Ted ate dinner after the others had finished their meal together. He was just as happy to eat alone as they were to avoid him. He would wait until they were sleeping and then go check on Ian and Jim. Mike had been thoughtful enough to leave a plate out for him, although Ted wondered if the bastard had spit in it. Well, if he had, it wouldn’t be nearly as nasty as what he would get in return.
After dinner, Tony and Jess stayed up on the bridge together. Tony ran diagnostics of the hull sensors and internal atmospheric controls while Jess kept him company. Mike and Theresa had spent a little time in the lab, but then retired to her cabin. Hours later, Ted woke up from his nap and walked the ship to confirm the rest of the crew was asleep. When he was satisfied that he had some privacy, he returned to the power plant. When he walked into the biofuel room, the sight was still unnerving.
Ian and Jim faced each other in their separate tubes. Their hands and faces were pressed against the glass as they seemed to call out to each other in quieter groans. They fluttered up and down the tubes in unison. It was a bizarre scene that gave Ted the willies.
He approached the tanks slowly, wanting to see without being seen. He was only halfway across the room when the two infected men stopped moving and spun inside their tanks to face him. Interesting. Did they hear him? Smell him? How did they know he was there? Once detected, Ted merely walked over and spoke to them as if they could hear him.
“Hello, boys. Feeling better today? Hungry?”
They stared at him with dead black eyes, but they didn’t lick at the glass. He studied their horrid faces. They looked, well, angry.
“Don’t like the accommodations?” he asked.
The two of them began slowly floating up and down inside their tanks again, in perfect unison. They glared at him.
Ted folded his arms across his chest and watched for a moment. He wasn’t easily intimidated, but he could clearly sense what could only be recognized as hostility. Was it recognition? Did they know it was Ted that had put them there? Could they feel human emotions like hate or anger? Or were they just hungry? Ted decided to get some bluefish and see how they would react. The rest of the evening would be spent working on killing or weakening the bacteria just enough to make a vaccine. Then he’d have to pay a visit to Mike.
As he walked to get the bluefish, his brain worked at a hundred miles an hour. It was quite fascinating how Ian and Jim had taken on so many of the characteristics of the tube worms once infected. Their central organs had been totally redesigned, and yet they were still consuming solid food. It was an adaptation worth noting. Deep-sea tube worms, once infected, had no need to eat, hence, they lost their stomachs, mouths, and anuses. They were merely “beings” that served as hosts to the bacteria, which supplied nutrients. In the case of the men, the bacteria had transformed them greatly; however, a human’s anatomy was so much more complex than a worm, clam, or mussel that the changes had been quite different.
Ted wondered what would happen if he merely stopped feeding them. Would they adapt to feeding off the algae and simulated sunlight in the algae grow tanks? With no poisonous sulfur gas to convert to oxygen, the hemoglobin wasn’t creating the energy the way it did in the deep sea. Ted reasoned it must be why they still needed to eat. Or, were they like most sea life and just fed when food was available out of survival instinct?
Ted decided on an experiment. Rather than put the two of them together in one chamber, he would instead stop feeding one of them. One would serve as a control and be fed bluefish every day. The other would watch. He decided the commander should have the privilege of eating. Besides, he never really liked Ian.
***********
Ian and Jim hovered midwater in the green glow of the algae tubes. They had been quietly singing back and forth like the whales for hours, but the sounds, for all of their quiet ambiance, became more and more agitated. As the “music” increased in its tempo, the two of them swam up and down in their confined spaces ever faster. It wasn’t long before the two of them were bouncing off the bottom of their tanks and springing to the top with amazing speed and strength. The water foamed with bubbles as the two of them broke the surface repeatedly, crashing against the covers of the glass tubes.
Like a fox that would chew its own arm off before giving up in a snare, Ian and Jim repeated their assaults on the covers. When Ian pressed his suction-cupped hand against the inside of the lid and began rattling it up and down, Jim mimicked this new attempt at problem solving. As they slammed around wildly in the foamy tanks, the lids buckled in and out. They had not been designed for such abuse. Ian’s mouth opened and produced a sound that could only be described as rage as he pummeled the lid. The seal broke with a hiss.
************
Mike waited until he was sure Theresa had fallen asleep before he dressed and snuck out to start searching the ship. On more than one occasion, Ted had commented about Jim “perhaps not being quite dead.” That was as upsetting as him actually being dead. Was he in pain? Suffering? It was horrible to think about. They’d all seen Ian that day in the water—it was an image too horrific to ever forget. What would Jim look like now? Part of him didn’t want to find Jim and see, but he couldn’t simply leave a friend behind without trying something.
He started on Deck Two. Jim wasn’t on the bridge; it was too small and crammed with equipment, and they had all been in and out of there a hundred times. Jim had to be on either Deck Two where the crew quarters and sickbay were located, or on three, where the power plant was. Mike started on two and checked the storerooms and offices near the sickbay. He then took a quick look in Ian’s and Jim’s old rooms. When he was satisfied that Jim wasn’t on the second level, he headed down to three.
Mike walked the deck quietly, listening to the quiet hum of the power plant. The incessant moaning and groaning noises had stopped a few hours before, giving credence to Ted’s theory about the pipes, but still—Mike didn’t trust him. Deck Three was amidships and the widest diameter of the sphere. If you were trying to hide something, this would be the place.
Mike entered the power plant and stepped into the dim, cavernous room. At night, the ship ran “night lights,” which ran at twenty-five percent power. The first thing that hit Mike was the odor. It smelled like dead fish or low tide or something that wasn’t normal for the inside of the sea lab. He stopped and looked around, checking the wall for a light switch, but found none. He walked further into the room, trying his best to listen over the low hum of the machinery. As he headed back toward the biofuel room, he could see dim light coming from the open door.
That was when he slipped on the wet, slimy floor and landed flat on his back. And then heard the strangest sounds.