Save the Manatee!

12: South by Southeast

(Saturday-Sunday, June 13-14, 2015)

Bent over beneath a cone-shaded lamp, Stanford worked with chart, roller ruler, three-armed protractor, and dividers to plot the course. Dipper, beside him and looking on, asked, "Wouldn't it be easier to use the computer for all this, Grunkle Stan?"

"Most navigators would," Stanford murmured, never looking up from the chart. "However, since my return from the outer dimensions, I've never picked up the computer skills necessary to perform that task. Now, here," he said, making a pencil mark, "is the last known location of the Triton Trident. The bulletin is about an hour old now, and she's making between eight and nine knots, so that would put her . . . about . . . here." He made a second pencil mark.

"How far away?" Dipper asked. He braced himself with his foot, because the boat was pitching and rolling in the heavy Pacific chop.

The motion didn't seem to bother his great-uncle Stanford. "Mm, we're . . . here." The dividers did their swivel-walk over the map. "That would be about, let's see, 175 nautical miles, or a shade over two hundred miles, south-southeast of us."

He sketched in a course. "So . . . if we can maintain a speed of twelve knots, and let's say theirs is 8.5 knots . . . not quite nine hours until we should be within sighting distance of them. What time is it?"

"Um, it's . . . 1805 hours, I guess?"

"Then we should come within sight of them at three in the morning," Stanford said. "The unknown factor is Voillelli's yacht. We managed to get a head start, but it's undoubtedly put to sea by now, and it may be faster than the Stan O' War II. Until my friend—"

The ship rolled to port, and Dipper gripped the edge of the table. "The Professor."

Stan shook his head ruefully. "Old habits of secrecy die hard. Yes, Professor Weaverly—please don't mention that name to anyone else, not even Wendy, because it's unbelievably classified. Yes, until the Professor can arrange to have a flyover to spot and locate the yacht, we can't be sure where it stands in this equation."

"Didn't they have to file a sailing plan or something?"

"Pleasure excursion to San Francisco," Stanford said. "That is obviously false—"

"Hey Ford!" Stan, bellowing from up on deck.

"Excuse me, Mason." Stanford stood up and made his unsteady way to the short stair—the companionway—leading up to the deck. "Yes, Stanley?"

"Gonna need to put more fuel in the port tank pretty soon."

"I'll attend to it."

Dipper hadn't been down in the fuel area of the boat, in the bilge—cramped, so low that even he would have to walk doubled at the waist—and he said, "I'll do it, Grunkle Ford."

Stanford put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from rising. "Better let me, Mason. We have extra fuel aboard, but it's a little tricky to operate the hand pump, and I know which containers need to be emptied in which order. However, it's a nasty job, so I will change clothes first."

Dipper went back on deck, hanging on to anything he could reach. Though the motion didn't make him seasick, as it did his sister, it was hard to get used to. The afternoon sun shone warm and unbroken by clouds, but the air felt as chilly as the ocean looked, deep slate-blue, streaked with white foam. "How's Mabel?" Dipper asked Stan, who stood at the wheel, looking nautical in pea jacket, gloves, and toboggan cap.

Stanley nodded. "Better. She's forward, with Wendy. Go tell 'em to grab some life vests if they're gonna horse around, OK?"

Going forward on the Stan O' War II meant either walking through the deckhouse, or walking across its flat roof, or squeezing through about fourteen inches of deck space on either side of it. With the boat still wallowing a bit in the chop, Dipper took the easiest route, going through the deckhouse—though he staggered and lurched a little—and out the forward hatch.

Wendy and Mabel stood at the curved rail in the bow. The boat was pitching as it hit the waves, the bowsprit rising up and up until it pointed at empty blue sky, and then as the boat crested the wave, swinging down until it pointed at the ocean surface. When they rode the downward slant of the wave and boomed into the trough, the bows sent a spray of white water foaming and whipping away on the wind.

"You OK?" Dipper asked, coming up to join the girls and stand between them.

"Lots better," Mabel said, her face no longer green, but still pink with the remnants of a sunburn. It had started to peel on her arms, and she enjoyed pulling long strips off. Mabel had told Dipper that her ambition was to peel her face off in one complete piece: a Mabel skin-mask. Right then, she looked as if she had bundled herself in three sweaters, plus a light jacket. "Whee!" she exclaimed as they climbed another wave. "The pill kicked in, I guess."

Since she had probably thrown up the pill in her first bout of seasickness, Dipper didn't see how that could be possible. However, the placebo effect might explain it. "You OK, Wendy?" Dipper asked.

She had bundled up, too, and she seemed to huddle herself inside the windbreaker. "Yeah, dude. Not sick at all. Cold, though! I didn't know it would be like the middle of winter out here."

"It's the ocean," Dipper said. "The water temperature's about fifty. That cools the air, and there's a lot of ocean, so it can chill a lot of air."

"Fifty's not that cold," Mabel said.

"Yes, it is," Dipper told her. "You'd get hypothermia in about an hour if you were in the water."

