LITTLE PEOPLE!

by Gardner Dozois

  We groped our way to the alleyway door and into the mid-ship house. Light was streaming from the skipper’s room, and as we approached the door we heard the rare, drawn-out chuckle. I’ll never forget the shock of seeing this best of captains, a man who had never dented a bilge plate in his life, sprawled back in his tilted swivel chair with his feet on a tilted desk, chuckling into a tilted bottle of Scotch.

  Toole squawked: “Cap’n! We’ve struck something!”

  The skipper giggled. He had a terrific load on. I leaned past Toole and shook him. “Skipper! We’ve struck!”

  He looked at us blearily. “Heh. Siddown, boyss, de trip iss over. Ve have not struck. Ve is just finished. Heh!”

  “Clear the boats,” Toole said aside to me.

  The skipper heard him. “Vait!” he said furiously, and lurched to his feet. “I am still in command here! Don’t lower no boats. Ve are not in distress, y’u hear? Heh! Ve are loading. I know all about it. Go an’ see for y’uselfs, so y’u don’t belief me!”

  Toole stared at the captain for a moment. I stood by. If Toole decided the Old Man was nuts, he’d take over. If not, then the squarehead was still running the show. Suddenly Toole leaned over and cut the master switch on the alarm system. It had a separate little battery circuit of its own, and was the only thing electrical aboard that still operated. The silence was deafening as the alarm bells throughout the ship stilled, and we could hear a bumble of voices from back aft as the crew milled about. They were a steady bunch; there would be no panic. Toole beckoned me out of the room and left. Once we were outside he said: “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s—I dunno, Toole. He’s a seaman first and a human being afterward. If he says we’re not in distress, it’s likely true. Course, he’s drunk.”

  Toole snorted. “He thinks better when he’s drunk. Come on, let’s look around.”

  We dropped down the ladder. The ship lay still. She was careened, probably with her starboard side under water and the starboard rail awash.

  Toole said: “Let’s go to port. Maybe we can see what it is we’ve hit.”

  We had to go on all fours to get up there, so steeply was the deck canted. It did us no good; there was nothing to be seen anywhere but fog.

  Toole clung with one arm to the chain rail and puffed, “Can’t see a thing down there, can you?”

  I hung over the edge. “Can’t even see the water line.”

  “Let’s go down to the starboard side. She must be awash there.”

  She was. I stepped ankle-deep into sea water before I knew where I was. The sea was dead calm, and the fog was a solid thing; and something was holding the ship heeled over. I tell you, it was a nasty feeling. If only we knew what was under us! And then—we saw the ship being loaded.

  ###

  May I never see another sight like that one. As if to tease and torture us, the fog swirled silently away from the ship’s side, leaving a little dim island of visibility for us to peer into. We could see fifty or sixty feet of deck, and the chain rails fore and aft dipping into the sea at our feet; and we could see a round patch of still water with its edges wetting the curtain of fog. And on that patch of water were footprints. We both saw them at the same time and froze, speechless. Coming toward us over the water they were—dozens of them. The water was like a resilient, glossy sheet of paving, and the impression of dozens—hundreds—of feet ran across it to the ship. But there was nothing making the footprints. Just—footprints. Oh, my God!

  There were big splay ones and big slow ones, and little swift ones and plodding ones. Once something long and invisible crept with many legs up to the ship, and once little pointed feet, high-arched, tripped soundlessly over the chains and something fell sprawling a yard from where we stood. There was no splash, but just the indentation in the water of a tiny, perfect body that rolled and squirmed back onto its feet and ran over to the deck and disappeared. I suddenly felt that I was in the midst of a milling crowd of—of people. Nothing touched me, and yet, all around me the pressure of scores of beings who jostled each other and pushed and shoved, in their eagerness to get aboard. It was ghastly. There was no menace in it, nor anything to fear except that here was a thing that could not be understood.

  The fog closed down suddenly, and for a long moment we stood there, feeling the pressure of that mob of “passengers” and then I reached out and found the mate’s arm and tugged him toward the mid-ship house. We crawled up the canted ladder and stood by the glow from the lamp in the captain’s room.

