Another head popped up along the enlisted men’s side. It was Raquel. Unbound black hair lay wetly over her back and shoulders. The coarse woolen dress clung beautifully. “¿Permiso to boar’, sair?” she asked.
Joe swallowed and returned her salute. Raquel glanced briefly at the dangling Roman and his oarmaster, then turned back to Joe with an enigmatic look.
Joe had forgotten them. He went forward and unlatched the winch until they could sit again.
The Roman studied Joe with a new respect. “What is that bloody rag you worship?” he asked.
“A symbol,” Joe explained, “of the slow-footed, butter-fingered, bungling Great White Father whose stupidity we curse daily.”
“A strange way to worship one’s gods.”
“Yes, isn’t it? Takes an experience like this to understand what’s really going on when you stand at attention while the squadron’s father image runs up a bloody rag.”
“Barbarians,” the Roman muttered.
To Joe’s surprise, Dr. Krom was still alive. The old man wept without shame as he faced aft. Ma Trimble was lifted aboard with much grunting and wheezing. She stood a moment facing aft in silent awe. “Sonny,” she asked, “what are the extra stars for?”
“What about your girls?” Joe asked. “I’ve only seen eight or ten so far.”
Chins, breasts and abdomens quivered as Ma Trimble laughed. “Stop worrying, sonny,” she said. “Most of your swab jockeys’ve settled down with one or another. The odd girls decided they’d rather take their chances with the Romans. Of course, I can call ’em over.”
“Oh no!” Joe said quickly. Thank God the Alice wouldn’t be quite so crowded now.
There were nineteen persons aboard: himself, Gorson, Guilbeau, Cook, Rose, Villegas, Schwartz, and Freedy. Raquel was there, along with Ma Trimble and seven of her girls. Ten men and nine women. Who was the odd man? Twenty-four hours ago Joe would automatically have considered himself the odd man.
Cookie was the only man without a companion. Even Dr. Krom was paying archaic, old world courtesies to Ma Trimble’s trembling bulk.
“How come no girl?” Joe asked the gaunt Tennessean.
“Already got a wife.”
“She’d never know,” Villegas hinted.
“I would,” Cook said.
Joe regarded him with new respect.
Red Schwartz had latched onto one of the more spectacular blondes. “All here but one,” he said.
Joe also remembered McGrath. “Yeah,” he said glumly. All but one. But it wasn’t quite true. The imam, had not been of the Alice s original company but Joe had a special affection for the old man—an affection which extended to the young Moors who had so lightheartedly accepted their new master. They had died for the Alice.
The imam’s aged heart had beaten its last in the galley’s under bunk. Chained three oars aft, Dr. Krom had seen this worn part discarded from the galley’s immense, inefficient engine and wondered if he would be next.
Joe unsnapped the main halliard from his captives’ wrists. “One of my men is dead,” he said. They sat, not bothering to look at him. Joe worried at their bonds with a pair of scissors. Cookie went below for a knife.
Eventually the line parted. The hostages stood unsurely, rubbing their swollen wrists. The Roman’s arrogance was returning with his circulation. “A Roman has kept his word,” he sneered. “Now we shall see if a barbarian keeps his.”
Joe fingered a welt high on his shoulder and wondered how many stripes it had taken to still the old imam’s heart. “I keep my promises,” he said, and pushed them overboard. They were still tethered to the mizzen mast and the line was short enough to hold their feet out of water. After some preliminary splashing they arched themselves and held their heads above water by grasping their ankles.
Joe surveyed them dispassionately, noting with interest how the planes and angles of the Roman’s face blurred into new and softer lines as he understood he was about to die.
The moon hung low in the west now. Almost morning, Joe guessed. The galley still drifted with all oars shipped, a hundred yards away. Both ships had drifted until the island lay three or four miles east. The hostages’ heads drooped lower until only their faces were out of water. A wavelet washed over and they coughed, struggling to raise their heads for a clean breath. Cookie came on deck with the knife.
It was over. He had his ship back and most of his people. “Cut them loose,” he grunted.
