G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

He thought fleetingly of his father—how hard the old man had worked, how easily the world had swindled him out of his meager earnings. And now the world had gotten away with his graduation present to his only son!

Joe squinted at the galley and decided it was time to stop seeing both sides of every question. He turned his attention to the six nautae who chattered to each other in some kind of Greek.

Jerking a peremptory thumb, he strode to the Alice’s bow. “Down this hole,” he growled. “Don’t pile the anchor line on deck, you miserable philosophers.” He poked a couple of feet through the deck eye and stood back. Nautae stared. “Get on the ball!” Joe roared, and drove his fist into the nearest nose.

Blood spouted and the sailor dropped into a crouch.

Joe stood erect, arms folded across his chest. The nauta knew a captain when he saw one. He shrugged and went to work.

The galley turned and lowered sail. Oars flashed raggedly as exhausted men took up the beat. The Alices people were still chained to them. What was he going to do?

They would have to wait until the stores were back aboard. Trying not to worry about Raquel, he went below.

The Romans had lifted the floorboard over the engine. Joe began studying the maze of pipes and valves, trying to figure out the short cuts Rose had taken when he shut off the galley stove. Why, he wondered, weren’t history teachers required to know more of practical mechanics?

They were nearly in the harbor now so he guessed he could safely open the valves which allowed sea water into the heat exchanger and out of the exhaust. How much fuel was left? The day tank glass showed half full, enough for two or three hours running. He opened the valve at its bottom and waited to see if anything around the engine started dripping. So far so good.

The lifter bar was up. Better leave it that way until the engine was spinning. What shape were the batteries in? Would it start?

He looked about the tiny compartment and breathed a silent prayer of thanks. The can of starting ether was still there, one of the few things the Romans hadn’t pilfered. Nothing was dripping so he decided to leave all valves open. Was everything right now? Water valve open, exhaust gate valve open, lifter bar up … The engine should roar into life as soon as he switched in the starting batteries and dropped the lifter. Forgetting anything?

Holy hell! Abruptly, he realized what was wrong.

They would have made good their escape this morning if line hadn’t fouled the screw. No wonder the galley hadn’t been able to tow the Alice! How many hundred feet of line draped in tangled festoons from the yawl’s screw?

A tuba blatted and he felt the Alice lose way. Moments later they tied to the pinnacle and the Alice was warped up alongside. The korax was lowered to her deck again and a working party started transferring the loot back.

Joe spent the next couple of hours frantically sorting and directing packers to deposit things somewhere near their proper place. It would take weeks to get things where they belonged. He suspected the Romans were holding out everything small enough to hide.

Eventually the double column ceased flowing back and forth across the korax. Joe snatched a mattress and a couple of blankets and stuffed them into his cubicle.

He was thinking guiltily about the Alice’s men still chained to oars.

Morning came and his problems were still there.

Nautae munched round loaves of bread. “Where’s mine?”

Joe asked. They started to give him the stupid treatment again but something about the young man’s stance made the mangle-nosed one reconsider. He produced Joe’s loaf from the folds of his himation. Joe wolfed down his bun—much harder than he’d expected—and wondered if one was all the others had eaten. Probably.

Roman efficiency would make a galley slave’s breakfast indivisible and as small as the difference between life and death.

He had to do something soon or he would be back pulling an oar without another chance. No use teaching Romans the fine points of sailing into the wind. The Roman captain expected a miracle that could be accomplished only with the diesel. He turned abruptly to the nautae and stopped. He wanted to ask if there was a diver among them but couldn’t remember the Greek. Come to think of it, he didn’t remember the word in Latin either. “Scitisne nature?” he finally asked.

They looked Greek and Greeks used to skindive for sponges. The man whose nose he’d flattened seemed to be some kind of a leader. “You,” Joe said. “Down to the bottom and bring me a rock.”

He was given the stupid act again. It worried Joe.

Maybe they really didn’t understand Latin. But sweet reasonableness was not characteristic to commanders of this period. Joe pushed the man overboard.

The nauta hit the water with arms and legs going like windmills. A second later he came up gasping. “Swim, damn it!” Joe growled. The nauta was putting on a good act. He choked and swallowed water before going down again. Several seconds passed this time before his head broke water and the Greek’s pasty complexion finally convinced Joe. Disgustedly, Joe tossed a line.

The Greek was too far gone to grab it.

“Everything happens to me,” he growled, and jumped in. A moment later he had the line secured around the unconscious nauta and those aboard dropped their stupid act long enough to pull them in.

It took several minutes of Holger-Nielsen pumping before the Greek finally coughed and vomited a half gallon of water along with his breakfast. “Go back aboard the galley,” Joe said when the Greek sat up.

“Stay there and tell the skipper to send me a—” Damn it, what was the word for diver? “—someone who hunted sponge.” The nauta nodded sickly and vomited once more before crossing the korax.

Joe waited but there was no sign of a replacement for the waterlogged nauta. “Damn them all,” he grunted and went to sorting the Alice’s stores. Somewhere there had been a diving outfit. The air tanks were long since empty but with the faceplate Joe might be able to hack away a few strands of nylon between breaths.

But where was the faceplate?

He found the tanks and regulator buried in a pile of gear dumped in the Alice’s cockpit, but the face mask was still gone.

The more Joe thought about it the madder he got.

He swung himself onto the korax and marched across, down the catwalk and aft to the quinquereme’s poopdeck. “Where’s the magister of this bucket?” he roared.

The oarmaster appeared and rasped something in Greek. Joe stiffened his arms to keep from killing the man who’d whipped him. “I defecate on your metaphysical tongue,” he said. “Can’t you speak Latin?”

“Somewhat better than you,” the oarmaster said sharply. “And what’s the idea of using up my men? You think they’re cheap?”

The Roman captain erupted from the stem castle.

“I’ll castrate the next man who awakens me!” he promised, then caught sight of Joe.

“Why doesn’t a Roman keep his word?” Joe grated.

“And what do you mean by that?”

“I mean everything small enough to hide is hidden.

If you want that ship to run, give it back!”

“What specifically do you want?”

“Everything. At the moment I’m looking for a faceplate.”

“A what?”

Joe tried to describe it. The Latin for glass didn’t mean the kind you could see through. What had they called mica? Lapis specularis! “If I don’t get it your thieving thugs have stolen a ship from you.”

The Roman captain sighed. The marines were Romans; if he couldn’t keep them in hand he might as well open an artery. “Fall in!” he trumpeted.

Seconds later he scowled at them. “One article of loot is missing. You will fall out and return with full packs. You will march single file around the capstan.