by Andre Norton
“Where the devil are you going,” Feathers shouted out the door as a gray tail disappeared around a corner. “I don’t have time to chase a cat about. Dammit, come back!”
But Bomber was gone.
Perhaps he had decided to tackle the Bismarck on his own. Feathers could just imagine Bomber waging his own sort of guerrilla war with the enemy. He could almost hear the harsh Prussian voices scream in bad World War One movie dialogue about “eine verdammt geschpritzen-katzen!”
Feathers Geoffrey-Faucett shrugged. Bomber had gone off on some mission, now Feathers had to attend to his own. He jammed his cap back on his head and made his way to the briefing room, where the aircrews were already assembling.
The plan was essentially the same as before, except this time, presumably, they would attack the right ship. A subflight of three Swordfish would approach in a steep dive behind the quarry. As the planes pulled out of the dive, they would fan out and approach the enemy in line abreast. At ninety feet, flying a flat course, they would drop their torpedoes into the sea and sheer away from the barrage of flak from enemy anti-aircraft guns.
The trick was getting close enough before dropping the torpedo. The optimum distance was 900 yards, but Feathers doubted that Bismarck would let anything get within that range before blowing it out of the air. He felt his hands begin to sweat. Sheffield had held her fire from the attacking planes. Bismarck would give it all she had.
They would have to fly low and hope for luck.
Bad weather had dogged the first attempt and threatened to scuttle the second. The rain squalls that gusted fitfully around the carrier became a full gale. Feathers pulled his leather flying cap down over his head, pulled his jacket collar up around his neck and braved the pelting rain. The sky, already dimmed by twilight, was darkened almost to blackness by the storm. The deck crews could only work by floodlights.
As he approached his Swordfish, a sweating crewman in a grime-streaked slicker was rolling a torpedo on a dolly toward the plane’s undercarriage. Between the rain, the glaring lights and the seesawing deck, the airedale was having a struggle to get the torpedo in place. Feathers hastened his steps to help the airedale, fearing that man, dolly, and torpedo might be swept over the side by the rush of white water spilling over the carrier’s bow and sluicing down the deck.
Before he could reach the dolly, he saw a little four-footed shape gallop from the shadows toward the torpedo. With a yell, the airedale shouted and flailed, driving the animal off. What the hell was Bomber doing out on the flight deck, Feathers wondered, but he had no time to go after the cat. He overtook both airedale and dolly, adding his strength to the crewman’s. Together they wrestled the torpedo back toward the airplane, raised it and secured it in the rack between the Swordfish’s wheels.
“Thanks, sir,” panted the crewman. “Might have lost ‘er over the side if you ‘adn’t ‘elped. Rum thing, that cat running out from nowheres. Gave me a start, it did.”
Feathers squinted against the rain and the glaring floodlights but saw no sign of Bomber. He spotted the shapes of Patterson, his gunner, and Crockett, his forward observer. With a few last words to the two about the attack plans, he boosted them into their cockpits, then took one futile look about for Bomber.
Before he knew it, a lithe shape launched itself from somewhere behind the Swordfish’s tail, bounded across a stream of seawater, scrambled up his trousers, and tunneled beneath his jacket. Feathers swore in a mixture of delight and annoyance. He was glad the cat hadn’t been swept overboard, but what the hell was he going to do with him? There wasn’t time. The other Swordfish crews were in their planes and one was starting the tracking run down the deck line. As the biplane skittered and wobbled, Feathers wondered how it would ever make it through the curtain of heavy spray and crashing waves from the ship’s bow.
Somehow the carrier’s deck lifted at the critical moment, giving the plane an additional boost into the air. Feathers saw it wallow unsteadily, on the edge of a stall, then gathered speed, circling away from the carrier. He prayed that he would be that lucky.
Bomber, tucked away beneath the pilot’s jacket, had sunk his claws into Feathers’ shirt in a way that suggested it would be difficult and time-consuming to remove him. And even if he did pry the cat loose, the airedales had their hands too full to bother with a cat. “All right, you’re going,” said Feathers to the furry lump underneath his jacket. “I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
“What are you standing there talkin’ to yourself for?” yelled Patterson. “Sayin’ your prayers?”