  “It’s a lot of goddam nonsense,” I said weakly.

  “Hm-m-m.”

  I didn’t know whether or not Toole agreed with me.

  The skipper’s voice came loosely from the porthole. “Heh! I cert’n’y t’ank y’u for de Scotch, I du. Vat a deal, vat a deal!” And he burst out into a horrible sound that might have been laughter, in his cracked and grating voice. I stared in. He was nodding and grinning at the forward bulkhead, toasting it with a pony of fire water.

  “He’s seen’ things,” said the mate abruptly.

  “Maybe all the rest of us are blind,” I said; and the mate’s dazed expression made me wonder, too, why I had said that. Without another word he went above to take over the bridge, while I went aft to quiet the crew.

  ###

  We lay there for fourteen hours, and all the while that invisible invasion continued. There was nothing any of us could do. And crazy things began happening. Any one of them might have happened to any of us once in a while, but—well, judge for yourself, now.

  When I came on watch that night there was nothing to do but stand by, since we were hove to, and I set Johnny to polishing brass. He got his polish and his rag and got to work. I mooned at the fog from the wheelhouse window, and in about ten minutes I heard Johnny cuss and throw a rag and can over the side.

  “What gives, Johnny?”

  “Ain’t no use doin’ this job. Must be the fog.” He pointed to the binnacle cover. “The tarnish smells the polish and fades off all around me rag. On’y where I rub it comes in stronger.”

  It was true. All the places he had rubbed were black-green, and around those spots the battered brass gleamed brilliantly! I told John to go have himself a cup of coffee and settled down on the stool to smoke.

  No cigarettes in the right pocket of my dungarees. None in the left. I knew I’d put a pack there.

  “Damn!” I muttered. Now where the—what was I looking for? Cigarettes? But I had a pack of cigarettes in my hand! Was I getting old or something? I tried to shrug it off. I must have had them there all the time, only—well, things like that don’t happen to me! I’m not absent-minded. I pulled out a smoke and stuck it in my chops, fumbling for a match. Now where—I did some more cussing. No matches. What good is a fag to a guy without a—I gagged suddenly on too much smoke. Why was I looking for a match? My cigarette was lit!

  When a sailor starts to get the jitters he usually begins to think about the girl he left behind him. It was just my luck to be tied up with one I didn’t want to think about. I simply went into a daze while I finished that haunted cigarette. After a while Johnny came back carrying a cup of coffee for me.

  Now I like my coffee black. Wet a spoon in it and dip it in the sugar barrel, and that’s enough sugar for me. Johnny handed me the cup, and I took the saucer off the rim. The coffee was creamed—on a ship that means evaporated milk—and sweet as a soft caramel.

  “Damn it, Johnny, you know how I like my coffee. What’s the idea of this?”

  “What?”

  I showed him. When he saw the pale liquid he recoiled as if there had been a snake curled up on the saucer instead of a cup. “S’help me, third, I didn’t put a drop of milk in that cup! Nor sugar, neither!”

  I growled and threw cup and saucer over the side. I couldn’t say anything to Johnny. I knew he was telling the truth. Oh, well, maybe there happened to be some milk and sugar in the cup he used and he didn’t notice it. It was a weak sort of excuse, but I cl
ung to it.

  At six bells the second heaved himself up the ladder. “O.K., you’re relieved.” he said.

  “At eleven o’clock? What’s the idea?”

  “Aw—” His huge bulk pulsed as he panted, and he was sweating. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. Shove off.”

  “I’ll be damned! First time I ever heard of you rolling out before you were called, Harry. What’s the matter—this canting too much for you?” The ship still lay over at about 47°.

  “Naw. I c’n sleep through twice that. It was—Oh, go below, third.”

  “O.K. Course ’n’ speed the same—zero-zero. The wind is on the weather side, an’ we’re runnin’ between the anchors. The bow is dead ahead and the smokestack is aft. The temperature—”

  “Dry up, will ya?”

