“What is a dog?” Larry asked, suspicious.
“Man’s best friend,” Silva said, his grin fading. “If you saw a dog you’d prob’ly chase him down and eat him, but dogs are the best. I guess you’ll just have to do for now.” Larry looked at Silva as if unsure whether he was being mocked or complimented. His uncertain pose provoked another laugh and Dennis ruffled his crest. “Don’t worry, you make a pretty good dog substitute. You can’t help what you are any more than I can. Just wag your tail now and then and you’ll be close enough as to make no difference. ’Specially if you don’t talk so much.”
Larry glanced at his slightly feathery tail and twitched it experimentally.
“Can we please resume our march now?” Rajendra demanded exasperatedly.
“Why, by all means!” Dennis said. “In fact, why don’t you lead the way, Captain Rajendra? With them two pistols, you can pro-tect us from the boogers.”
Meeting the challenge, Rajendra stepped off and led them across the remainder of the clearing. They passed several more clumps of the strange kudzulike grass, and it looked like there were more bones in at least a couple of them. Abel and Brassey chatted excitedly about what it might mean, clearly hoping to crawl all through the things as soon as they could. The little thorn that had pierced Abel’s finger was already forgotten.
As Silva had predicted, the stretch of jungle was not very wide, and though they traversed it with care they soon saw the sea through dwindling brush. Without a word, Silva resumed the lead and stepped out from the cover of the jungle alone. Intently, he scanned the beach in both directions for some time, looking for telltale tracks or marks in the sand. They saw them sometimes, even near camp. When they did, they knew they had to be extravigilant that day. Who knew what improbable, screwy, terrifying damn thing might have squirmed up out of the sea during the night? God knew the island was dangerous enough without the shiksaks it was beginning to draw.
A mighty bolt of lightning seared the guts of a distant, spreading thunderhead and lashed the sea behind a black curtain of rain. Except for that one squall, however, the sky remained mostly clear and the fierce sun baked the sand around him. Silva saw no evidence that shiksaks or anything else had come ashore nearby, and he motioned his companions to join him.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Silva,” Rajendra growled irritably. “I do hope you haven’t had us thrashing about for most of a day merely so you might view yet another beach—that looks quite identical to the one we left this morning, I might add.”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.” Silva waved out to sea. “You’re a sailor. You’ve seen the beach we came ashore on. There’s breakers, coral heads or something like them, for a mile or more offshore. No way we’re gonna get the boat back through that even after we’re done fixin’ it. It was some sort of biblical miracle we came across in one piece the first time. I guess the tide was running and them big waves helped a bunch, sort of tossed us over the reef, or something. Anyway, like I said, we’re going to have to break out somewhere.” He nodded beyond the beach. “This might not be it either. If you look over there, the breakers seem to run even farther out to sea.” He pointed southwest along the beach. “That might not be too bad over there, though, see? The tide’s not out, but it’s on the ebb. I don’t see anything but happy beach waves there. We take the boat out at high tide, we might just make it.”
Rajendra spluttered. “Are you suggesting we attempt to move the boat through . . . I don’t know, miles of terrifying jungle, full of even more terrifying creatures? I consider you an evil man, Mr. Silva, but not an idiot. It simply can’t be done.”
“It ain’t ‘miles,’ an’ not that much is even jungle. Did we just come the same way? Besides, there you go about ‘evil’ again,” Dennis said, shaking his head in frustration. “It’s been maybe a month since I blew up your ship! Give a guy a break! You blew up Cap’n Lelaa’s ship first, and helped start this whole mess, but she doesn’t whine and moan about it on and on like you do. She’ll probably kill you someday when this is over, but for now she’s put all that aside to get the princess and Miss Tucker off this damn bump. Why don’t you do the same?” He paused, reflecting. “I never said I ain’t an idiot, though. If you can think of a better idea, maybe we’ll give it a shot. Ain’t you been thinking about anything? Larry says this joint’s gonna be jumpin’ with shit-sacks soon, and we can’t be here when that happens.”
Rajendra surveyed the apparent passage in the breakers. “Perhaps we could launch the boat where it is and sail it around to this point,” he speculated.
