The Ship That Sailed The Time Stream Part 26

sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d dialect which develops whenever stran- gers are thrown together.

He had finally succeeded in thoroughly and irre- mediably botching things up. And, he reflected, it was all his own fault. Why couldn't he have gotten out of here last night? Under jib and jigger the Alice would have been twenty miles away by now and with daylight he could have set the main.

Too tired! This was what happened to captains who could afford to get tired. He took a deep breath and tried to drive the mind sapping despair out of his body. What was he going to do? Mutiny?

That, he suspected, he would not do. He climbed on the narrow bench, standing as straight as the chain would permit. The imam was five oars ahead of him.

Gorson was chained to an oar on the portside. The rest of the Alice's men were scattered throughout the lower bank.

What had happened to Ma Trimble and her girls?

They would switch allegiance at a moment's notice anyway-why worry? He wondered how he would stand up under the strain of rowing. How would he take the oarmaster's lash?

He looked aft again. Gorson was sunk in apathy, his head resting on his oar. Raquel forced her way to the top of his unwilling mind. Ma Trimble's blondes were of this era and capable of looking after themselves.

But Raquel- From where he sat amids.h.i.+ps no female was visible. He squinted through the thole hole down at the Alice.

Roman nautae were fumbling helplessly with her run- ning rigging. They had the jigger raised after a fas.h.i.+on, though its luff puckered and bagged like Maggie's drawers. Great snarls and Irish pennants festooned the mainmast. They had not fathomed the mysteries of the winch ratchet, nor had they managed to raise jib or mains'l.

Someone shouted and they cast off the Alice's stem line. A moment later they bunched in the bow and, ignoring the electric windla.s.s, began hauling the Alice hand over hand toward the pinnacle which moored her bow. Not understanding the why of the chain locker's deck eye, they piled line in a great tangled heap atop the winch.

An expectant rustle ran through the oar benches. Bet- ter pay close attention, Joe decided. There was a double blat-snort from an offkey trombone. The anchor man on each oar began unlas.h.i.+ng the oar behind him. Joe hurried with the las.h.i.+ngs but he was too late.

CRACK! The noise numbed his eardrums like a pistol in a small room. He felt his s.h.i.+rt rip between his shoul- der blades. That mad corner of his mind admired the skill of an oarmaster who could create such a devastat- ing effect without harming his animals. He was still fumbling with the strange knots when the CRACK came again. It ploughed an inch-long furrow across the point of his shoulder blade.

He finally slipped the las.h.i.+ng. There was another flat blat and he stumbled hastily backward to avoid being crushed between his own oar and the bench. Someone began pounding a drum. After a couple of strokes Joe began to get the feel of the rise, one step forward, fall back on the bench.

The oar was clumsy as a telegraph pole. Most of its power came from inboard where the unchained oars- men guided the stroke, walking three steps fore and aft.

He barked a single unintelligible word at Joe. On the next stroke Joe pushed harder.

Another discordant blat. They stopped, backing water with one reverse stroke. Joe pushed the wrong way, working against the four men.

CRACK! This time the lash bit deeper.

They rested, awaiting the next signal, and Joe glanced covertly at the man who held the whip, studying the

graying, s.h.a.ggy haircut, the jutting chin with its week- old growth of black beard, engraving this face in his memory. What had become of his detached historian's viewpoint? That ignorant clod was merely doing his job. Joe shrugged. The welts began to throb. His scholar- ly detachment departed, along with several of his boyish illusions.

The trumpet blatted and the drum began thumping again. Rise, push forward, fall back again-this time very slowly. There was a slight jerk and he guessed the hawser between the quinquereme and the Alice had gone taut. The drum thrumped more rapidly.

They towed the Alice out of the horseshoe harbor and around the island. Joe burst into torrents of sweat- ing. Once around the island, the full force of the wind hit them. They headed northwest, dead into it.

