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Chapter Nine
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Wrestling her chosen piece of driftwood down to the water turned out to
be easier said than done.  But somehow, Dana managed.

She had, of course, picked the largest piece she could find, in hopes
that she might be able to completely avoid touching the water.  Which
was pretty unlikely, she realized, as she stood there at the water's
edge, hands on hips, surveying her impromptu boat.  She'd been on enough
small boats to know that it was going to be impossible to stay
completely dry.

Well, she could only hope that the aforementioned monsters needed more
than a little sea spray in order to be a threat -- assuming, of course,
that they couldn't just climb up on her makeshift boat with her ....

Dana shook her head sharply, banishing the thought.  No time for that. 
She needed to get out to the pirate ship; she had no time for
irrelevancies.  And before she could second-guess herself, she picked up
the flat piece of wood she'd chosen as her paddle and tucked it under
one arm, then pushed and dragged the larger piece of driftwood out into
the water.

A few moments later Dana was perched precariously atop her tiny craft. 
Her lips quirked slightly; using the word "craft" to describe this
arrangement was more than a little ridiculous.  Still, as Ahab had said
to her on more than one occasion, the sailor is what makes the
difference, and she was nothing if not a sailor.  She was Starbuck,
after all.

And Starbuck needed to get to moving, she thought, nodding to herself as
she dipped her paddle into the water.  It was at least three hundred
yards to the pirate ship, and the tide was still coming in.  She had her
work cut out for her.

But much to her surprise, the first part of the journey was fairly
easy.  Her body quickly fell into the old, accustomed patterns, paddling
first on one side and then on the other, in deep, even strokes, as she'd
learned to do at summer camps, and on those rare canoe trips with BIll
and Charlie and Ahab.

As she paddled, she tried not to pay too much attention to what was
going on in the water.  It was still night time, of course, and the sea
was black as pitch, seemingly impenetrable.  Yet there were shapes down
there, moving about -- strange, angular shapes that were even blacker
than the water, but that were nevertheless clearly alive.  They were
little more than shadows, deformed charicatures of the human form, that
flitted and darted on either side of her, sometimes diving deeper into
the water until they almost disappeared, then turning and rushing
towards the surface -- but never quite breaking into the open air.

They seemed to be pacing her, she thought.  Waiting for her to make a
mistake, and fall off into their domain.  If she did, what would
happen?  She didn't know, but she had a horrible feeling in the pit of
her stomach that it would not be as quick and simple as being torn to
pieces -- and suddenly, she could again hear the women screaming in the
boxcars --

Dana forced herself to look away from the water, and stared ahead into
the gloom in the direction of the pirate ship.  She had already made
considerable progress; in fact, she was more than halfway there.  And
so, keeping her eyes fixed on her destination, she redoubled her efforts.

Sooner than Dana would have thought possible, she found herself bumping
up against the pirate vessel.  As far as she could tell, she hadn't been
detected -- at least, there had been no outcry from on board as she
approached.  And so she began paddling quietly around the ship, looking
for a means of access.

She briefly considered the possibility of flying up the side of the
ship.  Surely *that* would be safe.  Wouldn't it?  And yet, Pan had
warned against flying:  //You fly too close to that ship, and they shoot
at you.//  Pan knew more about Neverland than she did -- and he'd been
right about the monsters, after all.  Dana supposed she should heed him
in this, as well.

And in any case, here was the anchor cable.  Without further thought or
hesitation, Dana moved carefully to the end of her tiny craft, rose to a
crouch and leapt across the small intervening stretch of water.  Her
hands slipped for a moment, but then her fingers found their purchase,
and she began to climb laboriously up the cable.

This turned out to be no mean task.  The cable was cold and wet, and
seemed to go up and up and up, forever.  Every foot of progress was a
battle, and several times she almost lost her grip on it entirely. 
Don't look down, she told herself firmly, and don't look up.  Don't
think about how much farther you have to go, and don't dwell on how far
you'd fall if you let go.  Just climb.

Finally, she reached the top.  Still clinging to the cable with one
hand, she cautiously reached out for the gunnel with the other, and a
moment later she was chinning herself up and over it.  At last, she
dropped lightly to the deck of the pirate ship.

For a pair of minutes she simply crouched there, gasping for breath and
getting her bearings.  She was fairly close to the prow -- perhaps a
fourth of the way back -- and not too far from the first of three
masts.  She remembered that upon first seeing this ship from the air,
she'd thought it looked like a Dutch flute, and now, as she studied the
rigging, silhouetted against the starry night sky, she saw nothing to
make her change her mind.

She turned her gaze back to the deck.  It was plain and flat, made of
hardwood planks -- but as she looked more closely she realized there
were dark, man-sized lumps scattered all around her.  The crew, she
realized.  The men who crewed the ship were taking advantage of the
balmy weather by sleeping sprawled around the deck.  Which was very
understandable -- from what she'd read, the below-decks area on a ship
of this sort were not exactly the Hilton.  But it did mean she was going
to have to be very careful not to make any noise at all.

Slowly, carefully, Dana straightened to a standing position and surveyed
the deck.  As such things went, it seemed to be unremarkable.  Even the
sleeping crewmembers seemed perfectly ordinary.  Well, as ordinary as a
band of 18th century cut throats could be expected to be, she amended.

