Slave Ship (12 page)

I touched my finger tips together, "I see," I said. "You want to know if you can tell Nina about Josie's puppies."

"That's right."

"Don't interrupt me, Semyon. I'm thinking." I closed my eyes to concentrate. The problem had many ramifications, and I couldn't help wondering how Semyon had got onto that subject in the first place. Lineback would throw a tizzy if he even knew that Semyon had so much as admitted he'd ever
seen
a dog. But Lineback, of course—

"Logan!" Semyon sounded angry. "Wake up!"

I opened my eyes and smiled at him forgivingly.

"Well?" he demanded. "What is your verdict?"

"This is my verdict," I announced. I paused to frame the thing in exactly the right words. I was feeling a little woozy from the double shots, there was no denying it. Not only was I flushing hot all over, but I could feel my skin getting dry and my pulse thudding; it was time to take it easy for a while. I said carefully: "You can't tell her about the puppies. You can tell her about Josie herself, all right; but you mustn't mention talking to her, or the
Weems
."

He shook his head disgustedly. "Curse this security," he said.

"Don't say anything about our shipping orders either," I warned him.

"Of course not, Logan! Do you think I am a loose-tongue? Well, Nina, I cannot discuss the puppies, so do not ask me. I won't do it."

I nodded approvingly, and closed my eyes to listen better.

This time it was the girl who said, with a touch of irritation, "Wake up, Lieutenant Miller. The chaser's getting cold."

"Sorry," I mumbled, and found my case. She grabbed it, apparently under the impression that I was going to spill its contents. "No need to get excited," I protested.

She said, "You've only got one anthrax left. Maybe you'd better lay off for a while."

I sat up straight. "Help yourself," I said cordially. "Officer of the Line can mix his shots. Don't expect girl to do as much."

She took the flat green pastille and swallowed it, making a face as she sipped the lukewarm bouillon. I took one at random and popped it. "Hey!" she cried, but I already had it down and was choking on the chicken broth.

"You shouldn't have done that," Nina said worriedly. "Do you feel all right?"

"I feel ferfec—perfectly fine." It wasn't entirely true, and I avoided her eyes, not so much because they were accusing as because they were attached to her face, and her face was moving. I didn't want to look at any moving objects just then. I stared at the ceiling, waiting for the slight tremor inside me to go away.

It didn't. I took a deep breath and sat up straight—it seemed hard to stay erect for any length of time—and smiled at Semyon and the girl. "Dance, Miss Merriam?" I invited.

"There isn't any music," she pointed out.

But Semyon responded, even if the girl was a spoilsport. His eyes jerked open. "Dance!" he said. "Timiyazev will dance
lesgilka
for you?"

"Oh, no you won't," said Nina Merriam, and between us we got him back in his chair. I had had only one more shot than the girl, but I was frankly reeling and she seemed as fresh as a daisy. I don't know how women do it. She reminded me of my wife: Elsie and I had pub crawled three nights a week for half a year before we were married, and it was always I who began getting disorderly.

Semyon resisted only briefly, then he sat back, sprawled in his chair, and smiled lovingly at us. "Good party, Logan," he said.

"The best," I said.

I sneaked a look at my watch; it was hard to make it out, and even harder to perform the necessary subtraction, but as near as I could figure it was two hours since I had taken my first shot. The anthrax colonies in my system were pretty well established; I had a fine building case of fever and approaching delirium. Any minute now the second layer of the pastille would dissolve and the antibiotics would take over, cleaning out the bacteria and sobering me up. It was about time, I thought fuzzily, computing the time to get back to base and the amount of sleep I would have before our transportation arrived the next morning.

And I completely forgot the trouble with mixing your shots. For the antibiotics are specifics; the cores that will sober up your case of anthrax in an hour don't touch pneumococcus or the others. I was in for a double-jointed hangover—still drunk on the second dose while I was being sobered up from the first. I didn't know it, and it was just as well. But I knew it the next morning. Oh, yes.

XII

"DO WHAT I DO," I told Semyon, who was rubbernecking at the big ships in the wash. He glowered resentfully, but he followed orders.