“Might need ‘em,” said Feathers as he swung into the center cockpit behind the pilot’s windscreen.
Now, you blessed old Stringbag, he thought to his airplane, as he revved the engine and the airedales took away the chocks, let’s not decide to go for a swim.
Just as he began the takeoff run, Ark Royal hit a deep trough that tilted her bow down until her deck was like the steep side of a hill. Feathers could see whitecaps on the sea below as he hurtled right downhill toward it. It took all his willpower not to pull back on the stick before the plane had attained flying speed. At the last instant, when he was sure he was going in the drink, the bow started to lift, tossing him in the air.
Bathed in sweat, he pushed the throttle to full power, feeling the plane begin to mush at the edge of a stall. A short dive let the Swordfish pick up speed and stability. With a surge of excitement, Feathers pulled back on the stick, starting a slow climb to attack altitude. The Stringbag might be old, slow and outmoded, but by God there was no other plane that could have gotten off a carrier in weather like this.
As he circled, climbing, he saw the rest of the torpedo-laden Swordfish leave the deck of the carrier. All fifteen made it safely.
Bomber squirmed inside Feathers’ jacket. With the plane trimmed for a climb, he could spare a moment for the cat. He let the stowaway slide out from the bottom of the jacket and stuffed the cat between his knees and the edge of the seat.
“Now stay there and don’t get tangled up in the control cables. And if you get airsick, it’s your own fault. I don’t know what made you decide to come along, but there’s no turning back now.”
Bomber seemed to understand. He wedged himself into the small space, keeping out of the way. He didn’t seem to be frightened by the vibration or the hiss of the wind past the open cockpit. He also, Feathers noted thankfully, had shown no indications of airsickness.
Catching sight of another plane in Subflight Two, Feathers joined it and soon both were twining about each other’s paths as they climbed to an altitude just below cloud level. Once aloft, the full squadron assembled in formation and flew over the Sheffield. The cruiser gave them a somewhat wary welcome and directions to the Bismarck. When the flight was past Sheffield, they climbed to attack altitude of nine thousand feet. Crocket, Feathers’ forward observer, reported a blip on the radar that couldn’t be anything but Bismarck.
After a short cruise, word came back from the squadron leader that he had sighted their quarry through a hole in the clouds. Most of the Swordfish would come in on the Bismarck‘s port side, but Subflight Two was to attack from the starboard.
“Let’s go get her, lads,” came the voice of the squadron leader over the wireless and the fifteen Swordfish started the hunt.
Rain pelted against the Swordfish’s windscreen and Feathers’ goggles as he dived the torpedo plane from nine thousand feet. Between the rain squalls, the low clouds and gusty winds, Feathers could hardly keep track of the dark gray silhouette of the enemy ship. She was moving fast, crashing though the force eight gale that blew about her and sending up fountains of spray from her bows.
“What’s her heading?” the pilot shouted to the observer in the forward cockpit. The lash of rain and wind coupled with the wavering drone of the Swordfish’s engines drowned out Crockett’s reply, but the discomfited look on his face told Feathers that the weather was making it impossible to do more than guess t
he warship’s heading. And the radar set aboard the Swordfish was too crude to show anything but the ship’s approximate location. He couldn’t tell if the battleship was in a turn or running a straight course. God, what he’d give for a look at the Bismarck‘s compass.
And then something stirred beneath his feet, reminding him that the Swordfish was carrying an extra crew member, whose usefulness was doubtful. As if Bomber had caught the gist of that thought, he crouched on the cockpit floor in the cramped space underneath the pilot’s knees. His tail began to shiver in an unmistakable manner.
“Not here! Not in the bloody aircraft!” Feathers yelled, but an appallingly familiar pungency rising from the cat showed that Bomber had already begun his performance. With both hands on the stick and feet on the rudder pedals, Feathers could only curse impotently. Then the cat wriggled to one side beneath Feathers’ right thigh, pointed its ears, rippled its fur, and let loose a crack of miniature lightning from eartips into the center of the damped spot.
