Dissolved Brass in Cell Four

Cold grease seeped through the knees of Halldor's canvas trousers, but his attention stayed fixed on the four dog-clamps of ballast cell four. The bulkhead between the cells was three-quarter-inch boiler plate, rated to withstand thirty pounds of hydrostatic head, yet the steel bowed outward into cell three by the thickness of a thumb. An inspector needed to know what could warp twenty square feet of braced iron without setting off a single pressure relief valve on the main deck.

"Kolskegg," Halldor called, pitching his voice low against the ringing channel. "Bring the dog-wrench and the secondary carbide pot. Crawl flat. Don't rattle the lanyard."

A clatter echoed through the oval limber hole behind him, followed by heavy breathing. Kolskegg wriggled into the void on his belly, shoving a heavy bronze dog-wrench and an iron lantern ahead of him. Black shale dust and yellow rust flaked from the overhead floorplates, raining onto the boy's neck.

"Did you hear that thud from the manhole, Master Halldor?" Kolskegg's whisper quavered, bouncing off the damp ribs. "Sounded like a dropped drop-hammer."

"I felt it in my shins," Halldor said. He took the heavy wrench, laying its octagonal jaw across the lowest bronze dog-nut. "Take the lantern. Keep the reflector tilted forty-five degrees toward the gasket. If gas blows when I crack the seal, don't drop the glass."

"Is it water?"

"Water doesn't push a center bulkhead two inches out of plumb," Halldor said. "Water follows the drainage limbers into Brynhild's pumps. This plate is hot."

He laid a bare palm against the painted skin of cell four. The iron gave off a dull, greasy warmth, like the flue-box of a banked boiler. Along the bottom lap-joint, the red-lead caulking had turned into black crumbly ash.

Halldor pulled a six-inch steel feeler gauge from his chest pocket alongside a tapered drift-pin. He slid the thinnest leaf into the seam between the frame angle and the hatch rim. The steel leaf slipped through without drag. The rubber-canvas gasket had rotted out completely, eaten away from the inside.

"Hold the drift-pin against the dog-lug," Halldor instructed. "When I heave on the wrench, brace the dog so the corroded threads don't shear. If an iron dog snaps under backpressure, this hatch will take your teeth out."

Kolskegg swallowed and planted the drift-pin against the lower hinge lug. His thin arms shook against the iron, but he set his boots against frame nineteen to hold his ground.

Halldor leaned his weight into the three-foot handle of the wrench. The square nut groaned, rusted threads squealing in protest. A puff of warm, foul air vented past the loosened dog.

The smell struck them like a wet cloth soaked in vinegar and rotten clams. Kolskegg gagged, jerking his chin into his collar. Halldor blinked against stinging fumes, his eyes watering instantly. In his coat pocket, the sealed tallow tin containing the living polyp specimen pressed against his ribs, heavy and cold.

"Don't bolt," Halldor warned, his voice hard. "Breathe through your teeth. That's sulfur and decomposed tallow."

"Smells like the offal rendering pits behind the slaughter docks," Kolskegg gasped, wiping his nose with his sleeve.

"Brandsk's union boys would call it standard working atmosphere and demand an extra fourpence piece-rate for shirt damage," Halldor said dryly. "Then they'd bill the Riveters' Guild for the soap."

He turned the second dog two full flats. The iron deadlight gave a wet sucking noise as the seal separated. A trickle of viscous, milky-green fluid oozed through the cracked lip, dripping into the stagnant bilge water between Halldor's boots. Where the liquid hit the standing water, thin white bubbles hissed to the surface, etching bright streaks into the dark scale on the floorplate.

"Keep the light steady," Halldor commanded.

He gripped the center dog-lever and hauled it back. The circular eighteen-inch iron inspection deadlight swung open on its greased pivot.

Kolskegg thrust the carbide lamp forward. The white beam cut across the suffocating dark of cell four.

Neither of them spoke.