  “The temperature is mighty hot around the second mate. What’s eatin’ you, Harry?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said suddenly very softly, so Johnny couldn’t hear. “It was my bunk. It was full of spikes. I could feel ’em, but I couldn’t see ’em. I’ve got the blue willies, third.” He mopped his expansive face.

  I slapped him on the back and went aft laughing. I was sorry I had laughed. When I turned in to my bunk it was full of cold, wet worms that crept and crawled and sent me mooning and shuddering to the deck, to roll up in the carpet for some shut-eye. No, I couldn’t see them.

  We left there—wherever “there” was—about fourteen hours after we struck. What it was that had stopped the ship we never did find out. We took soundings all around and got nothing but deep water. Whatever it was that the ship was lying on was directly underneath the turn of the bilge, so that no sounding lead could strike it. After the first surprise of it we almost got used to it—it and the fog, thick as banked snow, that covered everything. And all the while the “loading” went on. When it began, that invisible crowding centered around the section of the starboard well deck that was awash. But in a few hours it spread to every part of the ship. Everywhere you went you saw nothing and you actually felt nothing; and yet there was an increasing sense of being crowded—jostled.

  It happened at breakfast, 7:20. The skipper was there, and the mate, though he should have been on the bridge. Harry rolled in, too, three hundred pounds of fretful wanness. I gathered that there were still spikes in his bunk. Being second mate, his watch was the twelve to four, and breakfast was generally something he did without.

  The captain lolled back in his chair, leaning against the canted deck and grinning. It made me sore. I refused the bottle he shoved at me and ordered my eggs from the messman.

  “Na, don’t be dat vay,” said the skipper. “Everyt’ing is under control. Ve is all going to get a bonus, and nobody is going to get hurt.”

  “I don’t savvy you, Cap’n,” I said brusquely. “Here we are high and dry in the middle of an African pea-souper, with everything aboard gone haywire, and you’re tickled to death. If you know what’s going on, you ought to tip us off.”

  The mate said, “He’s got something there, Captain. I want to put a boat over the side, at least, and have a look at what it is that’s grounded us. I told you that last night, and you wouldn’t let a boat leave the chocks. What’s the idea—don’t you want to know?”

  The captain dipped a piece of sea bread into the remains of four eggs on his plate. “Look, boyss, didn’t I pull y’u out of a lot of spots before dis? Did I ever let y’u down yet? Heh. Veil, I von’t now.”

  The mate looked exasperated. “O.K. O.K., but this calls for a little more than seamanship, Skipper.”

  “Not from y’u it don’t,” flared the captain. “I know vat goes on, but if I told y’u, y’u wouldn’t believe it. Y’u’ll make out all right.”

  I decided to take matters into my own hands. “Toole, he’s got some silly idea that the ship is out of our hands. Told me the other night. He’s seeing ghosts. He says we were surrounded by ‘vimmin mit tails on.’ ”

  The mate cocked an eyebrow at the Old Man. The captain lurched to his feet.

  “Veil, it’s true! An’ I bat y’u y’ur trip’s pay against mine dat I gat one for myself! Ve is taking on a cargo of—” He swallowed noisily and put his face so close to mine that our foreheads nearly touched. “Vare de hell y’u t’ink I got dis viskey?” he bellowed. “Somebody has chartered dis ship, and ve’ll get paid. Vot y’u care who it is? Y’u never worried before!” He stamped out.

  Harry laughed hollowly, his four pale chins bobbing. “I guess that tells you off, third.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said hotly. “I trust the Old Man as much as anyone, but I’m not going to take much more of this.”

  “Take it easy, man,” soothed Harry. He reached for the canned milk. “A lot of this is fog and imagination. Until the skipper does something endangering crew, ship or cargo we’ve got no kick.”

  “What do you call staying in his room when the ship rams something?”

  “He seems to know it’s all right. Let it go, mate. We’re O.K., so far. When the fog clears, everything will be jake. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.” He stared at Toole and upended the milk can over his cup.

  Ink came out.

  I clutched the edge of the slanting table and looked away and back again. It was true enough—black ink came out of a milk can I’d seen the messman open three minutes before. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. Neither Toole nor Harry noticed it. Harry put the can on the table and it slid down toward Toole.

