She was shrinking.

Jake stared, his mouth open. There was no doubt about it. She was lying on her front, and she was deflating like a balloon. The sailor next to her was the doing the same, it was just less obvious due to the size difference.

“That ash,” Reeve said, “is dissolving her flesh.”

“I don’t…how…what?” Kiera seemed unable to say any more than that.

“I told her to wait for you two, but she ignored me, said she was going up to where the wreck of the town is. I sent Horace after her and waited here a while. Then I sent Dante to try and find the airport, and I followed after the other two. She screamed, and when I got to her, her feet were…melting.” Reeve had one hand on his hip and the other on his forehead. He was swinging slightly from side to side, like he was debating with himself about whether to continue.

“Go on,” Jake said.

“I could see it was the ash. She was wearing flip flops, she must have just kicked through the ash like sand on a beach. And it dissolved her feet, I mean, it just ate away at her flesh. I’ve never seen anything like that, not like that….”

“And Horace?”

“He tried to get it off her. Brushed it off with his hands. His bare hands. As soon as they touched it, the same thing happened. It’s…it was…I’ve never seen anything like it. That’s why we can’t go any further. If that stuff touches your skin, you’re dead. I don’t know what the hell it is, and I don’t want to know. We need to get away from here.”

“We need to find Dante,” Jake said, looking up at the security officer. “Which way did he go?”

“No! It’s too dangerous.”

“Reeve’s right Jake. Besides, you’re in no state to go after anyone.”

“We can’t just stay here and wait for him to find out for himself what that ash can do! Besides, look at that.” He pointed to the partially capsized tender. “We’re not going anywhere, we can’t!”

Reeve reached inside his jacket pocket and extracted a radio. He pressed a button and it crackled into life. “Max, this is Reeve, over.”

A tinny voice replied. “This is Max, go ahead.”

“We have a problem. This environment is extremely hostile, I repeat, hostile. Too dangerous to stay. Our transport is no longer functional, we require alternative transport back to the Arcadia A.S.A.P., over.”

“Understood. I’ll get on it. Standby, I’ll come back to you. Out.”

“Maybe we could swim it?” Kiera suggested. “Although,” she looked at Jake, “no, maybe not.”

“We don’t know if the water is toxic. There must be ash in there too, who knows what it could do to us?” Reeve shook his head.

“We’ve been drinking water from the desalination plant since that ash cloud hit. We haven’t had any reports of anyone melting in medical.”

“Yes but like I said, this isn’t the same ash that we saw further north.”

“Well I think we might have our answer,” Jake said. He had turned and was looking at the water. About a hundred metres away he could see Dante, swimming towards them.

Thirty-Seven

“WHAT DO YOU mean dangerous? What is happening over there?” Lucya was trying not to panic, not very successfully.

“I don’t know, and it’s not important right now. We need to get them back over here. What other transport do we have?” Max asked.

“All the lifeboats burned. The other tender has been broken up for spares. That just leaves the rafts. We’ll have to send someone over in a raft.” She paced back and forth, thinking hard, then picked up the phone and dialled.

“Engineering?”

“Martin?”

“Yes. Lucya?”

“We have an emergency. The tender sunk and there’s something going on over there, something dangerous. We have to get them back, fast. I’m going to launch a life raft. Dave will take it over and bring them back.”

“I will?” This was news to Dave, and he wasn’t very happy about it. “I’m a navigator, not a raft…driver!”

“Fine, then find me a sailor who can go instead. But you’d better hurry because as soon as that raft hits the water someone is going, and it could just as easily be you. Go!”

Dave rushed off to find someone better suited to the mission than he was.

“Sorry Martin, anyway, so how do we propel the raft? Those things don’t have motors.”

“There are spare oars in the stores. I can send someone up with them.”

“No! No, I’ll come and get them. Thanks.”

She hung up.

“Pedro. Listen, you need to try and take us in closer. It will take too long for them to row over. The closer we can get the better.”

“This is very risky. There are bits of concrete pier in that water,” Pedro said carefully.

“I know. So don’t hit them. Melvin, time you earned your keep around here. You need to stand there.” she pointed to the far end of the bridge, with windows that extended beyond the beam of the ship. “You’re on lookout. If you see anything in the water, shout at Pedro.”

She turned to leave, but Max called after her.

“Lucya! I don’t know what’s going on over there but it doesn’t sound good. Reeve said the environment was hostile. He’s a good guy, wouldn’t exaggerate. If there’s a danger to this ship then we need to be prepared.”

“Agreed.”

“By which,” Max could see she hadn’t got the point, “I mean armed.”

“I see. I think that’s really a decision for the captain to make.”

“The captain isn’t here. He’s in the hostile environment. Maybe he can’t make a decision. He left you in charge, you need to make the call.” Max looked over to the secure weapons cabinet.

“Fine, yes, you are right. Do what you have to do.”

Lucya raced out of the bridge, down the corridor, and down ten flights of stairs to deck one, cursing the decision not to switch on the elevators with every flight. She wound her way through the labyrinth of passageways on the deepest level, until she found the store room. Once inside, the oars were easy to find, they were stacked on a top shelf, above the grey crates. She looked at them, then bent down under the table and looked at her special buoys. She picked one out, grabbed two oars and left for deck seven.

• • • • •

Martin Oakley was fuming One minute he was having a perfectly normal conversation with one of his engineers, and the next he couldn’t hear himself think as the engine he was stood next to started to rev up.

“What the….? What’s going on?” He threw his hands in the air, looked to his colleague for an answer, and realised one would not be forthcoming. “We’ve dropped the anchors for goodness sake, we’re not supposed to be moving anywhere. What are they playing at up there?”

“Actually according to the computer, the anchors were pulled up two minutes ago.”

“Who ordered that? Lucya said she was leaving the bridge to go down to the stores. Right, that’s it. They can’t just move off without telling us first.”

Martin picked up the phone and dialled the bridge. He let it ring for a good minute, but nobody answered. Even though he was below the waterline and there were no windows, he could feel the ship moving slowly, although he couldn’t be sure about the direction.

He slammed the phone down, angry that nobody would pick up on the other side. After pacing up and down muttering to himself, he picked it up again and started to dial another number.

“Maybe Silvia knows what’s going on here, she…”

He didn’t complete the sentence because there was an ear splitting crunching sound, the ship shuddered, and he was thrown from his feet. The telephone handset fell to the floor where it cracked in two. Martin’s colleague was toppled off balance, but caught the edge of a console and steadied himself. The ship had come to rest. The engine revs died down, and it was then that Martin became aware of another noise. He knew that sound, he had heard it once before, but only once. That was the sound of water pouring through a hole in the hull.