He told them about the prospects for their rescue voyage. "Three in the morning?" Mabel moaned. "Oh, man! Why couldn't we meet them at a decent time? Noon, maybe?"

"Because by then the manatee might be aboard Voillelli's yacht," Dipper said patiently. "It'll be lots faster than the freighter, so we wouldn't have a chance of catching it. Any word from Mermando yet?"

"Uh-uh," Mabel said. "But the dolphins are real friendly. Look!" She leaned over and yelled, "Hey, guys! This is my brother, Dipper the dork!"

"Mabel!"

But he didn't have time to complain, because a row of gray dolphins erupted, breaching, curving, and submerging again, right beside the bow. They made their squawky, excited, chattering sounds as they did.

"Whoa!" Wendy said. "Must be a hundred of them!"

"Bottlenose dolphins," Dipper told her. "I didn't think they liked cold waters."

"These are just visiting!" Mabel yelled. "I think Mermando sent them to meet us!"

One dolphin leaped high and squawked, "Urr-an-o!"

"He said 'Mermando!'" Mabel yelled. "When the time comes, these guys are gonna help form a teleportation circle and bring Mermando and his merfolk in to help us!"

"How . . . do you know that?" Dipper asked.

"Mystery Twin intuition! Yes!" Mabel did a fist-pump. "Also, Mermando wrote about it in one of his letters."

"Oh, dude, look there!" Wendy said, pointing off to the left.

Dipper said, "Whoa!" fifty yards from the boat, a pod of black-and-white bodies, much larger than the dolphins, broke and spouted. "Orcas!"

"Killer whales," Wendy said. "I know that much from TV."

"Yeah, but they're really not whales, but a super-large species of dolphin," Dipper said. "Are they along for the ride, too?"

Mabel pushed past him. "Let's see! Hey, orcas! If you're comin' to help Mermando save his wife, come closer!"

Instantly the orcas changed course, angling in to approach the boat.

"Um, close enough, Mabes!" Wendy said. "We don't want to hit 'em!"

But the orcas took care of that, straightening their course to parallel the Stan O' War II a couple of dozen feet away. Dipper took Wendy's hand—it was very cold—and thought to her, —They're not dangerous to us. They're the smartest of the dolphins. They hunt in packs and have organized ways of getting food.

Like what, Dip?

—Um, I saw this TV show. There were seal pups on an ice floe. The orcas couldn't reach them, though sometimes one will chase a seal up on a beach and nearly come out of the water to grab the prey. Anyhow, about a dozen orcas got in line, abreast of each other, and then swam toward the ice so fast that they pushed up a wave and washed the seals off, and then they grabbed them and—well.

Brutal. But not any worse than a bear or a wolf, I guess.

—Yeah, but don't tell Mabel, OK? She thinks seal pups are cute.

The dolphins and orcas gradually fell behind. "More of 'em will show up," Mabel told them. "They take shifts, I think. I'm going downstairs to see if I can find some food. Maybe I can keep it down, and I'm all empty."

"Be careful," Dipper told her as she started to squeeze around the port side. "And get your life jacket on!"

"Yeah, yeah, I will."

Dipper watched until he was sure she had made it safely aft.

"Guess we should have life jackets on, too," he told Wendy.

"OK. You're the sailor."

He laughed. "I made one trip before this!"

She nudged him. "More'n me, dude! I've never even been on the Small World ride!"

"You're lucky," Dipper said. "Ready to go?"

Wendy let go of the rail. "Let's go. But I'm goin' inside to get to the back. The wind's awfully cold."

Seeing her as she turned, Dipper smiled. "First, before we leave," Dipper said, "get right in the bow. This won't take long. Hold the rail, both hands."

She laughed. "Dip, we're not seriously doing this, are we?"

"Humor me."

"OK." She did as he asked.

Standing behind her, pressed against her, he reached to hold both wrists and gently forced them up until both teens stood with arms extended, facing the sea. The boat rose and plunged. "We're flying," he whispered into her ear as her long hair swept against his cheek.

"Yeah," she murmured. "We are."

For him it felt dizzying—and enthralling. They saw the bowsprit rise, fall, and even dig its tip into the water as the boat plunged down into the trough. They saw white spray explode beneath the bow and then whip off to port. They felt the sea wind.

"It's really beautiful," Wendy whispered. "And I'd love it, except I'd be freezing my butt off if you weren't so tight against it."

He laughed. "Well—everybody's gotta do the Titanic thing at least once."

"Cross that one off our list. OK, Dipper, that was romantic. Now take me somewhere warm and thaw me out!"

And somewhere south-southeast of them, Auguste "Gunny" Inglehorn, captain of the Triton Trident, waited while the radio operator raised the Cutwater. The yacht's radio man came on the line, his voice distorted and crackling—there was a lot of sunspot activity just then, and that sparked electrical disturbances in the upper atmosphere. The Trident's man gave the coded recognition signal, then Inglehorn sat next to the operator at the radio station, earphones on, and reached for the microphone. "Is he aboard?" he asked.

