“When I was eight,” Raquel continued, “my father took me to Santander.”
It started again. Joe waved an angry hand and crept forward. In the forecastle Cookie held a stick of firewood with a hole drilled through it. One end of the copper coil from their homemade still projected through the hole. While sheep crowded around observing interestedly, Gorson was trying to flare the tube with a mallet and marlinspike.
Relief gushed through Joe and culminated in a whirlpool somewhere beneath his stomach. “Damn it!” he yelled, “Haven’t we got enough trouble without you playing junior scientist?” And what was the forecastle going to smell like by morning? But. . . the sheep couldn’t stay on deck in this weather.
“Well hell, sir,” Cookie began, “we was just gonna make some rye whiskey.”
“You’ll make salt water taffy if I catch you screwing around with that thing again. Where d’you think our next load of food’s coming from?” He turned and stamped out of the forecastle. Back in the galley he absently drew another cup of burnt rye. Raquel still sat at the table. “Now what were you saying?” he asked.
“Oh go listen to your noises!” she flared, and ran out of the galley.
Now what got into her? Joe wondered. And what’s gotten into me? He would never again have an opportunity to study this period. What would Dr. Battlement have given to question a citizen of medieval Spain firsthand? But then, she was a woman and therefore uneducated. A peasant too, which cubed her ignorance. He could probably get more from a world almanac than he would ever extract from Raquel about her own neighborhood. It would be nice to cross paths with an educated man of this era, but there was little chance of that. Besides, he had to take the crew to the Azores and figure this mess out. “To hell with history,” he muttered, and went to bed.
Light glowed down the edge of his door and switches snapped as Freedy checked the fathometer. The lights went out again. Had he been too sharp with Gorson and Cookie? Who ever heard of such a crazy idea for a vacuum still anyhow? A coil inside a bell jar! The copper spiral had looked more like Dr. Frankenstein’s patented mummy resurrector.
Holy Appropriation! The more he thought about it the more possible it seemed. Dr. Krom must be right after all: the Alice was the first ship ever to disappear into time. She was the first ship ever to have a screwy coil set at just the proper angle, with just the proper radius and spacing inside a partially evacuated bell jar—and at just the moment when a bolt of lightning had come along to power the apparatus. Gorson and Cookie’s still was the time machine! He stopped fighting the idea and immediately slept.
It was still blowing like an Eskimo in Texas next morning. Cookie’s pancakes had a leaden texture so he guessed Dr. Krom had gotten his mill to grinding rye. One problem solved; now what about navigation? Could he design an astrolabe? No, Joe decided. Maybe Columbus knew how to keep that silly little pendulum from swinging but Joe knew he’d never get an observation from the Alice’s plunging deck. How about a cross staff? The trick was to hold the long stick on your cheekbone and slide the T head until one end touched a star and the other was on the horizon. He sketched what he wanted on a paper towel and gave it to Abe Rose.
“What’s wrong with the sextant?” the engineman asked. There I go again, Joe thought. He hadn’t expected Rose to know a cross staff from a ripsaw.
“I read a book once,” Rose added with a thin smile. “But maybe I can fix the sextant.”
“What sextant?” Joe muttered. He went to look for Gorson and Cookie. They were in the galley, scowling into mugs of burnt rye. “Where’s Raquel?” Joe asked after a moment.
“Last I saw, she was looking for a quiet comer to slash her wrists.”
“Seasick?”
Gorson shook his head. “What’d you chew her out about?”
“Why, I never said a word—”
“That explains it,” Cookie said.
“About the still,” Joe said after a long pause. “Do you think you could get it working?”
Cookie’s face lit up. “Why shore,” he said. “Just give me a couple of days to sour the mash.”
“I mean the way you were doing it before.”
Cookie was hurt. “You don’t like rye whiskey?”
“If I survive this cruise I’ll never look a pumpernickel in the face again,”
“We ain’t got any dried apples left,” Cookie protested. “I’m not interested in booze,” Joe said patiently. “I just want it set up the way it was when lightning struck.”
