Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

“Quarantine Titanic ? Haw! Haw-haw.” O’Laughlin shook his head as he laughed. “Do you know what is riding on this trip? The record, man, the record! To beat Olympic’s time to New York. Lots of bets’ve been placed.”

“Of course, we know that, sir. We are officers,” replied Murdoch, his mustache twitching at the suggestion otherwise. “We know very well, Doctor, what we’re about, and rules don’t allow us to gamble, sir.”

“Oh, pity that. Stuff the rules, I say.”

“By now everyone aboard understands that, sir,” Lightoller’s tone became patronizing. “Look for a taste of your stashed rum, we can all have a seat and discuss the matter in more detail… get to the bottom of Constable Ransom’s concerns, and move on.”

“Show him the photos, Declan—the autopsy photos,” said Ransom.

“I can assure you, gentlemen,” began O’Laughlin, “There’s no sickness aboard Titanic that I’m aware of—”

“On a ship of this size? Four New York blocks long? How can you be sure. This is like… like a floating city, and every city has its underbelly.” While Ransom and the boys were amazed at what their eyes took in at every juncture of the Titanic , their mission allowed for little chance to wonder at the marvel they walked upon.

“He’s correct, Dr. O’Laughlin,” said Lightoller. “Fact is there is everything from dysentery to consumption just among the Black Gang alone. I mean they fake not having their various disorders, but there’s no signing on 900 crewmen and women that I know of that is without a good share of illness. You may as well suggest there’re no rats aboard!”

“The Black Gang?” asked Thomas. “Who would they be?”

“Stokers—the men feeding the boilers, Tommie,” said Declan.

Lightoller added, “The fellas who see to it the boilers are hot and turning those giant turbines and propellers below.”

“How else do you think we churn out 22knots,” replied O’Laughlin. “Black as coal miners they are from shovelin’ the stuff… mountains of it each day. They’ll be carrying ’em up from time to time with heat stroke, I assure you, but unlikely anything else save a case of consumption now and again.”

“I saw no one terribly disturbing come aboard.” Murdoch said of the Black Gang. “But you can bet there’re a number who’re carrying one sort of pestilence or another.”

“And some as soon slit your throat as not?” asked Ransom.

“Aye, that too.” Murdoch met Ransom’s glare.

“They seem a good bunch to me,” defended Lightoller. “Certainly know how to throw a party.”

“Are you saying they have rum, whiskey, rye?” asked Ransom.

“That and more.” The doctor laughed but it was cut short when his eyes fell on the photos Declan held out for his perusal.

Everyone fell silent. O’Laughlin with Murdoch and Lightoller looking over each shoulder studied each of eight photographs of three separate bodies, twenty-four in all.

“What do you make of it, Dr. O’Laughlin?” asked Murdoch.

“These are burn victims,” he replied and shrugged. “Hardly disease victims. What kind of hoax are you about, you men?”

“Burn victims?” shouted Thomas. “These are not!”

“That darkened skin is the result of complete, total dehydration, Dr. O’Laughlin,” insisted Declan. “Look, we are students at Queens University Medical.”

“How wonderful for you,” replied O’Laughlin, unimpressed, his eyes never leaving the photos.

“Well, I mean presently we’re doing residency at Mater Infirmorum, surely you’ve heard of it? I’ve a letter from my professor and the dean there—read them.”

“I knew this would be a waste of time!” Ransom exploded, grabbed up the photos and was about to hand them to Declan for safekeeping when suddenly a robust-looking Captain Edward Smith stepped into the doctor’s quarters, asking, “What is going on here, William?” He instantly glared eye-to-eye with Ransom. “My officers, crewmen, and passengers have been startled by you men. Do you wish to explain yourselves?”

“They’re not exactly stowaways, sir,” began Lightoller. “Sorry but they talked their way aboard. My doing entirely sir… .I mean my misjudgment.”

Murdoch did his best to cover for his junior officer. “Mr. Lightoller’s brought this to my attention, sir, and I thought it best to bring it to Dr. O’Laughlin’s before we should bother you with any of it, sir, and glad we did.”

The ship’s doctor piped in with, “T’would seem these fellows are here to pull off some sort of fraud, a dreadful, misguided hoax!”

“Ahh yes, a hoax of some sort, just the thing,” replied Captain Smith, looking Ransom and his young partners in crime up and down. “It’s the only thing hasn’t happened aboard yet. We have a lady topside shouting bloody murder about some dream she’s had—demanding she be put off the ship at Queenstown. Making a terrible row among the passengers to the point we had to lock her in her berth until we reach Queenstown. Now this!”

“Deputy Constable Ransom and his traveling companions,” began Murdock, “are claiming the ship’s being ravaged by a plague!”

“Nonsense, of course,” put in the doctor.

“Sounds to me more like a Typhoid Mary situation here, Captain,” countered Charles Lightoller. “A plague-carrier scattering it, so in a sense he’s a murderer if he is knowingly spreading it, sir.”

“I can bloody well speak for myself, Officer Lightoller,” bellowed Ransom. “Captain, we’ve no time to waste haggling over matters. This is of the utmost concern, and I assure you it is no hoax! But rather a matter of life and death, sir, and you must listen to our story and look at our documented proof.”

“Indeed…” Smith looked Ransom over once again, taking his time to size up this stranger; both men were approximately the same height, weight, and age. Both men carried themselves well. “Are you some sort of Sherlock Holmes, sir? I confess a guilty pleasure in reading accounts of the fictional Holmes but meeting a real life Holmes aboard Titanic , now that is grand indeed.”

“The photos they claim to be of diseased men, sir,” said O’Laughlin, “appear to be men burned alive if you ask my opinion.”

“On the contrary, sir,” said Declan, holding out the stack of photos, now smudged with fingerprints. “These men died a horrible, horrible death—one of them Thomas’ uncle.” He paused to pull Thomas into the circle as Thomas had shied off when Smith entered with his thick white beard and darting azure eyes. “These men died from the inside out… from the egg-sacs laid in them and the incredible hunger of this thing, sir, this… this alien creature… a monster and a killer we know far too little of; this enemy of mankind, sir.”

“I see. Well now shall we have a seat everyone about the conference table and have a closer look, Dr. O’Laughlin? Perhaps you are mistaken in your diagnosis; not easy to make judgments based on out of focus, grainy photos, really.”

“Let’s have that rum you fellows were interested in,” said Dr. O’Laughlin. “Perhaps I was hasty in my conclusions after all.” Ransom had missed the glint in each man’s eye, captain and doctor. They had been together for years and knew one another’s most subtle gesture and sarcasm, but Alastair had an ear for such nuances as well, and he began to wonder.

“Rum sounds good indeed,” began Ransom, “but Captain, these men in the photos were not seared to death by fire but by a vile organism that feeds on the entrails of a man; a parasite that we believe originated in the mines in Belfast from where the ore for your came. Crazy as it may sound, this organism has an affinity for the iron and steel, sir.”