The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream

by G. C. Edmondson

  “Easy, sir,” Gorson was saying, so Joe allowed himself to be led below, wondering if his failure was as apparent to everyone else as it was to himself. Cookie handed him a cup. He drank and gasped.

  “What is that?” he wheezed.

  “You said it was all right to set up the still again,” Cookie said.

  “Oh Jesus!” Joe moaned. What would Commander Cutlott have to say when they met again? He limped into his cubicle. Lying down didn’t help any. The Alice was his again—through no effort of his own. The same problems faced them—only more so.

  The Azores were now two hundred miles farther upwind, and there were four more mouths to eat up their groceries and drink their water. Unfriendly mouths at that. For all he knew, one of those Moors was boring holes in the Alice’s bottom at this moment. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Dr. Battlement’s history department?

  Abruptly he remembered the Alice was still heading east Every hour on this course mean five hours beating back. After the yawl was hauled about, tacking southwest, he found Rose and asked how much oil was left.

  “Maybe thirty-five hours,” the engineman said. Joe hoped they wouldn’t be caught again on a lee shore.

  Then he remembered Howie. He’d have to congratulate him or something, if he’d calmed down. With a sudden grin he reflected that the god shouter was the only man in the navy who rated the Crusader’s Cross.

  When Joe went below Gorson was drinking burnt rye in the galley, glaring at the imam and two Moors who accepted their fate with equanimity and squatted in the opposite comer of the galley.

  “Chief,” Joe said, “do you think McGrath rates a medal?”

  Gorson choked and sputtered over his rye, then sobered. “How’d you happen to pick him to spread the word?”

  Joe didn’t have an answer ready. Lousy captain—not even a good liar. The imam and Dr. Krom were both looking at him. Joe was too young to realize that age did not automatically bring omniscience. Nor did it occur to him that the imam didn’t understand English and that Dr. Krom understood nothing.

  “I didn’t pick him,” Joe said in a lame voice. “I was working a different angle. Had us set up for a laboratory and a little peace and quiet once we were safe in Granada. The mutiny was Howie’s show.”

  Gorson whistled. “I guess he does rate a medal.”

  McGrath stuck his head down the scuttle. “Squall brewing,” he said. “Might be lightning.”

  “Cookie, hop to it with the still.”

  “Agin?” Cookie asked despairingly.

  “We ain’t gonna have any sails left if you keep steering into these squalls,” Gorson grumbled.

  “Shorten sail and heave to,” Joe decided. “We’ll all go below this time.” He passed a hand over his face and discovered someone had taped the cut made by Howie’s knife.

  Little Howie was very quiet. Halfway in shock, Joe guessed. He wondered if the little steersman remembered what he had done or realized that Joe had rabbit punched him. He looked carefully but the little man’s eyes were blank. Nor did he flinch when Joe swabbed his mangled ear with merthiolate.

  Raquel smelled clean for a change. “For what is the red paint?” she finally asked.

  “It heals wounds quicker.”

  “Put some on his toe,” Raquel said.

  The god shouter’s big toe was swollen. A blue patch radiated from two indentations in the nail. Like teeth marks, Joe thought. The skin was unbroken though, so he didn’t waste merthiolate.

  “Here,” Raquel said, pulling her ankle length skirt up to expose her knee. Joe painted the odd shaped wound just above her kneecap. “Looks like another bite,” he said.

  “It is.”

  Guilbeau stuck his head down the scuttle. “Be heah any minute,” he said.

  “Everything tied down topside?”

  The Cajun nodded and swung down the ladder, dogging the hatch behind him. Joe glanced forward where Gorson and Cookie fussed over the still. Gorson nodded. All hands crowded into the galley, waiting excitedly for what the lightning would bring. Not much, Joe feared—at least it hadn’t the last time. Then another horrible thought struck him.

  He hadn’t been too sure of his position before this fracas with the Moors. Now, with all this driving east, how far was the African coast? Or the Spanish coast? “Freedy,” he said, “how about firing up the fathometer?” He went into his cubicle and looked at the pilot chart, wishing for the hundredth time that it were some kind of a chart with proper soundings. Even a hundred fathom curve would help.