Cookie slashed. They struck out for the galley, swimming clumsily because they were still bound together by the feet. Dr. Krom appeared beside Joe. “I don’t wish to interfere,” he said deferentially, “but we really should be leaving. Do you remember those test tubes?”
Joe nodded absently. The two swimmers were halfway to the quinquereme. Abruptly, they stopped swimming and started yelling.
“Leaving? Oh yes,” Joe remembered. “Rose, light ’er off.”
“Yes sir!” Rose twiddled topside controls and the warm diesel started immediately.
Things were finally happening aboard the Roman ship. Oars unshipped and stroked rapidly toward the two swimmers. Joe threw in the forward clutch and spun the wheel, idling the Alice gently upwind so they could make sail. Dead ahead the island silhouetted in the faint beginnings of dawn. “Look,” Dr. Krom said. A thin tendril of smoke issued from the crater.
But Joe was looking elsewhere. The quinquereme had quickstroked to full speed. Nearing the two swimmers, she tossed out a spar for them to cling to and raced on without missing a stroke. The bronze ram was less than a hundred feet away, aimed straight for the Alice’s midships. Joe rammed the throttle home.
He thumbed his nose as the Alice walked away from the undermanned galley. Once more he was heading south, toward the mouth of the Aegean. One right turn at the Sea of Crete and they wouldn’t stop till they reached the Azores. Saving the diesel for emergencies, he could outrun anything the Romans could send against him.
Water tanks were still full, thanks to the Roman ignorance of pumps. He wondered what would have happened if they had discovered all that wine. While the Alice’s men traced out lines and undid the Roman snarls in standing and running rigging, Cookie squared away the galley and put girls to grinding flour.
They were a mile ahead now and the galley was turning back toward the oarmaster and captain, who still clung to a floating spar.
Raquel hadn’t said a word to Joe since boarding, yet some instinct told him their relationship had changed. Bloodthirsty savage, he’d called her. How could he have known what lay so close beneath his own civilized exterior?
Then the engine stopped.
The quinquereme was completing its pickup, about a mile and a half behind them. Joe wondered if the engine’s noise could carry that far upwind. His question was answered when the immense striped sail dropped from its yard and bellied. The bronze ram lifted and began throwing twin wings of spray. “Make sail!” Joe shouted.
“Be a few minutes yet,” Gorson answered. “Those sons of bitches unrove the mainsheet.”
Dawn was a little brighter now and the island was clearly outlined some five miles astern. “None too soon,” Dr. Krom was saying. “Look at that smoke.”
Joe went to see what had happened to the engine. “Day tank ran empty,” Rose explained.
“I didn’t know how to fill it,” Joe apologized.
“The engine drives the transfer pump.”
Joe began to worry. “And without fuel to start the engine you can’t pump fuel into the day tank to run the engine to—”
Rose laughed. “I’ll drain a cupful somewhere.” He grabbed a wrench and crawled deep into the Alices bilges. “Don’t worry,” his muffled voice came back, “I’ll find a plug soon.”
The galley had closed to less than a mile. Joe studied its bow wave and wondered if the Alice could outrun this light drafted vessel downwind. If it came to that the Alice could come about and tack until the oarsmen were exhausted.
“How much longer wit
h that sail?”
“Any minute,” Corson said cheerfully. The galley was making a good nine knots now and the plume of smoke which rose directly behind her gave Joe the momentary impression of a destroyer preparing to ram at flank speed. He was starting down the after scuttle again when he heard the starting motor grind. The diesel coughed raggedly and the glass tube on the side of the day tank began filling. He went on deck to see what the galley would try.
“Not going to conk out again, is she?”
“If she does I’ll turn Christian,” Rose promised.
The galley was within three hundred yards, gaining rapidly. Joe opened throttle and headed crosswind to take the weather gage. Instantly, the sail brailed up and oars flashed as the galley turned. But the Alice was faster now and had no difficulty staying on the larger ship’s stem. He caught a glimpse of the Roman captain, livid with rage as he shouted orders.
A catapult twanged and the stone splashed short.