The interior of cell four was stripped bare of structural paint. The longitudinal stringers, built to reinforce the dreadnought's keelson beneath the forward ammunition magazine, looked like grey pumice stone. Thousands of calcified barnacle shells, each four inches across with serrated, triangular lips, encrusted the floorplates in overlapping mounds. Thick ropes of translucent mucus bridged the stringers, glistening with sickly green phosphorescence.

Directly below the hatch rim lay a bundle of sodden blue wool.

The fabric had melted into the iron plate, fused by drying crusts of acidic secretion. Sticking out of the shredded coat sleeve was a human forearm. The skin and muscle had been completely stripped away, leaving pitted, porous bone yellowed by sulfur and pitted like old driftwood. The rib cage lay half-submerged in the central limber gutter, hollowed out, its interior cavity packed with dozens of small, twitching grey cones that flexed with every breath of fresh air from the open deadlight.

Kolskegg made a strangled sound in his throat and scrambled backward until his shoulders slammed against the bulkhead behind him. "Torvald," the boy whispered. "Sweet saints above... that's the night watchman."

Halldor did not move back. His knuckles rested against the rim of the manhole, iron-hard and steady despite the coiling stench.

Torvald had vanished five nights ago during the third shift. The yard superintendent had docked the man's pay and posted an imperial desertion writ on the drydock mess-hall gate, claiming the watchman had slipped onto an outbound coal barge to dodge his union debts.

"Superintendent Sigvard won't be calling this desertion," Halldor said under his breath.

He reached into the deadlight opening. The air inside felt humid, thick as porridge, and heavy with caustic heat. Avoiding the pulsing cluster of grey shells near the wrist, Halldor reached toward the left breast pocket of the rotting coat.

His thick fingers closed around a circular disc of metal partially buried in green crust. He gave it a sharp twist. The calcified slime broke with a brittle crunch, and Halldor drew his hand back into cell three.

He wiped the object against the rough canvas of his thigh.

It was an octagonal brass duty-token, stamped with the imperial basin anchor and the number 47. The edge of the brass was deeply pitted where digestive acid had begun to eat the alloy, but the stamped numerals remained sharp.

Torvald's shift token. The watchman had not run to the coal barges. He had climbed down into the double bottom with his patrol lantern, and the floor of the ship had swallowed him.

"Master Halldor," Kolskegg stammered, his fingers clawing at the limber hole behind them. "Look at the corner. By the magazine support."

Halldor raised the lamp.

In the farthest recess of the cell, nestled between frame twenty-one and the magazine transverse bulkhead, the carpet of barnacles rose into a swollen, pulsating mound the size of an overturned rowboat. A thick central fissure ran down its leathery crest, expanding and contracting with wet, rhythmic wheezes. Dozens of barbed feeding tendrils, thick as hawser ropes and dripping with caustic lime slime, lay coiled around the base of the ammunition bulkhead, their tips testing the iron plates.

The creature shuddered.

A tremor passed through the keelson. The serrated shells across the floorplates snapped shut in a rolling wave of sharp clicks. The central mass began to heave, dragging its armored belly across the eroded floor toward the open deadlight.

"Back to the manhole, Kolskegg," Halldor ordered, his voice dropping into cold authority. "Now."

Kolskegg did not hesitate. He scrambled through the limber hole on elbows and knees, hauling the extra lantern behind him.

Halldor grabbed the deadlight handle. He swung the heavy circular plate shut.

Before the dogs could bite, an impact struck the iron door from the inside.

Clang.

The blow sheared Halldor's grip off the handle. A heavy spray of acidic vapor hissed through the unsealed gap, blistering the skin across the back of his right knuckles. Biting his lip against the burn, Halldor grabbed the dog-wrench, slammed the deadlight flush against its iron seat, and dropped the lower dog-clamp into its retaining groove.

He jammed the bronze dog-wrench over the nut and hauled downward with every ounce of his two hundred pounds.

The dog-clamp lever in Halldor's grip shuddered violently as thousands of barbs scratched against the reverse side of the three-quarter-inch iron plate.