Tania was best off on the lower starboard bunk. The deep foam padding cushioned her for the deceleration. The two front-seat passengers sprawled over the console and had a momentary picture of dark sea surging up the panoramic screen.
Water jetted in through the partly open port, impartially delivering an astringent douche to all hands. The shuttle bucked buoyantly onto its stern and then came down again with a slap and a second squirt. Swarbrick cursed and tore at the closing mechanism which had locked solid.
Wayne, who was the most disappointed member of the crew, nevertheless defended the craft.
“What do you expect after all this time? It’s marvelous that it moved at all.”
Swarbrick, less preoccupied by the engineer’s viewpoint, asked, “How do we move it now?”
Shultz, picking himself out of the bilges, volunteered the services of his handmaiden. “Get the sweeps out. The mind-bender can row us home.”
By this time the tender had settled to a short, pitching, uneasy motion. She had no way on her and was coming round broadside to the run of the waves. Water mark was well below the sills of the entrance ports, but lateral rolling would dip them under.
Swarbrick had been a reader of accounts of ancient exploration. He even remembered some of the terminology. He said, “If we let her broach to she’ll roll over. Keep her heading into the weather. Get some sail on her.”
Cheryl Bentham looked as though the man she had taken to her bosom had turned out to be an adder. She contributed, “What’s he on about?”
Some idea of it was clear enough to the other two men. Wayne reached up and hinged back an oval skylight. Placed forward of the center thwarts, it would be well sited to take a jury mast if one could be devised.
Shultz was sizing up tubular members of the detachable stretcher bunks. Properly braced they might take the strain. Two meters each. Four overlapped and clamped together would give a seven-meter spar. There was no shortage of thin unbreakable line and half an hour’s work saw the finished mast wedged, chocked, and braced by the taut standing rigging which Ancient Mariner Swarbrick prescribed.
He had also prescribed a square sail to be hauled up on a transverse spar. This kept the women occupied, though not sufficiently to keep their minds off the sea. The short choppy motion of the small craft was something entirely new to anybody’s experience and its physical effects were beginning to make themselves felt.
Wanda was first to go. She used the partly open port in a practical demonstration that every situation can be turned to advantage by a little thought. When she drew in her head, she was deathly pale. Lee Wayne stopped his shipwright’s chore and carried her to one of the remaining bunks.
A compulsive shiver was making even speech a difficulty. He wrapped one of the remaining blankets round her, tucking her in like a platinum-headed mummy. He said, “Try not to worry. Think about the fun of it all.”
Meanwhile the sail was ready to hoist. It was clewed up to a three-meter spar and lifted away on elementary tackle. The foot flapped wildly away and Swarbrick saved himself as he slid from the shuttle’s dolphin back by grabbing the hatch coaming.
His weight, hanging there, emphasized the list on the next roll and a fine stream of sea water sprayed in from the submerged sill on that side. Cheryl Bentham, who seemed likely to be the best sailor in the crew, was moving about as sure-footed as a cat and helped him back. Between them, they captured the sail and sheeted it home to two stubby projections which housed retractable aerial antennae.
It filled at once and began to draw. The tender stopped plowtering about and dipped its nose into the next wave. Swarbrick was remembering illustrations. “A rudder. We need some kind of steering oar.”
Two more tubular runners, with short cross members lashed at one end and filled in with a seat back, were shoved out from the rear starboard port. The shuttle came round and began to drive ahead.
The motion of the craft was completely changed. It had a kind of rhythm which could be anticipated. It was a purposeful thing.
Shultz said, “How do you go in a direction other than the one the wind is blowing in?”
Showing that she was not entirely a spent force, Tania answered with, “You don’t. You circumnavigate and come up to it from the other side.”
Now that they were down in it, the sea was immense. Travel over it at this slow rate was a matter for a long-term plan. It would be more comfortable to have the coast in view and Wayne found himself, in the unexpected role of party leader, thinking out a kind of strategy. He had marked up a small sketch map with a route and had charted their position in very rough terms by a line of crosses representing units of ten kilometers. They were somewhere between the tip of the island of Sardinia and the North African coast. He reckoned that a due west course would bring them to a landfall on that coast in something like three hundred kilometers.
The shuttle was driving ahead very well. It was conceivable that they would make a hundred kilometers a day. Three days then. After that it would be as well to land during the day and then sail on each night. There would be less risk of being picked up by searching craft.
Calling a conference in the loading bay meant that the steersman and the mummy were able to take part. Tania thoughtfully brought her sling bag and opened it on her knee. She was a trier. Wanda looked fixedly at the captain; for once the dictum, “Be loving and you will be happy,” seemed to be a nonstarter. She only gave a momentary flicker of life, when he got to the bit about landing during the day.
At the end he said, “Food is going to be a problem. We always knew it would. Gaul had an idea that after a week we should be living off the land—finding material to use in the converter for as long as we had it working. Well, it’s sea. Fish. There ought to be fish. In a small boat like this it should be easy. We can rig up some kind of cooking device with one of the thermal lances. Grilled fresh fish will be very nice.” The mummy’s eyes rolled mutely in agony and there was a small eruption as it burst its wrappings and made for the port.