This is ridiculous, Joe thought. He didn’t want to waste fuel playing tag, yet the Roman wouldn’t give up. The quinquereme was more solidly built than that Scowegian dragon ship. Joe might get the worst of it in a ramming match. To hell with it. He’d lead them off crosswind for a while, then set every stitch.
Another stone plunked short of the Alice. Joe cracked the throttle a trifle wider. “Look!” Dr. Krom was pointing at the island, now dead ahead.
It reminded Joe of the Bikini movie. A visible shock wave moved through the clear morning air. A mile high pillar of smoke was already beginning to mushroom. How long before the tsunami reached them?
“All hands below!” he screamed at the spellbound deck force. “Dog everything tight!” He pushed Dr. Krom through the scuttle and dived after him. Thank God they hadn’t set sail! And the Alice, at least, was heading into it. “In your bunks,” he yelled. “Shut it off, Rose.”
The shock wave struck. There was no sound, just a feeling like the end of the world. Somewhere in the loudest silence he had ever known Joe heard a tinkle of broken glass.
There were ominous creakings and groanings, a hum which ended with a snap like an overturned guitar string. If that’s the backstay we need a mast. The nearest suitable timber would be in Gaul. How many weeks to find a stick and shave it down? No, by Mahan—the Bible mentioned cedars in Lebanon. But there wasn’t fuel even to reach there.
The tsunami struck—a vertical wall of water which poured over the bow before the yawl could lift. Water poured through the slide behind him. Floorboards tilted slowly from beneath his feet and he hung from the ladder. Girls screamed. The bow raised slowly, majestically skyward. Joe surveyed the wriggling mass below him and wondered why in hell they hadn’t gotten in their bunks.
.He heard water gurgling down the cockpit’s self-bailing drains. The Alice came to an even keel and after a moment he opened the scuttle and scrambled on deck. The others streamed behind him and surveyed the turbulent, mud colored sea. There was neither splinter nor corpse of the Romans.
He turned ruefully to Dr. Krom. “I see why you wanted to leave.”
The old man grinned, looking suddenly young. “All my life I have lived with fear. First, it was the simple fear of starvation. Then came Hitler and new fears. All my life I have fought fear, seeking only to align myself with the lesser evil. Did you know the Communists also tried to buy me?”
What kind of confession was the old man leading up to?
“Freedom began the day I realized you were in command—that I could in no way influence events.” The old man smiled inwardly. “To be a leader is always to be alone. Chained to an oar, I suddenly knew I was free—for the first time in my life. I knew the island would explode but I could not act so I did not care.”
Ma Trimble crowded up. “Quite a band, sonny,” she said. “Did you shoot off one of them atomizer things?”
Dr. Krom laughed and probed layers of fat with his forefinger, poking in the general direction of Ma Trimble’s ribs. “Do you realize,” he asked Joe, “that this blithe spirit has never heard of Hitler, Stalin, or Khrushchev?”
Ma Trimble gave the scientist a kittenish glance and they moved off together.
The island was visibly changed. The mushroom had tom and was streaking over the Alice. The wind blew due south, and deposited a fine ash over the Alice and the surrounding sea.
“Make sail,” Joe said. “First reef until things settle down.”
It was nearly noon before they sighted land, ten degrees off the starboard bow. Joe reflected a moment. The Roman had been heading due west for Athens. They were possibly fifty miles south of that position now. He studied the inadequate pilot chart and cursed. Here he was, a historian professor travelling through the islands where so much of the western world’s history had been made. Which was this? Was it the Paros which shuttled back and forth between Athens and Persia so many times? Could it be Naxos, where the god Dionysius picked up Ariadne after Theseus stood her up? Maybe it was Amorgus, where the Roman emperors sent their poor relations, or Kinaros, famous only for its artichokes. It couldn’t be Kos, birthplace of that father of quacks, Hippocrates, or he’d have run aground long ago.
“Freedy,” he yelled, “fire up the fathometer.”
“Two hundred fathoms,” Freedy reported a moment later.
