Distant Thunders (37 page)

Irvin looked thoughtful. Scampering up the rungs to the top of the conn tower, he tried the other hatch, and it spun freely. It had been the one they used most often when they were here before. It clanked open against its stops and he peered into the dark hole. Remembering the battle lantern, he shone it down.

“Doesn’t look that bad,” he murmured noncommitally. “Smells nasty, but what do you expect? No more gas, so water hasn’t gotten to the batteries again.”

“Are you going inside?” Lelaa asked. Irvin seemed to consider.

“Well, at first I figured we’d let her air out overnight. Even if it rains, it won’t hurt anything, not really. Why?”

“I want to go inside,” Lelaa announced. “All I can see is this little thing poking out of the sand. I want to see inside!”

“Okay . . .” Irvin hedged. “It
is
nasty. And it’s hot in there too. Maybe not as hot as it used to be when it was in full sunlight . . .”

“Hell, let’s go,” said Danny. “You told the fellas we’d start to break her or get her out tomorrow, one or the other. They deserve an answer!”

Irvin nodded. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”

One at a time, they descended to the control room below. The smell was ghastly and it felt like breathing a putrid soup, but eventually they grew accustomed to it, even Lelaa. Irvin shone the light around until he settled on the switch he was looking for. It activated the red emergency lighting Spanky had turned on months ago. To Irvin’s surprise, the lights still came on, but just barely. There wasn’t much juice left at all.

“If we get her dug out, run a cable from the generator, maybe we can charge her up enough to start an engine,” Danny said.

“Maybe. Or if the compressed air tanks are still charged, we can turn one over that way. Just give her some fuel, and vroom!” He shook his head. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“What are these big poles for, and what are those big, shiny wheels?” Lelaa asked, pointing to port.

“The poles are the periscopes. You know, those two things sticking up on top of the conn tower?”

“One is bent.”

“Yeah, it was damaged when the Japs were depth-charging us. Giving us a treatment kind of like what we did to the mountain fish with the “Y” gun. We use them to see above the water when we’re under it. Those wheels control the bow and stern planes. They make her go up and down underwater. That, and the amount of water we let in.” She looked around.

“Water in here?”

“No. In the ballast tanks. We let water in to go down, and blow it out with compressed air to go back up. That big wheel at the front of the compartment controls the rudder, just like on
Simms
. It makes the boat turn from side to side.”

“Sounds simple.”

“Believe me, sister. There ain’t nothing simple about it!” Danny quipped.

“Hey!” cautioned Irvin. “I don’t think ‘sister’ is an appropriate way to address the captain of a United States ship!”

Danny blinked, then nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. Bein’ back here on my old ‘sugar boat,’ it started to feel like old times.”

Lelaa blinked in acceptance. “Then let us be about the business of determining whether we can make it more like old times by getting your ‘sugar boat’ off this beach!”

They decided to go forward first, since the bow was buried deeper than the stern. The crew compartment looked much like they’d left it: decks clear, racks chained to the bulkhead. They’d removed some of the mattresses for bedding on the island and the others had turned somewhat gray.

“Here’s where some of the mildew’s from,” Danny said. “High humidity got the fart bags!” Irvin pointed the light, nodded, then looked around. It was the most spacious area in the boat and even some of the wooden folding chairs were still secured. A few had come loose, probably when the boat was rolling with the storm. Danny knelt and raised one of the linoleum-covered deck plates and Irvin shone the light.

“Forward battery looks just like we left it.” Irvin glanced at Lelaa. “We lost a few batteries in here and had some water coming in. Had to seal off the compartment. Some good fellas died. Gas.”

It was a simple statement, but Lelaa could tell the words still hurt. Irvin had already told her the story and explained what happened when seawater and sulfuric acid met. She also knew he’d been a junior officer and the decision wouldn’t have been his. She wondered how she would have felt. Probably the same, she concluded. Not guilty, certainly, but pained that she’d survived as a result of such a decision.

“All the passengers were in the torpedo room.” Irvin gestured forward. “No torpedoes, so it was the logical place to put them. There’s racks in there too.”

