G. Edmondson: The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

Though he was given to daydreams of a wooden ship and iron men era, Ensign Joseph Rate was captain of a wooden ship in a predominantly atomic navy. And a sailing ship at that!

The Alice was an 89-foot yawl, engaged in very secret work which involved countermeasures against enemy submarines. Since the Alice could move without thumpings or engine noises, she was well suited for this kind of work. Ensign Joe Rate was less suited to be her skipper.

A year ago he had been one of Dr. Battlement’s Bright Young Men, youngest assistant professor in the history of Athosburg College.

At the moment he was arguing with Dr. Krom. “If we don’t start hauling your perverted Christmas tree out right now there won’t be time,” he said. “That squall isn’t going to wait.”

Dr. Krom sighed and passed a hand through his shock of white hair. “We could be through in another hour,” he protested. Joe showed no signs of weakening so the doctor played his trump card. “Finish these tests today and we’ll spend the next two weekends in San Diego.”

A glance at the bulletin board would have advised the old man that Ensign Rate and the Alice were already scheduled to spend tomorrow in port. Nothing could have given Joe more pleasure than not doing so.

Joe knew perfectly well Dr. Krom saw him as a navy-minded oaf. He reflected charitably that he didn’t regard the doctor as a mad scientist. Feebleminded, perhaps … “Will you absolve me if we have to cut it loose?” He spoke loud enough to be overheard and repeated come Board of Inquiry day.

“You won’t have to,” Dr. Krom said confidently. He was not a meteorologist.

“On thy head be it,” Joe muttered.

Twenty minutes later the yawl was plunging with that corkscrew motion peculiar to sailing hulls when stripped of the canvas which steadies them. Sailors fought to lash the flogging main boom someplace where Dr. Krom’s nightmare would not make the yawl list quite so soggily aport and perhaps work a trifle less doggedly at smashing the midships planking.

Krom’s Christmas Tree was a fantastic, hydrophone-studded pyramid which was grunted overboard with much winching and taking of the Lord’s Name in vain while accomplices in the dinghy exploded half-pound charges of TNT at varying distances. While the Christmas tree draped from the end of the main boom no sail could be set, and the Alice listed uncomfortably.

“Be careful,” Dr. Krom begged. “Two years’ appropriation went into that.”

“You’d better go below, sir,” Ensign Rate said.

“But maybe I can help.”

Joe choked back his I-told-you-so as he glanced at the skinny old man. “Let me handle it,” he said. “We pay taxes too.” Joe had learned a little about handling superannuated genius back in his History Department days—but not enough.

If getting an education had not exactly meant starving in a garret, still it had not been easy for Joe. Were it not for his phenomenal memory the hours he’d spent keeping body and soul together might have kept the young man from passing a single course. As it was, college had seemed to him a mere variation and expansion on themes he could still quote verbatim from sixth grade texts. But he had never learned how to outguess Dr. Battlement or his daughter. He wondered if he’d ever be able to handle Dr. Krom.

Ten hectic minutes passed before the Alice’s boom was secured. Under bare poles and with her diesel barely ticking over, the yawl crabbed into the swell. Krom’s monster hung from a hundred feet of cable and would be safe, providing the Alice maintained steerageway and didn’t drift into shallow water. The squall blew the tops from short, steep waves. A thunderhead drew lightning from a wavecrest a mile away. There hadn’t been time for oilskins and Joe was soaked. “You all right?” he asked. The helmsman nodded so he ducked below.

Gorson and Cookie were fumbling with something inside a bell jar as he passed through the galley. “Coffee, Skipper?” Cook asked. Joe shook his head. He knew he ought to say something about the still but they had been in the navy longer than he. The chief had a theory that their dried-apple brandy’s foul taste came from too much heat—hence their experiments with low temperature vacuum distillation.

He went into his cabin and rummaged for dry clothes.

In the galley Cookie humped energetically over a hand vacuum pump while Gorson studied the gleaming copper coil inside the bell jar.

At that moment lightning struck.

Most of the charge bled harmlessly down the Alice’s standing rigging to the waterline, but there was enough left over to stand everybody’s hair on end. Balls of St.

Emo’s fire danced merrily about the ship’s innards and the single echoless CRACK was felt rather than heard.

In the galley Cookie and Gorson stared at the melted coil which crumpled amid shards of the shattered bell jar. “Holy balls,” Gorson mumbled, “Hey Skipper, look!”

But Ensign Rate, clad only in non-regulation skivvy drawers, was clambering up the ladder.

Seaman Guilbeau stared glassily at the binnacle. The Alice was 90° off course. The ensign pushed him away and fought the struggling yawl back up. Schwartz and Rose, who had been tending the winch, sat up dazedly.

Dr. Krom’s bushy head emerged from the forward scuttle. “Stop worrying,” Joe called. “Your monster’s still with us.” He glanced upward to see how much of the Alice’s standing rigging had been cremated by the flash.

There were no loose stays dangling. No one was dead.

He reached for a cigarette and abruptly learned he was only drawers distant from naked.

The squall was dying now and Joe was troubled by a feeling that something was wrong. Then he knew what it was: the wind was blowing from the wrong direction.

Freedy came on deck. “Radio’s dead,” he reported.

“Both ways?”

The radioman shrugged. “Nothing coming in. Can’t tell if I’m getting out.”

The bos’n came on deck and took the wheel. Joe herded the dazed deck watch below. Cookie was sweeping up the shattered bell jar when he passed through the galley. “Any other damage?” the cook asked. Joe shook his head and went into his cabin to finish dressing.

“Mr. Rate—hey, Joe!” Gorson screamed. The skipper abandoned his coffee and scrambled on deck again.

The bos’n was staring at a ship off the port bow. It was also a wooden ship, with a single furled square sail.

Bearded faces stared from behind shields which lined the side. An armored and helmeted man braced himself at the dragon figurehead and chanted as oars flashed.

“A fine day to be shooting a movie,” Joe growled.

The actors shipped oars and drifted toward the Alice. “How’d you make out in the squall?” Joe shouted.

The man in the bow yelled back. Joe didn’t understand him. He yelled again. When Joe didn’t understand a second time the bright bearded man threw a spear. It landed with a thunk and stood thrilling in the after scuttle. “Hey, take it easy,” Joe yelled, “That’s navy property! What studio do you guys work for anyway?”

Abruptly, bearded and armored oarsmen stood behind the bulwark and more spears winged toward the Alice. Gorson’s mouth opened and he flattened himself in the foot-deep cockpit.

“I knew all actors were nuts,” Joe muttered. “But this’s carrying Stanislavsky too damn far!”

Helmeted men crowded into the Viking ship’s bow, brandishing half moon axes. The ships were only fifty feet apart now. Joe scrambled from behind the binnacle and rammed the throttle forward. The diesel roared and the Alice strained for her full ten knots. But something was wrong. She wasn’t answering her helm properly.