Joe slapped a hand to his forehead and went below to the chart again. He decided to head south and try to thread his way out of this cluster of Cycladean islands. Even if he had the fantastic luck to catch a fisherman, these smaller islands changed names every twenty years. Every other one was Iraklia, Herdkleon, Herculaneum, or some such thing, all named after the omnipresent hero. Cape Malea, the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, couldn’t be more than another fifty miles south. And if the Roman had been heading west for Athens this morning, it must be at least a hundred miles west.
They rounded the island, whatever it was, and two hours later another appeared. Joe took the BuShip’s name in vain. He could be three different places in the Aegean and still see two islands this far apart on this course. Damn the navy’s meaching economy with charts! If he ever got back he’d writer letters and damn the promotions.
Things were finally shipshape again. Not as shipshape as they had been, for all her arms and many other bits of the Alice were gone forever. From now on, Joe decided, he’d keep plenty of sea room. If the wind held and if all his other guesses were right, they’d clear the passage between Kithera and Andikithera just about daybreak. The next obstacle in their westward run would be Sicily.
The Alice galloped along on a broad reach under all plain sail. There had been disturbances and tidal waves throughout the day but it seemed to be over now. The Alice’s people were tired unto stumbling. They’d had several hours less sleep than Joe during the last forty-eight. Tired as he was, he was still the freshest man aboard.
“All hands sack out,” he said. “I’ll take the wheel.” He wanted to steer awhile—not to spare the crew so much as to be alone. When had he last had an interval of peace and quiet? He needed to think. This time travel-business: there was something odd—well, it was all odd, but there was something even more than peculiar about it. He had thought it was the lightning and the still. Thank Mahan the Romans had brought back all the parts for the still . . . But something else came into it.
Lightning, yes. And the copper coil inside the still’s vacuum chamber obviously had something to do with their jumps. But what else? If it were this simple every moonshiner would have ended up in the Roman army. There had to be another factor—something which existed only aboard the Alice. The standing rigging might serve as some sort of antenna. Even though not connected with the still, there might be some resonance between them.
Assuming time travel was an electromagnetic phenomenon—but how did he know there wasn’t some entirely new form of energy involved? To dislocate an object in time must require an enormous expenditure of energy. That was where the lightning came in. What else? Radio? Freedy hadn’t tinned it on since they’d skipped
back to an era without transmitters.
The moon rose and silhouetted the Alice. It was a clear, cloudless night and the horizon betrayed no hint of land. It would have been nice to check his reckoning with the fathometer and make sure they were in the deeps off northern Crete but he hadn’t the heart to wake Freedy.
Fathometer . . . By Mahan, that was it! Joe thought back carefully, reconstructing the events preceding each time jump. Each time the still had been set up; each time lightning had struck. But what had been the triggering factor? The fathometer! How, Joe wondered, could a sonic echo from its transducer heterodyne with whatever lightning was feeding through the still’s coil to produce the time travel effect? Whatever it was, it was beyond him. But it seemed to work. How could he reverse it?
If he set up the still and fathometer and waited for another lightning flash, according to past experience, he wouldn’t be home—he’d be another thousand years backward, about the time of the Trojan war. A hundred years before Solomon would get around to building his temple. Good God, what a chance . . . Joe sighed and pulled the Alice back on course. His first obligation was to his people and ship. If he ever got them home . . .
Gorson came on deck, yawning and stretching. “Still two-thirty degrees?” he asked.
Joe nodded. “If you spot any small islands, try to keep them astarboard.”
“By the way,” Gorson asked, “what became of those Roman swabbies you had aboard?”
“They died.”
“All at once?”
Joe explained briefly about the looped hawser, then went below before Gorson could ask any more questions. How had he been able to do such things? His one undergraduate adventure had been the time he’d organized an anti-vivisection campaign and the biologists had landed on him like a ton of tormented tomcats. He felt his way through the darkened galley, marvelling at his own bloodthirstiness, admitting to himself that it had taken no great effort of will to perform this auto da fé. He remembered the horror with which he’d watched Raquel carve her initials in the Viking woman. Oh well . . . He closed the door to his cubicle and turned on the light. After staring at the narrow, monastic bunk for a moment he sat on it and took off his shoes. “What the hell were you expecting?” he muttered, and flipped the light out.
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 14