Galapagos Below by D J Goodman

Author:D J Goodman [Goodman, D J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2016-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

13

“A tortoise?” Merchant asked, her voice halfway between disbelief and giddy glee. Maria was sure she was having visions of ridiculously high ratings dancing through her head. “You think Mrs. Schmidt was eaten by a giant, mutant tortoise?”

They were all gathered in Sea Avenger’s bungalow command center. Immediately after the bus had dropped them off back in Puerto Ayora, Maria had run (it wasn’t until later that she realized this was the first time she had run since she’d lost her leg, and she was surprised by the ease with which she’d accomplished it) back to the bungalow and ordered everyone to gather around. Ernesto was here, and Kevin had arrived with Monica and Gutierrez shortly before Maria and the Gutsdorfs. They were gathered in a loose circle, with all the camera people and sound engineers and general production hangers-on trying to make sure they captured every moment of this meeting without actually getting in the shot.

“Not a mutant,” Maria said. “Well, actually yes. No. Maybe. We can’t know yet. The DNA samples we got off the arm might be able to help us with its exact origin.”

“A giant tortoise or turtle, though?” Kevin asked. “You don’t think that sounds at all far-fetched?”

“No. Given the fact that we’re in the Galápagos, an environment known for producing not only giant tortoises but also for forcing natural selection to work faster than other places, I’d say that’s substantially less far-fetched than, say, an enormous hammerhead that can control other sharks.”

“Fair enough point,” Kevin said. “But this still requires us to jump to some conclusions without having many facts. I thought you wanted to be Scully instead of Mulder.”

“Did I say I was Scully?” Maria asked. “I thought I was Mulder.”

“You obviously aren’t sure because the writer can’t remember what she wrote earlier,” Simon said.

Maria, Kevin, and Cindy all turned to him and spoke at once. “Shut up, Simon.”

Simon hmphed.

“Look, we can review the tapes again, but we’ve all already seen them plenty of times. Whatever was under the water was long and kind of snaked out. That was its neck. And what little we could see of its mouth matches that of a turtle or tortoise.”

“I see several problems with that assertion,” Ernesto said. “The first is that the tortoises of the Galápagos are vegetarians. There is no way one would eat a tourist, even if it did somehow grow to that size.”

“There are meat eaters in the turtle and tortoise family, though,” Maria said. “We can’t make the assumption that this one is a native to the area. It might not be a direct descendant of any Galápagos species of tortoise or sea turtle. It could have been introduced.”

“And how exactly would someone ‘introduce’ something big enough to eat a person whole without anyone seeing?” Cindy asked.

“I don’t know,” Maria asked. “Maybe that’s something we can look into. You know, like seeing if anyone has noticed anyone or anything suspicious about Isla Niña before this.”

“I could look into that,” Ernesto said.

“There’s also the issue of where something of that size is hiding,” Kevin said.

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