G. Edmondson: The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

She nodded and started to explain. The noise started again. Joe put his fingers to his lips. The noise didn’t seem to be on deck after all. He crept forward with a hand to his ear. It stopped again. A weakened chain plate could dismast them. But it sounded too far forward for that. Maybe the anchor chain was rattling in its chock.

“When I was eight,” Raquel continued, “my father took me to Santander.”

It started again. Joe waved an angry hand and crept forward. In the forecastle Cookie held a stick of firewood with a hole drilled through it. One end of the copper coil from their homemade still projected through the hole. While sheep crowded around observing interestedly, Gorson was trying to flare the tube with a mallet and marlinspike.

Relief gushed through Joe and culminated in a whirl-pool somewhere beneath his stomach. “Damn it!” he yelled. “Haven’t we got enough trouble without you playing junior scientist?” And what was the forecastle going to smell like by morning? But … the sheep couldn’t stay on deck in this weather.

“Well hell, sir,” Cookie began, “we was just gonna make some rye whiskey.”

“You’ll make salt water taffy if I catch you screwing around with that thing again. Where d’you think our next load of food’s coming from?” He turned and stamped out of the forecastle. Back in the galley he absently drew another cup of burnt rye. Raquel still sat at the table. “Now what were you saying?” he asked.

“Oh go listen to your noises!” she flared, and ran out of the galley.

Now what got into her? Joe wondered. And what’s gotten into me? He would never again have an opportunity to study this period. What would Dr. Battlement have given to question a citizen of medieval Spain firsthand? But then, she was a woman and therefore uneducated. A peasant too, which cubed her ignorance.

He could probably get more from a world almanac than he would ever extract from Raquel about her own neighborhood. It would be nice to cross paths with an educated man of this era, but there was little chance of that. Besides, he had to take the crew to the Azores and figure this mess out. “To hell with history,” he muttered, and went to bed.

Light glowed down the edge of his door and switches snapped as Freedy checked the fathometer. The lights went out again. Had he been too sharp with Gorson and Cookie? Who ever heard of such a crazy idea for a vacuum still anyhow? A coil inside a bell jar! The copper spiral had looked more like Dr. Frankenstein’s patented mummy resurrector.

Holy Appropriation! The more he thought about it the more possible it seemed. Dr. Krom must be right after all: the Alice was the first ship ever to disappear into time. She was the first ship ever to have a screwy coil set at just the proper angle, with just the proper radius and spacing inside a partially evacuated bell jar—and at just the moment when a bolt of lightning had come along to power the apparatus. Gorson and Cookie’s still was the time machine! He stopped fighting the idea and immediately slept.

It was still blowing like an Eskimo in Texas next morning. Cookie’s pancakes had a leaden texture so he guessed Dr. Krom had gotten his mill to grinding rye. One problem solved; now what about navigation?

Could he design an astrolabe? No, Joe decided. Maybe Columbus knew how to keep that silly little pendulum from swinging but Joe knew he’d never get an observation from the Alice’s plunging deck. How about a cross staff? The trick was to hold the long stick on your cheekbone and slide the T head until one end touched a star and the other was on the horizon. He sketched what he wanted on a paper towel and gave it to Abe Rose.

“What’s wrong with the sextant?” the engineman asked.

There I go again, Joe thought. He hadn’t expected Rose to know a cross staff from a ripsaw.

“I read a book once,” Rose added with a thin smile.

“But maybe I can fix the sextant.”

“What sextant?” Joe muttered. He went to look for Gorson and Cookie. They were in the galley, scowling into mugs of burnt rye. “Where’s Raquel?” Joe asked after a moment.

“Last I saw, she was looking for a quiet comer to slash her wrists.”

“Seasick?”

Gorson shook his head. “What’d you chew her out about?”

“Why, I never said a word—”

“That explains it,” Cookie said.

“About the still,” Joe said after a long pause. “Do you think you could get it working?”

Cookie’s face lit up. “Why shore,” he said. “Just give me a couple of days to sour the mash.”

“I mean the way you were doing it before.”

Cookie was hurt. “You don’t like rye whiskey?”

“If I survive this cruise I’ll never look a pumper-nickel in the face again.”

“We ain’t got any dried apples left,” Cookie protested.

“I’m not interested in booze,” Joe said patiently. “I just want it set up the way it was when lightning struck.”

“An idea?” Gorson asked.

“I’m not sure, but we’ll have to start somewhere.”

“Cain’t,” Cookie said.

Joe looked at him.

“The bell jar. Hit busted in a million pieces.”

Joe sighed and took a breath. “Rose!” he shouted.

The engineman popped his round face into the galley.

“It’s not quite ready,” he said.

“Forget the cross staff for a while. Do you have any of those 5 gallon bottles that Krom’s distilled water came in?”

Rose mouthed his cigar. “I think so,” he said.

“We need a bell jar.”

The engineman grunted and disappeared.

The Alice drove southward through eight more days of heavy weather before the still was assembled and ready. The water bottle’s corked neck had been dipped in paraffin. Its bottom, snapped off where Rose had flamed a gasoline soaked string, was not perfectly flat.

After abortive experiments with lengths of split rubber hose, Cookie had sealed it with a gasket of dough.

All hands stood by in anxious silence as Gorson humped over the vacuum pump. Joe glanced from him to Cookie. “You’re sure everything’s just the way it was the first time?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” Cookie said.

“What now?” Gorson asked.

“Keep everything ready and wait for lightning.”

Another day passed before Gorson called him from his bunk. “Line squall building up,” the chief said.

“Who’s gonna steer?”

“I am,” Joe said.

“You’re the only guy can navigate this bucket,” the bos’n protested.

“It’s my idea so I take the risks.”

“But you can’t just—”

“Like hell I can’t.” Joe went on deck. Villegas was steering and Guilbeau was on forward lookout. They tied him to the binnacle and went below. The scud of black cloud was barely two miles away. Forks of lightning danced in its depths. The wind died and in the abrupt calm Joe heard thunder. An immense anvil-headed cloud bore toward the Alice.

The calm was abruptly shattered by a tremendous gust which knocked the yawl on her beam ends. Wind wailed as the Alice, taking every third one over the bows, tore along with her cockpit filled. Joe took a deep breath and wondered when he would learn to fasten the top button of his oilskins. An avalanche of green water engulfed him and the yawl shuddered.

After a long moment he gulped air again and twisted his head, feeling for the wind. The Alice was three points off and still turning. He spun the wheel with a silent prayer to Mahan’s ghost.

Lightning struck.

The next thing Joe felt was Gorson forcing a vile taste into his mouth. The squall had passed and the Alice raced along under single reefed main. Here and there patches of blue peeped through the clouds. “Did we make it back to our own time?” Joe asked.