Iverson was at the wheel, steering the freighter through the fog, and Gosling was at the chart table making computations the old fashioned way. With a pencil and quadrant laid over a chart of their last confirmed position, he had plotted their course… he hoped. But without working compasses, LORAN, GPS, or even a plain old star to pinpoint their position, they were sailing blind and he knew it.
He was just going through the motions.
But, honestly, he didn’t know what else to do.
“Come left to one-twenty-three,” he told Iverson.
“Aye, sir, one-twenty-three and holding.”
“Rudder amidships and keep her so,” Gosling said. He scribbled a few figures on the chart. “Mark your head.”
“One-twenty-three, sir, steady on”
Gosling sighed, staring down at the chart. In the old days with a good compass and a few stars, it was all you needed. Gosling was a good navigator and he had complete faith in his ability to navigate the old-fashioned way. But out here, out in this damnable sea on the far side of the Devil’s asshole, all he was doing was making wild, desperate guesses. He was changing their heading just about every hour on the hour, hoping they’d sail clear of that damn fog.
But it wasn’t happening and he had a nasty feeling it never would.
“Sir… the radar,” Iverson said, a note of panic in his voice.
But Gosling was already on his feet, the alarm of the collision-avoidance radar pulling him from his daydreaming. He stood before the console. What he was seeing nearly filled the screen and the Mara Corday was on a collision course with it. Something, according to the radar, that was about the size of a football field.
“Right hard rudder!” he called out.
Iverson spun the wheel and the ship canted to starboard. Everybody on board was feeling it now, that sudden drastic shift. Gosling was staring intently at the radar screen. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t a ship. It was big as one, but it was just too low in the water. The Mara Corday missed it by a matter of feet. As whatever in the hell it was swung past the freighter’s port side, it vanished from radar… then reappeared, only it wasn’t a single immense object, but a school of smaller blips each about the size of a station wagon, according to the screen. As it or they passed, they vanished from radar again and did not come back.
Gosling felt something in him drop. It had been close. Damn close. He exhaled, wiped a dew of sweat from his face. “Come left to one-twenty-three,” he said.
“Aye, one-twenty-three,” Iverson repeated. He was breathing hard himself. “What in the fuck was that?”
“Hell if I know. Whatever it was, we almost hit it.” Gosling sank into his chair at the chart table. “I thought… I thought maybe it was an overturned hull riding that low… then it broke up into something like a pod of goddamn whales. You log it.”
The door at the rear of the pilothouse opened and Morse appeared. He did not look happy. “What in the hell’s going on, Mister?”
“We came over hard,” Gosling told him. “Something… something bearing down on us.”
“What?”
The question was addressed to Gosling, but Iverson couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Ghosts, sir,” he said, tittering under his breath. “Just ghosts.”