The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker

Author:Charles Tucker [Tucker, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Published: 2021-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

Stone Man Revived

The original byssus victim washed up on Sennen Cove beach had been preserved in cryogenic conditions. He had been subjected to MRI scans and was the first example, according to the biologist’s theory, of suspended animation. At that time an autopsy was not possible due to his cover of impenetrable diamond hard byssus coating. A complexity for the marine scientists was the state of his brain. During his extended time submerged on the Seven Stones reef a starfish had chewed a tiny hole in his skull and eaten a good section of the fleshy part of his brain. The network of neurones and ganglions remained preserved in sea water. If revived, would his brain regenerate and would he be viable?

Propped upright in his cryogenic drum, he was rocking and banging the sides, creating the noise of distant rumbling thunder. His depleted brain had been agitated into a reflex reaction despite the low body temperature.

The unanimous decision was taken to free him from his hard coating and bear the consequences if he was brain dead. Work on him could not start until the Newlyn trawlermen had dredged up a large quantity of starfish. The trawlermen were getting wise. A price of ten pounds a kilo for the five-armed predator was better than white fish. And there would be more. The four Sardinian trot boat crew had to be freed from their byssus coating purgatory. They were rumbling in the morgue.

The biologists were astonished at the combined reaction of the five human byssus victims to the freeing of a dog from its physical lock up.

As they had noted previously, there seemed to be a collective consciousness between the millions of nano-sized byssus platelets in Stone Man’s blood plasma. Now, they were seeing a collective consciousness at the full-sized animal level between humans and a dog.

Unknown to the lab scientists, the collective consciousness had struck the hundred byssus encased crew members of the Bulgarian factory ship far out in the North Atlantic. Distance between byssus affected victims appeared to be no barrier to the collective reaction. The stirring of the hundred crew victims and the crashing racket of the byssus shells trying to escape to the ocean put the fear of Lucifer into the skeleton crew. Commanding a live ship, the skeleton crew were ready to dump the uncontrolled mess on the fish processing deck, including the one hundred crew members in suspended animation. They simply had to open the stern trawl entry door and the sea would wash clean the processing deck. The Russian captain refused to concur until he had Reykjavik Coastguard permission. Iceland enforced strict laws on discharge at sea. Reykjavik noted the last port of call was Falmouth. Reykjavik called Falmouth and politely enquired why they had given permission for two factory ships to enter Icelandic waters. An astonished Falmouth Coastguard stated the permitted course given to the two ships, one under tow, was in transit to Bourgas on the Black Sea through the Mediterranean. Any other course was illegal.

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