Last Gasp by Trevor Hoyle Read Free Book Online Page A

know—kinda inhuman, cold, no emotions.”
    “I’m sure he’d be thrilled to hear that.”
    Gordon was immune to irony. “Jeez, I’d love to meet somebody like that, Sherry. I bet he’s a fascinating guy. I mean to say, the dedication it takes to go off like that, leaving civilization and all that stuff behind, living purely and simply for your work. That’s terrific.”
    “Is it?” Cheryl lowered the binoculars and stared at him, her tone sharper than she intended. “It’s terrific to live with relatives for most of your life, being shipped around like a package. To be an orphan when one of your parents is still alive. That really is terrific, Gordy.”
    The resentment, the hurt, so long buried, still had a raw edge to it. Especially when dredged up by a casual or thoughtless remark; and Gordon Mudie was an expert in that department.
    The bass throb of the engines faltered, missed a beat, and then resumed its pounding rhythm. Cheryl felt the vibrations through her rope-soled sandals. The ship seemed to be laboring. She leaned right over, holding the binoculars aside on their leather strap, and peered down into the churning water.
    Normally it was a cream froth. Now it was red, the color of blood. “Gordon, look at that!”
    “ Jeez-uz !”
    “What have we hit?”
    “Must be a seal. Or a shark, maybe.”
    It was neither. Cheryl looked around and discovered that the Melville was afloat on a red ocean. She looked again over the stern and realized that the vessel was struggling to make headway through a thick spongy mass of minute planktonic organisms, which was giving the sea its reddish hue.
    There’d been several outbreaks in recent years: vast blooms of the microcellular organism Gymodinium breve had appeared without warning off the coasts of America, India, and Africa. Nobody knew what caused the growth, nor why it suddenly came and went. But the “red tide” was deadly poisonous, to both fish and man. Millions of dead and decaying fish and other sea creatures had been found off Florida’s eastern coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.
    She clamped the headset back on and spoke into the mike. “Monitoring room? We’d better wind in the RMT. We’re in the middle of an algae bloom—red stuff, acres of it. I think it’s the poisonous variety.”
    The headset squawked a reply and Cheryl said, “We’re to close the release gear and bring the trawl in.” When Gordon didn’t immediately respond, she snapped, “What are you waiting for? If we pick up any of this crap it’ll take days to clean out.”
    Gordon backed away from the rail, his high forehead creased in a perplexed frown. “Where’s it come from? There must be tons and tons of the stuff.” Still frowning, he went over to the winch and began winding.
    The girl gazed down at the water, mesmerized a little, lost in the illusion that she was on a bridge with a river flowing underneath. Her snub nose with its sprinkle of freckles (the one that Gordon thought was real cute) wrinkled as she caught a whiff of something rotten, and in the churning red wake she saw the white upturned bellies of hundreds of fish. A shoal of poisoned sea bass.
    In spite of the warmth of the sun she felt a shiver ripple down her spine. What had caused it? What had gone wrong? A natural ecological foul-up or man-made thermal pollution?
    And just imagine, she thought, shuddering, if the bloom kept right on multiplying and spreading and poisoning all the fish. It would eventually take over, filling all the oceans of the world with a stinking red poisonous mess. Every sea creature would die, and the bloom might not stop there—when it had conquered the oceans it would infiltrate the river systems and lakes and streams. It might even gain a roothold on the land....
    Cheryl shook herself out of the nightmare. Thank God it was only imagination.
     
    Bill Inchcape—Binch as everyone called him—in short-sleeved shirt and check trousers was seated at the keyboard of the computer