Robert W. Walker (30 page)

Before them stood the smooth wall of the ship showing no planking marks, nothing to pin the eye on. It looked like the great belly of a whale. Her eyes used to the dark, her nose used to the damp and clay, she still thought that she could smell the leviathan's rotting carcass, and that she could see the nearly imperceptible, inaudible breathing as the ribs of the whale moved in and out. She eerily wondered if they were about to be swallowed up by the whale.

It was as if the thought had been spoken aloud, for Stroud stared at her, drawing near to her mask so that she could see the expression on his face when he said, "Yes, Kendra, the beast has become the ship, and the ship the beast; we are about to step inside the beast once we lance a hole in its belly."

What he was saying, and the way he said it, frightened her more than anything she had seen down here. "You must all return after you enter," he said.

"What about you? Do you expect to die here?" she asked.

"Leave me to my fate."

Deceptive appearances had made of the ship wall an impenetrable leviathan, but it was far from impenetrable. It gave at the touch. Breathing heavily on it made it move like cardboard.

Decay was the operative word here in the bowels of the ancient ship. Immediately the archeologists went to work, examining the petrified wood that had become like stone to the touch, almost like charcoal. Yet covering the exterior, was a layer of living fungus and
mushroomlike
growths which turned into a profusion of flying spores at the slightest touch. "What holds the damned thing together?" asked Stroud.

"The earth here is almost pure clay. It has retarded the natural decay of the wood, and the wood itself--teak would be my guess--" began Wiz.

"Yes, teak beams, imagine it," agreed Leonard, staring.

"The
Estrucans
were master shipbuilders."

They had stepped inside the ship, and the moment they did so the Etruscan skull, which had somehow fallen into the hands of the pharaoh of Egypt, and had been buried with him, began to glow with a singular orange-to-yellow light. It went bright with the color, dimmed and became bright again, dimmed and brightened, dimmed again, as if breathing, until it finally settled on a glow similar to the sodium-vapor light of a modern streetlamp.

"Damned thing gives me the creeps almost as much as this ship," said Kendra.

"Don't you see that the closer we get to the true cause of the evil here, the stronger
Esruad's
power becomes?" asked Stroud.

"All I know is that our time is running out."

"Look, look here," said Wiz, pointing. It was a stack of terra-cotta bowls, ladles, jugs, cups. "These will help to date the ship," suggested Wiz.

"Very similar to the terra cotta taken from the
Kyrenia
ship," said Leonard, "somewhere about 700
b.c
."

"Closer, then, to the
Yassi
Ada
ship discovered--"

"We haven't time, gentlemen," Stroud told them.

"Over here," said Leonard. He led them to a collection of double-headed axes, pickaxes, a hoe, a shovel, billhooks, pruning hooks, hammers, knives, punches, gouges, files, chisels, bits and thousands of wooden peg nails.

"Such instruments prove vividly that the Etruscans were most certainly an independent empire, Stroud."

"Count on it," said an elated Leonard, who pulled forth a camera he had smuggled in. He began snapping picture after picture with the 35mm. "We must record this."

"God, if we could only do this right," said Wiz, "with
stereophotography
, with care and--"

"Gentlemen, this isn't a typical archeological site," shouted Stroud. "It's possessed of the father of evil. I understand your professional concerns, but we must be realistic."

"Take as many overlapping photographs as you can here, Leonard," said Wiz. "We are not coming away from this empty-handed, Dr. Stroud."

Frowning, Stroud said, "I have to push along, for the center of the ship." The others didn't have the slightest idea that the entire staging of this event was somehow meant for Stroud and
Esruad
to come together at this point in time, to face the evil of the ship together, that it was all somehow
predetermined
when
Esruad
had worked his magic to imprison himself and thousands of other souls in the crystal skull.

"Get some pictures of the timbers, Leonard," Wiz was saying now.

Stroud cleared away some of the debris along the bottom and found the keel, which was a forearm's width. It ran into the next cabin and the next, down through the ship. Leonard clicked off pictures of the find. "The keel will be attached to a stern piece and presumably a similar bow piece. Then the builders added the teak planks," said Stroud, his own archeological interests peaked now.