  There was a thrumming of rain. A sudden explosive blast knocked the Alice on her beam ends. Then the yawl righted itself and began facing up to the squall.

  Cookie humped over the still while Gorson watched anxiously. “Ninety-two fathoms,” Freedy called. He had to yell to make himself heard over the squall.

  Abruptly, the bottom dropped out of creation. Books and papers floated off the chart table and hung in midair, just as Joe himself floated off his chair. The Alice wasn’t even rolling—she was falling, straight down on an even keel. The fall ended abruptly with a tremendous crunching splash and myriad clatters as objects within the Alice once more sought their proper level. Joe settled back into his chair with a spine-shattering thump. The binoculars whizzed past his nose and landed in his lap.

  Out in the galley the imam and Dr. Krom sat upright and ashen in one comer. Gorson and Cookie were looking dazedly at the still, whose bell jar was miraculously intact. Freedy puckered his tiny mouth and god-damned something while banging his fist against the fathometer. “Ninety-two fathoms a minute ago,” he grumbled. “Now the damned thing reads sixteen.”

  “Switch ranges,” Joe suggested. He was trying to get the hatch open, but it wouldn’t budge. Water trickled around its edges. Abruptly he realized it was stuck from the weight of solid water on the other side. At least thirty seconds had passed since the smash, but the yawl was still under water!

  He took a deep breath and reached for a cigarette. He was out of them—damn it! He looked cautiously around to see if anyone else had noticed the dripping hatch. They were recovering from the jolt and beginning to wonder about the strange silence. There was neither sound nor feel of the sea. There was no doubt in Joe’s mind now; the Alice was making like a submarine!

  Water would be leaking through the deck openings into chain locker and through the charlie noble, a steady trickle coming down the rudder post. If they were at any depth the valves in head and bilge pumps would rupture. No, he guessed, if they were that deep the hatch would be stove in.

  He stared at it, afraid to call anybody else’s attention lest the whole crew panic. Water trickled slowly around the hatch. Water trickled down Joe’s forehead and a cold prickle oozed between his shoulder blades.

  VI

  THERE WAS a sudden waterfall roar as the Alice broke the surface. Joe released a tremendous breath. He forced the hatch and clambered topside. In spite of everything the Alice’s close reefed sails were intact. Everything was there except the bloodstains on deck—and the dinghy.

  Joe peered hopelessly into the dark, overcast night. No sign of the small boat. They’d have to swim ashore if they ever got to the Azores.

  “Secure the still,” he told Gorson. “There won’t be any more lightning tonight.”

  Guilbeau took the wheel and they shook out a couple of reefs to speed the yawl southwest. The wind was veering now and she ran more freely. “Steady as she goes,” Joe told the Cajun and went below.

  Freedy was still thumping and god damning the fathometer. “No matter what I do, it reads sixteen,” he grumbled.

  “Were probably over the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Atlantis,” Joe said. “Wake me if it shoals out to eight.” Hoping he inspired more confidence than he felt, Joe shut himself in his cubicle and again studied the damnably insufficient pilot chart.

  He must be close to Gibraltar—but was he north or south of it? Either way, he consoled himself, the Alice’s southwest course would carry her
clear of any land. He stretched out carefully on his bunk and tried to find some position where the back of his head wouldn’t throb quite so badly. He had almost found it when someone knocked and opened the door. “Eight fathoms,” Freedy reported.

  Joe pushed past him and scrambled topside. Nudging a startled Guilbreau away from the wheel, he spun it and spilled wind. “I’ve had enough thrills for one day,” he Said. “Drop anchor.”

  While they took in sail and unlashed the anchor the Alice drifted another quarter mile. Just as the anchor chain started rattling she ran gently aground.

  The next few minutes were somewhat chaotic. Joe went into a frenzy of sounding, looking for a shore with his feeble batteried flashlight, asking Rose for the thirtieth time when he was going to get that anomalous engine started. Eventually it did and the Alice chugged sedately away for a couple of miles while Freedy tossed a lead and chanted soundings. When Joe thought they were in deep enough water he finally allowed the anchor to be dropped again.

  So much more fuel gone.

