Part 9 (1/2)

The mate of the _Pequod_ called in, around noon, and said it was safe for Oscar to come back to the s.h.i.+p. The mate of the _Javelin_, Ramon Llewellyn, called in with the same report, that along the waterfront, at least, the heat was off. However, he had started an ambitious-looking overhaul operation, which looked as though it was good for a hundred hours but which could be dropped on a minute's notice, and under cover of this he had been taking on supplies and ammunition.

We made a long audiovisual of Murell announcing his price of eighty centisols a pound for wax on behalf of Argentine Exotic Organics, Ltd.

As soon as that was finished, we loaded the boat-clothes we'd picked up for him and his travel kit and mine into a car, with Julio Kubanoff to bring it back to the _Times_, and went to the waterfront. When we arrived, Ramon Llewellyn had gotten things cleared up, and the _Javelin_ was ready to move as soon as we came aboard.

On the Main City Level, the waterfront is a hundred feet above the s.h.i.+p pools; the s.h.i.+ps load from and discharge onto the First Level Down. The city roof curves down all along the south side of the city into the water and about fifty feet below it. That way, even in the post-sunset and post-dawn storms, s.h.i.+ps can come in submerged around the outer breakwater and under the roof, and we don't get any wind or heavy seas along the docks.

Murell was interested in everything he saw, in the brief time while we were going down along the docks to where the _Javelin_ was berthed. I knew he'd never actually seen it before, but he must have been studying pictures of it, because from some of the remarks he made, I could tell that he was familiar with it.

Most of the s.h.i.+ps had lifted out of the water and were resting on the wide concrete docks, but the _Javelin_ was afloat in the pool, her contragravity on at specific-gravity weight reduction. She was a typical hunter-s.h.i.+p, a hundred feet long by thirty abeam, with a squat conning tower amids.h.i.+ps, and turrets for 50-mm guns and launchers for harpoon rockets fore and aft. The only thing open about her was the air-and-water lock under the conning tower. Julio, who was piloting the car, set it down on the top of the aft gun turret. A couple of the crewmen who were on deck grabbed our bags and hurried them inside. We followed, and as soon as Julio lifted away, the lock was sealed.

Immediately, as the contragravity field dropped below the specific gravity of the s.h.i.+p, she began submerging. I got up into the conning tower in time to see the water of the boat pool come up over the armor-gla.s.s windows and the outside lights come on. For a few minutes, the _Javelin_ swung slowly and moved forward, feeling her way with fingers of radar out of the pool and down the channel behind the breakwater and under the overhang of the city roof. Then the water line went slowly down across the windows as she surfaced. A moment later she was on full contragravity, and the s.h.i.+p which had been a submarine was now an aircraft.

Murell, who was accustomed to the relatively drab sunsets of Terra, simply couldn't take his eyes from the spectacle that covered the whole western half of the sky--high clouds streaming away from the daylight zone to the west and lighted from below by the sun. There were more clouds coming in at a lower level from the east. By the time the _Javelin_ returned to Port Sandor, it would be full dark and rain, which would soon turn to snow, would be falling. Then we'd be in for it again for another thousand hours.

Ramon Llewellyn was saying to Joe Kivelson: ”We're one man short; Devis, Abdullah's helper. Hospital.”

”Get hurt in the fight, last night? He was right with us till we got out to the elevators, and then I missed him.”

”No. He made it back to the s.h.i.+p about the same time we did, and he was all right then. Didn't even have a scratch. Strained his back at work, this morning, trying to lift a power-unit cartridge by hand.”

I could believe that. Those things weighed a couple of hundred pounds.

Joe Kivelson swore.

”What's he think this is, the First Century Pre-Atomic? Aren't there any lifters on the s.h.i.+p?”

Llewellyn shrugged. ”Probably didn't want to bother taking a couple of steps to get one. The doctor told him to take treatment and observation for a day or so.”

”That's Al Devis?” I asked. ”What hospital?” Al Devis's strained back would be good for a two-line item; he'd feel hurt if we didn't mention it.

”Co-op hospital.”

That was all right. They always sent in their patient lists to the _Times_. Tom was griping because he'd have to do Devis's work and his own.

”You know anything about engines, Walt?” he asked me.

”I know they generate a magnetic current and convert rotary magnetic current into one-directional repulsion fields, and violate the daylights out of all the old Newtonian laws of motion and attraction,”

I said. ”I read that in a book. That was as far as I got. The math got a little complicated after that, and I started reading another book.”

”You'd be a big help. Think you could hit anything with a 50-mm?” Tom asked. ”I know you're pretty sharp with a pistol or a chopper, but a cannon's different.”

”I could try. If you want to heave over an empty packing case or something, I could waste a few rounds seeing if I could come anywhere close to it.”

”We'll do that,” he said. ”Ordinarily, I handle the after gun when we sight a monster, but somebody'll have to help Abdullah with the engines.”

He spoke to his father about it. Joe Kivelson nodded.

”Walt's made some awful lucky shots with that target pistol of his, I know that,” he said, ”and I saw him make hamburger out of a slasher, once, with a chopper. Have somebody blow a couple of wax skins full of air for targets, and when we get a little farther southeast, we'll go down to the surface and have some shooting.”