They moved to the hatch, which had been left standing open. Sure enough, there were quite a few more racks stowed in the compartment. There was also the most confusing conglomeration of pipes, valves, and instruments Lelaa had ever seen. She watched Irvin and Danny inspect a few gauges here and there and make approving or disapproving sounds. They inspected the bilge in the forwardmost area, in front of the fuel tanks.

“Well, she ain’t dry,” Danny announced, “but she ain’t sunk either. Looks about like normal seepage to me.”

“So?”

“So we look aft,” Danny answered, shrugging.

The aft crew’s quarters and officer’s country looked much the same. The batteries under the plates looked okay too. There was water in the bilge under the engines, but it hadn’t reached the huge machines.

“Those are the engines?” Lelaa asked. She’d seen the steam engines they were building, but the difference in sophistication was stunning.

“Yep,” Irvin said. “Two NELSECO diesels. Twelve hundred horsepower combined. They’ll move this tub at fifteen knots on the surface, if the sea’s calm.”

“And they were both running when you ran out of fuel?”

“That’s right,” said Danny. “They worked the last time we used them.” Lelaa looked at him and twitched her tail. She had much to learn about Amer-i-caans, but the statement sounded . . . odd.

“What is in the next compartment?”

“The motor room.”

Lelaa
was
confused now. “I have heard you, your people, use the words ‘motor’ and ‘engine’ interchangeably,” she said. “Why would S-19 need engines
and
a motor?”

Irvin started to laugh, but then realized it was a perfectly good question.

“Motors, actually. Plural. Okay, here’s the deal. Unlike the new Fleet Boats, S-19 can run her propeller shafts with a direct drive straight off the diesels. She’s actually faster that way. The trouble is, she can only run them one direction—forward. She can’t back up or use her screws for maneuvering with the engines. Since she has to use electric motors underwater—they don’t burn fuel, make exhaust, or need air; that’s how it works—we use the motors for reverse and maneuvering on the surface too. The new system’s really better. They don’t use the engines for anything but charging the batteries, and the motors do all the work. You’ve got forward and reverse and all the maneuvering you want all the time.” He patted one of the NELSECOs. “But these babies do pretty good.”

“I am anxious to see these ‘motors,’ but you did not answer my question: why is one a ‘motor’ and the other an ‘engine’?”

Irvin and Danny looked at each other.

“Ask Sandy,” Irvin said. “He’ll know.”

Danny nodded agreement, but then turned back to Irvin. “So what’s the verdict, Skipper? What do we tell the guys?”

Irvin rubbed his forehead, looked at his two companions, and sighed. “Tomorrow we dig. And I want everybody trying to figure out the best way to dredge a canal this thing’ll fit through!”

U
SS
Dowden
’s anchor splashed into the almost mirror-clear water off the Lemurian city of Chill-chaap. Jim Ellis barely remembered having been there before—he’d had a fever at the time—and it wasn’t exactly where its human counterpart, Tjilatjap, had been. The human city was east-southeast of the place the Lemurians had once chosen, and Jim remembered it as it had been in the early, chaotic days of the war they’d left behind. Some ships were still getting in and out when they’d seen the old cruiser
Marblehead
moored there after the pasting she’d taken from Japanese planes. Anyone who saw her was amazed she was still afloat. Her rudder had been jammed hard aport and she was still low by the head. They’d been transferring the wounded ashore, since nobody really expected her to make it out of the area alive. Ellis reflected that he’d never know if she had or not.

Tjilatjap was a dump. The fueling and repair facilities there were inadequate and there were no torpedoes to be had. Worse, from the crew’s perspective, there was virtually zero nightlife. Even though it meant steaming back in the teeth of the Japanese storm, he’d actually been glad when they steered for Surabaya once again. He shook his head. That was another time, another world. Where the Tjilatjap he knew should have been, there was absolutely nothing, and never had been. Of the Chill-chaap their Allies had built on the other side of the peninsula, there was nothing left.

