Conrad Starguard - Conrad's Time Machine Part 14

"Quite right, sir, and I suppose you'd say that's her weak point. She can only cruise for twelve hours without refueling. Yet in a left-handed way, it increases our security. Wecould defend San Sebastian fairly adequately, I expect, but we simply don't have the range to attack anyone. It makes us a safe neighbor, don't you think?"

Fire control was just forward of the engines and below the bridge. Judging by the heavily padded chairs and the seat belts, the Hotspur had a pretty rough ride.

"Twelve turret control stations here, sir. One for each of the deck turrets. We have eight machine gun turrets and four missile launchers. This station is for the fire control chief and that forward is for the Exocet operator."

"Exocet?"

"It's a French surface-to-surface missile, sir, with enough of a punch to take out just about any modern warship. Not an old battle wagon like the Missouri, of course. At least not with one shot, but we carry four aboard. Our Monday punch, as it were. Launched from the bow tube you doubtless noticed."

"Oh, I thought that was for torpedoes."

"No, no torpedoes, I'm afraid. We carry a dozen homing depth charges though, which are fairly similar. They pop out the back."

Leftenant Fitzsimmon's accent sort of came and went depending on whether he was thinking about it.

The auxiliary bridge was forward of gun control. Most of the electronic equipment was down here, with repeaters going up to the "main" bridge. One odd fitting turned out to be a periscope.

"It eliminates the need of having lookouts up in a crow's nest, sir. It has a pair of gyro stabilized lends' a hundred feet or so above the deck, and doesn't retract like the periscopes used on subs. Also, it doubles as a range finder, in case our radar goes west."

The story below was taken up with fuel and ammunition storage.

"That's about it down here, sir. Shall we go up to the main bridge?"

"That's it? Don't you have any crew's quarters or a galley?"

"No sir. With only twelve hours of fuel, our usual patrol is eight hours. There's a coffee pot on the bridge, and we brown bag it for lunch."

Barb and the others followed us up a ladder to the bridge. They'd been quiet, probably bored, having seen it all before.

The machine gun turrets were hemispherical, reminiscent of a belly gun on an old bomber. Four of them hung over the side of the deck so as to be able to defend against boarders. They could actually shoot straight downward. The other four were mounted more conventionally. Repairmen had the covering of one of them removed, exposing a Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun with a smaller thirty-caliber "mini" beside it. Above the two sat a telescope with a TV camera attached. There was a third, empty mounting on the servo platform between the two guns.

"Hey, what normally goes here?"

"Well, nothing, sir. Presently that is, but you never can tell what the designers will come up with." I noticed that he was trying not to stare enviously at the "sword" clipped to my belt.

"Right. I don't see how you operate these guns. Where does the man sit?""Below, sir, in gun control. I showed you."

"What, n.o.body up here at all?"

"At full speed, this deck is a dangerous place in peacetime and in daylight. Fighting from it would be absurd. Between the radar and a TV camera on each turret, the operator can see everything he needs to. Loading is automatic, of course."

"Well then, what do you need with all these people? There must be a hundred aboard."

"This isn't my crew, sir. Maintenance comes under the Harbor Master. The Hotspur's compliment is twenty-four. They'll be along directly. We're due to go out in a half hour to relieve the Nonesuch."

"So, there are more ships than just these two?"

"Six, sir. The other four are on patrol."

"Oh. Is that usual? Two in and four out?"

"It's typical, sir, although we try not to be too regular in our movements."

I did some quick calculations. "I see. I gather then that you have multiple crews, like some of the U. S. Navy submarines."

"Oh no, sir. I wouldn't want to share the Hotspur with another skipper."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Barb turning red, shading to purple.

"Hey, but you've told me that this ship averages two eight-hour patrols a day, every day, with no facilities for sleeping or eating. If you're the only captain, that's an absolutely killing schedule."

"Hardly that, sir. In fact, we're just coming off a two-week holiday."

Barb looked like she was ready to explode.

"So, who was driving the boat when you were away?"

"Why, we were! One doubles back and that sort of thing. Surely you understand that the Hotspur represents a considerable capital investment, and it would be foolish to let her sit idle."

Oh yeah. These people were pulling the same stunt that Hasenpfeffer pulled in his office. Only they did it on an everyday basis!

"Yeah. Yeah. I see. Leftenant, you have a fine ship. A lot of the equipment has familiar manufacturers' name tags, but I've never seen anything like her. Where was she built?"

"Right here, sir, in that dry dock."

"All six of them?"

"Well, not exactly, sir. I mean we only had to build her once, of course, and then refit her each time she came back."

Oh. Whoopee. s.h.i.t.

"Yeah, thanks for the tour, Leftenant. I'd probably think of some more questions only my head's hurting. Barb! Gather up the girls! Let's go sailboating!"

We met Ian's party by the yachts, and he was babbling on about a building big enough to drive a container ship into, and these hoists that ran on variable tracks on the ceilingthat unloaded and reloaded the thing in a half hour. I wasn't interested.

"Hey, you girls! Get busy casting off the scuppers and shivering the bowlines and doing all that other nautical stuff to make this thing go!" I went down into a spartan cabin to rub my temples and let this latest set of data get digested.

Soon, one of the women came in and started rubbing my neck and shoulders, which felt delicious. Before long, she was rubbing me all over. I found out that her name was Kathy. She was my librarian with her hair fixed differently and without her phony horn- rimmed gla.s.ses. We enjoyed each other.

I was back on deck in time to wave at the Hotspur as she went by.

There was a complicated looking radio aboard. "I want to talk to Leftennnt Fitzsimmon. Any of you girls know how to work this thing?"

Tammy did, and Fitzsimmon was on the air within seconds. At the same time the Hotspur made a fast "U" turn.

