Doc and his courageous crew race to the Far East to combat the Axis plague! Can they solve the mystery of an insidious new weapon certain to turn the tide of the war? What causes the sun to turn red and ships to disappear? Can mere light really turn a man to smoke and ashes? Will Doc and Monk save Ham in time or will he too die under a bleeding sun?
Ship Death!
The puzzlement would arise thanks to Curly's attire. He wore a black tuxedo, boots, a hat and goggles.
His hat was a dusty, creased and much-abused Stetson, styled for cowboy wear - that is, for a real, working cowboy, not one of those singing Hollywood fellows whose gear gleamed with polish and whose clothing stayed starched, ironed and speck-free through an entire 90-minute film, no matter how many bar fights, gun battles and cattle stampedes he survived.
Likewise, his boots were of the pointy-toed cowboy variety, scuffed and caked with dirt.
His suit, on the other hand, appeared flashy and new. However, it had the look of having been slept in recently.
Curly Wolfe was neither hirsute nor lupine. In fact, except for the hanging shrub he generously named a mustache, Curly hadn't a single hair on his head - his dome was shiny slick under that ten-gallon hat. And not even brows or lashes protected his eyes, which perhaps explained the World War I-era aviator goggles that Curly wore.
Wolfish? No. No lean, gaunt stalker was Curly Wolfe. Instead, he was a sturdy, roughworn character with large fists and red, rawbone knuckles. He looked ready to leap into any fight at the drop of a hat - his or anyone else's - instead of biding his time to attack on the sly.
As the sun came up, Curly stood on a wharf of the inner harbor peering through the morning fog toward the Charlestown Navy Yards. For more than 100 years the yards had served as one of the country's leading ship-building and repair facilities. With the war on, the yards were the site of furious activity around the clock. Already at this hour the sounds of heavy machinery and the clanging of metal rolled across the water from the docks located there.
As Curly watched, a tanker left the immediate area of the Charlestown Yards with a handful of tugboats. The long ship was doubtless filled with gasoline and oil to be used for the continuing war effort. Once it reached the bay, the tugs would drop away and the tanker would pick up a Navy gunboat escort for its cruise along the coast.
The fuel carrier and the tugs nursing it along were at first visible in the fog only as dark silhouettes - their course out of the inner harbor took them through a particularly thick curtain of clouds. But as the haze lifted with the slowly rising sun, details about the vessels grew clearer from where Curly stood.
Curly Wolfe craned his neck left and right, as though searching for another craft on the water. Sighting none, he whipped around as if to ask anyone within reach whether he or she had spotted other boats in the area, but no one else was within shouting distance.
Curly turned his attention back to the tanker.
The waves from the ship's wake were slamming against the wharf. The sun, still low in the sky, hovered behind the tanker's superstructure. The light passing through the still-rising and slowly dissipating fog spread a reddish tint through the air.
Members of the tanker's crew were visible from shore as small figures moving about the deck, busying themselves with their normal duties. A keen observer might have noticed each of those figures suddenly stopping whatever he was doing to run across the deck and converge with his fellows. There, the men gesticulated wildly, turned their heads this way and that as if trying to spot something that wasn't apparent from shore.
A slight mist began to rise from the water immediately surrounding the tanker, as in a pot of water that has just begun to boil. Then, under the reddened sky, the ship began to melt!
Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, beads of metal started to form on every surface of the ship like condensation. As the beads appeared, they rolled down from the upper edge of each part of the vessel - the hull, spars, the radar mast, the superstructure. Yelling and then screaming from the crew was audible for a moment, but soon was drowned out by the greater racket of the ship's destruction.
It was an uncanny sight: solid metal softening and turning liquid without the tremendous heat of a smelter. As streamers of fluid metal began to rain down, the nearby tugs drew away from the large ship. Great plates of metal began to crumple and fold upon themselves like sheets of tin foil. Rivets melted or, weakened by material loss, were sheared through by the weight of shifting loads.
Before the deck collapsed, the huddle of screaming crewmembers appeared to melt as well!
Sheets of fluid steel rained into the water. With a tremendous, rending roar, the tanker's superstructure tumbled onto what remained of the deck. Then, a massive explosion slammed the Port of Boston as the ship destructed in a brilliant flash of light.
Wreckage flew like shrapnel. Nearby buildings sustained great damage as walls collapsed. A number of unprotected bystanders were badly injured, some killed outright.
After the immediate roar, the noise of crashing glass falling from windows continued for a number of minutes within several surrounding miles.
The sounds of shipwork had ceased from the Charlestown Navy Yards. Black clouds rose from the crackling flames that danced across oil floating in the port waters.
One of the tugs that had accompanied the tanker now swayed on the choppy waters. Another listed low in the water, and a third had apparently disappeared in the blast.
There was no sign of Curly Wolfe.
docsavage.info
Written By:
Duane Spurlock
based on notes by:
Kenneth Robeson
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