Sobek emerged beside the ship and rapped three times on the hull. Carnopo, Al, and other dinosaurs quickly got out of the hold and leaned out of the hull to be able to talk to him. "What's going on, pack leader?" they asked; in fact, Sobek normally came at night to avoid attracting attention, so the dinosaurs found it strange that he had come to call them in broad daylight.

"We are arriving" Sobek replied, pointing to the coastline that was becoming more and more evident on the horizon. "We must prepare for ditching"

"Ditch... what?"

"Ditching, it's… forget it. In any case, given the current trajectory of the ship, we will end up straight into a port... and no, I don't have time to explain you what a port is!"

The autopilot was programmed only to follow the naval route. Slowing down and landing near ports was the crew's job. Dinosaurs had no idea how to steer a ship, so they could neither perform such operations nor change course. Therefore it was inevitable that the ship would have crashed into the harbor.

Sobek didn't care: casualties were not his problem and humans would have taken the shipwreck as an accident. Of course, the fact that there was no longer a crew would clearly have raised doubts, but after all there weren't few 'unsolved mysteries' in the world, so the news wouldn't have attracted too much attention. It was also likely that given the chaos he had wreaked in the ocean they would have blamed him, which is not too far from the truth.

"Listen to me carefully, because we will have no further opportunity to speak. That is what we will do..."

******

"Were you able to communicate with the ship?"

In the port of Touron, an area not far from Marsala, a group of people gathered inside the control room and anxiously observed a bright dot on the radar that continued to approach at insane speed.

"Negative. The ship is unresponsive and does not appear to slow down" someone replied.

"If it continues at its current speed it will break through the harbor like a bullet!" exclaimed another. "Commander, what are the orders?"

The man in charge scratched his worried chin. That situation was abnormal to say the least. Not only had the radar signaled the arrival of a ship without warning, but that ship did not slow down near the coast. Something must have happened to the crew; the lack of communications could be justified with a broken radio, but certainly not the insane speed that would have led the boat to crash. "Can we establish how big the ship is and its course?"

"According to the radar, it should be a freighter over a hundred meters long, probably weighing between sixty thousand and eighty thousand tons" replied one of the men in the room. "If it does not change course it will enter the estuary of the river and crash into the north side of the port"

"Expected damage?"

"The ship should break through the port for at least two hundred meters before stopping. If he were to meet other ships on the way it would open them as if they were made of cork"

The commander bit his lip. The port of Touron existed as a communication route between the sea and the colony of Odaria, Marsala; it was located all along the north and west sides of the Ko-Tenka River. Not many large ships used it, as the colony relied mostly on highways to transport goods, but there were many fishing boats, speedboats and small boats that frequented the area. "What ships are on the river and in the surrounding sea at the moment?"

One of the technicians quickly checked the radar. "Speaking of large ships, there are three merchant ships, one moored on the west side of the port, the other two on the way. All three find themselves off the course of the mysterious ship. But the estuary and the coast are full of small boats"

"Send a message to all of them immediately. Order them to leave the waters immediately, both in the river and in the sea. If they don't have time to go back, they can ditch near the coast. The important thing is that the road is clear" the commander ordered. "How much time left before the impact?"

"Eight minutes, sir"

"Keep trying to communicate with the ship, and alert the authorities. Clear the port area at risk and get ready to fight a fire"

Time passed quickly. It almost seemed to speed up from usual. After not even a blink of an eye, one minute had already passed.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

"Unknown ship, you are dangerously close to the coast! Answer please!"

No reply. Four minutes.

"Unknown ship, you have to slow down now! You are a danger to the port!"

Five minutes.

Six minutes.

"Is the impact area clear?" the commander asked.

"Yes, sir. And we are ready to contain any threat"

Seven minutes.

"Unknown ship, please respond! You have to slow down now!"

Eight minutes.

The commander looked out the window. For a hasty moment there was silence, then an abnormally large ocean liner emerged from the intense sea mist and crashed into the harbor at insane speed. From the control room it was possible to see the immense trail of destruction it brought with it. The front of the ship folded as if it were made of sugar, but the structures and warehouses in front of it suffered a far worse fate as they were literally reduced to crumbs. The hull emitted sparks as it came out of the water and hit land. The ship continued its course for a while, then finally stopped; then it leaned over to one side and fell to the ground, crushing anything beneath it. Fire and smoke rose throughout the affected area.

"Order the workers on site to use fire hydrants to stop the fire! Now!" the commander order. Most of the harbor structures were made of wood, he could not risk the fire spreading. Fortunately, if there was one thing that wasn't lacking in a port it was water, and in fact in a few minutes the flames disappeared and the smoke went from gray to white, a sign that the fire had been extinguished.

The commander left the post and exited the control room, quickly heading for the wreck. By the time he arrived, hundreds of people were already inspecting the ship's carcass. One of them quickly came to update him on the situation. "The crew?" the commander asked bluntly.

The man shook his head: "We can't find them, sir. There is no one on board" he replied. "We found only a few patches of blood, but no corpses"

"Could they have been pulped by the impact?"

"In that case the bloodstains would be much larger and there would be obvious pieces of flesh, skin and bones scattered over the wreck. No, sir, the most logical option is that the crew disappeared a long time ago"

"How was the ship going to get here unmanned?"

"The autopilot will probably have followed the intended course. If the ship hadn't found obstacles or storms in its path then it could have arrive here without problems"

The commander sighed in dejection. He was liking that situation less and less. Who or what had made an entire crew disappear? It was certainly not unusual for a large sea creature to attack a ship, but if it did then it would sink. Also on the wreck there were no signs of teeth or strong blows. "Do we know who the ship belongs to?"

"We can find out"

"Do it, and now. We have to get to the bottom of this situation"

"And the wreck, sir?"

"I've already ordered two tugs to set sail and come here. The ship isn't too damaged, so we'll tie it up and drag it back to sea so we can rebuild the harbor. Since I have given the order to all ships to return to the port until further notice, we will have no obstacles"

The most effective way to remove a wreck was to drag it into the sea, since on land it would have to be dismantled and that would have meant closing the port for months. Instead, by returning the ship to the water, they would have cleared the area, thus being able to rebuild all the destroyed or damaged buildings, and would therefore have prevented the port from being blocked for too long. And since no boats were allowed to sail anymore, the tugs would find no obstacles in doing their job.

In reality, such an operation was not too difficult: with a little luck they would have finished by the end of the day. Furthermore, most of the destroyed structures were easy to rebuild, so even the economic damage would not have been too serious. The problem was rather another: what had made the crew disappear?