The Dragon in the Sea by Frank Herbert Page A

automatic timelog’s hands swept around, around, around and around, clocking off the deadly dull routine of danger. The red dot marking their position on the sonoran chart crept around the tip of Florida, up the Atlantic coast and out into the ocean—a mite creeping toward Iceland.
    Five days, thirteen hours, twenty-one minutes from point of departure.
    Sparrow entered the control room, stooping for the door, pausing inside to sweep his gaze over the dials—his other sense organs. Too much moisture in the atmosphere. He made a mental note to have Garcia check that on his watch. Now, it was Bonnett’s watch. The main board was
set up for remote control. A repeater board was missing from its rack.
    On the sonoran chart, their position marker stood almost due east of the northern tip of Newfoundland, and on a line south from the southernmost tip of Greenland: course sixty-one degrees, twenty minutes. The static pressure gauge registered 2360 pounds to the square inch: about 5500 below the surface.
    Sparrow stepped across the control room, ducked through the door and out onto the engine-room catwalk. The catwalk padding felt soft under his feet.
    Bonnett stood on the lower catwalk, back to Sparrow, staring down to the left. Sparrow followed the direction of his first officer’s gaze: the door sealing one of the emergency tunnels into the reactor room.
    Something odd about Bonnett’s movements, thought Sparrow. Looks like he’s counting .
    Then Sparrow recognized the motion: Bonnett was sniffing the air. Sparrow took an experimental whiff himself, smelled the omnipresent stink of their recirculated air plus the ozone and oil normal to the engine room. He strode out onto the catwalk, bent over the railing. “Something wrong, Les?”
    Bonnett turned, looked upward. “Hi, Skipper. Don’t know. I keep smelling something rotten in here.”
    Sparrow’s lips twisted into a half smile. “How can you tell in this stinkpot?”
    â€œI mean actually rotten,” said Bonnett. “Carrion. Rotting meat. I’ve been getting it for several days—every time I go past here.”
    â€œHas anybody else noticed it?”

    â€œThey haven’t said.”
    â€œIt’s probably your imagination, Les. After five days in this floating sewer pipe everything stinks.”
    â€œI dunno, Skipper. I can sort out most of the smells. This one doesn’t fit.”
    â€œJust a minute.” Sparrow stepped to the connecting ladder, dropped down to Bonnett’s level.
    â€œTake a sniff, Skipper.”
    Sparrow drew in a deep breath through his nose. There was a faint carrion odor in the air, but then meat got high quickly in the heavy oxygen of a subtug’s atmosphere. “Could it be a dead rat?” he asked.
    â€œHow would it get aboard? Besides, we went over the Ram with a fine-tooth comb. A mosquito couldn’t—” He broke off, turned, stared at the radiation bulkhead.
    â€œThere’s one place we didn’t comb,” said Sparrow.
    â€œStill, we looked it over with the internal eyes,” said Bonnett. “There—” He fell silent.
    â€œLet’s take another look,” said Sparrow.
    He led the way back to the control room, keyed the master screen to the reactor-room scanners, one by one.
    â€œNothing,” said Bonnett. He looked at Sparrow, shrugged.
    Sparrow glanced at his wrist watch. “Joe went off standby about an hour ago.” He looked at the now blank screen. “Get him up to that tunnel door anyway. Put Ramsey on stand by here in the control room. I’m going forward.” He stooped for the forward door, went out onto the catwalk, dropped down to the lower level.
    In the control room, Bonnett went to the communications panel, buzzed Garcia. A sleepy voice came on the speaker. “Yeah?”

    â€œSkipper wants you forward. Number-one reactor-room tunnel.”
    â€œWhat’s