"Affirmative."

Inglehorn grimaced. Voillelli always hired veterans, but since the type he went for were mostly dishonorable discharges, and they always overcompensated. "Inglehorn here. Let me talk to him."

It took five minutes, Inglehorn grumbling the whole time.

Then Voillelli himself, his voice a rasp: "This better be important."

"ETA and some concerns."

"Go ahead."

"At the place you know," Inglehorn said. "Oh one thousand."

The place would be obscure enough a destination to any eavesdroppers. And Voillelli knew what anyone else would not: the appointed time, 10:00 AM, was wrong. To get the correct rendezvous time, one subtracted two hours—the two vessels should meet at eight in the morning.

"I'll be there very early," Voillelli said. "You find us. Concerns?"

Inglehorn thought carefully. They had a sort of code, but he'd never bothered to memorize it. "High traffic," he said.

Some seconds passed while Voillelli absorbed this. "Is the water smooth or choppy?"

"Choppy," Inglehorn replied. "It was that way coming out of the harbor. Three times since." It was as close as he dared come to telling Voillelli outright that three times choppers had crossed their wake or their path—very unusual. They looked like Navy helicopters, but were never quite close enough for him to be sure.

He heard Voillelli make a low growling sound. "Twelve plus," he said. "Until one thousand, twelve plus, all times. Repeat that."

"Aye," Inglehorn said. "Twelve plus, understood. Over and out."

"Twelve plus!"

Inglehorn clicked the switch and broke the connection. "That will be all," he told Meyers, the radio operator. "Back to your station."

Inglehorn went back to the bridge and called the navigator. "How far offshore are we now?" he asked.

"Twenty miles," the man told him.

"Good Are we coming inside the limit at any point on the course?"

"No. Closest would be off Cape Blanco, before we make our turn, and we'd be sixteen, eighteen miles there."

"He's worried about getting caught inside the twelve-mile limit."

The navigator shook his head. "Coast Guard won't bother us."

"Don't be too sure. They stop drug runners in the open sea," Inglehorn muttered.

"We ain't running drugs."

"Yeah," Inglehorn said. "But look at who we work for." Inglehorn called the second mate: "Where the hell are you? You should've been here five minutes ago."

"Comin'!"

After another five minutes, Pedersen, sloppy, sweaty, and reeking of body odor, lumbered onto the bridge. "Lost track of time," he muttered.

"Christ, Pederson, take a bath someday soon! Take over. I'm getting some chow. Hold present course, notify me immediately if anything out of the way happens. Especially if you see aircraft in the area."

"Like airliners?"

Inglehorn cursed. "No, dummy! Low planes! Helicopters! Like that."

"OK, Gunny."

Inglehorn bit back a vulgar response. Airliners! If you saw them out here, it was as barely-visible dots at the leading point of a contrail sketched across the sky. Airliners!

What the hell. He was quitting after this run, anyhow. He could sign on with Dolphy, a freighter company that hauled fuel, mostly on South Pacific runs. He didn't like this business of being an errand boy for a gangster who happened to own a hefty percentage of the Triton company.

And he hated the stupid reason that Voillelli had cautioned him to run outside and that they all just might, incidentally, serve time for: a damn manatee!

She was in her cramped tank on the starboard deck, next to the midships Heill crane that could handle twenty tons. The animal herself only weighed half a ton, but the tank, water, heater and all the apparatus racked up the weight. He tapped the circular dial to make sure the reading was correct: 24 Celsius, should be comfortable enough.

Inglehorn paused at the end of the tank and looked down. The top of the tank had been closed by a barred grate, so it was like looking through a ladder laid horizontally. The manatee bobbed, her gray nose above the surface. She squeaked like a damn rat when he was beside her. He could see the stupid mark on the top of her head, a warty-like pink growth that resembled a crown.

That damn manatee and no other. That was the only one Voillelli wanted. God knew why.

But, Inglehorn reminded himself, he wasn't looking at a cabbage-eating crap factory, but at a clear hundred thousand dollars for himself and another hundred thousand to divide up among the crew, cash, untraceable.

God, he'd be so glad to have the money in hand and to be shed of this mound of fat.

Inglehorn continued aft, but stopped at the rail again as he noticed a disturbance in the water on the landward side—a pod of Dall's porpoises, a big one, maybe six or seven hundred of them, leaping and pacing the ship.

"Good luck," he grumbled. That's what the sailors said—porpoises alongside a vessel meant good luck. He'd been at sea too long to believe in superstitions, though.

He carried his personal good luck in a holster strapped to his belt and his right leg: A SIG Sauer P210 9-mm pistol. Most shooters agreed it was the most accurate semi-automatic pistol on the planet, and Inglehorn was one of the most accurate shooters. And just in case that good-luck token failed him, on his left, in a scabbard, he carried a five-inch, Martinez-designed dagger.

He had experience with both. In times of danger, he relied on both.

Certainly a lot more than he would on a pod of damn porpoises.