7

"I don't believe this!" Webber said.  "Metallurgists, archaeologists, chemists... who gives a shit?  All that counts is what's inside!  What are they thinking of?"

"Yeah, well, you know bureaucrats," the pilot said, trying to be sympathetic.  "They sit around with their thumb up their ass all day, and now, suddenly, they got something to do, they gotta justify their existence."

They were standing on the stern of the ship as it steamed westward toward Massachusetts.  The box was secured on a cradle on the fantail, and Webber had spent hours mounting lights on the ship's superstructure to create a suitable atmosphere of mystery, for when the box was opened.  He had chosen sunset, photographers' ‘magic hour,’ when shadows were long and the light soft, rich and dramatic.

And then, not half an hour before he was to begin shooting, the ship's captain had handed him a fax marked "Urgent" from the Geographic:  he was to leave the box untouched and unopened until the ship reached port, so that a cadre of scientists and historians could meet the ship and examine the box and open it in the presence of a writer, an editor and a camera team from the National Geographic Explorer television series.

Webber was devastated.  He knew what would happen:  his lighting setup would be destroyed:  he'd be shunted aside, given a backseat to the TV team, ordered around by the experts.  He'd have no chance to shot enough film to have ample "outs" — pictures the Geographic wouldn't want and which he could sell to other magazines.  The quality of his work would suffer, and so would his pocketbook.

Yet there was nothing he could do about it, and worse, it was his own fault.  He should have stifled his excitement and waited to inform the magazine about the discovery of the box.

Now he shouted, "Shit!" into the evening air.

"C'mon," the pilot said, "forget it.  Let's go down to the wardroom; I got a friend there named Jack Daniel's who's dyin' to meet you."

*          *          *          *          *

Webber and the pilot sat in  the wardroom and finished the Jack Daniel's.  The more the pilot groused about bureaucrats, the more convinced Webber became that he was being shafted.  He had discovered the box, he had photographed it inside the submarine, he should be the one to take the first, the best — the only — pictures of what was inside.

At eight-forty-five, the pilot pronounced himself stewed to the gills, and he staggered off to his bunk.

At eight-fifty, Webber decided on a plan.  He went to bed and set his alarm clock for midnight.

*          *          *          *          *

"That's Montauk Point," the captain said, indicating the outer circle on the radar screen, "and there's Block Island.  If we had a calm, I'd anchor off Woods Hole and wait for daylight."  He looked at the clock mounted on the bulkhead.  "It's one-fifteen now; we'll be able to see pretty good in four hours.  But with this easterly blowing like a banshee, I'm gonna take her into the shelter of Block and then go up the coast at first light.  No sense getting everybody sick and maybe smashing up some gear."

"Right," Webber said, nauseated by the pool of acid coffee that sloshed in his stomach as the ship nosed into a trough and then rose askew onto the crest of a combing wave.  Pushed by a following sea, the ship was corkscrewing through the night.  "Guess I'll go back and try to get some sleep."

"Put a wastebasket by your bunk," the captain suggested.  "Nothing worse than trying to sleep in a bed of puke."

Webber had gone to the bridge to see how many lookouts were on duty and had found only two, the captain and a mate, both in the wheelhouse, both facing forward.  The stern was empty and unobserved.

Back in his cabin, he put a finger down his throat and forced himself to vomit into the toilet.  He waited five minutes, tried to vomit again, but brought up nothing but bile.  He brushed his teeth, and, feeling clearheaded and more stable, he slung a Nikon with an attached flash over his shoulder, picked up and tested a flashlight and walked aft, out onto the stern.

The wind was blowing twenty-five or thirty knots, but there was no rain, and the ship was moving with the wind at fifteen knots, which cut its bluster:  walking across the flat, wide stern was no worse than trudging into a fresh breeze.

Two five-hundred-watt lamps flooded the afterdeck with light.  The submersibles squatted on their cradles like mutant beetles assigned to guard the gleaming greenish-yellow box that lay between them.

Webber stayed in the shadows as he crossed the hundred feet of afterdeck.  He crouched behind the portside submersible, checked to be sure no one was watching from the wings of the bridge, then shone his flashlight on the side of the box.

He had no idea how heavy the lid of the box was — hundreds of pounds, certainly more than he could hope to lift alone.  If he had to, he could use the lifting rig from one of the submersibles, a big steel hook shackled to a block-and-tackle arrangement and powered by an electric winch.  But perhaps the lid was spring-loaded; perhaps there was a release latch or button.

He emerged from the shelter of the submersible cradle, crossed the deck and knelt beside the box.  Facing aft to shade the flashlight beam with his back, he followed the lip of the lid form one end to the other.  On the far side, only a few feet from the edge of the fantail, with the ship's wake boiling as it rose and fell beneath him, he saw a design etched in the bronze:  a tiny swastika.  Beneath it was a button.

He pressed the button, heard a click, then a hiss, and the lid of the box began to rise.

He knelt, stunned, for a moment as he watched the lid move up tantalizingly slowly, rising at no more than an inch a second.

When it was about half open, he got to his feet, turned on his camera, raised it to his eye, focused it, and waited for the beep signaling that the flash was ready to fire.

The light was dim; the lid shadowed the interior of the box, the view through the lens was shimmery and amorphous.  The box was full of liquid.

He thought... was that a face?  No, not... but it was something, and facelike.

There was a sudden thrashing in the liquid, and flashes of what looked like steel.

For a fraction of a second, Webber felt pain, then a rush of warmth, then a feeling of being dragged underwater.  And then, as he died, the bizarre sensation that he was being eaten.