  Dawn was rosy fingered as a Homeric couplet. Joe glanced at his wrist. Should’ve bought a new watch long ago but sentiment attached him to this venerable relic. Get it cleaned again if he ever got back. He looked around the Alice. Two miles west of her anchorage, a small island jutted from the sea. Goats grazed on its sparse vegetation and the almost vertical shoreline was crisscrossed with their tracks. All hands stared at this unexpected miracle.

  “We could use some meat,” Cookie suggested.

  “Yes,” Joe said absently. “But can we spare the bullets?

  “Another thought occurs,” Dr. Krom’s pedantic voice injected.

  “I know,” Joe said. “Where there are goats there’s water.”

  “How do we get ashore without a dinghy—or even if we had one?” Gorson asked after studying the sheer cliff face.

  They weighed anchor and the Alice ghosted along in the light morning air, tacking around a headland. Freedy stood in the bow tossing the leadline since he no longer busted the fathometer. “Six fathoms,” he chanted. “Five and a half . . . seven . . . nine . . . no bottom at ten.”

  They had passed over some ridge. Joe studied the island’s contours and tried to guess which way they would continue under water. “There it is I” Corson shouted.

  The yawl ghosted on to the southeast side where the crater opened, offering a perfect horseshoe inlet. A tiny rock pinnacle extended from its center, like a lopsided pencil point. The harbor was perhaps two hundred yards across and here on the island’s inner surface goats had not wrought as much havoc with the vegetation. Tiny patches of green showed between rocks. One rift in the crater wall had eroded into a canyon lined with scrub oak.

  “No bottom at ten,” Freedy called again.

  “How we gonna anchor?” Corson asked. “Wind shifts south and we’ve had it.”

  “Perhaps,” Joe said. He took the wheel and headed the Alice toward the pinnacle. Throwing it hard left, he spilled wind and lost speed so that the yawl’s bow drifted by within jumping distance. Grooves in the rock hinted that other mariners had tied up here.

  Joe stripped to his skiwie drawers and jumped overboard with the stern line. To his surprise, the water was warm. Now that he noticed it, the weather this morning was definitely not what it had been for the last couple of weeks. He swam ashore but once there could barely pull himself up the steep bank.

  Corson jumped in and helped him. They struggled a hundred yards to a gentler slope at the bottom of the minuscule canyon, then heaved until the Alice came drifting ponderously after them. Eventually her stem was made fast to one of the tiny oaks.

  “If there’s a spring it’ll be up there,” Gorson said. They hadn’t gone more than a hundred feet through the scrub oaks before Joe wished he’d had his shoes thrown ashore. But the ridge couldn’t be more than a quarter mile. To hell with it, he decided; if Gorson could make it barefoot he could. The wind flapped his wet skivvies over his thighs end gave him a slight chill. Within another hundred yards he was sweating.

  The canyon was narrow and steep but fortunately for their bare feet it was covered with soil instead of rock. Close-cropped grass grew under the umbrella-like covering of oak whose lower leaves had been browsed clean by goats. “Odd,” Joe muttered.

  “What?” Gorson panted.

  “We’ve had seagulls with us during the wildest weather, yet here’s a perfect roosting place and not a single bird.”

  They plodded upward until they found the spring. It was so small that its overflow did not form a visible stream but seeped downward through the canyon’s small triangular cross-section of soil. It was a clear, semicircular pool in the rocks, about the size of the Alice’s galley sink, and with a clear, sandy bottom. Joe flopped down and lowered his face for a cautious sip. “Tastes clean,” he said. “With the island uninhabited, chances are it is.”

  “Uninhabited?” Gorson repeated.

  Joe looked up. Facing them across the tiny clearing stood a girl. She was tanned but of an obviously blonde race. She wore her hair in a braid which had been twisted into a high crown held in place with thorns. She wore a necklace and bracelets of some blue stone. She wore nothing else. Joe stared awestruck, waiting for her to shriek or run. She watched them with an expectant, hopeful expression.

  Joe glanced down. “Caught in my drawers again,” he muttered.

  “What?” Gorson asked.

  “Nothing,” Joe said.

  The girl beckoned. When they still stared she apparently tired of standing. She lay down in the short cropped grass and waited.