We stepped into a submersible whaleboat and sat ourselves in the sternsheets while a couple of efficient seamen disposed of the crates containing the animals in the cargo space. They were almost all the baggage Semyon and I had between us; the orders had specified strip-ship condition. It meant battle stations; it meant the big-ship Navy and a combat mission; it meant, perhaps, getting somewhere near the east coast of Africa and Elsie.

We boarded
Monmouth
, a 40,000 ton carrier, by one of the three after gangways, and Semyon was so preoccupied watching the whaleboat carrying our animals to a forward gangway for loading that he almost forgot to salute the colors. I nudged him, and he looked at me blankly for a moment before he remembered our careful rehearsal. Josie and the apes were easier to train than Semyon Timiyazev.

Our quarters were small but comfortable; we shifted into dress blues and reported to the Executive Officer, and were sent immediately to see the Captain. I had almost forgotten such niceties of the naval service as the Captain's call. I would have felt like the wanderer coming home, except that I wasn't feeling much of anything except a queasiness in my stomach and a throbbing like
Monmouth
'
s
main-drive engines in my head. But I got through the interview with the Captain all right, and so did Semyon. Having a hangover is not, after all, the worst thing that can happen to a naval officer on his first day at a new ship; it tends to make you concentrate on what you are doing.

But as soon as we had a moment to ourselves, we headed for the sick bay and wheedled vitamin shots out of one of the surgeons.
He
thought it was very funny. They helped, but I did not enjoy the surgeon's prescription for "helping to re-establish the intestinal flora" which he claimed the antibiotics had pretty well knocked out. It was yogurt, and I forced it down, but I almost lost it again when Semyon cried delightedly, "
Schav
! Please, Doctor—me too," and proceeded to swallow a pint of the stuff.

All in all, we were in pretty good shape for the briefing at 900 hrs, the next morning, except for Semyon's nagging worry about his beloved dogs. "Josie, of course," he told me fretfully. "They understand Josie, she is on the orders. And Sammy is all right, and the apes. But the little puppies, Logan, will they be all right? No orders for them, you know."

I chased him down to the whaleboat level to look them over.

Before sunrise we got under way.
Monmouth
slipped lines and stood out into the channel—on the surface, since Caodai radar didn't matter on our initial course in the Gulf. I was on deck in officer's country as we sailed, feeling useless, with reason. I had no part in the complicated task of getting a war vessel on course.

Faint dawn light was coming up behind us.
Monmouth
blinkered good-by to the harbor monitor through a gentle drizzle, and then the hailer gave all of us idlers the warning,
Stand
by
to
submerge
. I found a spot out of the traffic lanes, near a running port; and I watched through the glass as the deck parties stripped and stowed the outboard gear. They did their job and disappeared in well under sixty seconds.
Monmouth
was a taut ship.

There was a hoot and jangling of bells, and
Monmouth
slid downward into the water. Green and blue waves bubbled up over my port; turned brackish gray; and then there was nothing at all to see, nothing but a faint sourceless light through the water outside.

I went to the briefing in a thoughtful mood, and was astonished at the number of officers there—nearly sixty.

The ship's Executive Officer rapped his knuckles against the standing microphone and called us to attention.

He looked at us queerly for a moment before he spoke. Then he waved a red-sealed envelope and said:

"Welcome aboard, gentlemen. You've all got quarters and you all know you're on a crash-priority mission, and half of you have been haunting my office ever since we got under way. Well, I couldn't tell you anything. I've been in this Navy for forty-six years, and I've heard of sealed orders, and I always thought they were something you read about in books." He slapped the envelope against the mike, and the amplified
thud
rolled around the room. "That's what we got here. Sealed orders. In—" he glanced at his watch—"in one minute the Captain's going to be opening his copy of these, and then we'll all know what we're up to. Until then, hold your breath."

He rocked back on his heels, calmly observing his watch. Then he leaned forward again, and I guess we all really did hold our breaths. He said: "I forgot to tell you, those of you that don't know it already, that Captain's Calls are suspended for the time being, so don't bother me for appointments."

There was a groan from the sixty of us, and he said: "All right, gentlemen. Here it is." And he stripped the seals off the envelope and began to read.

