Infinity Beach - Jack McDevitt [13]
“The conspiracy freaks were constantly after him. That appears to be the reason he left Greenway. But yes: He maintained that nothing unusual happened on the Hunter mission. They went out. They had an engine problem. They came back. Didn’t know what happened to the women. Thought Tripley died in the blast.”
“Mount Hope.”
“Yes.”
He lowered himself into the water, and his voice came in over her ’phones. “There is someone you might try talking to.”
She watched him start down, and then followed him in. “Who’s that?”
“Benton Tripley. Kile’s son. His office is at Sky Harbor. When you go there next weekend, why don’t you stop by and see him? He might be able to tell you something.”
“I don’t know.” She slipped beneath the surface and filled her lungs several times to assure herself the converter was working properly. The air was sweet and cool. When she was satisfied, she started down. “I think I’ll settle for just looking at the woods and let it go at that.”
Bars of sunlight faded quickly. A long rainbow-colored fish darted past. The oceans of Greenway had filled rapidly with lobsters and tarpon and whales and algae and seaweed.
She dropped through alternating warm and cold currents. Solly, now trailing behind her, switched on his wristlamp.
The Caledonian had been running among the islands on its way out to the banks with nineteen passengers and a three-person crew when a freak storm blew up. It became a legendary event because there’d been some famous people on board, and because there’d been only two survivors. One had been the unfortunate captain, later held negligent by a board of inquiry, charging failure to train his crew, poor ship handling, failure to develop emergency procedures. His situation was exacerbated by the suspicion that on the night of the accident he’d been frolicking in his quarters with a married passenger.
The ship’s wheel was on display at the Marine Museum in Seabright. Other divers had gone over the wreck and taken whatever they could. Even Kim, who was usually inclined to respect such things, had removed a latch from a cabin door. The latch was now inside a block of crystal, which she kept hidden in her bedroom because visitors had made a point of showing their disapproval. Moves were currently afoot to declare the area a seapark, install monitoring equipment, and thereby protect it from future looters. Kim, with the quiet hypocrisy that seems wired into the human soul, favored the measure. She soothed her conscience by promising herself she’d donate the latch to the museum. When the time came.
She left her own lamp off, savoring the dark and the solitude and the moving water. The bottom came into view. A school of fish, drawn by Solly’s light, hurried past.
Ahead she could make out the wreck. It lay on its starboard side in the mud, half buried. Its rudder was gone, the spars were gone, planking was gone. Anything that could be carried off had been taken. Still it retained a kind of pathetic dignity.
The seabottoms of Greenway, unlike those of Earth, were not littered with the wrecks of thousands of years of seafaring and warmaking. It was in fact possible to count the number of sinkings along the eastern coast, during five centuries, on two hands. Only one, the Caledonian, had been a ship in the true sense of the word. The others had all been skimmers. The loss of a vessel was so rare an event that anything that went down became immediately a subject of folklore.
They were approaching bow-on. Kim switched on her light. “Spooky as ever,” said Solly.
It wasn’t the adjective Kim would have used. Forlorn, perhaps. Abandoned.
Yet maybe he was right.
They drifted down toward the foredeck.
The other survivor had testified that the ship’s captain had done what he could.
The unfortunate skipper’s name was Jon Halvert. He’d used a lantern to signal passengers to the lifeboats, and renderings of the incident invariably showed him holding the lantern high, helping men and women off the stricken ship. But it had all come too late and the Caledonian had turned