“What’s going on up here?” Hawkins asked, though it sounded more like a demand. “We’re being pummeled down there.”
“We don’t have time for this right now,” Blok said. The man spent most of his free time reading novels, and he was generally soft-spoken. His raised voice instantly alerted Hawkins to the seriousness of their situation.
“The computer’s fried,” Blok said. “We’re sailing blind.”
“We’re not sailing at all,” came the angry voice of Captain Drake. He arrived a moment later. “If they want to see the end coming, I won’t deny them that.” He looked Hawkins in the eyes. “Just stay out of the way. Clear?”
Hawkins nodded and stepped past the seamen with Bray and Joliet in tow. The ship rolled, forcing everyone to cling to whatever nearby bolted-down object they could find. “Is no one steering the ship?” Hawkins asked.
“Can’t,” Drake said. “Controls aren’t responding.”
Bray’s eyes widened. “We’re dead in the water?”
“Not exactly,” Blok said. “The ship’s systems are functioning. We’re just not in control of them.”
“How is that possible?” Joliet asked.
“The Magellan is run by computers. Every system—navigation, communications, environmental—everything, is managed by the computers,” Drake said. “And those computers have a mind of their own at the moment.”
Hawkins looked out over the wheelhouse. Every computer screen flickered, offering brief glimpses of the aberrant system. Even the radar screen was a jumbled mess of green lines and random blobs of color. The three other crewmen in the wheelhouse just clung to their stations with white knuckles. There was nothing else to be done.
Hawkins nearly asked if they’d tried switching the ship to manual control, but decided the question would insult Drake. Of course he’d tried. An old sailor like Drake would probably prefer to spend the night behind the wheel, battling the storm on his own rather than let the computer take control. But there was another possibility. “Could it be a computer virus?”
Drake shrugged. “Not my area of expertise.”
“What about Kam?” Joliet asked.
“We sent Cahill to find him fifteen minutes ago,” Blok said as the ship rolled hard in the other direction. He stumbled, but Hawkins caught him by the arm and kept him upright.
Ryan Cahill was both the second mate and the ship’s medic. When the storm abated Hawkins thought the man would have his hands full. “We just came from the science quarters,” Hawkins said. “Cahill’s not down there.”
“Neither is Kam,” Joliet added. “We didn’t see either—oh, no…”
“What is it?” Drake asked.
Hawkins knew what Joliet was thinking and answered for her. “The stairwell hatch on the main deck was open. Took at least one wave, maybe two before we closed it. It’s possible one, or both of them, went outside.”
The ship tilted back as it rose up over a wave, spilling Daniel Sanchez, a deck hand, to the floor where he slid until he hit the back wall. His head struck the metal wall hard. He slumped to the floor. Bray made his way to the man and knelt down. “He’s unconscious.”
“Dammit,” Drake grumbled, then shouted to the other men. “I thought I told you three to strap in!” He turned to his new arrivals and repeated the message. “That goes for all of you, if you want to stay. Pick a seat and strap yourself in.”
“What about Kam and Cahill?” Joliet asked.
Drake gave her a look that said, Do not argue. “If they’re outside, they’re dead, and there is not a thing you can do about it. Now sit yourself down and—”
“Sir!” Jeff Allen, a young deckhand, shouted. This was his first long-term voyage aboard the Magellan and the storm had managed to bleach his normally tan complexion.
As the ship tipped forward over the crest of the wave, Drake made his way to the front of the wheelhouse. Ignoring the captain’s orders, Hawkins, Joliet, Bray, and Blok followed him to the front windows, where a battery of windshield wipers were losing the battle against the endless sheets of rain.
They peered out the fore windows and saw a curved, trash-filled ocean in the bright glow of the Magellan’s floodlights. The ship entered the trough between waves, leveling out, but the view didn’t change.
“Oh my God,” Bray said, backing away from the window.
Hawkins followed the vertical wall of garbage up. It disappeared into the darkness above the ship. A flash of lightning illuminated what Bray must have already realized—a fifty-foot wall of garbage-laden ocean was about to crash down on them. This wave couldn’t be climbed. The Magellan would have to go through it.
“Hold on to something!” Drake shouted as he dove to the floor and held on to the base of a bolted-down chair.
The last thing Hawkins saw was a frothy wall of white dropping on them like a mammoth curtain call. Then there was a sound like thunder, but louder, and a jarring impact that sent him sailing. He blinked once, caught a glimpse of a refrigerator, felt a momentary pain in his head, and then, nothing.