by Andre Norton
Shepherd agreed. “They don’t have room for pets on the transports. Look,” he said, switching the subject. “Why don’t you nip down to the galley and coax some tinned mackerel out of the cook while I look after Bomber?”
“What? You’re already given him a name?”
“Well, we don’t know what he was called aboard the Hood. There was no name on the tag and his markings do look like a bomber jacket.”
Feathers grinned as he walked down the hallway on his errand. Bomber. It wasn’t a bad name. And it was certainly appropriate for a cat aboard an aircraft carrier. When he returned to his cabin with the fish on a saucer, he heard Shepherd’s voice querulously scolding the cat.
“That’s the property of the Royal Navy, you ungrateful animal!”
Feathers stepped through, mackerel in hand. Bomber spotted it and made a dive for the plate as Feathers laid it on the floor. The pilot stared at the air controller, who rolled his eyes at the cat. “What’s the matter?”
“I shouldn’t have given him that name,” Shepherd said. “I bet he thinks he’s got to live up to it. He’s perfumed your cabin like a bloody bug bomb.”
Feathers took a sniff. The smell was redolent and well remembered from his childhood among his mother’s feline household. “He’s just staking out his territory. Obviously knows his way about a ship.”
“Well, I’ll think I’ll be getting along,” said Shepherd, making a hasty exit. “I’d keep the cabin door shut until he… ah, makes himself at home. Cheerio.”
While Bomber was still preoccupied with the mackerel, Feathers made one more foray into the galley for an old baking tin and some newspapers. He fled under assault from the cook, who had grown indignant at such raids upon his territory. A ladle clanged against the wall behind Feathers as he made a quick exit, bearing pan and papers. Once he had regained his cabin, he shredded the papers, stuffed them in the pan, took the cat by the scruff and pointed his nose at the makeshift sandbox.
“You’d bloody well better use that, or you’ll find yourself right back in the Atlantic,” he growled, then pulled the slicker from his bunk and stretched out on top of the blanket. He noticed that Shepherd had, in his haste, forgotten his bottle of rum. He uncapped it, took a pull and lay back for some quiet thoughts.
After scruffling about in the shredded papers for a while, Bomber came over, leapt onto Feathers’ chest and settled there, kneading with his paws and exhaling a faint odor of mackerel.
Feathers put one hand behind his head and dabbled in the cat’s fur with the fingers of the other. “Where did you come from, eh? Are you really the Hood’s ship’s cat? If you are, I’ll wager you’d like to be in on a scrap with the Bismarck.”
Bomber’s ears twitched back and his tail wagged briefly while his eyes slitted. In them, Feathers thought he saw the unmistakable glint of anger. He sighed, laid his head back, wondering if his imagination was getting the best of him.
The captain called the ship’s company out on the flight deck for an announcement that Feathers expected. Force H was being sent north to join in the hunt for the German wolves that had destroyed the Hood. The two enemy ships now lay poised to prey on the transatlantic convoys that were the only resource keeping England in the war.
“Though what good we’ll do is beyond me,” whispered Shepherd, who had come up behind Feathers. “Flying outmoded Swordfish chicken coops with only one torpedo each. If we had some decent carrier-based aircraft…”
“Don’t you count out the Stringbags yet,” snapped the gunner Patterson, standing nearby. “Remember the ships we sunk at Taranto Harbor? Knocked out half the Italian fleet.”
Feathers said nothing. Though he felt a fierce loyalty to his airplane, he knew Shepherd was right. The Fairey Swordfish torpedo biplane, while reliable, maneuverable and easy to fly, was no match for the guns and armor of enemy ships and aircraft. If any of the Swordfish saw service in the coming fight, it would be as a last-ditch attempt after all else had failed. And it would likely end in disaster.
There was nothing they could do about it in any case. Pilots and crew would have to sit out the hours drinking coffee, studying maps, and listening to reports on the wireless while Ark Royal and the rest of Force H churned their way north to join the hunt.
Feathers returned to his cabin. When he stepped in, he saw Bomber nosing about the corners of the cabin.
