.

The Moorea Explorer passengers and crew watched in horror as a flotilla of Hiva Oa islanders came to their rescue, only to be overtaken by the swarming mass of cephalopods that turned the ocean to jelly. The luckiest rescuers were marooned on the water with their engines jammed with squid carcasses. The less lucky were attacked and pulled off their small boats by the giant tentacles. A hundred islanders were dragged below the surface of the ocean.

The others could only watch as the Moorea Explorer was pulled away.

The pace picked up slowly, and by morning they were bobbing in the waves with the other ships, all heading north into the vortex. The buzz of rescue choppers was ceaseless.

The passengers demanded that the captain bring the rescue to them. He laughed. “I’ve begged. I’ve threatened. I tried to bribe them. They say we have to wait in line. There are a thousand people that have to be rescued from the other ships before they get to us. But they won’t get to us. We’re dead meat. We’ll be in the vortex by lunchtime.”

The captain was right. There were still five fully loaded passenger ships in the flotilla when they reached the vortex. Every patrol ship within a hundred miles was befouled before it could move to intercept. A fleet of helicopter gunships arrived with depth charges, and the Pacific Ocean rocked with the thunder of the charges. The squid died by the thousands, their slimy bodies turning the ocean to the consistency of egg drop soup. The flotilla came to a stop, and still the depth charges continued to thunder, until the gunships had used them all. The gunships raced away to get resupplied at their base ships.

Minutes later, the ships started moving again. More squid had arrived, ignoring the countless dead brethren and taking up the towlines.

Five empty ships, and five ships full of human beings, were pulled inexorably into the vortex, where no rescue could follow them.

Chapter 42