Jeffery Kooistra: A Monster's Tale

Illustration by Steve Cavallo

They started off with him seeing her naked.

Kelly Lindsey often sunbathed in the nude. The Flying Witch was her boat after all, all sixty-five, high-powered feet of her. With the canvas blinders up, one would really have to be determined to catch a glimpse of her from the dock. And the handgun she kept next to her drink on the stand kept her from feeling naked.

The Sun had bleached out even the minor traces of brown in Kelly’s hair, and baked her skin to a warm bronze. She was far too beautiful to be taken seriously on first sight, except during those few months when she’d worked as a stripper in Florida—just out of high school and eager to be on her own. But that was six years ago. She had a better way to make money now, and it was usually legitimate.

“Knock, knock. Anyone home?” The voice came from behind her.

Kelly flipped over and out of her lounge chair, in the same movement pulling her gun off the table and training it on the man standing there. She didn’t care one damn bit that she was nude.

He didn’t either, not with a gun pointed at him.

“Hold it, please. I’m sorry I’m Dr. Fred Fryling. Your passenger? You know? The cruise line hired you to take me around.”

Slowly she relaxed her grip on the gun, though she didn’t drop it yet. “Next time you want to come on board my boat, you holler from the dock first. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kelly put on her robe, not tying it particularly tight, and offered Fred a chair. “I have a few questions I ask clients, Dr. Fryling.”

“Please, call me Fred, unless you expect me to call you ‘Captain.’ ”

“OK, Fred. I want to know why the cruise line hired my boat. They were adamant that no other boat would do.”

“Because you’re the only person in the Caribbean who owns a charter boat with an MHD drive. A big drive, too, for a boat this size.”

“I see,” Kelly said. “So where’s your cargo? Can you load it by yourself, or should I help you?”

“I don’t have any cargo. I mean, not anything other than my luggage and some special equipment. What kind of cargo do other people bring?”

“That’s a question I try not to ask,” Kelly said. She looked over her passenger again. He was quite attractive, she decided, though she wondered if he could even find his ass with both hands. And a doctor, too. Wouldn’t mom be happy if she could hook up with someone like that—instead of having her remain a vagabond independent shipper. “What kind of doctor are you?”

“I’m a marine biologist,” Fred answered. “That means I don’t drive a Porsche. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Fred. I’ve had this pain in my ass ever since you came on board.” Then she burst out laughing and he joined in.

“We didn’t get off to the best start, did we?” Kelly said.

“No. But I think we’d better learn to get along if we’re going to hunt sea monsters together.”

“What did you just say?”

He explained it to her over drinks in the galley, after she’d dressed in shorts and a bikini top.

“I was on board the cruise ship Caribbean Lady, on one of those gambling, drinking, and dancing cruises. The Lady happens to be a huge MHD drive ship. By the way, do you know how your drive works? The principle of the thing?”

Kelly set down her drink and used a napkin to wipe perspiration away from between her breasts. “Why, no. Why don’t you tell me?” She was watching him closely. He failed to notice her sarcasm. Yet there was something about Dr. Fred that she either loved or hated, though she couldn’t tell which.

If you have a magnetic field pointed the right way, Fred explained, and you have a wire in the field with a current going through it in the right direction, the wire will be repelled. In the case of the magnetohydrodynamic drive, you run current through conductive sea water as it enters the drive tubes. The superconducting magnets cause it to be repelled out the back. “Simple physics, but the Japanese own the patents, and they’re cleaning up,” Fred concluded.

“Fine. But you missed the part about avoiding freshwater outflow from big rivers. It wrecks conductivity,” Kelly put in, smiling.

Fred looked at her, said, “Well…” and continued telling her about the cruise. “We were well on our way to Rio when there was a bump during the night. The engineering crew noticed a loss of efficiency in the starboard drive tube. Captain Porter ordered us to continue on at one-half speed and in the morning had one of his guys dive down to inspect the starboard tube. The outside looked OK so they told him go inside. On the Caribbean Lady that tube is thirty-five feet across.”

“What was inside there?” Kelly asked.

“There’s only supposed to be a few trim fins to control the water flow. The captain thought there might be a tree trunk—one of those big ones that sometimes come floating out of the Amazon—stuck in there. But what they hauled out looked like a twelve-foot-wide section of green plastic sheeting, but with scales on it.”

“Scales?”

“Yeah. That’s where I come in. I was jogging on deck that morning and saw them pull it out of the water. Captain Porter wondered if it was a fin from some kind of squid or big fish. I told him it was like nothing I’d ever seen.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Nothing. Another guy came over from the crowd that had gathered. I recognized him from the night before. He’d been barfing drinks over the side. He told us what he saw when he was throwing up.”

“And what did the drunk say he saw?”

“A sea serpent. A long, thick, snaky, dragon-headed sea monster. Said it reared up fifty feet out of the water then dove back under, and that’s when the bump came.

“So that’s the story. The captain reported it, a cruise line rep came out to look into it and decided there might be a good advertising angle here if the line could substantiate things scientifically. Since I was qualified and already knew everything, he hired me on the spot.”

Kelly got them each another margarita. “OK, Doc, now I know why you’re hunting sea monsters. But why my boat? The Witch is fast, but she’s hardly unique in that department.”

“Your MHD drive, Kelly. My theory is that the sea serpent came by our ship because it was attracted to the engine’s EM fields. Lots of water life is sensitive to electrical effects. Electric eels, for instance. Why not the sea beasty? And sea serpent reports dropped off markedly after the invention of steamships. Sea monster believers account for this by assuming that the things just plain don’t like the noise. MHD drives are quiet.”

“So you’re hoping that my big engine will turn on any local sea monsters and bring them around? How big did you say this thing was again?”

“My guess is that it’s between one hundred fifty and two hundred feet long, and probably fifteen feet thick at its widest.”

“Aren’t sea monsters supposed to crush ships and eat what they find floating in the water?” Kelly asked, then burst out laughing. “Fred, if I actually believed we’d find anything out there, I’d throw you overboard and cut out like nobody’s business. But since I don’t, I’ll just take your money and ferry you around anywhere you want to go.”

Fred frowned. “You don’t believe me? Or that we’ll succeed? Why?”

“Why? Because it’s silly. I’ve been on the water for a long time, and I’ve talked to old people who’ve been on it their whole lives, and none of us have seen sea serpents. We have our share of strange stories, but no sea serpents. I’ve never heard of any scientific evidence—”