From: cgdemarc@ai.mit.edu (Carl de Marcken)
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 13:26:17 -0400
To: all-ai
Subject: GSB, Friday, May 24th, 5:30 PM



The first warning they could have had was the screaming from the forward
paint locker.  The girl from Madras- McEachern had bought her for half a
kilo- had taken to hiding there, even during the worst of the late-season
blows.  But with the wind howling over the rails it would have taken a good
ear to hear her, better than any aboard.  Anyway, after three days the
pity was gone and even Strode would have shrugged and let McEachern have
his fun.

It made its way to deck and aft, first to the forward pom-pom.  Improbably,
the gun was still there, the relic of a Murmansk run that the captain had
refused to junk even after years in the tropics had rusted the mechanisms
beyond recognition.  In a fit of fury it ripped the gun off the decayed
mount and tossed it over the starboard retaining wall.  That was the second
sound they could have heard.  But they didn't.

Ironically, McEachern was the first crewmember to know.  Drunk as always on
the palm wine he had stolen in Aden and unable to sleep in his bouncing
cabin, he had wandered to the w.t. only to trip and smash the wireless with
a half-empty bottle.  It heard his rapid swearing and continued forward.
McEachern saw the motion, stumbled out, and was blinded by the rain.  By
the time he saw it was too late.

Defying explanation, it then went deep, past the empty ward room down into
and past the engine spaces to the shaft tunnel where the three Chinese- the
engineer and machinist's mate and cook- were screaming insults at the only
Muslim on board, a Pakistani that had thought he was signing onto a
Norwegian oiler, over a Mahjongg game.  The wall had barely been touched
when it entered the tunnel.  Its heavy footsteps had been completely masked
by the pounding on the hull and the deafening chatter of the engines and
shaft.

The last to go was Strode, of course.  He knew by then, and convinced
himself he had known all along.  It didn't care.  It was unthinking and
remorseless.

It was GSB.  It was going to Cambridge.  And nothing could stop it.