G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

Howie stopped suddenly, and stared around at the speculative, amused faces of his shipmates as they straggled up on deck.

Howie’s return was the last thing Joe had expected at that moment. Afterward he tried to analyze what went on inside his head at that moment. The young god shouter’s appearance neither surprised nor mystified him. It must have been the sudden fruition of long subconscious cerebration—a mushroom of knowledge which burst into awareness after days of patient, probing subterranean growth. In other words, intuition.

Sympathetic magic, Joe sneered, for his explanation was about as scientific as sticking pins in dolls or removing warts with separated bean halves. But, magic or not, Joe knew Howie had returned because he was part of the original ship’s company. Something—aura, field, mystique—held them together and strove to replace everything sooner or later back into its own proper time.

Joe thought of the teeming mass of time mongrels belowdecks with a little shiver of foreboding.

“Where are we?” Gorson asked.

“Search me,” Joe said. “At least we’re away from those f—” He stopped horrorstricken at the realization that he had been about to modify “Liburnians” with a present participle unbecoming an officer, gentleman, or professor of history. He’d have to watch himself if he ever hoped to lecture again.

Raquel came on deck. “Cuando estamos?” she asked.

Joe was amused that her precise Latin mind asked not where, but when they were. She stood upwind and her usual gamy stink was replaced by a fresh, unperfumed odor of healthy female. Joe remembered the oarmaster’s explanation of her former fetors and grinned.

Freedy’s tiny mouth formed a report. “Everything looks fine. Still’s in one piece. Nothing on the radio though; I swept every band.”

Joe sighed, then brightened. After all, it had taken two jumps to get here. Maybe something limited them to thousand-year jumps. If so, they must be roughly back in Raquel’s time. He looked around again. The sea rippled under a full sail breeze which drove them gently toward a bright, half-high sun. A slight ground swell hinted at shallow water but there was neither land nor breakers. He looked at the compass and tried to fix the time of day.

It didn’t look right. Reaching into the binnacle, he wiggled the gimbals. It wasn’t stuck. He spun the wheel and the compass card swung obligingly. He eased back on course and looked at the sun again. The weather was too balmy; he wasn’t in the Arctic. Where else could the sun swing so far north?

He groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Cookie asked.

Joe pointed at the compass.

“Ah don’t git it.”

Gorson crowded up and peered into the binnacle.

“I do,” he said sickly.

“Right,” Joe said, “Only Mahan knows where, but we’re in the southern hemisphere.”

Gorson sighed tiredly. “You guys furl those sails,” he said.

Joe nodded. “Run the jib and jigger up for steerageway.” He turned the wheel over to Guilbeau and went below.

Raquel stood in the doorway in his cubicle, silently watching as he pored over inadequate charts, looking for any salt water in the southern hemisphere which lay out of sight of land and shallow enough for a ground swell. The southern hemisphere was mostly water and they could be just about anywhere.

“You worry?” Raquel asked.

Joe turned to explain. “Do you know the world is round?” he asked.

“I have heard it said.”

“Do you believe it?”

She shrugged. “I am still not sure whether I believe in you.”

“Well, anyhow,” Joe said, “I’m not sure when we are.

Maybe in your own time. But we’re on the wrong side of the world.”

“What will you do?”

He shrugged. “Keep trying. What else can I do? I’m sorry I couldn’t take you home.”

“Home?”

“Your own time. Wouldn’t you like to see your parents again? Didn’t you have a young man before you left home?”

It was Raquel’s turn to sigh. “So long …” she said.

“I had no thought of ever seeing home again. Perhaps they still live.”

“The young man?”

“Man? Ah; I had no novio. Once a boy stood below my window. My father investigated. His family was not suitable so the boy was told not to walk down our street again.”

Cook produced rye bread and dried goat stew. All hands crowded in the galley. “So now what?” Dr. Krom asked.

Joe explained his theorizing about thousand-year jumps.

“What proof have you?” the old man asked.

“As much that I’m right as you have that I’m wrong,” Joe said, and silently damned the quibbling old man.

Holy Neptune but he was tired! Would he ever get enough sleep?

Abe Rose choked down a lump of stringy meat and cleared his throat. Behind the black whiskers his mouth was slightly lopsided, as though still clamped around an imaginary cigar. “Why not jump again and see if we can pick up something oil the radio?” he asked.

Joe was tempted to turn in but remembered what a night’s sleep had cost him the last time. “Square away the galley and set up the still,” he said.

He went on deck again. The ground swell was unchanged and there was still no land. The sun was slightly lower and farther left so he guessed it was midafter-noon. Time jumps were getting his stomach as confused as jet travel.

Raquel appeared and they faced each other across the lashed wheel. “You are tired,” she said.

Joe agreed. “That’s the principal recompense for being captain.”

“You did not wish to take the other girls,” she pursued.

“No,” Joe agreed.

“Why did you take me?”

“Why uh… Well, you saved my life.”

“Is that all?”

“What can you expect?” Joe asked. “Admittedly, love at first sight is a great time saver, but I’d known you all of five minutes when you came aboard.” He paused.

This wasn’t coming out the way he meant it to. How could he explain this gradual growth of confidence—his increasing ease in her simple, often pointless conversation? “After a time …” be began. What he wanted to say was how nice it was to be around someone who was quiet when he needed silence—someone who made no demands nor expected him to solve all problems.

He glanced up and she was gone. “Damn it!” If she had just stuck around another moment he felt sure he would have found a way to say it. Oh well, some day he’d have more time.

The horizon was clear, the sea calm. At last they would be making a jump under less than frantic circumstances. This time Joe would be below, watching every dial and meter. Sooner or later he would control this phenomenon.

Dishes were cleared away. Inside its makeshift bell jar the still sat amidships of the galley table. The Alice’s crew and Ma Trimble crowded into an attentive circle.

The blondes regarded the prospect of another jump with monumental apathy. They scattered about the yawl, fixing each others’ hair, mending clothing. Up by the chain locker one blonde unraveled a tattered jersey. Joe wondered what she intended with the yarn.

Not socks for sure; the Mediterraneans hadn’t invented them yet.

“All set,” Gorson reported. He humped over the vacuum pump. Cookie regarded the bell jar and slapped a dough patch over one point where the seal threatened to rupture.

Joe felt his stomach tighten. Would they materialize in the middle of a desert? Or a hundred feet above or below it? “You may fire when ready,” he said.

Freedy flipped the switch. Nothing happened. They waited for tubes to warm up. Still nothing. Freedy flipped the gang switch up to middle range and began cranking up the pot. Abruptly, vision shimmered for a microsecond and Joe felt that now-familiar twisting, as if gravity had gone off for half a heartbeat.