Wrestling the Swordfish’s control stick with one hand, Feathers caught Bomber by the scruff. He was considering a quick toss over the side, but he realized that he was far too late. Rainbow rings were already blooming in the center of the cockpit floor as they had on the cabin wall. In fright the pilot pushed back against his seat as a circular gap appeared in the floor and enlarged. Would it spread underneath his seat, dropping him through to God knows where? He began to wish he had been a little more diplomatic toward the cat. And if he disappeared right out of the plane, that would leave the observer and gunner still barreling along in a pilotless craft. Surely Bomber didn’t have it in for them, too?
The thoughts sped through his mind as the Swordfish continued in its hurtling dive through the clouds. And then he suddenly noticed that Bomber’s hole wasn’t getting any bigger, but the haze inside it was clearing. He could see through. And what he could see was the top of a military cap, a pair of uniformed shoulders and two arms whose gloved hands rested on the huge upright steering wheel of a ship. A huge glass-faced compass before the wheel read one hundred and six degrees. East-south-east. Roughly the same direction that the Bismarck was heading.
In a rush Feathers realized that Bomber had provided him with exactly what he needed; a view right into the Bismarck‘s helm control room. He was looking right down on top of the helmsman’s head and the ship’s great main compass. Abruptly the needle began to slide toward one-twenty as the helmsman’s hand bore down on the right side of the wheel. The Bismarck was starting a turn to starboard, zig-zagging to avoid torpedoes tracking in on her from other Swordfish.
If she’ll stay in that turn, thought Feathers, I can send that torpedo to hit her aft, in the rudder or screws.
A banging on the fuselage behind him made the pilot jump. “What the hell are you playing at!” the gunner bellowed into the slipstream. “Do you want to send us into the sea?”
Feathers stared at the onrushing waves below. Too many seconds of inattention had sent the Swordfish into too deep a dive. A surge of adrenaline made him pull back the stick barely in time. He swore that spray from a high-breaking wave splashed the torpedo-plane’s undercarriage as the Swordfish pulled out of her dive and roared along at wave-top height. Ack-ack fire spat uselessly over the top wing, for the Swordfish was so low that she was beneath the firing range of the Bismarck‘s anti-aircraft turrets.
He glanced between his knees at Bomber’s viewhole down onto the enemy’s helm station. The compass was still swinging steadily as the great warship kept to her same rate of turn. In his head the pilot estimated the trajectory needed to hit the Bismarck astern. Keeping his course dead level and his airspeed at 75 knots, he bored in toward the rain-shrouded shape of the German warship. He wanted nine hundred yards, but he knew he couldn’t make it. The anti-aircraft fire was missing, but the big ship had taken to shelling the sea around itself, the explosions causing eruptions of water like geysers that could swallow a light aircraft and drag it down into the sea. At twelve hundred yards, Feathers pushed the torpedo release.
The bronze cylinder plummeted from the plane. Stay in that turn, you bastard. Stay in that turn, Feathers prayed as he veered away and caught sight of the torpedo’s wake making a white trail directly toward the Bismarck‘s stern.
One quick glance down between his knees through Bomber’s viewport onto the enemy helmsman told him the warship had spotted the attack. He heard orders in German barked down the speaking tube to the wheelman. The officer leaned to one side, gathering the momentum needed to bring the great wheel hard to port.
Instantly Feathers knew that if the warship swung her stern aside, the tracking torpedo would miss. He’d launched it from too great a distance. Bismarck had already shown amazing maneuverability for so long a ship and great adeptness at dodging torpedoes.
With a yowl, Bomber, who had been poised on the edge of the hole, launched himself right through it. Feathers had the most amazing bird’s eye view of the cat tumbling straight down onto the head of the Bismarck‘s wheelman.
The officer threw both hands up in the air with a hoarse yell as a ten-pound bundle equipped with raking claws, teeth, and its own peculiar brand of chemical weaponry descended upon him. Bomber knocked the man’s hat off and delivered a flurry of scratches to the hapless victim’s head and shoulders. As a parting shot, the cat gave the flailing officer a final blast in the face as he sprang at the ship’s wheel.