Even before the Grik came in force, a raiding party had sacked the city, eaten or taken its inhabitants, and razed much of what remained to the ground. Since then, a year and a half was all it had taken the jungle to reclaim a city almost as old and large as Baalkpan. It was a dreary, creepy sight. Vines and bizarre, spiderweblike foliage covered the ruins, and the old pathways were choked and impassable. From what Ben, Pam, Brister, and Palmer had told him, there were many bones as well. He figured rodents and other things would have eaten the bones by now, but he was glad they wouldn’t have to make their way through the once-proud city. According to Rasik, what they sought was a number of miles up the estuary where the river became a swamp.

“Good morning, Cap-i-taan Ellis,” came a voice from behind him. He turned and saw Chack standing there, neatly maintained Marine battle dress at odds with the dented American doughboy helmet he wore. He wore a sword suspended from a black leather baldric, and hanging by its sling, muzzle down on his brindle-furred shoulder, was his Krag.

“Morning, Chack. You ready for this?”

“Of course.”

Jim nodded. Of course. Chack’s steadiness and complete competence were among the constants he’d come to rely on. He still found it hard to believe the young Lemurian had once been a confirmed pacifist.

“Very well. You, me, half a dozen Marines, and Rasik-Alcas. I guess we’ll take Isak Rueben in case this ‘treasure trove’ of Rasik’s includes anything he might be needed to evaluate.” Jim frowned. Isak had transferred to
Dowden
as chief engineer for the trip, since the ship would be on her own. Isak clearly understood the principles of
Dowden
’s machinery better than anyone else, but he wasn’t a very good teacher. Once away from Tabby and Gilbert, he wasn’t quite as antisocial as usual, but he didn’t delegate worth a damn and tried to do everything himself. He probably needed a break from the engineering spaces as much as the engineering division needed a break from him. “One of the Marines will be Koratin?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust him?”

Chack’s tail swished thoughtfully. “In a fight, as a Marine, I trust him. His status as a former Aryaalan noble causes some mild concern. By all accounts, he once lived a life of expediency, taking the tack of best advantage for himself.” Chack blinked irony. “That is not necessarily consistent with the accounts of his performance in battle, so perhaps he has indeed changed.” Chack shrugged in a well-practiced, very human way. “We will see.”

The longboat went over the side and slapped the still water. The Marines escorted Rasik into the boat, followed by Isak, grumbling about the “stupid bulky rifle” he had to carry. Jim knew Isak was proficient with a Krag, but he also knew the wiry little Mouse didn’t like wagging one around. The black powder and hard-cast bullet loads they’d made for the weapons had proved fairly effective on animals as big as a midsize rhino-pig, but even the precious few remaining rounds from the Rock Island Arsenal barely got the attention of something the size of a super lizard. No one but Rasik had any idea what sort of monsters they might encounter, and on that subject, at least, he’d remained cryptic.

After a brief word with Muraak-Saanga, his exec and “salig maa-stir,” Jim was last over the side. He alone carried an ’03 Springfield with “modern” ammunition and extra stripper clips. He also had his 1917-pattern Navy cutlass and a 1911 Colt. Besides Chack, the Marines he’d handpicked were all armed with their swords and the shorter thrusting spears they preferred. None carried shields. Without the numbers required to form a wall, they’d only get in the way. Two had longbows slung over their shoulders.

Chack barked a command and the oars came out. First and foremost, Chack would always consider himself one of
Walker
’s bosun’s mates, and whenever he was in charge of anything on the water, he reverted to that capacity. He moved to the stern and took the tiller himself. Jim settled in for what promised to be a long trip, and with another command from Chack, the oars dipped in unison. “Well, Rasik,” Jim said conversationally, “it’s your show now.” He grinned. “Don’t disappoint us.”

“You will not be disappointed.”

“Swell. I’m glad you want to please. Just to remind you, though, I’ll repeat the deal. You show us what you found. If it has any use at all to our war effort, you go free.” He gestured to the south. “That’s Nusakambangan. It’s a pretty big island, and even on my world there was plenty there to survive on.” He grinned again. “The Dutch used it as a prison, kinda like an eastern Alcatraz. For some reason, that strikes me as highly appropriate. Anyway, it may not be a palace, but if you managed to scratch out a living in the wild for nearly a year, you should have no trouble there. We’ll even leave you weapons.”

“I understand. Exile or death.”