  Gorson exploded into laughter. “What a place for a whorehouse!” he roared. “I wonder how business is?”

  Something, Joe kept telling himself, is wrong. In the first place, there shouldn’t be any island here. And now this! He wasn’t dreaming. He was sweating and out of breath and his feet hurt. Gorson couldn’t possibly laugh that loud in a dream. They went around the spring to where the girl still reclined in the grass.

  “Do you speak English?” Joe asked.

  A pleading smile.

  “Ask if she’s got a private room somewhere,” Gorson said.

  Joe tried again in Raquel’s Tenth Century Spanish but the girl only smiled. “Oh hell!” Joe said, “this isn’t really happening.” He turned around to reassure himself—and faced two more naked girls.

  “Holy Neptune,” Joe muttered.

  The girl recognized a god’s name: “Roumánu?” she asked.

  Roumanu—Roman!

  “No,” Joe said. “Non sum Romanus.”

  “Ah.” There was polite disappointment in the girl’s tone.

  “Are you?”

  “Roumánu égo?” She gave a fluting laugh and slipped into some form of bastard Greek which Joe could follow only vaguely. He sighed and tried to keep his eyes on her face. Damn women! Maybe he’d stumbled into a Tenth Century nudist colony. When in Rome . . . His eyes strayed back to those firm, upward pointing—

  “Where are we?” he asked. “What is this island?”

  It sounded like Phryxos and rang no bell with Joe.

  “What’s she saying?” Gorson asked.

  “I’m trying to find out where we are. Where’s Spain? Hispania—Iberia. Lusitania?”

  She shrugged and those pink tipped things jiggled.

  “Where’s Africa?”

  Understanding glinted in the blonde’s eyes. She pointed. Joe stared and did a double take. Unless the sun was crazy, this blonde was pointing due south.

  “Where’s Rome?” he persisted. She pointed vaguely west “Impossible,” Joe said. “We’re in the Atlantic.” But a horrible suspicion was growing on him. That warm water—this balmy climate. And what was a volcanic island doing in this part of the Atlantic? “Quô modô appallatur hoc mare?” he asked—how is this sea named?

  “Agaios.”

  “Aegean!” Joe shook his head. Even without a sextant he couldn’t be that far off. But another thought struck him. “What year
is this?”

  The girls stared.

  “Are you Christian?”

  No reaction.

  “Moslem?” Still no reaction.

  Joe knew damned well he’d been in the Atlantic last night. The last jump in space had also been a jump in time. Was this one? How was a history professor to know when people wouldn’t keep track of time? “Who is your god?” he asked.

  The first girl had given up wriggling in the grass and came around the pool to join the other two. “Aphrodite,” she said.

  “Venus,” the other girl corrected. “He speaks Latin.”

  “It figures,” Joe muttered. He passed a hand over his eyes and tried again. “What,” he asked, “is Caesar’s name?”

  “Gaius Octavius.”

  Joe felt a thrill of recognition. That tied it down to, let’s see . . . He took over in 31 B.C. and died in 14 A.D. But there were too damn many Gaii in Roman history. “Is this Gaius the adopted son of Julius Caesar?” The girls nodded.

  “What’re they saying?” Gorson asked.

  “Later,” Joe said. By one felicitous stroke he had located them within forty-five years—but this, as he recalled, was a turbulent time, even though the Romans preferred to regard it as the Augustan Peace. Another thought came.

  “Augustus?” he asked.

  The girls looked blank.

  “Is Gaius Octavius called Augustus?”

  The girls were unsure.

  “Is he young?”

  They nodded.

  And that tied it down: Gaius Octavius took over in 31 B.C. In 27 he assumed the title Augustus. Joe decided to quit while he was ahead.

  “Is this a nudist colony?” Gorson asked. “Why aren’t they wearing clothes?”

  “Forget to ask,” Joe parenthesized. “How many of you are there on this island?”

  The girls preferred not to understand. “How many you?” one finally countered.

  Joe decided it was his turn to avoid an answer.

  Gorson was frantic. “What’re they saying?” he insisted. “Getting information’s like pulling teeth,” Joe explained, “but I think—” He was about to say they’d gone back another thousand years, then—he didn’t quite know why—he decided not to.