Upon a Sea of Stars (68 page)

“I should be with you in seven hours,” said Grimes. “I shall try to take you in tow.”

“We’ll have everything ready, Captain,”

“Good. We shall be seeing you shortly. Over and standing by.”

Wilcox had come into the chartroom. He said, “Everybody’s been informed, sir. The Chief reckons that he can squeeze out another half knot.”

“Anybody hurt when she went over?”

“Only minor lacerations and contusions, sir.”

“Such as this,” announced Sonya, who had joined the others in the chartroom, putting a cautious hand up to the beginnings of a black eye. “But it’s in a good cause.”

Iron Warrior
was not a pretty sight.

She lay wallowing in a welter of white water, like a dying sea beast. The seas broke over her rust-colored hull in great explosions of spray, but now and again, during brief lulls, the extent of the damage that she had sustained could be made out. She was a typical bulk carrier, with all the accommodation aft, with only a stumpy mast right forward and her mainmast growing out of her funnel, and no cargo gear but for one crane on the poop for ship’s stores and the like. That crane, Grimes could see through his binoculars, was a twisted tangle of wreckage. That would explain why the
Warrior
’s Captain had not used oil to minimize the effect of breaking waves; probably the entrance to the storerooms was blocked. And there must be some other reason why it had not been possible to pump diesel fuel overside—even though a mineral oil is not as effective as vegetable or animal oil it is better than nothing. The side of the bridge seemed to be stove in, and under the boat davits dangled a mess of fiberglass splinters.

Beyond her—and not far beyond her, a mere three miles—was the black, jagged spine of Devlin’s Islet, dead to leeward. It seemed more alive, somehow, than the stricken ship, looked like a great, malevolent sea monster creeping nearer and ever nearer through the boiling surf toward its dying prey.

Grimes was using oil, a thin trickle of it from his scuppers, wads of waste soaked in it thrown overside to leeward. Luckily there had been plenty of it in
Sonya Winneck
’s storerooms—fish oil for the preservation of exposed wire ropes, a heavy vegetable oil for the treatment of wooden decks and brightwork. It was beginning to have effect; the thin, glistening surface film was a skin over the water between the two ships, an integument that contained the sea, forcing some semblance of form upon it. The swell was still there—heavy, too heavy—but the waves were no longer breaking, their violence suppressed.

Aft, Andersen and his men were standing by the rocket gun. The heavy insurance wire was already flaked out ready for running, its inboard end taken not only around both pairs of bitts—these, in a ship with self-tensioning winches, were rarely used for mooring, but there was always the possibility of a tow—but also around the poop house. The sisal messenger was coiled down handy to the line-throwing apparatus.

On the bridge, Grimes conned his ship. She was creeping along parallel to
Iron Warrior
now, at reduced speed. She was making too much leeway for Grimes’s taste; unless he was careful there would be two wrecks instead of only one. Too, with the swell broad on the beam
Sonya Winneck
was rolling heavily, so much so that accurate shooting would be impossible. But the necessary maneuvers had been worked out in advance. At the right moment Grimes would come hard to port, presenting his stern to the
Iron Warrior
. Andersen would loose off his rocket, aiming for a point just abaft the break of the other ship’s fo’c’sle head, where men were already standing by. They would grab the light, nylon rocket line, use it to pull aboard the heavier messenger, use that to drag the end of the towing wire aboard, shackling it to the port anchor cable. After that, it would be plain sailing (Grimes hoped). He would come ahead slowly, slowly, taking the weight gently, trying to avoid the imposition of overmuch strain on either vessel. Slowly but surely he would pull the wounded
Warrior
away from the hostile fortifications. (
Come off it, Grimes,
he told himself sternly.
Don’t be so bloody literary.
)

“Hard a-port!” he ordered.

“Hard a-port, sir!” The clicking of the repeater was audible above the shrieking of the wind.

“Ease her . . . Midships . . . Steady! Steady as you go!”

Sonya Winneck
hung there, her stern a bare two cables from the side of
Iron Warrior
. Grimes thought,
I cut that ratlier too close. But at this range it’ll be impossible for Andersen to miss.
To the Third Officer, at the radar, he called, “Are we opening the range?”

“Slowly, sir.”

