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

size of a football and probably capable of producing enough juices to inject into the diamond hard casing and digest captured large living creatures.

Of great interest to the marine biologists was the rudimentary nervous system. Although dead, they stimulated the central nerve with a small AA battery. The three-metre shell made a weak attempt to close but returned slowly to its original position. Dropping a stone into the open shell produced no response. Dropping a moving object, a wind-up toy, produced a response. Clearly the byssus shell would respond only to moving objects, living creatures, a venus flytrap type reaction.

The final question was reproduction. How could the byssus shell reproduce? The answer, it could not. The parent shell increased size each year, indicated by a new extension to the front of the shell, akin to tree ring growth. At the same time. it produced a new inner byssus shell. The three-metre mutation was recreating itself every year in transparent killer form.

The biologists agreed they had discovered an unnatural form of existence, a parasite that could not live without killing others. Was this the same as a virus? An inorganic virus that the parent shell was innocently creating? The three-metre mutated Pinna nobilis had only mutated because of man-made radiation. The mutated byssus shell was a man-made creation.

The scientists and biologists agreed. It was their duty to stop the byssus killer.

They had interfered with the ‘Soul of the Sea’.

 

 

 Alive or Dead

To date, one hundred and six men had been victims of a byssus shell attack. They, and a dog, had been encased in a diamond hard byssus film and presumed dead. One biologist believed they were in a state of suspended animation.

In support of his argument, the encased bodies had neither mummified nor putrified despite forty years under the sea, as in the case of the Sardinian trot boat. The blood samples had exhibited super-fluid characteristics. A very faint pulse had been detected in one individual on one occasion, dubious because it had not been repeated.

The biologist calculated the number of heart beats in seventy normal years to be one-thousand-four-hundred and seventy-one million beats. For the suspended animation victims, at the rate of one beat every thirty minutes over forty years the number of beats would be a mere seventy million, equivalent to living two hundred times longer. The ultra-slow heartbeat pumping super-fluid blood would be almost imperceptible. The biologist’s case for suspended animation was strong.

The biologists were puzzled about the demise of the Pinna nobilis shell washed up on a Sennen Cove beach. It did not have enough strength to open its three-metre shell and feed off captured prey, for instance humans. A sharp-eyed technician noticed a small hole above the shell’s hinge muscle, immediately recognisable as the work of a predatory starfish. Starfish have forceps type jaws capable of cutting off the point of a limpet shell, leaving a small hole. Enzymes are injected to digest the limpet. Starfish have another trick. They can evert their stomachs outside the body cavity to digest bigger prey. The three-metre Pinna nobilis shell was clearly too large. Even the injection of its powerful toxin, tetrodoxin had not killed the shell. Controlling the growth of Pinna nobilis colonies would be difficult. Controlling the shell’s ability to make the victims’ blood a super-fluid and induce suspended animation would be even more difficult.

If the starfish could make holes in the diamond hard byssus shell, the digestive enzymes and toxins in starfish stomachs was a good starting point to removing the coating from Sennen Cove Stone Man. The technicians were given the chore of asking Newlyn trawlermen to bring back buckets of live starfish instead of throwing them overboard. Getting the stomach contents was the worst chore and getting enough to fill a half pound jam jar was the ultimate challenge. On the basis that starfish were adaptable in selecting their prey, some chose oysters, some dug into the sand to find clams, some chose limpets and in warmer waters some ate coral; a cross selection of their digested prey was needed. Inducing a crack in oyster shells, splitting clams open and chewing a hole in limpets all had one aim; get through the shell, the same scientific aim as breaking open the diamond hard coating. The technicians noted the small hole penetrating into the Pinna nobilis hinge had propagated a fine crack along the length of the shell. The starfish intended to eat the contents. But this was no rich oyster. The byssus shell was empty.

Analysis of the starfish stomach contents was inconclusive. The expected digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid were there, but nothing exotic like fluorine that burns through glass and bone. Driven by expediency to save the suspended animation victims, the scientists decided to press on.

They had five human victims, four from the trot boat and Sennen Cove Stone Man, but they were weighty samples. Their thoughts centred on the Sennen Cove Irish Setter, less area to cover in starfish stomach paste and less risky. Any mistake could be buried.

The Irish Setter was recovered from the low temperature morgue. The byssus shell had made a neat job of rolling and sealing the dog into a tubular casing some six inches in diameter. Placing the encased dog face down, the technicians brushed a line of starfish paste nose to tail along the dog. They sat back and waited for the animal to warm up to room temperature. Drilling a small hole in the casing at the base of the dog’s tail propagated a fine tail-to-nose crack exactly as the starfish would have achieved. The technicians were unable, yet, to break open the diamond hard casing. Another line of paste was needed on the front side of the dog.

 

 

 The Demons Let Loose

The Bulgarian factory ship under tow by a Russian ship was refused a pilot through the Straits of Dover. The course given to