Heidi fell silent; her blood turned to ice. Hoker sat like a chunk of granite at the console, his face dazed with disbelief Oddly, Gunn tilted his head to one side and studied the apparition with the clinical look of a surgeon contemplating an X-ray.
"In my wildest dreams," he said in a hoarse voice, "I never really thought I'd see a ghost."
Gunn's apparent composure didn't fool Pitt. He could see the little man was in a near state of shock.
"Reverse Baby," he said calmly to Hoker.
Fighting a fear he had never experienced before, Hoker gathered his senses and moved his fingers over the controls. At first the undulating shape receded in the background, and then it began to grow larger again.
"Oh, lord, it's following," whispered Heidi.
A quick glance at the strained, stunned faces showed the same realization on every mind. They stood paralyzed, their attention transfixed on the monitors. "For God's sake, what is it doing?" rasped Gunn.
No one answered, no, one in the control room possessed the power of speech. No one except Pitt.
"Turn Baby around and get it out of there, fast!" he snapped.
Hoker forced himself to tear his eyes from the unearthly sight and pushed the power setting toFULL .
The little survey craft was not designed for speed. At maximum, its thrusters could only propel it at three knots. It began a tight turn. The cameras in the bow panned away from the undulating menace, past the open portholes glowing weirdly from the filtered light from the surface, past the faces of the mirrors that reflected no more. The 180-degree maneuver seemed to take an endless time.
And it came too late.
A second transparent specter drifted above the threshold of the doorway to the lounge, its shadowy arms outstretched and beckoning.
"Damn!" Pitt cursed. "Another one!"
"What should I do?" Hoker's voice was pleading, almost desperate.
It would be an understatement to say that Pitt held the undivided attention of everyone in the control room. They were awed by his glacial concentration. It was beginning to seep through to them why he was held in such high esteem by Admiral Sandecker. If ever a man was in the right place at the right time, it was Dirk Pitt standing on the deck of a salvage ship calling the shots against the unnatural.
Given a century, they could never have guessed the thought running through his mind. All they could detect from his expression was that anger had replaced studied contemplation.
If "Attack and be damned" worked with the phantom train, Pitt reasoned, there was little to lose by repeating the play. He nodded to Hoker.
"Ram the bastard!"
The mood abruptly changed now. Everyone took their strength from Pitt. Their fear gradually altered to growing determination to expose what their imaginations suggested were dead souls haunting the decaying ocean liner.
The RSV zeroed in and struck the spectral barrier in the doorway. There seemed to be no resistance at first. The blurred figure gave way, but then it floated forward and its shroud enveloped the craft. All focus was lost from the cameras and the monitors projected only vague shadows.
"It appears our hosts have substance," Pitt said conversationally.
"Baby is not responding to command," Hoker called out. "The controls react as if it's immersed in cooked oatmeal."
"Try reversing the thrusters."
"No go." Hoker shook his head. "Whatever those things are, they've immobilized it."
Pitt walked across to the control console and peered over Hoker's head at the instruments. "Why is the directional indicator vascillating?"
"It's like they're wrestling with Baby," answered Hoker. "Trying to drag it somewhere, I would guess."
Pitt gripped his shoulder. "Shut down all systems except the cameras.
"What about the lights?"
"Shut them down too. Let those heavy-handed ghosts think they've damaged Baby's power source."