Стюарт Стерлинг - Collection of Stories

There was no sign of an uplifted arm or any bobbing head in that welter of water.

The ketch had vanished around the Point. Whoever was at the wheel of the Sea-Dog probably intended to run her inshore on the other side of the Island.

Vaugh came into the pilot house. “Myself, I wouldn’t care to handle her in this. Not for all she’s worth! She’s been taking in water so fast the last few days I’ve had to run the pump every couple hours.”

That wouldn’t make any difference, Steve told himself, if they planned to beach her right away.

The police boat plunged wildly as she roared around the Point. The searchlight poked through the spray. There was no vessel of the Sea-Dog’s size in there.

Then she must be heading for Hell Gate, the East River, the Bay — and open ocean! What lunatic thought a leaky auxiliary could run away from a police patrol in narrow waters like that? And why would anyone want to risk it? Was there something about the Sea-Dog that justified taking that kind of crazy gamble?

“Grab the wheel.” He waved to Vaugh. “Keep her a point west of Stepping Stones. We ought to catch her before she gets to Throgs Neck.” He took the Thompson from its rack, checked the load.

He snapped the switch on the two-way:

“Patrol Nine to W-N-P-D. Are you getting me? Over.” He flicked the lever.

A hollow voice from the speaker said:

“We get you, Vigilant. Are you checking on that floater? Take it.”

He told the dispatcher what he was doing. Gave his position. Requested Patrol Six at Randalls to cover Hell Gate if by any mishap Nine failed to overtake the Sea-Dog.

Vaugh peered across the storm-wracked waves. “Don’t see anything looks like a ketch.”

“You’re heading too close to Throgs. Hold her in the channel.” Koski bit off his words. How could a man hold master’s papers and not know how to steer a course! Or could there be a purpose to that sort of blundering?

He went up on the foredeck, manipulated the search beam from atop the pilot house.

The Sea-Dog would be running without lights. That was dangerous at any time, in ship traffic. It was worse, when whitecaps hid a white hull in the dark.

The faraway emerald eye of the Stepping Stones light flickered — once, twice. Twin masts of a ketch, coming between the lighthouse and the police boat, might cause such a flicker.

Koski knelt, indicated the course to Vaugh.

The Sea-Dog was a half mile ahead. Patrol Nine smashed through the tumbling crests at a good twenty knots. The auxiliary couldn’t be making more than five.

Koski clung to the handrail, moved along the waterway to the ventilator. “Come up on her starboard quarter, Cap. Slow her to the ketch’s speed. Hold her there while I find out what makes.”

The Sea-Dog’s masts swung in erratic pendulum sweeps as she buried her bow in the troughs.

The oilskin-wrapped figure crouching by the wheel might have been man, woman — or wrestler. It wasn’t Mulcahey.

The Vigilant drew alongside.

Koski shone the beam in the helmsman’s face. It was Buzz Cotlett. The engineer tried to shield his eyes but the ketch fell off, broadside to the sweep of the waves. Her masts swung down so the spreaders touched water.

Koski pounded on the pilot house roof. “Slow her, Cap! SLOW!!”

The Vigilant turned to follow the Sea-Dog’s bow. The police boat heeled, pitched. Her propeller came out of the water. The motor screeched.

Through the glass, Koski could see Vaugh, face screwed up, fumbling at the throttle. The lieutenant dived for the pilot house.

The patrol boat’s tail went down. She plunged ahead at top speed. Her nose crossed the Sea-Dog’s bow. The motor died.

Koski seized Vaugh’s shoulder, wrenched him around. “Get your flippers off that wheel.”

Vaugh swung his arm up clumsily, as if to steady himself. Koski drove a stiff right at his chin.

There was a violent crash. A splintering of wood. The Vigilant rolled over on her side. Koski was flung off his feet, hit the wheel with jarring force.

At the same instant he felt the paralyzing impact of the length of pipe Vaugh swung up and down — once — twice!

The gloom burst into flaming light that became so over-poweringly bright it was utter darkness.

The shock of cold water made Koski gasp. The gasp was choked before it barely began; he was drawing salt water into his lungs instead of air. He was under water!

He let his muscles go limp. No sense swimming while he couldn’t tell which way was up. The current tugged at him. Something smashed at his skull, stunned him. He opened his mouth, gulped.

A tremendous roaring in his ears. A motor exhaust! He had surfaced.

He’d come up beneath the police boat’s stern, banged his head against a propeller blade.

Vaugh had probably tossed him over-side from the pilot house; he’d drifted the length of the Vigilant’s hull under water!

He caught the patrol boat’s exhaust pipe; held on, though the metal scorched his fingers. The black transom above him, with the white letters: POLICE, New York City, lurched and twisted like a frantic porpoise. It would be tough to climb aboard over the stern even in calm weather. With the old girl rearing and plunging like this, it would be almost impossible.

A few yards off to port the Sea-Dog loomed up against the ghostly green of the Stepping Stone Light. Her Diesel was going cuddle-up, cuddle-up, but her clutch wasn’t in, she wasn’t moving. The ketch wallowed sluggishly in the tumbling waves. She seemed to be lower in the water than she’d been on the mooring.

Koski gauged his chances. He might not be able to muscle himself up over the Vigilant’s stern, with his water-soaked clothes, his knife-slashed arm, that crack on the skull from Vaugh’s piece of pipe. But if he was going to be able to do anything for Joe Mulcahey, he had to get back aboard.

He had one knee on the exhaust pipe, his fingertips touching a stem chock, was summoning all his reserve strength to pull himself up to the gunwale, when a voice only a couple of feet from his ear growled:

“She’ll go down in half an hour; it’ll look as if she simply sank in the storm.”

That was Cap Vaugh talking! He was still on the Vigilant!

Who was the treacherous old rat speaking to? Who had come aboard from the ketch, to join him?

Koski let himself down into the water again, listening. It would be committing suicide to climb into the cockpit with Vaugh waiting for him with that Thompson sub-machine-gun.

But he heard no more voices, nothing except the slam of the patrol boat’s motor hatch. Vaugh was getting set to drive the hundred and eighty horses, leaving the ketch, with anyone who might still be on her, to founder.

Maybe Joe Mulcahey wasn’t on board the Sea-Dog. Maybe the sarge wasn’t even alive now? But that was the only chance Koski could grasp at.

He toed off one boot, pulled loose his sock. He swam around to the Vigilant’s starboard side, dived beneath the hull.

He stayed under until he heard the starter whine, the motor explode into life.

He took two desperate strokes to get clear of the propeller before the clutch gears meshed. He nearly made it, but one of the spinning blades sliced at his right foot.

When he came to the surface, he was in a lather of foam from the police boat’s wake. His foot was numb; he couldn’t be sure how many toes he still had left but he wasn’t stopping to count them now.

The wash of Patrol Nine had swept him another five yards away from the Sea-Dog. The ketch was drifting downwind.