It was time that Andersen got his rocket away. The ship was not pitching too badly; firing at just the right moment should not be difficult. As long as the missile passed over the target it would be a successful shot. Grimes went out to the wing of the bridge to watch. The air scoop dodger deflected the wind, throwing it up and over, so it was not too uncomfortable away from the wheelhouse.

Andersen fired—and at precisely the wrong moment the ship’s head fell off heavily to starboard. The rocket streaked through the air, arcing high, a brief orange flare against the gray, ragged clouds, a streamer of white smoke, and behind it the fluorescent yellow filament of the nylon line. Inevitably it missed, finally splashing to the sea well forward of and beyond
Iron Warrior
’s bows.

Grimes didn’t see it drop. He stormed into the wheel-house, bawled at the helmsman, “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

“It’s the wheel, sir,” The man’s voice was frightened. “It turned in my hands. I can’t budge it!”

The ship was coming round still, turning all the time to starboard. The gale force wind and her own engines were driving her down on to the helpless
Warrior
. “Stop her!” ordered Grimes. “Full astern!”

Denham was still at the radar, so Wilcox jumped to the engine controls. He slammed the lever hard over to the after position. Still the ship was making headway—but, at last slowing. She stopped at last, her stern scant feet from
Iron Warrior
’s exposed side. Grimes could see the white faces of her people as they stared at him, as they watched, in horrified disbelief, this rescuer turned assassin.

Sonya Winneck
was backing away now, her stern coming up into the wind. She was backing away, but reluctantly, Wilcox shouted, “Denham, come and give me a hand! I can’t keep this bloody handle down!”

Grimes dragged his attention away from the ship he had so nearly rammed to what was happening on his own bridge. Both the Chief and Third Officer—and Wilcox was a big, strong man—were having to exert all their strength to keep the metal lever in its astern position. It was jerking, forcing itself up against their hands.

Sonya—who until now had been keeping well out of the way—grabbed him by the arm. “Tell the Chief to put the engine controls on manual!” she screamed. “I know what’s happening!”

“What’s happening?”

“No time now to tell you. Just put her on manual, and get Lecky up here!”

Grimes went to the telephone, rang down to the engine-room. “Manual control, your end, Mr. Jones,” he ordered. “Keep her on full astern until I order otherwise. And send Miss Hales up to the bridge. At once.”

Thankfully, Wilcox and Denham released their painful grip on the bridge control lever. On the console the revolution indicator still showed maximum stern power. Ahead, the distance between the two ships was fast diminishing. From the VHF transceiver came a frightened voice, “What’s happening,
Sonya Winneck?
What’s happening?”

“Tell him,” said Grimes to Denham, “that we’re having trouble with our bridge controls. We’ll get a line aboard as soon as we can.”

Wilcox, watching the indicator, yelled, “She’s stopped! The bitch is coming ahead again!”

Sonya said urgently, “There’s only one thing to do, John. Shut off the Purcell Navigator.
Iron Warrior
has P N against her name in the Registry—and she was built by Varley’s.” She turned to Mary Hales, who had just come onto the bridge. “Mary, switch off that bloody tin brain, or pull fuses, or something—
but kill it!
”

The pretty little blonde was no longer so pretty. On one side of her head the hair was charred and frizzled, and her smooth face was marred by an angry burn. “We’ve been trying to,” she gasped. “The Chief and I. It won’t let us.”

“She’s coming astern again,” announced Wilcox. “She’s . . . No, she’s stopped . . .”

“Watch her, Mr. Wilcox,” ordered Grimes. He ran with his wife and the Electrician to the house abaft the chartroom in which the Purcell Navigator lived. It squatted there sullenly on its four stumpy legs, the dials set around its spherical body glaring at them like eyes. From its underside ran armored cables, some thick and some thin—that one leading aft and down must be the main power supply, the ones leading into the wheelhouse and chartroom would be connected to various controls and navigational equipment. On the after bulkhead of the house was a switchboard and fuse box. Mary Hales went straight to this, put out her hand to the main switch. There was a sudden, intense violet flare, a sharp crackling, the tang of overheated metal. The girl staggered back, her blistered hands covering her eyes. “That’s what happened to the engine room switchboard!” she wailed. “It’s welded itself in the
On
position!” Then, using language more seamanlike than ladylike, she threw herself at the fuse box. She was too late—but perhaps this was as well. Had she got the lid open she would have been blinded.