The little cat stopped, turned his gray hindquarters to the wall, and began a meaningful quivering of his tail.
“Oh, hell,” growled Feathers, lunging forward to grab the offender, but he was too late. A misty aerosol formed in a cloud behind the cat’s tail, Bomber’s benediction to the wall. “One stinker on this ocean is enough, but I’m blessed with two. You and the bloody Bismarck.”
But even as Feathers was drawing back his open hand for a slap at the cat, Bomber spun around, pointing his head at the wall. His fur bristled and rippled as if some unseen hand were stroking it backward. His head ducked, pointing his ears toward the bulkhead.
Undulations swept through Bomber’s jacket, up his neck to his ears. The air around the cat grew electric with static. With a crackle, a hot white spark leaped from each eartip to the damp spot on the bulkhead.
Feathers jumped back so fast he nearly fell on his rump. “I’ve heard of a cathode,” he muttered to himself. “But I never thought it would be attached to a cat!”
And then he stared even harder, for Bomber’s show wasn’t over yet. The spot on the whitewashed cabin wall started to smoke and glow, making Feathers wonder if it would ignite like petrol and burst into flame. But instead the bulkhead started to ripple, just as Bomber’s fur had done. Rainbow-colored rings bloomed in the center, spreading outward. And the once-substantial metal bulkhead was somehow becoming hazy, transparent.
Feathers quickly snuck a glance at Shepherd’s rum bottle to see how much he had actually consumed before falling asleep. It did not reassure him to see that the level had only dropped by a half-inch. So it wasn’t spirits that were causing this. Not alcoholic ones, at any rate.
The wall continued its alarming transformation until it contained a medium-sized hole. Bomber turned to Feathers and crooked the tip to his tail.
The pilot dropped down on his knees and peered through the hole. It did not lead into the next cabin, as he had assumed. It seemed to go somewhere… else. Feathers quickly got up and locked his cabin hatch from the inside. He returned to cat and wall, finding both as he had left them. The hole, if anything, was a little larger.
Tentatively, Feathers put his fingertips to the edge of the opening. They tingled strangely. He peered through. The somewhere else definitely resembled the inside of another ship. But not the ArkRoyal. He was looking at walls and decking that had a different color and texture from the ones on the carrier or any other Royal Navy ship he’d ever been on. They were a heavy blue-gray and the air had the factory smell of newly manufactured metal. The rumble of engines sounded though the opening, but their sound was foreign.
The click of footsteps sounded on the other ship, making Feathers draw back from the gap. They grew louder. Feathers felt himself break into a sweat. Whoever was coming could hardly fail to notice a three-foot hole that hadn’t been there a minute before. He waited, expecting the steady click of the footsteps to cease and exclamations of astonishment and dismay to break through from the other side.
The steps did stop. But the expected outcry didn’t come. Unable to stand the tension, Feathers knelt and peered through the gap. He saw the hem of a double-breasted navy blue coat with two rows of buttons. The cuff bore a single stripe and a gold star on the sleeve, the insignia of a lieutenant in the German navy. The man had stopped right opposite the hole! But he wasn’t doing or saying anything. Perhaps he was simply struck dumb. Feathers waited for all hell to break loose.
The pilot shifted so that he could gaze slightly upward. Yes, a young German naval officer. He could see the Reich eagle on the cap. The man didn’t look as if he’d seen anything un
usual. He was leaning slightly against the bulkhead on the opposite side of the corridor, finishing a cigarette. He took a last draw, tossed the butt down, and strode off.
Feathers wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers, scarcely able to believe that the officer hadn’t seen anything. Apart from the hole itself, the noise coming through from the Ark Royal should have drawn the man’s attention. Unless…
Unless the gap only worked in one direction, like a one-way mirror. Perhaps the officer had glanced down and seen only the unbroken expanse of metal.
Bomber came up and butted Feathers impatiently, as if urging him to go through the opening. Feathers took a pen from his pocket and edged it into the gap, half-expecting the pen to be chopped off by the sudden reappearance of the bulkhead. There was something on the other side, on the metal floor. The officer’s discarded cigarette end. Feathers snatched it up and whipped his hand back through the hole.