Even amid his distractions Joe found an instant to marvel over the change. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler outside the harbor. He was still sweating but the wind kept his clothes dry. What, he wondered, would happen if they suddenly stopped rowing? Prob- ably pneumonia. But the galley showed no signs of stopping so he continued his rise, push forward, fall back on rubbery legs, wondering if the other oarsmen- Slaves was the word; he was a slave. Were the others as tired as he or would he harden to this Me and be- come an unthinking rising, pus.h.i.+ng, falling animal- another piston in the galley's enormous inefficient en- gine?

Though he had not noticed it, the drum had been slowing down. The galley alone was a rough go into the wind, and the Alice's external ballast and deep draft did not make for easy towing. They were still in sight of the island when, after four hours of suggest- ing and hinting, the quartermaster finally got this bit of information into the landlocked skull of his captain.

Came a final despairing blat and oarsmen abruptly

collapsed, leaving uns.h.i.+pped oars to dangle. Before Joe had time to worry about pneumonia he was uncon- scious.

Some one had him by the hair. He opened bleary eyes and recognized the man with the whip. Must remember that face. Someone was standing on the catwalk above them. It was the man who'd questioned him from be- hind a deskful of papers.

"Can you make that s.h.i.+p go?" the Roman asked.

Joe stared, still half asleep.

"Don't waste my time," the Roman snapped. "You had that s.h.i.+p moving without sails in the harbor. Can you do it again?"

Joe stared, trying to focus on the Roman. Why did the showoff have to wear polished armor at sea, aboard his own s.h.i.+p?

"Useless!" the Roman snapped to his quartermaster.

"Back to the island and beach it. Burn it and we can at least get something for the iron."

Joe snapped out of his lethargy. They were going to destroy his only link with the past. Or was it the future?

"No!" he shouted. "No, I can sail it It's too valuable to burn. I can make you rich!"

The Roman gave him a contemptuous glance and strode off down the catwalk. Joe collapsed across the oar again.

Without the Alice's vacuum pump and still there was no hope of seeing the Twentieth Century again. Nor would his historian fraction ever see more of the ancient world than the inside of some prison where slaves were quartered during the winter months when navigation was dangerous. He was slipping off into dreamless, hopeless sleep when someone shook him again.

To h.e.l.l with it! They'll wear me out and throw me overboard. Let them beat me to death right now. But the shaking wouldn't stop. There were clanks and ham-

merings. He opened his eyes in time to see a chiseled rivet head pop off the single manacle.

"Come on," the armorer was saying in atrocious Greek, "don't keep the kybernetes waiting."

Walking down the catwalk, Joe suddenly realized what Christians meant when they spoke of being born again. He tried to attract 'Gorson's attention but the chief lay crumpled over his oar.

The Roman captain still sat in his folding chair.

"We are not magicians," Joe began, "but our arts re- quire years of training. I'll need some of my men."

"How many kinds of fool do you take me for?" the Roman snapped. "You'll teach Roman sailors or go back to your oar."

Joe's confidence evaporated. He glanced astern at the Alice and the island. They had drifted back toward it and were less than four miles away now. "I don't know how much damage you've done," he said. "It may take time to get things working right. Can you set sail and tow us away before we ground?"

The captain shot a questioning glance at his oar- master, who sputtered a rapid sentence in Greek. The captain nodded. "We'll go back into the harbor again.

Will that suit you?"

"Well enough," Joe agreed.

"And while you're being towed back you can give my men their first lesson in your devious barbarian arts. I'm going aboard too and see what your bucket looks like."

Another beautiful plan shot to h.e.l.l. Oh well, it was better than being chained to an oar. He thought guiltily about the others, the imam and old Dr. Krom . . .

and Raquel?

Nautae hauled on the hawser and jumped aboard.

Joe sprang after them and a moment later the captain, still in polished armor, came down a rope ladder. A

striped sail bellied aboard the galley and nautae paid out the hawser slowly.

Joe went below, followed by the captain and six nautae. One look at the Alices interior made him want to cast his manly inhibitions aside and weep. The Ro- mans had gone through her like army ants, taking every- thing not nailed down and several things that were.