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corpse—to him. And there had been this curious creature he’d carelessly handled. It may well’ve come from that
ancient creature.
Whatever it was, it hadn’t killed him as it had the other miner. Instead, it was intentionally stretching out its
time with O’Toole—using him up in a more controlled fashion as if it could…as if it could manage to control its
feeding within.
While it had so quickly and voraciously fed on the other man, it had now ushered in a powerful self-control.
Whatever it might be called otherwise, this thing was sentient.
It directed him deeper into the shipyard; it seemed to want to get as far from its former prison as possible. To
that end, it wanted O’Toole aboard the ship just built, a ship that was made from ore taken from the mine that it
had snuggled alongside for how long—as if it had an affinity for the iron walls.
Or perhaps it realized that Titanic could act as its perfect lair.
While his conscious mind had no true evidence of any of it, his every remaining human instinct said it was so.
In any case, O’Toole had no choice but to carry out its wishes.
By now realizing himself to be just a conduit, a vehicle to move it from the mine to here, O’Toole thought of
killing himself, but he had no ready method of doing so save leaping into the water as he could not swim. He
made a move in that direction but was turned about. While his mind still fought for itself, his body was no longer
his. He guessed that he’d debated over suicide too long, and it knew his thoughts, and as a result, it was ahead of
him on this.
Francis moved now below the giant letters a hundred feet overhead and twenty feet apart. Letters that read:
T I T A N I C.
TWO
The Pier at Woods Hole Institute, Massachusetts, April 11, 2012:
The screeching pelicans and seagulls overhead seemed quite out of their minds with the unusually early
morning activity surrounding the bizarre-looking research vessel in its slip at the harbor. Human activity. Human
excitement. It must mean food scraps for them. What else might it portend, wondered David Robert Ingles,
feeling a bit like Ishmael of Moby Dick fame, readying for the voyage with the mad Ahab—in this case Captain
and Doctor of Oceanography, Juris Forbes, a man obsessed with Titanic, but then who wasn’t?
The research vessel, Scorpio IV—four times the size of anything else docked here in Woods Hole—was jam
packed with superstructure that supported two enormous cranes, affording sea birds all manner of handy
perches; in fact, the birds patiently awaited any opportunity for scraps and fish heads to eat. However, the
primary purpose of the two super cranes was hardly for the birds, but rather for lifting tons of weight from the
depths of the ocean and positioning heavy objects weighing tons onto Scorpio’s deck. In a matter of weeks, the
computer operated, hydraulic cranes would be hauling up treasures plucked from the mysterious interiors of the
one-hundred-year-old shipwreck named Titanic. The treasures would be placed in sealed vaults to protect them
from the change in pressure from the deep to the surface.
It was now April 2012—precisely one hundred years—the Centenary of Titanic’s launching and her demise
when she struck an iceberg at 22 knots.
David Ingles took notice of the birds—thankful the seagulls weren’t a flock of albatrosses. He gave a flash
thought to his reading of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, imagining he would undoubtedly run into an
ancient sailor on board Scorpio this trip—old timers with short fuses and little patience for the young and
foolish who got men killed at sea as quickly as scratching an itch. If the old timers aboard Scorpio knew his
history, or his latest failed mission, they’d surely be wary of him the entire way out and back.
Ingles came aboard without fanfare and no one to greet him. Everyone on the pier and on board busily work
at their jobs. It was obvious orders were to ship out within the hour.
At the center of Scorpio, Ingles found the ‘oil well’ over which the largest derrick supported a myriad of
equipment strung with cable as thick as hemp on a Cutty Schooner. But this ship was far from a schooner, and
while faster, hardly as romantic or beautiful. Essentially a high-tech outfitted drill ship, Scorpio’s primary drilling
derrick stood amidships. But rather than use a traditional drill pipe, Scorpio’s gleaming derricks supported her
enormous cables—hundred pound Cryo-Cable to be exact. Her cable could withstand the most frigid conditions