She started moving carefully towards the stern, staying close to the
gunnel and watching where she put her feet.  In addition to the sleeping
men, the deck was cluttered with partially coiled ropes, abandoned
tools, scraps of lumber and other bits of this and that.  Once, she
accidentally kicked a hammer, and it went skittering across the deck,
making enough noise that she was sure it would wake the dead -- not to
mention the sleeping pirates.  But nobody stirred or made any noise, and
after a moment, she continued on.

After what seemed like an eternity, she came to a hatch, set in the deck
a few yards from the main mast.  It was standing open, and an eerie,
blue-white light shone from down inside.  Cautiously, and very, very
slowly, Dana approached the opening and peered down inside.

And gasped.  It was nothing like what she'd expected.  No makeshift,
unsteady ladder; no narrow, badly lit companionway; no barrels of
half-rotten food or chests of stolen treasure.  No, the view that
greeted her looked nothing like what she imagined below-decks on a
sailing vessel to be like.

This looked more like the inside of a spaceship.

And a familiar spaceship, at that.

Even as her gaze was traversing the cobalt-blue, metallic walls, and
taking in the strange machinery lining those walls, Dana felt panic
rising in her throat.  She had been here before; she was sure of it.  It
was all so familiar, so well-known, so ... so terrifying.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and tried to remember, but she
couldn't get anything much to come.  Just vague ... impressions? ...
dreams? ... memories? ... of being carried down a catwalk much like this
one, with blue-white metallic walls much like these.  She was paralyzed,
literally unable to move, but she was awake and aware as they forced the
tube down her throat, and she was so very, very cold ....

Dana shook her head sharply, and tried to thrust the images away.  None
of that had happened, she told herself firmly.  It couldn't have
happened.  She would remember it if it had.

Wouldn't she?

Dana shook her head again, even more violently than the first time. 
There was no time for this; no time.  She was here for a purpose -- to
find Pan's sister -- and she had to get in and out as quickly and
quietly as possible.  It was only a matter of time before someone
discovered her, and then the game would be up, the opportunity lost. 
And so she took a deep breath, and started down into the bowels of the
pirate ship.

Despite her intentions, she felt her fear building with each step she
took.  It was only a dozen or so feet down to the catwalk, and then she
was stepping outward into the mysterious, blue-white gloom.

The room was huge.  Dana felt her eyes widening in shock and amazement
as she took it all in.  Everywhere she looked was strange,
futuristic-looking machinery and equipment -- machinery that looked as
if it were half alive.  Everything faded away into the general gloom --
and Dana realized that this room was *too* big.  It couldn't possibly
fit within the hull of the ship.

As she moved deeper into the chamber, her attention was drawn back to
the immediate vicinity of the catwalk.  She'd now passed well beyond the
entryway, and the path she was taking was lined with large, glass
cylinders.  Puzzled, unable to determine their purpose, Dana stopped for
a moment to examine one -- and her heart almost stopped.

There was a man inside of it.  A real, living man.  He hung there, nude
and motionless, suspended in some sort of translucent, green fluid.  His
eyes were wide open, his features frozen in an expression of abject terror.

Dana didn't even realize she'd been backing up until she bumped against
something.  She whirled around at the unexpected contact, and found
herself looking at another cylinder filled with green goo.  This one
held a little girl, perhaps four or five years old, and oh dear God, she
looked like Missy -- like the old pictures of Missy at that age in the
family scrapbook.

Again Dana backed away.  Her heart was in her throat, and she was having
trouble catching her breath.  She could feel her mouth working, but no
sound was coming out.  This wasn't real.  It couldn't be real.  It
wasn't happening.  It was a dream; a nightmare.  Once again she backed
into a cylinder; once again she spun around -- and this time she
couldn't suppress a gutteral moan of fear and despair at what she saw.

This one was alive.  Oh, it was most definitely alive.  But it was no
longer human -- if it ever had been.  It was black and spidery-looking,
with a hard, chitinous exterior, and huge, menacing claws. It writhed
and struggled in the fluid, and the claws beat against the glass, trying
to break out.  Trying to get to her.

Dana turned and ran.  She had no idea where she was going, or what she
would find, but she had to get away from the monster in the cylinder. 
She had to escape, and running was all she could do.  She was dimly
aware that she was running away from the entrance she had used, and the
sensible, logical part of her mind was telling her to turn around and go
the other way -- but no power on earth could have made her move closer
to the thing she had just scene.

She rounded a corner, and the rows of cylinders suddenly came to an
end.  She was facing a heavy metal door -- it looked very much like a
bank vault door, in fact, although there was no combination in
evidence.  She glanced back over her shoulder; she should go back the
way she'd come, and try to escape.  But the monster was that way.  If
she went back now, the monster would get her; she was sure of it.

Her attention was drawn back to the front as the door abruptly swung
open.  Automatically, heedless of the risk, Dana stepped forward across
the threshold --

And gasped.

She was in another huge room.  But where the first chamber had been dark
and foreboding, and seemed almost to be a living thing in its own right,
this room was brightly lit, cold and sterile.  More high tech equipment
lined the walls, glittering mysteriously, speaking of some ominous
purpose that Dana wasn't sure she wanted to understand.

Standing directly in the center of the room was a strange metal table in
the shape of a cross.  And lying on the table, his arms stretched out on
the crosspiece and held in place by harsh, metal restraints, was Pan.

================END CHAPTER NINE================