"Yes, sir. Can we be of a.s.sistance?"

"No problems, Leftenant. I just thought of another question."

The gunboat made another about-face. "Of course, sir."

"The five times your ship "came back," was it damaged? Shot up, I mean."

"I really couldn't tell you, sir. I wasn't there at the time, and it's not the sort of thing that they'd tell a bloke about. Rather like telling him when he's going to die, what?

Simply not done. Anything else I can help you with?"

"Yes. Just what is it that you do out there for sixteen hours a day?"

"It's mostly a matter of dashing about and staring at empty ocean, sir. About every fifth day we come on a fisherman inside the ten-mile limit. At least they say they're just fishermen. Just a matter of escorting them back out, usually. Once we a.s.sisted the Brazilian Navy in a rescue job. It's been pretty boring since the submarines stopped coming."

"Submarines, you say?"

"Yes, sir. Used to be scads of them. American, Russian, French, British-even a Chinaman, once. Lots of chaps were curious about what we were doing out here."

"Right. Just what are we doing out here?"

"I'm out here patrolling the ten-mile limit, sir. Couldn't rightly say about the rest."

"Huh. Okay. What did you do about the subs?"

"At first, we couldn't do much at all but stay on top of them and drop the odd hand grenade now and then to let them know we still cared, sir. Then one of the technical boffins came up with a variation on our homing depth charges. It has a magnetic grapple that clamps onto the beggar's hull. Then it has an underwater speaker and a tape recorder that says-I think I can recite it-'I am a five-hundred-pound bomb. You are violating the territorial sovereignty of the State of San Sebastian. If you depart immediately, I will detach at the ten-mile limit. If you continue in your violation, I will detonate in sixty seconds. I repeat . . . ' It worked wonders, sir, even if the equipment took up all the available room, and there was none left for a bomb. None of the blighters saw fit to call our bluff, so it was jolly well effective!"Years later, I found out that the real reason that the various world powers stopped sending subs around was that satellites and U-2 style aircraft could do a better job of keeping an eye on us, and do it cheaper. Ian and I were pretty much unaware of the fact that a lot of very powerful people were very interested in what we were doing.

"Lovely," I said. "But is it a good idea to go around transmitting stuff like that unencrypted on the radio?"

"We're not exactly transmitting, sir. We have our ways. Any other questions, sir?"

"Uh, no. Thank you."

I looked suspiciously at the radio. It had a big, complicated face, but it was only about two inches thick. Not much room for batteries, and the yacht was strictly sail powered.

There wasn't even a small auxiliary engine. Checking further, I found no antenna leads and no power wires leading into the thing. It was completely self-contained. I might not know much about boats, but I know quite a bit about communications equipment. I got out my Swiss Army knife and dismantled the "radio."

The silly thing had no transmitter section at all! Instead, it had a pair of small tape decks! b.l.o.o.d.y be d.a.m.ned tape decks! I had been talking to a G.o.d d.a.m.n tape deck! I stared at this for maybe ten minutes before I recognized two simple timers. Daylight slowly dawned in the swamp. If Fitzsimmon had a pair of tape decks on his boat, and he talked to it the same way I did, and then if somebody sent both "transmit" tapes back in time to before we both left port and then switched tapes, so my old "transmit" tape was his new "receive" tape, and vice versa, then we'd both hear what the other had to say, just as if we'd been connected by radio! d.a.m.n.

I put the set back together and called up the gunboat.

"Fitzsimmon, I've just inspected the 'radio.' Question: What happens if the Hotspur is going to sink?"

"Well, in my case, sir, I have a set of normal if less secure communications gear as a backup. We mostly use it to talk to foreign ships. In your case, if you have problems of any kind, just have one of your girls press her red b.u.t.ton and help will be on the way. Ah, I've just received the most atrocious communication from your lovely majordomo, and I think I would be wise to sign off. Cheerio!"

Another set of data to muddle out!

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two New Bodies

I looked back to check out the compet.i.tion. Ian had insisted on commanding his own yacht, so he still wasn't out of the harbor. We had to "hove to" for an hour until he caught up. It was noon, so Mary broke out lunch-salami sandwiches and Budweiser beer. Right after that, and completely without encouragement, the girls stripped to the buff to sun themselves. None of them had bathing suit marks on their suntans, so it apparently wasn't entirely for my benefit. I motioned Barb to come with me into the cabin, and I caught a few glances of envy directed at her from the crew.

After only a day and a half here, I was beginning to take this as part of the ordinary course of events. It's remarkable how adaptable the human organism is.

But just then, I didn't want her for s.e.x.

"Okay, Barb. Are you ready to 'fess up?"

"About what?"

"For starters, about why I need nine secretaries when you people go zipping to last Thursday as often as an American housewife goes to the grocery store."

"I am going to gouge Leftenant Fitzsimmon's eyes out."

"Well, from what I hear, your doctors could put them back."

"Then I'll take a try at his gonads!"

"Spilled a few beans, did he? Answer my question."

"Tom, you must understand that there was a lot of social pressure-from the women, I mean. A lot of them wanted the chance to . . . to meet you. Your culture uses secretaries and servants, doesn't it? It . . . it seemed the natural thing to do."

"Hah! So you admit that you're from a different culture!"

"You knew that already."

"Yes, but I still don't know which one. Spill."

"I'm not allowed to answer that."

"Then who is?"

"I can't answer that either.""So, what do I have to do to get the truth out of you? Slap you around?"

"You can if you want to. No one will stop you, Tom."

s.h.i.t. She called my bluff. I couldn't hit a woman, even if she did deserve it, and Barb hadn't gone nearly that far, yet.

"Well, okay. Now what's this about your culture not having any children?"

"We have children. Beautiful children."

"So where are they?"

"Tom, you can't expect us to have them here!"