The Last Olympian

hear them over the engines. Not a good sign.
    I locked eyes with Beckendorf. “How much longer?”
    “Too long.” He tapped his watch, which was our remote control detonator. “I still have to wire the receiver and prime the charges. Ten more minutes at least.”
    Judging from the sound of the footsteps, we had about ten seconds.
    “I’ll distract them,” I said. “Meet you at the rendezvous point.”
    “Percy—”
    “Wish me luck.”
    He looked like he wanted to argue. The whole idea had been to get in and out without being spotted. But we were going to have to improvise.
    “Good luck,” he said.
    I charged out the door.
    A half dozen telkhines were tromping down the stairs. I cut through them with Riptide faster than they could yelp. I kept climbing—past another telkhine, who was so startled he dropped his Lil’ Demons lunch box. I left him alive— partly because his lunch box was cool, partly so he could raise the alarm and hopefully get his friends to follow me rather than head toward the engine room.
    I burst through a door onto deck six and kept running. I’m sure the carpeted hall had once been very plush, but over the last three years of monster occupation the wallpaper, carpet, and stateroom doors had been clawed up and slimed so it looked like the inside of a dragon’s throat (and yes, unfortunately, I speak from experience).
    Back on my first visit to the Princess Andromeda , my old enemy Luke had kept some dazed tourists on board for show, shrouded in Mist so they didn’t realize they were on a monster-infested ship. Now I didn’t see any sign of tourists. I hated to think what had happened to them, but I kind of doubted they’d been allowed to go home with their bingo winnings.
    I reached the promenade, a big shopping mall that took up the whole middle of the ship, and I stopped cold. In the middle of the courtyard stood a fountain. And in the fountain squatted a giant crab.
    I’m not talking giant like $7.99 all-you-can-eat Alaskan king crab. I’m talking giant like bigger than the fountain. The monster rose ten feet out of the water. Its shell was mottled blue and green, its pincers longer than my body.
    If you’ve ever seen a crab’s mouth, all foamy and gross with whiskers and snapping bits, you can imagine this one didn’t look any better blown up to billboard size. Its beady black eyes glared at me, and I could see intelligence in them—and hate. The fact that I was the son of the sea god was not going to win me any points with Mr. Crabby.
    “FFFFfffffff,” it hissed, sea foam dripping from its mouth. The smell coming off it was like a garbage can full of fish sticks that had been sitting in the sun all week.
    Alarms blared. Soon I was going to have lots of company and I had to keep moving.
    “Hey, crabby.” I inched around the edge of the courtyard. “I’m just gonna scoot around you so—”
    The crab moved with amazing speed. It scuttled out of the fountain and came straight at me, pincers snapping. I dove into a gift shop, plowing through a rack of T-shirts. A crab pincer smashed the glass walls to pieces and raked across the room. I dashed back outside, breathing heavily, but Mr. Crabby turned and followed.
    “There!” a voice said from a balcony above me. “Intruder!”
    If I’d wanted to create a distraction, I’d succeeded, but this was not where I wanted to fight. If I got pinned down in the center of the ship, I was crab chow.
    The demonic crustacean lunged at me. I sliced with Riptide, taking off the tip of its claw. It hissed and foamed, but didn’t seem very hurt.
    I tried to remember anything from the old stories that might help with this thing. Annabeth had told me about a monster crab—something about Hercules crushing it under his foot? That wasn’t going to work here. This crab was slightly bigger than my Reeboks.
    Then a weird thought came to me. Last Christmas, my mom and I had brought Paul Blofis to our old cabin at Montauk, where we’d been going forever. Paul had taken me crabbing, and when he’d brought up a net full of the things, he’d shown me how crabs have a chink in their armor, right in the middle of their ugly bellies.
    The only problem was getting to the ugly belly.
    I glanced at the fountain, then at the marble floor, already slick from scuttling crab tracks. I held out my hand, concentrating on the water, and the fountain exploded. Water sprayed everywhere, three stories high, dousing the balconies and the elevators and