David Golemon - Legend

Jack turned and went over to Carl, who was scanning the river ahead with binoculars.

"Carl, go to Mendenhall and get sidearms from the weapons locker. Issue them to all security personnel; give one to Jenks and Sarah also."

"You got it, Jack. See something you didn't like?" Carl asked, handing him the binoculars.

"Yeah, two somethings, both of them about eighty feet high and representing something we may have a part of in fossilized form, and those things didn't look like they were welcoming people to this part of the river."

Teacher was still in semidarkness at noon. Every once in a while, dapples of bright sunlight would filter through in beams as bright as lasers. The oppressive heat and the sight of those strange carvings had unnerved the crew to the point that most were lost in their own thoughts. Before they had boarded, everyone had been briefed by each department on everything that was known about the original Padilla expedition, and now certain pages of those briefs were standing out like a lighted piece of artwork. Every man and woman onboard Teacher remembered the fossil and its estimated age from the carbon-14 tests that had been conducted. Although not official, the estimation of only five hundred years was now not just a curious fact, it was just a little scary, because the more one saw of this strange world, the more one could believe the existence of almost anything.

Jack was reading a tech manual on the operation of a small charge that could be used at depths up to two hundred feet, which was filled with Hydro-Rotenone, a tranquilizer used by research scientists and developed in Brazil for underwater catch-and-release programs. The hand grenade-size charges operated in exactly that fashion, except these silverish little eggs had a small switch that could be used to select certain depths to detonate a charge that would disperse the Hydro-Rotenone in a thirty-foot arch underwater.

"More toys?" Sarah asked as she sat next to Jack in the false twilight the canopy of trees had thrown them into.

He put the manual down and looked at Sarah, who was dressed in shorts and a sleeveless blue blouse. She was freshly showered and smelled strongly of bug repellent.

"Love that perfume," he said as he lightly placed a hand on her leg, then removed it.

"It's all the rage in New York these days." She watched his hand for a brief moment, saddened that he couldn't leave it on her leg.

Teacher had run up to six knots, and the breeze the extra speed created felt good. They heard laughter coming from a few sections down, where most of the science team was out on deck getting some air after lunch. Mendenhall was on duty with Jenks, and Sanchez and Carl were learning the fine points of the submersible operation in the engine room. Jack raised his head and wondered aloud were Danielle Serrate was.

"The last I saw, she was in the computer library doing something," Sarah said. "Why, are you starting to wonder what her motives are?"

"Yeah, it's hard to believe they're just ex-husband motivated, but with her being the head of her agency and being sanctioned by her government in the assistance she's shown, I wouldn't care to guess what her real motives would be."

"Does the fact that Carl is getting close to her affect your way of thinking?"

"Everett is a grown man; I think he knows how to handle himself. It's been over a year since he lost Lisa, and I think it's time he starts realizing there are other women in the world. Besides, have you ever in the last year heard him talk so much?"

"Yeah, I—"

They were interrupted by the very object of their conversation, as Danielle bounded up through the open hatch.

"Jack, look over the side!" she said as she made the deck and leaned over the gunwale.

The major stood and went to Danielle's side and Sarah to her other. Jack immediately saw what she was indicating and turned and ran for the boat's intercom, where he slammed down the proper button.

"Kill the engines, Chief," he said loudly as he again switched buttons and hit the one marked eng.

"Carl, are you still in engineering?"

"Still here," he said.

"Get someone and get to the fantail; use a boat hook and snag those bodies," Jack said hurriedly.

Jack heard the engines shut down. He hurried to the hatch and made his way down the spiral stairs. He quickly ran aft to the engine room. The double rear doors were open to the fantail. One of the detachable chairs went flying as the men maneuvered to arrest the floating bodies with boat hooks. As Jack joined them, he saw the bodies were bloated.

"Goddammit!" he said as he reached out and opened the railing. The four men struggled, bringing the two bodies aboard over the fantail just above the black letters that spelled out Teacher .

"Oh," Carl said as the smell hit them. He gently rolled over the larger of the two and saw that it was a man clad in a diver's wetsuit. The neoprene was stretched beyond endurance and had split in the upper arm and thigh areas. The face was bloated and misshaped. But that didn't keep them from seeing the deep gouges that had been inflicted upon the man's face.

Jack heard noise behind them and saw Virginia and Dr. Allison Waltrip, the surgeon from the Group, as they hurried through the double doors. Virginia gasped but Waltrip immediately bent over the two still forms. The three marines backed away and turned to face the slow-flowing river. The doctor moved from the larger to the smaller of the two. She gently rolled it over and saw that it was a girl who couldn't have been more than twenty or twenty-one. This corpse was bloated like the other, but had no injuries that were readily apparent. Her eyes were wide in death and glazed over with a milky substance that made Virginia partially turn away before she remembered her professionalism. Dr. Waltrip started feeling around the body for a wound. The girl was dressed in shorts and a blouse; it reminded Jack of the very clothes Sarah was wearing. The doctor ran her fingers through the girl's hair and then stopped.

"Gunshot wound to her temple. My guess she was dead before she entered the water, but I can't be sure without an autopsy."

Then her attention was drawn back to the large man in the wetsuit. "His injuries are extensive. The face wounds wouldn't have been life threatening," she rolled the man over, "but these wounds are deep enough to have severed several arteries in his back and lungs." She probed the open wounds with her finger, making everyone cringe just a little. As she ran her fingers along one of the larger gouges, she extracted something and held it up to the deck light. It was rounded and ridged and it seemed to shine, giving off rainbow effects in the light.

"What is it, Doctor?" Carl asked.

"I don't know." She looked closer. "That almost looks like a hair follicle on the bottom, see?" She held it up for all to examine.

"I think I know what that is," Heidi said as she stepped up and took the object from the doctor.

"What?" Carl asked.

"It looks exactly like a fish scale — a damned big one, but a fish scale." Jack walked to the railing and looked out on the water. "Dr. Waltrip, can you get a good picture in two hours of how they died?"

"I can try," she said.

Jack walked to the fantail intercom and informed Jenks that they would anchor in the middle of the tributary for two hours while autopsies were performed on the two bodies. Then he watched as the men moved the bodies to the section seven medical labs.

When they were gone, Jack looked at the rain forest canopy overhead and saw the dapples of light were fading from the sky. After hoping they would make the lagoon before nightfall, he had to reconsider under the circumstances. He might have to order them to anchor, as the thought of entering Padilla's lagoon in total darkness left little appeal. The bodies not withstanding, the urgency of arriving on site for possible survivors had become possibly a moot point. He would now have to consider the safety of this team his top priority now.