The Ship That Sailed The Time Stream Part 37

Joe waited.

"Kana code," the bos'n grunted. "Imperial j.a.panese Navy Headquarters, Tokyo."

"What year we in?" Cookie asked. "You s'pose we're still at war?"

"Unless it hasn't started yet," Gorson said. "I led the working party that blew up that transmitter."

Freedy switched to another band. Minutes later the RDF left them in no doubt of their position. The Alice lay between thirty-six and thirty-eight degrees north, and approximately a hundred sixty degrees west. The transmitters were too far away to get a closer bearing but no one cared. A thousand miles north of the Hawai- ian Islands there was little chance of running aground or into anything else, save possibly the j.a.panese fleet.

It was New Year's Day, 1942.

XII.

THEY FACED each other, stunned. They had followed the yawl's meanderings uncomplainingly throughout an- tiquity but a mere twenty years staggered them. Some- where at this minute, Joe thought, my mother's wheeling me around in a stroller. My father is just about to be swindled out of his partners.h.i.+p in the restaurant.

Gorson broke off the revery of his own hectic life in the early days of the war. "What do we do now?" he asked.

Joe glanced around at Ma Trimble's blondes and felt an unreasoning anger at the casualness with which they combed, mended, and chattered. Might as well get one thing over, he thought. "All hands a.s.semble for a shortarm inspection. Ma Trimble's the expert." He re- treated to his cubicle and closed the door.

1942. He couldn't stay here, he knew. Joe had read extensively in the newspaper files of this period. If the Alice showed up in any American port they'd all rot in prison camp while some birdbrained bureaucrat tried to figure the angles behind the Axis sending out a load of saboteurs with such a weird cover story.

No, not even in prison, Joe decided. They'd be lucky if they weren't shot.

And that miserable G.o.d shouting eightball had man- aged to get himself a dose. Even if there had been any medicaments aboard the yawl Joe would have been

afraid to use them. He reviewed all his theories, hunches, and superst.i.tions about time travel.

They were about twenty years from their starting point-which, all things considered, was pretty good.

So far he had learned how to separate forward from reverse. He wondered if further refinements were pos- sible and wished he could understand what Einstein had said about time. d.a.m.n it, if only he could learn to separate logic from magic in his thinking!

What was time? All this talk of rhythms and streams and fourth dimensions sounded to Joe like the learned balderdash of scientasters who concealed their ignorance behind Greek-rooted redundancies. Whatever it was, only one time really existed for Joe, for the Alice, and for the Alice's original company. That was their own time: mid-twentieth century. Everything else was his- tory and no matter how real to those who lived in it, it would never be real to Joe. Only 1965 was his.

The future.was equally nonexistent, except as a series of extrapolations-a branching of probabilities, a bud- ding of possibilities from the only true and real time: Joe's present.

If the future were equally nonexistent to the ma- chine, perhaps it would not or could not venture for- ward beyond its own time.

But it was confusing. Did Raquel and these blondes and all the others know they had been living in the past? Probably not. It was their present and only the past for Joe. Maybe a machine built in their time would reject any later era as impossible or unreal. If so they could jump again and cut down the remaining distance to their own era!

Joe smiled momentarily. They could still make that Sat.u.r.day inspection. But, he sobered, there was not one shred of evidence to prove his theory. Well, what could he lose? Not much, considering that typhoon was due any time now.

Holy Neptune! He'd forgotten about the barometer and that bra.s.sy sky. He opened the cubicle door and brushed past Ma Trimble as she tried to say something.

It was dead calm now, without a sniff of wind. The late afternoon sun was an immense flaming ball, as if no protective atmosphere separated it from the Alice.

The sea had a sluggish, oily look and the Alice's sails slatted gently as she rocked in an old swell which came from the southwest. In the direction of the swell the horizon was different-as if some gigantic hand had pried sky and sea apart and was now driving a thin black wedge in between.

Joe glanced absently at his wrist. d.a.m.n those watch- stealing Romans! How much time had he? He went be- low and after one unbelieving glance at the barometer yelled for Gorson and Cookie. "Set up the still-make it quick!"

Gorson and Cookie stared dumbly, with eyes like catatonic spaniels. The rest of the crew was mute and worried. Ma Trimble was solemn. "Well, what's wrong?"

Joe snapped. "Everybody got a dose?"

Ma Trimble shook her head and her chins quivered.

She dabbed at her eyes with an oversized man's hand- kerchief. Gorson cleared his throat and swallowed a couple of times. "Three girls gone," he said. "No sign of them anywhere. Abis.h.a.g, Miriam-"

"Abis.h.a.g-she the one who was unraveling a jersey?"

Rose nodded unhappily and held out a ball of yarn.

Joe remembered how the girl had disappeared at the moment of the jump. He thought she'd gone on deck.

Why hadn't all the girls gravitated back to their own time, just as Howie had been s.n.a.t.c.hed back to his?

The bell jar and coil must set up a field. Close to it, you're safe, but get so far away . . . The girl had been leaning against the chain locker bulkhead-almost in the Alice's bows. Abruptly, Joe stopped, realizing what

news they were trying to break to him. He drew a deep breath and looked for a place to sit.

Gorson nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Raquel too."

"You're sure?" he finally asked, and knew they were.

d.a.m.n it, why did she have to go now? Up on deck awhile ago he'd been-well, what? It wasn't- He sighed. Well, it just wasn't fair. He could see it all now.

She hung out in the chain locker. Whenever things went wrong she crawled into her hole just as he crawled into his cubicle. Why hadn't he guessed earlier why she flaunted that gamy stink? More important, he should have realized what those intervals of cleanliness meant.

If he had said the right things she wouldn't have run off to the chain locker. Why had he put it off?

He felt his insides tense at the antic.i.p.ation of pain.

It was going to hurt, he knew. Each day the aching would grow and swell. The emptiness inside him would grow until one day the thin sh.e.l.l would crumple and there would be nothing left of Joe. He wondered what the crew of the Alice would do if he were to tear his hair and scream quadrilingual blasphemies.

"Sir," Gorson was saying, "the barometer-"

Holy h.e.l.l, the typhoon!

Someday he would have time to mourn. Someday her name would be graven with letters of fire in some dark and secret corner of his duodenum. But for the time being he was captain of the Alice.

"Guilbeau, Rose, Schwartz, and Villegas, on deck!

Take in all sail. Dog everything down ready to jump.

Gorson and Cook, rig the still. Freedy, you know what to do."

He went on deck. The giant was prying horizon and sea farther apart. The black wedge could not be more than minutes away from the Alice. "Step lively with that sail!" he yelled, and began las.h.i.+ng the wheel.

Instructions were unnecessary. The Alice's people knew the weather and their captain were both ready

to break. "I won't think about it," Joe muttered, and helped punch the tattered mains'l into a neat furl.

There isn't time to think. He took a final look at that widening black wedge before following his people down the after scuttle.

The deck was secured, the hatches dogged. Gorson and Cookie were at the still. Freedy's hands poised over the fathometer. "Everything set where it was last jump?" Joe asked. Freedy nodded. "All right, let's try it."

The switch clicked and all hands waited for the warm-up. Joe reviewed all the countless possibilities for disaster. I won't think about her. So far the Alice had always fetched up afloat. Did their time machine have a special fondness for salt water or was each jump straining the law of averages? Five continents and seven seas; you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.

I won't think about her.

Nothing was happening.

"Move back to zero," Joe said, "and start ranging out again."