Even while he had been talking, the sky had noticeably darkened. It was colder. From being a comfortable excursion car, the tender had turned into a cramped and bedraggled small boat. It looked like a slum. Broken stretcher rails, and odds and ends of material. Water cold and scummy swilled along the two side aisles with the motion. Six people were going to find ease and relaxation hard to come by.
Wayne added a further note. “Work in pairs so that there’s a fixed rota for rest.”
“Watch below,” said Swarbrick.
“Watch what below?”
“It’s the technical term for off duty, ‘Watch below.’”
“Thank you very much. You’re a help, Peter. Don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise. Four-hour spells. That means four on and eight off. Watch below—to quote the expert—can see to meals.”
There was no dissent. Shultz said, “I’ll take the spy as my partner. She’s a very clever, hard-working girl. We’ll take over now.”
That made the other divisions easy. Swarbrick and Cheryl Bentham. Wayne and the zombie. The watch below began some tidying up and roused out the packs of quilted clothing.
Due west the sky had broken into streaks and bars of the most amazing color. They were sailing into it. From the protected and confined enclave of Carthage, they were in the most extreme position of isolation and danger. It was as if they had prepared a ritual ship of death and were making their voyage in a medium outside previous experience or imagination. They were all silent, looking out through the ports.
Wanda had hauled herself up beside a stanchion in the loading bay. Wayne, with one palm braced against the roof and swaying with the motion, had an arm round her shoulders to support her. The red flare turned her platinum hair to pink and humanized her pale green pallor. She said, “I feel like death, but I’d rather be here than anywhere I’ve ever been before.”
He kissed her forehead. It was clammy cold, but he was prepared to take the rough with the smooth in these matters.
“You’re a great girl, Wanda. Hang on and ‘all manner of thing shall be well.’”
They watched the light until it faded. The boat plunged on in a moderate sea with a steady breeze in the right quarter. Wayne helped her back into the bottom bunk. Then he joined her. Holding her chocked against movement and stroking her hair with a free hand. In ten minutes she was asleep.
For the first night in many millennia there was human activity on the land-locked sea. They were reviving a tradition with a respectable lineage. Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples had moved this way from the eastern Mediterranean to found societies in Europe and its offshore islands; megalith builders; Windmill Hill people; Phoenician traders had dodged the coasts; galleys from an earlier Carthage; triremes, quinqueremes; Roman ships loaded with amphora; private Genoese; Crusaders with high stern castles; Venetian argosies; frigates of war in the perfection of form of the last days of sail; floating cities of the Iron Age and, declining down the size scale again, the arrow-swift, light, skimming craft of the space era.
The heirs of these ages of human endeavor were more daring and a great deal luckier than they knew to be afloat in their improvised longboat. At the end of their duty spell, Shultz and Tania dropped through the hatch and made their way aft to rouse out the relief. They had been kept on deck by the night sky.
With the steering oar lashed, it was possible to keep a course without further action. They had been standing either side of the mast, looking astern along the tumbled, phosphorescent wake and at the immense dark dome over all. Without the stars it would not have differed greatly from the darkened dome of the city, but the stars signposted its depth. They suffered the kind of agoraphobia that had affected space men, when the fact of utter loneliness was rammed home through all the comfortable wadding of normal illusion. The environment was alien; they were utterly insignificant in it. Instinctively they had moved closer together. Their differences were fractional when compared with each one’s difference from everything else.
Swarbrick and his partner rolled out of the only remaining bunk and briefly shone a light to get their bearings; it was obvious that, for the night watches at least, the bunks would be used as vacated. The two arrivals were silent, carrying with them the sobering memory of what it was like outside. Tania only hesitated momentarily as Shultz said, “You get in first and move over.” When he stretched out beside her, she had turned to face the bulkhead; but isolation in the narrow bunk was not possible. They had taken off the quilted zipper suits which had been a necessity on deck and their shoes.
He was aware of her slim, firm body against his own, from knees to shoulders. She made no movement when he ran his hand lightly along the arabesque from the full curve of the thigh to the long smooth side and the small fullness under the arm. It was more comfortable to lie with one arm crooked round her. There was no protest when his fingers found their way under her crossed arms and made a definitive cage for the semisphere of her breast.
It was comforting to both of them as a statement of human solidarity in the face of an uncaring universe. Only minutes separated them from sleep, but he carried into unconsciousness the responsive pressure of a firm nipple against the center of his palm. Whatever her mind said, her body was inclined to be a traitor.
On deck the night was making its mark on the new watch. With the sail drawing away in a pale, taut curve, there was only one place to be, and they were standing, like their predecessors, on either side of the mast. A brand-new phenomenon was adding to the atmosphere. Partly to be welcomed for the light it gave, partly an additional element of cold fear, a full white moon had come up out of the sea. It showed up a world where they had no place. Dark, hurrying water jagged and toothed to the horizon on every side. A sky blown clear of cloud with a hypnotic depth of stars.
After the warmth of the bunk, it was cold even with the quilted suits. But Cheryl was shivering with something other than the cold. “If you weren’t here, Peter, I should want to scream.”