“Might work,” Silva admitted. “I’ve walked the beach this far a couple of times, and the patch this side of the breakers is real calm in places. The rough stuff’s just too damn close in others. We’d have to land the boat and cart it around a few times. Amounts to about halfway. I’m not sure if that would be easier or harder. I’ve walked a lot farther in the other direction, north, and it’s the same deal, except I bet the breakers run two miles out to sea, and I never saw a hole in ’em. This is the only place I’ve found so far. We can keep looking, but anything we find is just going to be farther and we’re runnin’ out of time. Unless you can come up with a better stunt, moving the boat, one way or another, to launch it here is what we have to work on.
“Now, one other possibility might be to break it up and wag it over here in pieces, since we’ve got it apart to fix it anyway. Bring it across a piece at a time and rebuild it here. It’s either that or try to move it in one piece. Float it and drag it, or drag it all the way. Personally, I’m for bringin’ it overland. Less complicated. All we have to do is clear a bigger trail and use rollers or somethin’. I know it’s too heavy to carry, push, or drag without rollers.” He shrugged. “Those are the schemes I’ve come up with. You conjure up something better, we’ll do it.”
Rajendra was silent for a long moment, staring at the shoreline, the breakers, and the waves. Absently, he twisted the ends of his mustache probably out of what was an old habit. He sighed. “The shattered planks on the bottom of the launch have been removed. Sadly, there were quite a few. Like you, I confess to believing only a miracle delivered us across the breakers. The carpenter has been shaping planks from what he hopes will be suitable trees—it is so difficult to tell with these unknown woods—but even with the existing repairs, he fears an inadequacy of fasteners. Nails. I don’t see how we can disassemble the boat further without damaging or destroying even more fasteners. That’s one thing we didn’t think to carry away much stock of.”
“Carpenter forgettin’ nails is like a gunner’s mate runnin’ off without bullets,” Silva accused. “Dumb-ass.”
“He does have tools,” Rajendra said in defense of the carpenter. “A drill and some bracing bits. Perhaps he can use dowels instead of nails, but I don’t think we dare break the boat down into pieces small enough to carry.” He looked at Silva. “I also agree, if you’re right about the obstacles, that the combination of floating and portaging the boat would be more complicated and potentially more dangerous.” He sighed. “So for now it looks as though your tedious and laborious plan is our best chance after all.”
CHAPTER 4
Talaud Island
Lieutenant Irvin Laumer felt the tremor through the hull of the old submarine, S-19, even over the vibrating rumble of the big starboard NELSECO diesel. The battered submarine was entirely afloat now, in the sandy pit they’d carved around it, which meant the tremor must be bad indeed if he felt it through the water. He looked at Machinist’s Mate Sandy Whitcomb, who was tinkering with the diesel, adjusting it. Sandy glanced back at him, catching his eye. He felt it too. Together, they just stood there in the engine room, sweating in the dull glare of the electric lights that glowed with the power the generator was packing into the batteries. The tremor continued. Radioman Tex Sheider stuck his head into the compartment through the forward hatch. His bearded face was flanked by a pair of’Cats, and it would have been a comical scene
if not for Tex’s expression.
“You better get a load a’ this, Skipper,” he said.
“On my way,” Laumer replied. “Where’s Midshipman Hardee?”
“Topside.”
Laumer exchanged another tense glance with Whitcomb and hurried after Tex. The almost bare aft berthing space had been converted into a workshop where many of the boat’s systems were undergoing repair, and they had to weave their way among the various ongoing projects before reaching the even more cramped control room. Climbing the forward ladder, they exited onto the deck, just in front of the conn tower and aft of the boat’s four-inch-fifty gun.
For just a moment Laumer looked around. The excavation around the boat had filled with water during a small storm the week before, which meant any remaining repairs below the waterline were out of the question. It was just as well. The boat was as tight as they had any reason to expect after wallowing on the Talaud Island beach for the better part of a year and a half. The rudder, shafts, and screws seemed relatively straight. The only thing they hadn’t been able to fix was a warped starboard diving plane. They’d managed to straighten it a little, so it shouldn’t cause a problem on the surface, but it had little range of motion. Of course, the last thing any of them ever wanted to do was take S-19 underwater again.