  “All right,” said Toole, “we’ll keep our traps shut until the skipper pulls something really phony. But I happen to know we have a cargo consigned to a Mediterranean port; and when and if we get off this sandbank, or whatever it is, I’m going to see to it that it’s delivered. A charter is a charter.” He picked up the can and poured.

  Blood came out.

  It drove me absolutely screwball. He wouldn’t watch what he was doing! Harry was working on a pile of scrambled eggs, and the mate was looking at me and my stomach was missing beats. I muttered something and went up to the bridge. Every time there was some rational explanation developing, something like that had to happen. Know why I couldn’t pipe up about what I had seen? Because after the ink and the blood hit their coffee it was cream! You don’t go telling people that you’re bats!

  It was ten minutes to eight, but as usual, Johnny Weiss was early. He was a darn good quartermaster—one of the best I ever sailed with. A very steady guy, but I didn’t go for the blind trust he expressed in the skipper. That was all right to a certain extent, but now—

  “Anything you want done?” he asked me.

  “No, Johnny, stand by. Johnny—what would you do if the officers decided the captain was nuts and put him in irons?”

  “I’d borry one of the Old Man’s guns an’ shoot the irons off him,” said my quartermaster laconically. “An’ then I’d stand over him an’ take his orders.”

  Johnny was a keynote in the crew. We were asking for real trouble if we tried anything. Ah, it was no use. All we could do was to wait for developments.

  At eight bells on the button we floated again, and the lurch of it threw every man jack off his feet. With a splash and a muffled scraping, the Dawnlight settled deeply from under our feet, righted herself, rolled far over to the other side, and then gradually steadied. After I got up off my back I rang a “Stand-by” on the engine-room telegraph, whistled down the skipper’s speaking tube, and motioned Johnny behind the wheel. He got up on the wheel mat as if we were leaving the dock in a seaport. Not a quiver! Old Johnny was one in a million.

  I answered the engine-room. “All steamed up and ready to go down here!” said the third engineer’s voice. “And I think we’ll have that generator running in another twenty minutes!”

  “Good stuff!” I said, and whistled for the skipper. He must have felt that mighty lurch. I couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t on the bridge.

  He answered sleepily: “Veil?”

  “We’re afloat,” I spl
uttered.

  “So?”

  “What you want to do—lay here? Or are we going someplace?”

  There was silence for a long time—so long that I called and asked him if he was still on the other end of the tube.

  “I vas getting my orders,” he said. “Yes, ve go. Full speed ahead.”

  “What course?”

  “How should I know? I’m through now, third. You’ll get y’ur orders.”

  “From Toole?”

  “No!”

  “Hey, if you ain’t captain, who is?”

  “I vouldn’t know about dat. Full speed ahead!” The plug on his end of the tube clicked into place and I turned toward Johnny, uncertain what to do.

  “He said full ahead, didn’t he?” asked Johnny quietly.

  “Yeah but—”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” he said with just a trace of sarcasm, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over from “Stand-by” to “Full ahead.”

  I put out my hand, and then shrugged and stuck it in my pocket. I’d tell Toole about it when I came off watch. “As you go,” I said, not looking at the compass.

  “As she goes, sir,” said Johnny, and began to steer as the shudder of the engines pounded through the ship.

  The mate came up with Harry at noon, and we had a little confab. Toole was rubbing his hands and visibly expanding under the warmth of the bright sun, which had shone since three bells with a fierce brilliance, as if it wanted to make up for our three days of fog. “How’s she go?” he asked me.

  “Due west,” I said meaningfully.

  “What? And we have a cargo for the Mediterranean?”

  “I only work here,” I said. “Skipper’s orders.”

  Harry shrugged. “Then west it is, that’s all I say,” he grunted.

  “Do you want to get paid this trip?” snapped Toole. He picked up the slip on which I had written the ship’s position, which I’d worked out as soon as I could after the sun came out. “We’re due south of the Madeiras and heading home,” he went on. “How do you think those arms shippers are going to like our returning with their cargo? This is the payoff.”