G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

All’s fair in love and war, Joe tried to tell himself, but he couldn’t rid himself of the sickness within him. “It was not of my doing,” he said, looking at the aged imam.

The old man’s eyes glinted understanding. “You are almost as poor a captain as I am a priest,” he said. “But neither of us chose the role we play in God’s little farce.”

With silent thanks that none of the Alice’s men understood, Joe struggled to his feet and nearly collapsed again from the throbbing at the back of his head.

“Easy, sir,” Gorson was saying, so Joe allowed himself to be led below, wondering if his failure was as apparent to everyone else as it was to himself. Cookie handed him a cup. He drank and gasped.

“What is that?” he wheezed.

“You said it was all right to set up the still again,” Cookie said.

“Oh Jesus!” Joe moaned. What would Commander Cutlott have to say when they met again? He limped into his cubicle. Lying down didn’t help any. The Alice was his again—through no effort of his own. The same problems faced them—only more so.

The Azores were now two hundred miles farther upwind, and there were four more mouths to eat up their groceries and drink their water. Unfriendly mouths at that. For all he knew, one of those Moors was boring holes in the Alice’s bottom at this moment. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Dr. Battlement’s history department?

Abruptly he remembered the Alice was still heading east. Every hour on this course meant five hours beating back. After the yawl was hauled about, tacking southwest, he found Rose and asked how much oil was left.

“Maybe thirty-five hours,” the engineman said. Joe hoped they wouldn’t be caught again on a lee shore.

Then he remembered Howie. He’d have to congratulate him or something, if he’d calmed down. With a sudden grin he reflected that the god shouter was the only man in the navy who rated the Crusader’s Cross.

When Joe went below Gorson was drinking burnt rye in the galley, glaring at the imam and two Moors who accepted their fate with equanimity and squatted in the opposite corner of the galley.

“Chief,” Joe said, “do you think McGrath rates a medal?”

Gorson choked and sputtered over his rye, then sobered. “How’d you happen to pick him to spread the word?”

Joe didn’t have an answer ready. Lousy captain-not even a good liar. The imam and Dr. Krom were both looking at him. Joe was too young to realize that age did not automatically bring omniscience. Nor did it occur to him that the imam didn’t understand English and that Dr. Krom understood nothing.

“I didn’t pick him,” Joe said in a lame voice. “I was working a different angle. Had us set up for a laboratory and a little peace and quiet once we were safe in Granada. The mutiny was Howie’s show.”

Gorson whistled. “I guess he does rate a medal.”

McGrath stuck his head down the scuttle. “Squall brewing,” he said. “Might be lightning.”

“Cookie, hop to it with the still.”

“Agin?” Cookie asked despairingly.

“We ain’t gonna have any sails left if you keep steering into these squalls,” Gorson grumbled.

“Shorten sail and heave to,” Joe decided. “We’ll all go below this time.” He passed a hand over his face and discovered someone had taped the cut made by Howie’s knife.

Little Howie was very quiet. Halfway in shock, Joe guessed. He wondered if the little steersman remembered what he had done or realized that Joe had rabbit punched him. He looked carefully but the little man’s eyes were blank. Nor did he flinch when Joe swabbed his mangled ear with merthiolate.

Raquel smelled clean for a change. “For what is the red paint?” she finally asked.

“It heals wounds quicker.”

“Put some on his toe,” Raquel said.

The god shouter’s big toe was swollen. A blue patch radiated from two indentations in the nail. Like teeth marks, Joe thought. The skin was unbroken though, so he didn’t waste merthiolate.

“Here,” Raquel said, pulling her ankle length skirt up to expose her knee. Joe painted the odd shaped wound just above her kneecap. “Looks like another bite,” he said.

“It is.”

Guilbeau stuck his head down the scuttle. “Be heah any minute,” he said.

“Everything tied down topside?”

The Cajun nodded and swung down the ladder, dogging the hatch behind him. Joe glanced forward where Gorson and Cookie fussed over the still. Gorson nodded.

All hands crowded into the galley, waiting excitedly for what the lightning would bring. Not much, Joe feared—at least it hadn’t the last time. Then another horrible thought struck him.

He hadn’t been too sure of his position before this fracas with the Moors. Now, with all this driving east, how far was the African coast? Or the Spanish coast?

“Freedy,” he said, “how about firing up the fathometer?”

He went into his cubicle and looked at the pilot chart, wishing for the hundredth time that it were some kind of a chart with proper soundings. Even a hundred fathom curve would help.

There was a thrumming of rain. A sudden explosive blast knocked the Alice on her beam ends. Then the yawl righted itself and began facing up to the squall.

Cookie humped over the still while Gorson watched anxiously. “Ninety-two fathoms,” Freedy called. He had to yell to make himself heard over the squall.

Abruptly, the bottom dropped out of creation. Books and papers floated off the chart table and hung in mid-air, just as Joe himself floated off his chair. The Alice wasn’t even rolling—she was falling, straight down on an even keel. The fall ended abruptly with a tremendous crunching splash and myriad clatters as objects within the Alice once more sought their proper level.

Joe settled back into his chair with a spine-shattering thump. The binoculars whizzed past his nose and landed on his lap.

Out in the galley the imam and Dr. Krom sat upright and ashen in one corner. Gorson and Cookie were looking dazedly at the still, whose bell jar was miraculously intact. Freedy puckered his tiny mouth and god-damned something while banging his fist against the fathometer. “Ninety-two fathoms a minutes ago,” he grumbled. “Now the damned thing reads sixteen.”

“Switch ranges,” Joe suggested. He was trying to get the hatch open, but it wouldn’t budge. Water trickled around its edges. Abruptly he realized it was stuck from the weight of solid water on the other side. At least thirty seconds had passed since the smash, but the yawl was still under water!

He took a deep breath and reached for a cigarette.

He was out of them—damn it! He looked cautiously around to see if anyone else had noticed the dripping hatch. They were recovering from the jolt and beginning to wonder about the strange silence. There was neither sound nor feel of the sea. There was no doubt in Joe’s mind now; the Alice was making like a submarine!

Water would be leaking through the deck openings into chain locker and through the charlie noble, a steady trickle coming down the rudder post. If they were at any depth the valves in head and bilge pumps would rupture. No, he guessed, if they were that deep the hatch would be stove in.

He stared at it, afraid to call anybody else’s attention lest the whole crew panic. Water trickled slowly around the hatch. Water trickled down Joe’s forehead and a cold prickle oozed between his shoulder blades.

There was a sudden waterfall roar as the Alice broke the surface. Joe released a tremendous breath. He forced the hatch and clambered topside. In spite of everything the Alice’s close reefed sails were intact. Everything was there except the bloodstains on deck—and the dinghy.