He quickly noted that their tender, perhaps whimsically named USS Toolbox still floated where she should a couple of hundred yards offshore. As an auxiliary, she carried only a few guns to save weight for things Irvin’s project might require, but like so many Allied ships, she was a highly modified Grik prize captured after the battle of Baalkpan. Even as he stared at her, Laumer began to feel a little dizzy and her masts almost seemed to blur.
“At the mountain, sir! Look at the mountain!” Hardee blurted. Laumer turned to see and automatically looked up. And up.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Shipfitter Danny Porter, joining them from below. Far in the distance, a massive mushroom cloud of dark ash piled high into the otherwise clear late-afternoon sky above the volcanic mountain that dominated the island’s landscape. The ash resembled a titanic, roiling, spreading blot in the heavens.
“What do you think, sir?” Tex asked. “Maybe it’s just a fart, like all them others.”
“Bigger this time,” Porter said. “Might be just clearin’ its throat for something really big.” That was the closest anyone had come to suggesting that the Talaud Island volcano might “pull a Krakatoa” since Laumer’s own long-ago ill-considered comment.
“Shut your hole, you mindless monkey turd!” Tex demanded. “You’ll jinx us for sure.”
“Maybe not,” Laumer said thoughtfully. “According to reports from Mr. Ellis, and now General Alden too, Krakatoa hasn’t ‘pulled a Krakatoa’ on this world. They said they saw it, and it’s a humongous mother, but all the ’Cats who hang out around there say that aside from spewing a lot of red fire, it never does very much.”
“Well,” Porter said, “ just because Krakatoa hasn’t ‘pulled a Krakatoa’ doesn’t mean Talaud’s not fixing to pop its cork.”
“If you don’t shut the hell up, I’m going to feed you to the spiderlobsters if they come back,” Tex declared.
Laumer put his hand on Tex’s shoulder. “Skip it,” he said. “You’re both right.” He looked at Porter. “You do need to lay off. You’ll upset the fellas.” He forced a laugh. “Shoot, you’ll upset me. You’re right, though; I don’t know anything about volcanoes, but that thing’s starting to give me the creeps.” Even as he spoke, the tremors slowly subsided and the relief he felt around him was palpable. He sighed. “Anyway, we’ve got to find some way to pick up the pace. Adar hasn’t come right out and ordered us off the project, and neither has the Skipper, but I guarantee Toolbox has already reported this latest burp. Her captain isn’t any happier about hanging around here than we are, and I can’t say I blame him. If we don’t wrap this project up pretty quick, I expect we will be ordered out.”
“Maybe the transmission didn’t get picked up,” Tex said. “Comm’s been pretty spotty.”
“Maybe not,” Irvin agreed, “but they’ll send it again. It usually does get through at night.”
“Well, so what’s left?” asked Porter. “We’re afloat and the starboard diesel’s up and running. We could get the boat underway . . . well . . . today, for that matter, if only ...”
“Yeah,” agreed Laumer, gazing at the beach-locked puddle the submarine floated in. “If only.”
“Sid has six boats, nearly a hundred ’Cats, and the whole Toolbox dredging us a channel. They’re going as fast as they can,” Hardee defended.
“I know. They’re all doing a swell job.” Laumer looked back at the mountain and rubbed his face with his hands. “We’re going to get some ash tonight. Make sure everyone’s under cover. Bring them on the boat if you have to. Maybe we can get an early start in the morning.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Irvin took a last look around at the battered submarine that he was determined to deliver—intact—back to Captain Reddy, and the ’Cats working so hard to help him succeed. Then he glared at the mountain in the dwindling light. He was on the very brink of accomplishing his mission—and the almost more important mission he’d set himself: to prove he was worthy to join the “Captain’s Companions,” those who’d been with Reddy from the start. To be considered worthy of that, he’d do whatever he had to—even if it killed him. To accomplish so much only to have it threatened by a volcano, a force of nature, seemed wildly unfair, but he would manage. Somehow, he would succeed. Pacing to the hatch, he prepared to descend the ladder and go back to helping Whitcomb. Before he did, he stood up straight and shook his fist at the distant smoky peak. “You won’t beat me,” he warned. “By God, you won’t.”