“An idea?” Gorson asked.
“I’m not sure, but we’ll have to start somewhere.”
“Cain’t,” Cookie said.
Joe looked at him.
“The bell jar. Hit busted in a million pieces.”
Joe sighed and took a breath. “Rose!” he shouted.
The engineman popped his round face into the galley. “It’s not quite ready,” he said.
“Forget the cross staff for a while. Do you have any of those 5 gallon bottles that Krom’s distilled water came in?”
Rose mouthed his cigar. “I think so,” he said.
“We need a bell jar.”
The engineman grunted and disappeared.
The Alice drove southward through eight more days of heavy weather before the still was assembled and ready. The water bottle’s corked neck had been dipped in paraffin. Its bottom, snapped off where Rose had flamed a gasoline soaked string, was not perfectly flat. After abortive experiments with lengths of split rubber hose, Cookie had sealed it with a gasket of dough.
All hands stood by in anxious silence as Gorson humped over the vacuum pump. Joe glanced from him to Cookie. “You’re sure everything’s just the way it was the first time?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” Cookie said.
“What now?” Gorson asked.
“Keep everything ready and wait for lightning.”
Another day passed before Gorson called him from his bunk. “Line squall building up,” the chief said. “Who’s gonna steer?”
“I am,” Joe said.
“You’re the only guy can navigate this bucket,” the bos’n protested.
“It’s my idea so I take the risks.”
“But you can’t just—”
“Like hell I can’t.” Joe went on deck. Villegas was steering and Guilbeau was on forward lookout. They tied him to the binnacle and went below. The scud of black cloud was barely two miles away. Forks of lightning danced in its depths. The wind died and in the abrupt calm Joe heard thunder. An immense anvil-headed cloud bore toward the Alice.
The calm was abruptly shattered by a tremendous gust which knocked the yawl on her beam ends. Wind wailed as the Alice, taking every third one over the bows, tore along with her cockpit filled. Joe took a deep breath and wondered when he would learn to fasten the top button of his oilskins. An avalanche of green water engulfed him and the yawl shuddered. After a long moment he gulped air again and twisted his head, feeling for the wind. The Alice was three points off and still turning. He spun the wheel with a silent prayer to Mahan’s ghost.
Lightning struck!
IV
THE NEXT thing Joe felt was Gorson forcing a vile taste into his mouth. The squall had passed and the Alice, raced along under single reefed main. Here and there patches of blue peeped through the clouds. “Did we make it back to our own time?” Joe asked.
“Dunno,” Gorson said, “but I doubt it.” He gestured astern.
They weren’t Vikings. The towering sails had a faint Arabic look. One thing Joe was sure of: he’d know more soon. Even as he looked the strange fleet gained on the Alice.
He tried to stand up. Panic flashed through him as muscles refused to obey; the lower half of his body felt asleep. Cold sweat gushed and ran in little trickles inside his oilskins. He took a deep breath and strained again. He felt nothing. Then he saw his foot move and knew he was not permanently damaged. Little by little, he felt control and feeling return. “Better let us take you below,” Gorson was saying.<
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“Below, hell!” Joe snapped. “I’m still captain of this ship. I want to know what the lightning’s done to her this time.”
The standing rigging still stood. Cookie appeared from nowhere. “Nothing happened to the still.” he said. Joe tried again and found he could sit up. His legs itched horribly and he fought the impulse to scratch.
Dr. Krom swam into his narrowed vision. “Are they friendly?” the old man asked, glancing anxiously back at the ships.
How should I know? But captains and gods were expected to know all things. “Judging from this century’s past performance, I’d say we didn’t have a friend in the world,” he said.
Raquel was crowding up. She’s worried about me, Joe thought. Why should she worry over an invincible god? The look of tender concern she wore made him almost forget what she had done to the Norse women. She studied the fleet which pursued them. “Do you recognize them?” Joe asked.
“Moros,” she said.
He wondered what Moros were doing this far north—but the real question, he realized, was just how far north they were. The cross staff had conned him into believing he was off Portugal, but if it were spring instead of late summer, with days getting longer instead of shorter, he could be wrong—wrong enough to tangle with a fleet coming back from the Slave Coast.
