Read Online The Creeping Kelp by William Meikle, Wayne Miller - Free Book Online

as I could and grabbed at the chain.
    “Not yet!” Rankin shouted. He danced aside, avoiding thrashing tentacles, until he stood on the spot where the metal cage had sat during the earlier experiment. “Wait until it is all inside.”
    He swerved again, just avoiding a long tentacle. But that only served to put him inside the reach of several more.
    “Rankin!” I called out. “Look out!”
    But I was too late with my warning. The first tentacle took him around the waist. He screamed as it started to tug at him, but he held his ground, forcing the main body of the kelp to come to him. More tentacles struck at his chest and his ankles. He struggled to stay upright. By now, most of the kelp was inside the room.
    Once more, I reached for the chain.
    “Not yet!” Rankin screamed. “None of it can escape.”
    The kelp rolled over the lab floor. It opened out like a huge umbrella towering over Rankin, then fell on him, his white hair being the last thing to disappear from view.
    “None of it can escape,” he called at the end.“Do you understand?”
    I understood, all too well.
    “Goodbye, Rankin,” I whispered and pulled the chain. I turned away, unable to watch as the screams, both from the kelp and the dying man, filled the lab. But the acid rain did its job. In five minutes, all that was left of Rankin and his creation was a pool of oily goop on the lab floor.
    It was only later, as I downed the first of many drinks I have had since that day, that I remembered his words.
    “I have sent a sample back to the Yanks."
    I spent weeks after that checking. I found the shipping order and the name of the boat, the Haven Home. Records show it was sunk by a U-Boat somewhere off the Scilly Isles. In my dreams I see a glass container, lying in a flooded cargo hold. Inside, the creeping kelp sits, dormant, waiting.
    And I worry.
    I worry about breakages.
    I think we’re in trouble.
    That’s what Suzie had said. After reading the papers, Noble had to agree. He’d been lost in the story, but now that he was finished, he became all too aware of the aches and pains that racked his body.
    But it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.
    He put the papers down on the small table beside the bed and lay back, staring at the ceiling. He was aware that, as yet, no one had come to check on him, despite the fact that he had been awake for at least an hour now. He considered calling out, but there was something about the deep silence that made it seem like sacrilege to break it.
    Besides, I shouldn’t complain about getting some rest.
    His thoughts kept returning to the last phrase in Ballantine’s journal. Suzie had it underlined in thick black pencil strokes. I worry about breakages. There was no doubt in Noble’s mind that the things that had overrun the Earth Rescue were indeed the self-same creatures that Ballantine described so vividly.
    It seems he was right to worry.
    He lay there for a while trying to sleep but his brain refused to slow. Eventually he gave into the inevitable and picked up Ballantine’s journal again. He was half way through his second read when someone finally came to check on him.
    The male nurse who entered looked just as tired as Noble felt.
    “So what’s the story?” Noble asked. “What’s such a big deal that I get left here to rot for hours?”
    The nurse smiled.
    “I looked in less than two hours ago and you were fast asleep.”
    “That’s not the point,” Noble replied. “Come on, spill it. I know there’s something going on and I need to know what it is.”
    “What you need to do is rest,” the nurse replied.
    He refused to be drawn into conversation as he slowly and methodically freed Noble’s leg from the tackle that constrained it.
    “Okay. If you won’t tell me what’s going on, can you at least tell me where I am?” Noble asked.
    “That’s classified, sir,” the man said and kept at his task.
    Noble laughed.
    “Who am I going to tell?”
    But the nurse