CHAPTER 5
Yap Island (Shikarrak)
“How much longer do you suppose they’ll be?” Princess Rebecca Anne McDonald, daughter of the Governor-Emperor of the New Britain Isles, asked anxiously; her large jade eyes narrowed with worry. Her sun-lightened blond locks had gone horribly astray under the constant battering of the stiff sea breeze, and finally getting some growth, she’d also suddenly begun to sprout from the battered Imperial dungarees she wore. Her waiflike appearance did much to undermine her “princess” status. She glanced fretfully westward, where the sun was making its final rapid equatorial plunge.
Nurse Lieutenant and Minister of Medicine Sandra Tucker’s bad sunburn was beginning to turn tan, but her normally sandy blond hair had gone peroxide. She looked at the bedraggled and somewhat gangly royal teen. “Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “They’ll be along.”
“But it’s nearly dark!”
“I assure you, my dear,” insisted Sister Audry in her precise Dutchaccented English, “Mr. Silva would be far safer in any wilderness you chose to drop him than any poor creature he might happen upon.” Sister Audry’s words were meant to reassure, but there was a subliminal thread of condemnation in her tone as well. Like the surviving Imperials, she harbored a deep suspicion that Silva was at least mildly psychotic. She stepped from beneath the sailcloth shelter they’d rigged against the daily rains and stood beside Sandra and Rebecca. She wore dungarees now too, although her practically destroyed habit was kept safely stowed in a bundle of oilcloth.
“I’m concerned about poor Lawrence as well,” Rebecca said, “and perhaps ever so slightly about Messers Cook and Brassey.”
“And Captain Rajendra?” Sandra asked dryly.
“Him too, I suppose,” Rebecca conceded. “I really should be, shouldn’t I?” she asked Sister Audry. Rebecca had learned to respect the nun’s moral authority, even if most of the other Imperial castaways still considered her some form of Roman witch. Rebecca knew better. She knew there was no more similarity between Sister Audry’s “Catholic” faith and that practiced by the “Holy Dominion” than there was between night and day.
“One should always try to think charitable thoughts about all people,�
�� Sister Audry replied, but it was clear by her tone how difficult even she found that at times.
A panicked cry arose near the shoreline, where Captain Lelaa and Carpenter Hersh were wrapping up their day’s repairs to the boat. Three other men, armed with muskets, raced to the spot from where they’d been posted along the beach to provide security for the laborers and their important charges. A loud Thump and a jet of fire flashed in the rapidly deepening gloom.
Captain Lelaa, the Lemurian commander and possibly only survivor of the destroyed sloop USS Simms, raced past them, tail curled high in alarm, toward the ranks of muskets they kept loaded and under cover. “Shik-saak!” she shouted breathlessly as she passed.
A large shadow, almost indistinguishable from the color of the sea behind it, lunged up onto the shore, barely missing the overturned boat where it lay chocked and supported on the sand. The carpenter was on his back, frantically scrabbling up the beach on his hands and heels, shrieking as he went. The security detail raced to that side of the boat and fired a volley directly into the monster before fleeing as fast as they could, reloading as they ran. It was a tactic they’d practiced before; get the shiksak’s attention, then lead it away from the boat and camp. They had no real hope of killing it with their muskets, and wouldn’t have wanted to kill it There in any case. Its carcass would only draw more predators. Their intent in this instance was to preserve the boat, protect the camp, and—hopefully—save the carpenter by provoking the beast into chasing them. It worked.
With a mighty froglike leap, the shiksak lunged after them, absorbing its fall with its semi-rigid front legs, or flippers, and the mattresslike cushion of fat on its belly. It emitted a kind of croaking wail when it struck the ground, but immediately gathered itself for another hopping leap. In a flat-out sprint, the security detail avoided being crushed beneath the massive body or taken by the gaping jaws, but they’d learned in a previous encounter that only a flat-out sprint would save them—and they’d practiced the technique against a considerably smaller shiksak. They’d discovered then that the slightest misstep, fall, or stumble would spell their death. It looked as though this larger, more powerful beast would render their tactic moot. Without a word among them, they split up.
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