The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (read a book .TXT) 📗

The radio messages from ship to shore escaped to the French Press. Headlines in Le Figaro and Ce Soir boosted by TV helicopters trying to locate the ship claimed, ‘Crew Wiped Out’. A complete one hundred strong crew had been struck dead by a sea borne virus. The trawler deck hand who boarded the vessel was killed stiff by the deadly virus minutes after he radioed the bodies were ramrod straight. The Press immediately judged the virus to be a type of tetanus or lockjaw, so vicious it killed in minutes. The article reported, ‘The French and British governments were working together to contain the virus within the anchored factory ship and not move it to a port.’ The usual exhortations not to panic, everything is under control, went unheeded.

Deserted beaches, pleasure boats hurrying back to marinas, fish markets closing, menus devoid of fish courses and tourists rushing away from the coasts showed the death virus scare was anything but under control in the minds of the susceptible.

The Plymouth based marine scientists threw up their arms in horror.

“We have proved we have a mutation of the Pinna nobilis shell structure. We are close to discovering how the Pinna nobilis secretes its byssus sea silk threads into thin film. How it senses its victims and wraps the film tightly around them, suffocates them, and why, is unknown. But a virus? Tetanus? It is most certainly not! The thought of a virus coming out of the sea worldwide and impossible to control would create international panic. The French media has gone mad!

The simple solution: sink the factory ship. The cold water will kill the Pinna nobilis.”

An objection was raised by the one marine biologist, Jones, who thought the victims may have been preserved in suspended animation as a future food store. Sinking the ship would kill them and the Pinna nobilis. “We should get an autopsy done on one of the five victims we have in the morgue as soon as possible.”

Destiny was taken out of their hands. A Russian factory ship called up the Falmouth Coastguard claiming the Bulgarian owners of the stricken vessel had given permission to tow it to the port of Bourgas on the Black Sea. It was on his course to Odessa. The Coastguard requested the Russian to explain why his submitted course was in the opposite direction through the Straits of Dover. He did not. His intended destination was the Murmansk Russian Navy Base. Russian intelligence had picked up information that that the Bulgarian had trawled an American airborne atom bomb aboard. The Russian Navy wanted to examine the bomb. They were cautious. The hundred dead crewmen may have been hit by a huge radiation dose if the forty-year old bomb had disintegrated on the fish processing floor.

 The Breakthrough

A huge piece of clear perspex washed up on Sennen Cove. It was about ten feet long and curved. Village youths had dragged it above the water mark. General opinion believed it to be the roof of an aircraft cockpit. The old codger was sure it was from one of those cold war B-47s. The local fishermen declared it to be the shape of a large mussel shell. The marine scientists arrived in great haste, avidly intent on finding this clear shell shape, but it would need a good deal of careful attention. They stressed to the local population it was not perspex but a clear form of byssus or sea silk, very, very rare. Removing the green slime and tiny crustacean deposits would be slow and painstaking. The ten-foot long shell was crated and trucked to the Plymouth marine labs for forensic cleaning. Even the weed, slime and crustacean deposits would be microscopically analysed.

In the same manner to the nacre or mother of pearl layer, the clear byssus material had formed to the smooth inner shape of the parent shell but was not deposited or attached to it. Surprisingly, the byssus material had formed two concave shells, one fitting perfectly within the other. They lay snuggly above the flesh content of the parent shell. Hinged at the pointed end, they were autonomous and free to leave the parent shell, opening and shutting to feed. The marine scientists presumed there was some control allowing the free shell to return to the mother shell.

One scientist, whose theory believed the byssus shells were storing their victims in suspended animation as a food stock, disputed the ‘free to roam and return’ philosophy. Once they had left the parent shell, they had to kill to live. With no beard or filament to attach to rocks, they had to adopt a different way from sea water filtration to survive.

He believed Senora Vigo was right when she said the Pinna nobilis was the ’Soul of the Sea.’ Disturb it at your peril or the byssus shell will emerge and swallow you! He firmly believed they should study the powerful hinge mechanism, the nervous system that triggered it and the body dissolving stomach fluids that fed it. This Pinna nobilis mutation was not bothered about a warm water existence. It could roam the oceans swallowing anything that moved. And it had a terrific advantage.

It was invisible!

The doubting Thomas scientist had spurred two courses of action: carry out the human autopsy to prove the byssus victims really were in a state of suspended animation; or dismember the byssus shell to see what transformed it into a killer. The technicians had cleaned the dead byssus shell to a level of sparkling transparency. The hinge, stomach and nerve receptor were all clearly visible, remarkably the same as the common mussel. A Pinna nobilis derivative was the addition of a spinneret to produce the byssus thread; the thread spinning around its victims and forging itself into a diamond hard casing. The Sennen Cove Stone Man was observed to have thread filling his mouth.

The stomach was the