He stood up, staring at his prize. It still smoked between his fingers. It was crushed and dingy, nevertheless, he could still read what remained of the tobacconist’s imprint. Three Castles. A German brand, popular with naval officers. He had stuck his hand through the hole and brought back the end of an enemy fag. That clinched it. That ship on the other side. It must be one of those that sank the Hood. Prinz Eugen. Or Bismarck herself.
His brain suddenly came alive with crazy plans. With this entryway to the German ship, men from the Ark Royal could slip aboard the Bismarck and cause all kinds of havoc. A charge could be planted in her engine room. Her captain and high officers could be picked off. The ship itself could be taken from within! What a triumph for the Royal Navy if the mighty Bismarck could be seized and turned against the Axis nations who built her.
But even as dreams piled atop each other in the pilot’s head, the hole trembled, shrank and popped shut. Shaking a little, Feathers touched the bulkhead. It was as solid as ever. Bomber gave Feathers a look halfway between resignation and disgust.
Feathers sat back on his bunk. He was tempted to take a large gulp of rum and dismiss the entire thing as a feverish hallucination. Until he looked at the German cigarette butt in his hand. There was no way to explain that.
He scratched his head. Apparently the effect was transitory, perhaps lasting only as long as the concentrated essence that created it. But if that was true, why hadn’t Shepherd noticed anything when Bomber first began to display his proclivities? Feathers hadn’t remembered any unexplained dimensional apertures in his cabin when he’d returned from the galley with a plate of fish.
Feathers sighed. Even if he could get the cat to perform again, no one in his right mind would believe him or be ready to duck through the interstice before it closed. And how would they get back? Could Bomber reverse the route from the German ship back to the Ark Royal?
The pilot flung himself back on his bunk, his arm across his eyes. Anyone in his right mind? Was he even in his right mind or was he going completely round the bend? He felt a heavy warm weight on his chest and saw the cat once more curled up on top of him.
“I don’t know what the hell you are, but as a secret weapon, you leave something to be desired,” he growled.
Bomber, however, didn’t answer.
The carrier Ark Royal plowed ahead on a northwest course along with the other craft of Force H who were hoping to intercept the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. The men aboard cheered at reports over the wireless that the Bismarck appeared to have taken a hit on the bow during the final engagement with the Home Fleet. The radar-equipped heavy cruiser H.M.S. Sheffield, which had been shadowing the German battleship, reported that Bismarck was leaving a wide swath of oil in her wake. But the excitement slowly died down when further reports indicated that the warship was not losing any speed and appeared essentially undamaged.
And then came the news that Bismarck had given her pursuers the slip and vanished into the fogs and rain squalls of the North Atlantic. Now all that the British forces could do was to wait and hope that air reconnaissance would spot her.
Force H kept steaming north, hoping the intercept Bismarck if she made a run for ports in Spain or France. But no one knew where the great ship had gone. It was as if she had vanished from the sea.
During the run north, Feathers had more free time than he wanted. He spent it drinking more than he should from Jack Shepherd’s rum bottle and pursuing Bomber about the cabin, trying to persuade the cat to repeat his extraordinary performance. But Bomber, perhaps in disgust at having to deal with creatures of such low sagacity and perception, was behaving in a maddeningly normal manner. He even used the baking tin and its nest of paper for its intended purpose without creating the tiniest of interspatial holes.
Feathers braved the cook’s wrath to abscond with more tinned mackerel, hoping that something in the fish had contributed to the cat’s display. But even though Bomber consumed every morsel with relish, nothing happened.
At last Feathers decided that the whole thing must have been a total fantasy or a dream. He could not bring himself, however, to toss out the German cigarette butt. The pilot resigned himself to the fact that if the Bismarck was to be taken, it would be done without any feline assistance, fantastic or otherwise.
May 26 dawned with gray heaving seas underneath the Ark Royal and an even grayer mood among her crew. Bismarck had been sighted again by a Catalina flying boat off the coast of Ireland, but the ensuing attacks against her were ineffective.
