Free Dead Sea by Tim Curran Page A

ships and planes that have trouble are really in the Sargasso. I should know, on account I was on one of them.”
    Gosling knew Smalls too well to think that the man was spinning tales here. But the Sargasso Sea was no true mystery. It existed, all right. It was an oval region of the western North Atlantic, roughly between the east coast of the U.S., the West Indies and the Azores. Unlike other seas that were bordered by land, the Sargasso was bordered by ocean currents — the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic, Canary, and North Equatorial — which flowed in a clockwise pattern around it, creating a deadly calm within its boundaries. Because of the calm, the Sargasso was a great floating desert of sargassum seaweed. In the old days of sail, it had been called the Sea of Lost Ships because of the many craft that had been becalmed or trapped in its vast weed banks. And in the realm of maritime folklore, it had a centuries-old reputation of disappearing vessels and derelict ships, ghost ships and sea-monsters and bizarre phenomena.
    But Gosling knew those tales were just bullshit.
    They couldn’t be anything else.
    Modern tankers and freighters could plow through the Sargasso without hesitating. It was only smaller boats that got their props tangled with weed. And as for the rest … well, sailors liked to tell stories and you could leave it at that.
    “Well, I’ll keep it in mind,” Gosling said.
    “You do that,” Smalls said to him. “We’re bound to come out of it sooner or later. Maybe we’ll be on course and maybe we’ll be down by the Bahamas … or maybe we’ll be somewhere else entirely.”
    Somewhere else entirely.
    That last bit was loaded with allusions Gosling wasn’t about to let himself think about. Not yet. He told Smalls they’d get together and discuss it all in more depth later on and Smalls said that his calendar was wide open for the foreseeable future.
    And again, Gosling didn’t care for what that implied.

19
    Gosling thought:
What the hell is it I’m looking for?
    But he didn’t know, couldn’t know. Not yet. He was down in engineering, near the stern of the ship, making his way down the port side companionway to the steering flat. On the metal steps which were painted an abysmal off-yellow that reminded Gosling of the color of vomit, he was seeing the darker splotches and stains of Stokes’ blood. You could maybe write it off in your mind as worn-in grime or grease, but if you knew what happened … could see in your mind Stokes stumbling up the companionway, spilling blood and screaming, his face hooked into a rictus of terror and agony … it wasn’t quite so easy.
    It was blood.
    Probably take lacquer thinner to get the dried stains out.
    Gosling moved down the steps, studying the bloodstains, keeping his boots from making contact with them the same way a kid avoided sidewalk cracks. He wasn’t even aware he was doing so. At the bottom of the companionway, he could gauge Stokes’ mad flight up to the spar deck. Yes, Gosling could gauge it … but he could never understand the depths of stark madness that had peeled the kid’s mind free.
    There were a few flecks on the bulkheads that hadn’t been mopped away.
    Below, in the steering flat, Gosling paused.
    Still, he was not sure what he was looking for. Stokes had lost his mind here and maybe Gosling thought he might find it, laying about somewhere like a cast-off rag. The steering flat was a huge room in which the massive gear quadrant that moved the rudder was located. Just off it, was the shop with its assorted lathes and drill presses, grinders and milling machines.
    Gosling went forward to the main engine room, feeling the hum and vibration of the gigantic plant. Boilers produced steam which was fed to the high and low pressure turbines which were connected to the propeller shaft by reduction gears. This room — if room it could be called — was cavernous, you could have dropped a three-story house in there and had plenty of