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Chantel stared intently.
Gamay moved the ROV to a position near what remained of the shark’s gut, just behind the skeletonized pectoral fins. Using the robot arm, she punctured a swollen area on the discolored flesh.
It ruptured as if it had been under pressure. Gallons of discoloredgel and pus spewed out along with thousands of the glowing orbs. They swirled around in dizzying patterns, slowly spreading out on the current.
“What is this?” Paul asked. “An infection? A parasite?”
“Whatever it is, they’re colonizing it,” Chantel said. “Consuming it from the inside.”
Gamay had no idea. “Extremely gelatinous. Possibly a swarm of some previously unknown type of jellyfish. Or even a colony organism like the Portuguese man-of-war.”
Paul saw the look on Gamay’s face. He knew what came next. “I assume you’re going to want a few samples.”
“Most definitely.”
“I’ll buzz the captain.” He picked up the intercom phone, which rang through to the bridge. “We’ve found something. Time to pull over and park the bus for a minute.”
The captain was oddly quiet. When he spoke, there was concern in his voice. “We’ve found something, too. You’d better get up here. You three need to see this.”
Paul acknowledged the captain and put down the phone. He could feel the ship slowing to a stop. He turned to Gamay and Chantel. “They want us on the bridge.”
Chapter 22
Paul, Gamay, and Chantel left the science bay and went forward. Due to the odd way the ship had been retrofitted, there was no internal way to reach the bridge from the science bay. It required a trip outside along the deck and then up a steep ladder to the forward part of the superstructure.
Finishing the climb, they entered the bridge to find everyone staring through the windows at a gray blur stretching across the horizon.
Gamay squinted. It looked like a cloud, but didn’t move like one.
The captain offered her a set of binoculars. “Tell me what you make of that.”
Gamay raised the binoculars and adjusted the focus. Despite the top-grade optics and her own twenty-twenty vision, she couldn’t tell what she was looking at. She fiddled with the fine adjustment, blurring things one way and then the other. She found no way to sharpen the image. “Is it smoke?…It seems to be changing shape. Could it be a dust storm?”
“At sea?”
“We’re not that far from Africa,” she said. “Sandstorms and dust clouds have been known to blow across the Sahara and travel hundreds of miles out to sea. Geologically speaking, you can find Saharan sand all over North America and Europe.”
“Yes,” the captain said. “But in this case the wind is at our back, so unless it came from Australia, it’s not dust.”
Gamay listened without looking away. The cloud seemed to be thinning as she watched. By the time she handed the binoculars to Paul, it seemed to be dissipating and moving farther off. The captain confirmed it had been thicker and closer when it had first been spotted.
A quick look was enough for Paul. He didn’t know what to make of it, either.
Chantel took a turn and then asked, “Does it show up on radar?”
“We got a brief return off the weather radar,” the captain said. “The computer classified it as heavy rain. Doppler indicated it was retreating from us at thirty knots, but the wind speed is steady around eight. And there is very little in the way of clouds.”
“Self-propelled,” Gamay noted. “Has to be a flock of birds.”
“It would need to be a very large flock,” the captain said suspiciously.
A shout from one of the lookouts broke the chain of conversation. “Object in the water,” the lookout announced. “Two hundred yards. Dead ahead.”
“Hard to port,” the captain ordered.
“Additional debris on the port side,” another crewman called out.
“All stop,” the captain ordered.