They were driving east, probably into the Mediterranean. Moors were supposed to be more sophisticated than their Christian neighbors but Joe doubted if their civilization had progressed to the point of respecting an unknown flag. The high lateen rigs bore an amazing resemblance to ships he had seen in Indian Ocean travelogues and would, he suspected, beat very handily to windward. Anyhow, they were too well spread out for the Alice to pull something fancy like circling behind them to gain the weather gage.
Schwartz and Villegas were already horsing the spinnaker up on deck. If they could gain headway the Alice might slant off and try to lose them. Maybe the Arabs wouldn’t search too hard for one small and not very profitable looking ship.
Under all sail, they skated on halfmile sleighrides down following seas. Stays thrummed and all hands watched nervously, wondering how soon the spinnaker would blow out.
Two hours passed and it was still in its boltropes. The Moors should have been well behind by now—instead, they were gaining. Joe studied the leading ship in his binoculars. Swarthy, ragheaded men with Satanic beards stared back with equal interest. He thought wistfully of the engine but the Alice was already over her natural speed. The engine would slow her down.
Raquel appeared beside him. “What do you know about them?” Joe asked. Her tirade was too fast for him to follow but the meaning was clear. They held half of Spain in the Tenth Century. “Do you speak their language?” Raquel shook her head. “Perhaps they’ll understand yours?” Clearly, she was not interested.
“Why do you wait?” she asked.
Joe gave her a look of bleak inquiry.
“When will you call down lightning?”
Gorson joined them in the stern. “What’s she saying?” he asked. Joe translated, wondering if all gods were troubled thus with unreasonable demands from their worshippers. There was a moment of silence as Gorson picked his teeth. “I don’t think it’ll work,” he finally said.
“Nor do I,” Joe agreed, “but we can give it the old college try. How many flares are left?”
“I’ll go see.”
“Are they real Arabs?” McGrath asked.
Joe was about to explain that they were Moors when he realized the god shouter wouldn’t know the difference. “Here’s your chance to kill a few Infidels and rescue the Holy Sepulchre,” he said.
McGrath stared at him.
“Either we win our own little crusade or were liable to be converted.”
“Converted?”
“Would you rather be a live Moslem or a dead Christian?”
“What’s a Moslem?”
“A Mohammedan,” Joe explained.
Gorson came back. “Eleven flares,” he said.
Cook appeared with the rifle. “Ninety-one rounds,” he reported, “but I think we gonna need more’n that.” Joe had nearly a box of pistol ammo. Kill a man with each shot and we’ll take care of two ships, he thought. Just find a way to clobber the other twelve and we’ve got it made.
Dr. Krom and his seasick assistant appeared. “Do you think they’ll attack?” Lapham asked.
“Of course not,” Gorson growled. “As soon’s they see our papers they’ll apologize for bothering us.”
The effects of the lightning were nearly worn off and Joe was thinking in high gear again. “Get Rose,” he said. Lapham went below and returned in a moment with the engineman. “How long would it take to string some bare wire around the gunwale?” Joe asked.
“Well bless my bacon, cried the rabbi.”
Joe stared at the usually dour engineman.
“My uncle’s a Zionist,” Rose laughed. “He’d get as big a charge as they’re going to if he knew I was about to fry some Ayrabs.”
“How big will it be?”
“Two kilowatts ought to take the curl out of their whiskers.” Joe remembered their last brush with the Norse off Ireland. “Will we be having any last minute engine failures?”
“If we do I’ll cut my throat,” Rose promised.
And ours too, Joe thought.
“What will you use for wire?” Dr. Krom asked.
“The input transformer from your Christmas tree.”
“No!” the old man screamed. “Half of my appropriation went into that—” Abruptly, he remembered where he was. “I’ll show them how to get it apart,” he said quietly.