He landed, caught and held, his weight dragging the wheel back over and ending the change of course the helmsman was about to make. The Bismarck continued her sweeping turn to starboard.
Feathers strained his head over the side. Through the driving wind and rain, he saw the wake of his torpedo driving straight and true for the Bismarck‘s stern. Water fountained up, mixed with smoke. The aft end lifted for an instant, then slammed back into the sea.
From the rear of the Swordfish came more pounding and a roaring cheer from Patterson. “Hoorah! We got her right in the arse!”
From the gap in the plane’s floor that miraculously looked onto the helm of the enemy came an unholy racket. Feathers glanced down at the scene happening between his knees. Bomber was still fighting the helmsman, screeching and spitting while the officer fended off the attack. From the voicetube connected to the Bismarck‘s bridge came frenzied shouts for the helm to obey. The uproar grew, Prussian bellowing mixed with British caterwauling, until the officer lunged, seized Bomber by the scruff, and hurled him against the wall.
Wild-eyed, he embattled wheelman seized control once again, hauling the wheel sharply to port as his captain had ordered, but it suddenly jammed at a rudder position of twelve degrees and wouldn’t budge. The torpedo had done its work.
But what about Bomber? Ignoring Patterson’s banging on the fuselage and demands to fly the bloody plane straight, Feathers stared down at the scene below him, searching for the cat. He spotted Bomber on the floor, looking up at him with something near desperation in the gold eyes. But Feathers himself couldn’t fit through the gap. It was too small. He grabbed wildly at a coil of rope in the cockpit, hoping to throw a line down for the cat to snag. But before he could even find the rope end, the interstice shivered and popped shut.
For a second, Feathers could only stare numbly at the now-solid floor of the cockpit. There was nothing he could do to rescue Bomber short of trying to land his Swordfish on the Bismarck‘s decks. And that would be sheer suicide.
“Would you tell me what is so interesting between your bloody knees?” Patterson roared again. “Get your head up and this crate home!”
Feathers pulled himself together. Bomber would have to rescue himself as best he could.
The Swordfish’s forward observer, who had been completely forgotten during the wild ride, turned a pale but smiling face to the pilot and handed him a slip of paper.
It read “Hit confirmed. Bismarck circling to port. Rudder looks stuck.”
Feathers gave him a thumbs up and headed the plane for home. As soon as he was
beyond range of the warship’s anti-aircraft fire, he started a climb to cruise altitude. Again he looked down over the side and was heartened by the sight of the Bismarck making a wide confused circle in the rough sea.
All the way back to the Ark Royal, the Swordfish rang with cheers and snatches of song. Feathers joined in, but his enthusiasm was tempered by the thought of Bomber lying on the deck of the enemy ship. The helmsman had thrown the cat hard enough to break his back, Feathers thought. But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. And he had to get his plane and crew back to ArkRoyal.
The carrier’s stern was still bucking in fifty-foot heaves when the Swordfish began their fly-on. Feathers concentrated everything he had on getting down in one piece. He was given additional motivation when the plane ahead of him touched the deck during the upward surge, smashing the craft’s undercarriage and sending it skidding along on its belly, shedding pieces. The crew scrambled out and the airedales pushed the wreck over the side before it could burst into flame.
“When Feathers’ turn came, the deck dropped away just as he was starting to settle and he had to make another go-round. But on the second try he landed.
He heaved himself out of the cockpit as the airedales rolled his Swordfish toward the lift.
“That was some of the damned craziest flying I’ve ever been through in my life,” said Patterson to him. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgot how to pilot.”
Feathers just ducked his head and walked through the driving rain. He knew there was no way he could explain to Patterson what had happened there up in the sky. The gunner hadn’t even known that Bomber was aboard.
Shepherd was among those down below, welcoming the aircrews aboard. The news had spread quickly throughout the ship that two Swordfish of the second subflight, coming in on the Bismarck‘s starboard quarter had got in one torpedo hit amidships and one aft. And the aft strike might have crippled her.