“I’m not surprised. Have a scream if you like. The watch below will think I’m beating you.”
“Have we done the right thing?”
“Not a doubt. You won’t question it tomorrow when the sun comes out.”
While he was speaking, he was watching the run of the waves along the hull. It seemed that the tender was not rising to them as buoyantly as she had been. She was burying her nose more. The crests were passing only inches below the sills of the side ports.
He said, “Hang on to the mast. I’m going to check below. We might be carrying a load of sea.”
Cheryl said, “I’ll come with you. I’m not madly keen about this moonlight.”
Confirmation came as he dropped through the hatch. Water was over the level of the aisles and several centimeters deep on the main platform which carried the seats. It was a wonder that the run back and forward had not wakened the people in the bunks. When the stern was down, the flood was within inches of the level of the mattresses.
He slopped through to the bay. Light they would have to have, whether it gave away their position or not. Two torches wedged in the ribbing lit up a macabre set. Shoes and clothing swilled about in a heavy waterlogged way. It was an all-hands job.
Coming out of deep sleep to face the cold muddle of the crisis was the hardest thing they had yet had to do. Wayne instinctively looked for power and felt defeated when he knew that there was none which could brought to bear. Wanda was feeling better. She said, “Open the door and let it run out. Well, get it out anyway.”
It concentrated action on the primary issue. Shultz reluctantly untwined himself from his warm spy and stepped delicately into the cold pool. “Jars,” he said, “dig out some jars from that locker, Lee, and we’ll just get busy emptying it out. It can’t be coming in very fast or we wouldn’t be here. But I suggest a change of course. South. We need to be as near a coast as we can get.”
It was two hours before the whole visible deck area was clear of sea water. The motion of the boat and the nature of the improvised baling gear had made it a clumsy chore. All hands were wet, dirty, and cold. Water was slowly seeping in round the four edges of the inspection hatch which led to the power pack and the blower units. From the shape of the shuttle it was likely that the space under the decking was a meter deep. Some compartments below would be still full of air or they would be riding much lower in the water.
Wayne said, “It’s some exhaust valve, no doubt. When the engine was running it would exclude air automatically. Then at the shutdown, it must have jammed open. These things must have been intended to land on the sea. I couldn’t possibly sort it out under water. She’ll have to be beached.”
The new course was as much angled to the wind direction as Swarbrick could get it. Eventually it would bring them to the coast, but when was anybody’s guess.
Among the general stores was a bottled section intended for the first clambake at journey’s end. Frank Shultz believed there would never be a better time than now and roused out a carefully packed flask of full proof brandy, a tribute to the flexibility of the city’s food dispensary. He rattled the metal stanchions with his bailing jar and called for beakers. Using half the bottle, they had a worthwhile measure. Even the insistent welling out of water from the hatch could not dampen the new optimism it brought.
Swarbrick generously delved back into his storehouse of esoteric phrases and defined the process as “splicing the main brace.”
Tania poured a few drops onto the floor. In the new euphoria, Wanda had reverted to speaking to her on something like their old basis of friendship.
“What’s that all about?”
“A libation to propitiate Poseidon.”
“This will help?”
“Only subjectively. The praying mind hypnotizes itself into a concentration of will.”
“Oh, good.”
Almost as though by response, however, the eastern horizon began to split into faint bars of lemon yellow light. Dawn still advanced at fifteen degrees of longitude
in the hour.
Clothes were tumbled astern in a rope net to be rinsed and then were napped out in a falling wind. By midday they were dried out and Lee Wayne had perfected a small cooking unit using the energy pack of a thermal lance. One crewman could keep the water in check. They had regrouped at a lower level of comfort, but it was still a viable organization.
Speed was well down; there was only enough way on to keep her maneuverable. In spite of wind direction, there was a surface current running back towards Carthage. Cloud had banked up over the invisible land to the south.
Using a fine line and a hook made from a brooch reluctantly donated by Cheryl, Peter Swarbrick was trolling for anything Poseidon could spare. She had just told him for the fifth time that it was a waste of a rare folk object, when he was pulled forward by a bite. Swift reaction time kept him on deck. He made a belay round the projecting tongue of the hatch fastening and twisted the rope round his wrist in a flurry of movement. If the fish had been going the other way it would have been a useful tow.
Brute force and ignorance in this case won the day. The hook had bitten well home and the line would not break. He finally heaved in a massive hake.
Some medical training made Tania the people’s choice for general butchery and she justified it by doing a very neat piece of dissection.
It was another first time for them. Food in the city was mainly created from basic staples, fed into a dispenser and arranged to copy any one of the thousands of possible natural dishes. Now they were back as a food-gathering economy. The hunter himself took an absurd pride in it, as though he had invented a hand axe or some new way of chipping flints.
A measure of wine from a demijohn of ersatz Chianti completed the meal. It was their main supply; a five-gallon swan-necked bottle in a wicker basket. Wanda had been principally responsible for finding the container and filling it in small amounts.
Shultz said, “God knows when this will get filled up again. Vines don’t grow where we’re going. You’ve got the breakdown of it, I hope?”
Eight Against Utopia Page 10