New story...Technofish: Prologue

My theatre story is in abeyance for a while... this new one, which I promise you I will not abandon....has my creative juices flowing. (I've been watching a lot of Gerry Anderson's Stingray recently.) This story will have it all! 

October 21, 1961

I.

It was cold...trawling for fish in the North Sea.

But Kendrick Trench enjoyed breathing in the fresh air. He was warm enough in his thick white turtleneck sweater and the thermal underwear beneath his blue dungarees.

The squealing of the crane over his head attracted his attention - they were bringing up another load of fish.

He looked over the side of the ship as the water began to boil, then the net full of fish rose slowly into the air. It would pause for a second, before the derrick arm would rotate so that the net was hanging over the large hold, then the net would be open and the fish would fall into the depths...depths that were circumscribed by the steel skin of the Titanica, best - because it was the luckiest - fishing vessel in the North Sea.

Kendrick watched the net as it was hoisted into the air...all that silvery blueness as the fish within struggled to escape their sudden captivity - never knowing what had happened to them...

Kendrick started to bring a cigarette to his lips and then stopped.

Mother of god!

There was a human face in the net.

A human face...silver...alive....staring at him.

Not taking his eyes off that face, he yelled, "Stop! Stop! Don't drop the net!"

But the noise was too great. No one heard him. As Kendrick watched...as the humanoid figure in the net watched him! ... the net traveled on its path over the open hold...one end was released, and a thousand pounds of fish dropped into the hold.

Along with that silver man.

Kendrick dropped his cigarette and ran. As he passed a life preserver he grabbed it up. As he ran he shouted to one of his shipmates to turn off the machinery.

There was a catwalk that ran along the top of the hold...if he could throw the life preserver into that wiggling mass of fish...if the silver man could somehow "swim" to the top, he could grab the life preserver and Kendrick could pull him to safety.

Kendrick made it to the catwalk, looked down desperately into the mass of flapping bodies. The machinery had been turned off...there was no noise except for the flapping of helpless fish.

What was that?

It was the sound of screaming metal...the sound that might be made as if someone with extremely strong fingers were peeling back the metal of the hold...making a door for itself to get out from under the oppressive mass of fish...

Then there was a more distant sound of peeling metal...was that silver man making another door for itself...was it going to be able to bore through the entire ship and out the other side?

If it did so...ripping its way through so many water-tight bulkheads...the Titanica would no longer be water tight.

Kendrick ran to the bridge. "Captain, we've got to abandon ship," he snapped.

Captain Shore raised a hand. "Calm down, Kendrick. Tell me what's happening."

"There was a man...a humanoid...in the net. It's ripping through the bulkheads...it's destroying the ship."

Shore looked at him incredulously. With any other crewman he'd suspect a drug-induced hallucination, but Kendrick Trench was as straight as a die.

But it was too unbelievable.

"Come on, Kendrick. You've got to give me more to go on. What happened...you saw a body in the net? Probably just some poor sap who fell off a yacht or a cruise ship or something."

"No, sir. It was alive. It was looking at me. From the time I caught sight of it until the time it dropped into the hold, we were looking at each other. It blinked...it was moving...and then...when it dropped into the hold...I could hear sounds like the bulkheads being ripped apart....this ship is going to sink."

The captain reached for his microphone that broadcast into all areas of the ship.

"This is the Captain speaking. We may have a ... situation. Everyone who is not on duty go check out the watertight compartments. All of them."

 
II.

The lifeboats were filled with men. They were high-tech lifeboats, plenty of food and shelter from the cold of the black water beneath them...nevertheless none of the men were talking. They sat, alone with their thoughts. Everyone had got out, after a couple of men had reported that the water-tight compartments had been breached - going straight down - and the Titanic was rapidly filling up with water.

They were alone with their thoughts...but their thoughts were all the same. No "silver man" had done this thing. It had to have been Kendrick himself...dropping a bomb into the hold to sabotage the ship...that was the only possible explanatoin.

It was only because Kendrick sat next to Captain Shore that there was not a mass movement toward him to throw him overboard...

He was safe for now...but sooner or later...he'd be alone...


III.

 Kendrick lay in his hospital bed, arms folded behind his neck, staring at the ceiling. He was under arrest...he was allowed no visitors.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door, then the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door opened and a man in a blue business suit came into the room. He sat down in the chair beside Kendrick's bed so he could face him.

"Mr. Trench," the man said, "I"m Special Investigator Tracy. I'd like you to tell me your story again, please."

"I've already told it twenty times. To twenty different sets of people. I'm not going over it again."

"Mr. Trench," said Tracy, "Let me explain this to you. You say that you saw a silver man in your fish net, and that he tore open your ship in order to get back to the ocean."

"Yes."

"Consider what would happen if we believed you, Mr. Trench."

"What do you mean?"

"Where there's one fish man, there's bound to be others. A whole race of these people...living under the sea. Well...the North Sea, anyway."

Kendrick sat up. "Yes," he said excitedly. "Yes!"

"So what do you think is going to happen? Do you think the world's super powers are going to send out peaceful expeditions to track these underwater people down? Of course not. They'll be captured, they'll be studied. Even if they prove to be intelligent, that would do them no good, just as it never did any good to any other indigent people on this planet. People who can breathe underwater, live underwater - at great pressure! Every super power in the world will be after them, and it won't be because they want to help them civilize enough to accept a seat at the UN."

"You mean..."

"They'll be enslaved, of course. Like highly intelligent dolphins sent out to hunt for magnetic mines, like we're trying to do now. Or worse, they'll all be dissected, so we can learn how they can live underwater. Whatever we do with them...they're doomed."

Kendrick stared at Tracy, his face white.

"It's your call, Mr. Trench," said Tracy. "Your story has actually made it to the newspapers - lots of your shipmates told the story.  They all scoff at you, but there are plenty of loons in John Q Public that will agitate that you be let loose. They'll want to go after these silver men to and our government will probably even help them do it. With a result that will not be happy for the fishmen. But it will save you... you'll be free."

"Or..." said Kendrick slowly.

"Confess to being a member of some anarchic group opposed to commercial fishing. There's one called SoS - Save Our Seas. They were formed last year, as a matter of fact. Tell the newspapers you lied...that you were just covering up the bombing of the ship. Tell 'em it was just a spur of the moment thing and you never expected anyone to take you seriously. That anyone who did take you seriously is an idiot. Kill entirely this idea that there are silver men living under the sea.

"And if I do...?" said Kendrick, still slowly.

Tracy shrugged. "You'll go to jail. But you'll be shown some leniency. After all, you could have let your entire crew die. Instead you warned them and everyone escaped with their lives. That counts for something."

Kendrick smiled wanly. "A couple of years off of a 20 year prison sentence?"

Tracy shrugged again. He stood up.  "It's up to you, Mr. Trench. I'll let the press in now."

And he went to the door and opened it. Dozens of men and women carrying huge cameras and large microphones streamed into the room, each talking over the other in an effort to ask him questions.

Kendrick swallowed hard...and said what he had to say.