Kendra Cline looked into the ominous maw of the next cell of the ship, wondering what lay in wait for them there.

"Yes," Wiz was agreeing with Stroud, "the builders added the teak to the ribs on each side, secured in the classical fashion by
tenons
set into the thickness of the adjoining planks.
Such workmanship!"

"And thought to be known only by the Greeks and Romans," added Leonard.

"So that places the waterline at the approximate level of two decks above us," said Stroud.

"Right reasoning," agreed Wiz.

"All right, so we have our direction for up, but which way is stern and which is bow, and how close are we to the center?" asked Stroud.

"Almost impossible to say."

"Time is running on, Abe," said Kendra, getting antsy, "and why's it been so ... so calm?"

"Licking its wounds, perhaps," he suggested. "We've penetrated the ship for a second time. That's got to worry the bastard thing."

"I hope you're right."

"Well, we have a direct corridor that way," said Stroud, "but should we take it?"

"It could be another trap," agreed Kendra, staring at the black hole ahead of them.

Stroud checked a gyrocompass he'd brought with him. "It's pointing north, and if the bow was, as you say, pointing east, then we must go a little north to get to the center."

"Let's go," said Wiz.

Leonard nodded. Stroud led them, his light immediately picking up the markings on the wall here. They were like rock carvings, crude yet detailed, of a whale, a
lizardlike
creature and some strange markings. Stroud indicated the markings to the others and his light picked them up clearly, causing Wiz and Leonard to tarry more. The representations meant nothing to Kendra, and yet she, too, was drawn to them:

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"Sperm whale," said Leonard, Wiz agreeing with a grunt as both men studied the markings. Leonard snapped more photos. Then, at their feet, they saw scattered piles of human bones and skulls. Stroud held Kendra back as the two scientists climbed over the find, studying the bones with quick eyes.

"Ancient human bones."

"Frequent bony growths on the surface of the joints," said Wiz. "Our Etruscan friends, young and old, suffered badly from arthritis.
Probably the cool and damp of Etruria."
Among the bones, Wiz picked out a long necklace of carefully perforated whale teeth.

"Well, we begin to know a little more about these people," said Leonard, taking the beautiful necklace from Wiz and staring through his face mask before Wiz placed it into a pouch and put it away.

Then suddenly all the bones in the place began to rattle and move and rise. They were now being hurled at the party of the living that had dared to enter this death ship. The bones struck with great force, the skulls hurtling at them with such ferocity that they backed from the area, unable to go on. From the portal of the other room, they watched the dance of the bones, which was more like flight of the bones as they hurled round and round the room, creating a dense curtain, a kind of energy field that held Stroud's party in check.

"What do we do now?" asked Kendra.

"Take out a wall," said Stroud, angry. He hurled himself at a wall and it was like going through cardboard. He was on the other side, drenched in spores and fungi that had exploded into a shower of dust with his effort. "We need to move up from here," he told the others, jabbing at the overhead planks. It took only the slightest hit to bring down the roof over them. Cascading debris rained around them, the dust creating a fog that was eerily lit by the skull as Stroud lifted it and held it up, moving it in a circular fashion here. The light penetrated the dust cloud only so far and gave them no warning of the hellish creatures the other side of the dust. Flying at them from nowhere came some thirty enormous moths, the size of cub bears, with huge mandibles, trying desperately to tear away their masks, perforate their clothing and get at the flesh inside. Their wings beat like small claps of thunder, and a screech at a piercing level filled the room as the power of their wings stirred the grainy dust cloud into an even greater pitch of confusion; this cut their sight so badly that they could not see one another.

"Stroud!"

"Kendra! Kendra!"

"Leonard, are you there!"

"Use your weapons! The gas!" shouted Kendra, who fired away.

"Don't let them get your clothing!"

"Son of a bitch!"

The gas sent one and then another and another of the
batlike
moths crashing to the floor and into the walls, sending up an ever-thicker curtain of mold and flying bacteria and dust particles. Stroud searched the darkness blindly, feeling his way, careful not to let the skull from his grasp. He called out to Kendra, and she to him, until they found one another. Wiz and Leonard joined them.