Still cursing softly, she grabbed a spanner from her belt. Her intention was obvious; she would unscrew the retaining nut holding the main supply lead firmly in its socket. But an invisible force yanked the tool out of her hand, threw it out of the open door.

Grimes watched, helpless. Then he heard Sonya snarling, “Do something.
Do
something, damn you!” She thrust something into his right hand. He looked down at it. It was the big fire ax from its rack in the chartroom. He got both hands about the haft, tried to swing up the head of the weapon, staggered as the magnetic fields which now were the machine’s main defense tugged at it. But he lifted the ax somehow, brought it crashing down—and missed his own right foot by a millimeter. Again he raised the ax, straining with all his strength, and again struck at the thick cable. The ship lurched heavily, deflecting his aim, and, fantastically, the magnetic deflection brought the head back to its target. The armored cable writhed away from the blow, but not in time, not enough. The keen edge bit home, in a coruscation of violet sparks. And Mary Hales, with a smaller ax that she had found somewhere, was chopping away, sobbing and cursing; and Sonya was jabbing with a heavy screwdriver at the thing’s “eyes”—and so, at last, it died.

And so it died, damaged beyond its built-in powers of self-regeneration. (Mary Hales made sure of that.) And so Grimes was able to get a line aboard
Iron Warrior
, and the
Warrior
’s people got the towing wire shackled onto their anchor cable, and slowly, slowly but surely, the crippled ship was dragged to safety, away from the avidly waiting fangs and talons of Devlin’s Islet; the rocky teeth and claws that, when the tow finally commenced, had been less than half a mile distant.

The Purcell Navigator was dead, and its last flares of energy had destroyed or damaged much more than itself. The gyro-compass and the autopilot were inoperative (but the ship had a magnetic compass and hand steering). Loran and radar were burned out, inertial navigator and echometer were beyond repair, even the Chernikeeff Log was useless. But Grimes was not worried. He had sextant, chronometer, ephemeris and tables—and the great navigators of Earth’s past had circled their globe with much less in the way of equipment. In the extremely unlikely event of his not knowing where he was he could always ask
Iron Warrior
for a fix—but he did not think that he would have to do so.

He did, however, urge the
Warrior
’s Master to put his own Purcell Navigator out of commission, explaining why in some detail. Then he went to the house abaft the chartroom where, under the direction of Mary Hales, Wilcox and his men were loosening the holding down bolts, disconnecting the cables that had not already been cut. (There might still be a flicker of life in the thing, some capability of self-repair.) He watched happily as the Mate and three brawny ratings lifted the spherical casing from the deck, staggered with it out the door.

“What shall we do with it, sir?” asked the Mate.

“Give it a buoyancy test,” ordered Grimes. He followed the men to the side rail of the bridge, watched as they tipped it over. It sank without a trace.

Grimes was relieved of his command in Longhaven, after the successful completion of the tow, and flown back to Steep Island, accompanied by Sonya. Neither he nor his wife felt very strong when they boarded the airship—the crews of both
Sonya Winneck
and
Iron Warrior
had united in laying on a farewell party more enthusiastic than restrained. (“You
must
be glad to see the back of us,” Sonya had remarked at one stage of the proceedings.) Even so, old and tired as he was feeling, Grimes had insisted on seeing the airship’s captain so as to be assured that the craft was not fitted with a Purcell Navigator. Then, he and his wife went to their cabin and collapsed into their bunks.

Steep Island, although not officially an airport, had a mooring mast, so a direct flight was possible. When the time came for Grimes and Sonya to disembark they were feeling better and, in fact, had been able to put the finishing touches to their report.

Captain Thornton, the Havenmaster, welcomed them warmly but was obviously anxious to hear what they had to tell him. In minutes only they were all seated in the Havenmaster’s Lookout and Thornton was listening intently as they talked.

When they were finished, he smiled grimly, “This is good enough,” he said. “It’s good enough even for the Council of Master Wardens. I shall issue orders that those infernal machines are to be rendered inoperative in every ship fitted with them, and that no more are to be put aboard any Aquarian vessel. Then we make arrangements to ship them all back to where they came from.”