It was a crash-priority mission, all right. Even the weary old Exec stood straighter and seemed to come alive as he read the formal phrases from the orders.

It was—the Glotch—though that wasn't what the orders called it. Intelligence had come up with the conclusion that the Caodai Headquarters for the new weapon was not on the interdicted mainland, but on the island of Madagascar. Our sortie was to make reconnaissance, to find out what was there—and, if possible, to pulverize it.

"Target Gamma." That's what the orders called it—a point fixed with grid markings on a map. Something was there, something which the Caodais were trying as ably as they could to hide. We were going to take a look.

The Exec finished reading the orders, and folded the sheet.

"Specific assignments will be given out later, by sections," he said after a moment. "Gentlemen, this has been as much of a surprise to me as to you, as I mentioned earlier. But I suppose we all had an idea that it might have something to do with the Caodai weapon.

"I only want to add one thing to what you've just heard. It's no secret that the Cow-dyes have been hitting us pretty hard. Well, it's been worse than you think. Worse than we can stand, in fact." He licked his lips. "Gentlemen, you're in for some rough times, and only a fool would try to tell you that you're all going to come through them alive. But keep this in mind: This is for keeps. I have it from the Captain. If this doesn't work, the JCS's next recommendation to the President will be a declaration .of war. It's as serious as that.

"We've got to come through. Or else it means the satellite bombs for everybody."

That was that; we were dismissed. We left the briefing room silently, all of us too busy thinking about what the Exec had said and its implications to talk. . But we were not all thinking of the same implications. I raced from the briefing room to the chartroom, to confirm what I already knew but could hardly believe.

Our target was Madagascar, a long, fat island hanging off the east coast of Africa. And next above it, inches away on the map, another island—

Zanzibar!

And Zanzibar meant Elsie.

Semyon came chortling to me: "At last we are equals! I have been promoted, I am now considered as valuable as you and the animals!" He displayed what had just been issued to him, an aluminum helmet, protection against the Glotch. The whole ship was being fitted with them.

"We're late," I growled at him, and tugged him away to our special section briefing. I had been on edge ever since I had found out how close I was coming to AORD S-14, where my wife was eking out her days in the monotony of a prison camp. Incredible that I could come that close to her and not see her! But impossible that I could do anything else! For all of my months on
Spruance
I had been praying for just such a strike; and now that it was within grasp, it was worse than anything I could have imagined.
So
near
, I said to myself—and for the first time understood how powerful the ragged, hackneyed clichés of speech had to be to survive so long—
so
near
and
yet
so
far
.

Our special section briefing was very exclusive—the briefing officer, Semyon, and me. He began without preamble: "There will be three waves against Target Gamma, and you are in Wave One. There will be three groups in Wave One: Group A, air reconnaissance. That's radar-proof gliders, launched at sea, with infrared scanners and so on. Group B is intelligence officers—they're Oriental nationals, mostly from Hawaii, I think, for infiltration. Group C is animal penetration—that's you."

He closed his Plans book with a snap and said: "Your mission is to get your animals as close to Target Gamma as you can and get them back. You will spend the next seven days rehearsing them; they will have to learn to use small cameras, which they will carry around their necks, and they will take pictures of
everything
in the area. You two are expendable, but the animals are not—until they've got the pictures, anyway."

I glanced at Semyon—the briefing officer had just sunk
Weems
, and my visions of my first combat command. "How are we supposed to get the animals back if we're expendable?"

"We'll establish a rendezvous point where they can be picked up. Frankly, I think you two will get caught. Maybe it will be even better if you
do
get caught," he added callously, "because it'll give the Caodais something to do. You—" he nodded at Semyon "—may get by; you'll have cover papers as a Ukrainian neo-Bolshevik refugee, of which Intelligence thinks there is a small colony on Madagascar. But you—" that was me "—are going to have to just stay out of sight. Oh, we'll color up your skin and give you what looks like a prosthetic arm, and hope you may pass for a disabled Caodai veteran. But don't count on it. The dogs, remember—they're what's important. Unless there's been a worse security leak than we have any reason to believe, the Cow-dyes won't be on to the animal bit."