The battleships H.M.S. Prince of Wales and King George V plus the cruiser Suffolk had tangled with her briefly, only to be driven off by the German ship’s deadly and accurate shelling. And a flight of Swordfish from Ark Royal sister carrier, H.M.S. Victorious, had loosed nine torpedoes at Bismarck with only one hit. It hadn’t fazed her in the least. She was still running at 20 knots, well ahead of the pursuing Home Fleet and likely to escape. The only way to slow her down lay in the Ark Royal and her aircraft.
The Ark Royal had already sent two Swordfish equipped with long-range tanks to shadow the Bismarck and make sure she did not slip from sight again. These relays of shadowers were continually replaced during the day. Then came the announcement that the fifteen Swordfish not engaged in shadowing operations would mount an afternoon torpedo attack on the Bismarck.
Feathers ate his lunch, then he and Crockett, his observer, went up to the briefing office with the other aircrews to plan the attack. When he went down to his cabin to collect some last-minute gear, Bomber tried to follow him out.
“Look, sport,” said Feathers, pushing him firmly back inside. “You had your chance to put some holes in that bloody battleship. Now I’m getting mine,” With that, he locked the cat inside the cabin, although he wondered whether Bomber might use his unusual talents to make an escape.
He didn’t have time to think about Bomber once he reached the flight deck. At two-thirty, the airedales had his Swordfish prepped and ready, torpedo slung underneath. Despite the tossing seas and rolling deck, he, Crockett, and Patterson made it off and buzzed away with the rest of their squadron, all hungry for a shot at the Bismarck.
About two hours later, a chagrined crew of Swordfish were circling about Ark Royal while the carrier headed upwind for their fly-on. The whole attack had been a fiasco from start to finish. Emerging from heavy cloud cover in an attack formation, the Swordfish had dived at a lone ship, thinking it was their sought-for target. But it wasn’t. Confused by the weather and over-eager for combat, they mistook the cruiser Sheffield for the Bismarck.
“God, what a bloody-balls-up,” groaned Feathers as he scrambled out of his cockpit onto the rain-swept deck. Patterson followed quickly so that the airedales could hustle the plane onto the lift and below decks before the next Swordfish made its approach. “They send us out and what do we do? Nearly sink one of our own ships!”
“I don’t know what those other blokes were about,” said Patterson. “We’ve used the Sheffield for all our dummy practice runs. As soon as I saw that superstructure, I knew it was the old Sheffield I t
old you to hold the torpedo. Was right, wasn’t I?”
“I imagine the War Office has lost all faith in the Stringbags and they won’t give us a second chance,” said Feathers gloomily.
“Boyo, they don’t have a choice. We don’t have anything else to throw at the bugger.” With that cheerful observation, Patterson shoved open the tower hatchway and held it for Feathers. “You’ll feel better when you’ve got some grub in you. I have an itch that the old man is going to give us a chance to redeem ourselves.”
“If the Sheffield isn’t sunk,” said Feathers. He trooped along with the others into the canteen and ate as much as he could hold, though the food might have been sawdust for all he cared. He was slightly cheered when news came that Sheffield had managed to maneuver so deftly that none of the torpedoes had hit her. He perked up even more when the captain announced that a second wave of Swordfish would depart the Ark Royal at 6:30 p.m. for one more crack at the Bismarck.
After the meal, Feathers was tempted to go immediately to the briefing room and then down to the hangar below to check his plane. But he remembered Bomber, still locked in his cabin. He hadn’t left the cat any water. Feeling guilty, he made his way down to his quarters and opened the door. Bomber was still there, nosing about the corners of the room. Feathers patted him roughly, then fetched him water in the empty mackerel tin. As he did so, he talked to the cat, telling him what a mess the attack had been.
“If you could just do your trick again and let me get aboard Bismarck, I’d have a better chance of wrecking her than I have flying that firecracker-carrying chicken coop.”
Bomber drew back his ears and narrowed his eyes. For an instant Feathers hoped that he had understood after all. The pilot was ready to grab his sidearm and dive through the moment that Bomber created a passageway between the Ark Royal and the Bismarck. But instead, the cat sprang away from Feathers, out the cabin door, and down the hallway.