Gorson and Cookie were already lashing sticks of firewood to the Alice’s stanchions. Not bad, as long as they stayed dry. If green water came over the rail something would blow up anyway. If it worked they could dream up something permanent. The Moors gained another quarter mile while Joe was thinking. Not the slightest chance of holding out until dark now. To hell with all this running, Joe thought. He was ready to meet the 10th Century on its own terms.
Wires were soon strung and there was time to bring the dinghy aft. With it lashed to the boom crutch the steersman’s back was protected from arrows or whatever the Moors would throw. Joe studied the arrangement and had mattresses lashed to the dinghy’s sides.
The leading Moor was only a mile away. Joe counted a fifteenth sail just coming over the horizon. “We’re ready, for once,” he said. “When they come in range we’ll try a couple of flares to put the fear of Allah in them. Maybe we can set fire to their sails. When they come close I want everybody below. I’ll be protected at the wheel and I don’t want any sightseers getting hurt. They may have slingers aboard, so keep the portholes shut.”
The leading ship was two hundred yards away, coming up slowly on the portside. “Another fifty yards and they’ll start throwing things,” Gorson muttered.
Joe rested the gun on the taffrail and took careful aim a hundred feet above the towering lateen sail. There was a pop and hissing roar as the flare curved in an arc which seemed sure to connect. The sail was white—linen or possibly cotton. Joe hoped it would bum. But the parachute opened too soon.
The flare floated gently into the water a few feet behind the speeding felucca. Impressive as it might have been in northern twilight, the blazing pinpoint was considerably less than lightning-size in bright afternoon.
“Another good idea shot to hell,” Gorson mumbled.
Joe handed him the flare pistol. “Go below,” he said. “Things may get a little hairy now.” He wasn’t really worried though. He hadn’t expected much of the flares. Thank Neptune the electric fence was ready. As he took the wheel he heard the generator start turning.
There was a twanging thunk as a catapult unwound on the Moor’s foredeck. Something the size and shape of a garbage can sailed in a high trajectory toward the Alice and Joe knew with a sick certainty that if a stone of this size struck squarely it would go nonstop through deck and keel.<
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The missile struck amidships, shattering a portside stanchion. As fragments crunched across the deck Joe saw it had been a large clay pot. The hot wire from the broken stanchion was dangling overboard. Overloaded generators screamed and a smell of burning insulation came from belowdecks. And that, Joe knew, was the end of his electric fence.
The broken pot was sending up blue flames and clouds of stinking, sulphurous smoke.
Great Mahans ghost! The slightest whiff of flame will melt that nylon spinnaker sheet in less than—Fluttering slowly like a manta ray, the spinnaker rolled forward and wrapped itself over the bow. Joe struggled to keep the yawl on course as she lost speed.
Gorson had a bucket and was sloshing water at the fire-pot. There was a warning creak and the mainsheet started running through its blocks. Joe threw the wheel hard aport, hoping he could spill wind before the boom came around and wiped out the standing rigging. Men came boiling out of the scuttle to fight the fire. Smoke blew aft as the yawl slowly turned. There must be unslaked lime mixed with it, Joe decided, for even under water the firepot burned.
From the corner of his eye Joe saw the Moor was also turning. Wind spilled from the huge lateen and both ships lost way. The felucca drifted down toward them. They had the fire nearly out before a grapnel whizzed and thunked into the Alice’s cabintop. A moment later ragheaded men with mephistophelean. beards swarmed over the yawl’s decks.
And the most amazing part of it was that nobody was hurt. An immense Negro with pointed teeth was tickling Joe with the tip of a yataghan before he had time to remember his pistol. Joe’s happiness at being alive was tempered by the knowledge that he was cast in a mold of less than John Paul Jones proportions. They counted on me to see them through. What must they think of their captain now? The Alice’s men were lined up on deck, stunned and unbelieving. What will happen to Raquel? Joe wondered.
With the deck secured, several ragheads ventured below. Minutes of tense silence passed, then a Moor stuck his head out of the forward scuttle and shouted. A moment later someone in a more elegant burnoose and a turban several shades whiter leapt the breach between the felucca and the Alice.
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 5