The Ship That Sailed The Time Stream Part 25

"Full ahead!" Joe yelled.

"We're tied up."

"It's light line. Try to break it."

The Alice trembled and moved a foot or two. Joe stationed himself at a porthole. "Reverse!" he yelled.

The Alice took up slack in the bow line which stretched to the midharbor pinnacle. "Now full ahead!"

The yawl lunged forward again. She made all of six feet. Aboard the bireme Romans stared at this ship which roared and moved without oarsmen. Joe won- dered if fear of the supernatural would keep them from boarding. Then he remembered the fixed Roman policy of destroying everything they mistrusted or mis- understood.

Cook was edging around the open engine compart- ment. Joe took the cleaver from him. "But Mr. Rate-"

He saw Joe's face and abruptly stopped. Joe eased the hatch open. The line came through an eye in the middle of the stern and ran across the afterdeck to a cleat port- side of the c.o.c.kpit. He oozed out into the foot-deep c.o.c.kpit, hoping the Romans couldn't see him. Abruptly, he burst from the c.o.c.kpit's shelter and streaked across the six feet of open deck to whack at the line. He chopped frantically and the line snapped. A javelin

thunked into the deck behind him. Joe dived back into the shallow c.o.c.kpit.

The Alice was moving out now, far faster under power than the bireme. Joe made silent prayer for the helm to be centered. How far would those Roman javelins carry? He had to run forward and cut or take in the bow line before they breasted the midharbor pin- nacle.

Spears still thunked into the Alice's woodwork. A poorly cast pilum clattered slatwise into the c.o.c.kpit.

The Romans would be casting off their own lines soon.

Would he ever outrange those d.a.m.ned spears?

Abruptly, the Alice's diesel strained, gave a tremen- dous racking sneeze, and stopped. With a sinking feel- ing Joe realized exactly what had happened. The slack in his own bow line was tangled in a stranglehold around the Alice's screw. Forgetting the spears, Joe dived for the after scuttle.

"Get the rifle, Cook. You Moors-" He remembered they didn't understand English. He turned to the imam.

"Fight! Tell them fight quick!"

Ma Trimble loomed huge and quivering in his path.

"Keep those d.a.m.ned girls out of the way!" He dived into his cubicle, searching for the pistol. d.a.m.n it! I knew I'd face spears sooner or later. Why didn't I have some shields made? The revolver wasn't under his pil- low. Finally he remembered where he'd hidden it after Howie's crusade.

He scrambled for the after scuttle. The Moors were already on deck; javelins whizzed past them as they disdained cover to yell insults. A spear struck one in the shoulder. He jerked it out and cast it back before sitting to examine himself.

The korax unhinged from the bireme's stubby mast and struck the Alice's deck with a splintering crash. The spike in its tip nailed both ships firmly together. Marines surged across the portable gangway onto the Alice. The

second Moor gave a falsetto shriek and charged, trying vainly to force his sword between their immense semi- cylindrical shields.

Short Roman swords flickered like serpents' tongues.

The Moor was on his knees now. Joe emptied his pistol into Romans who still charged across the gangway. He ducked into the shallow c.o.c.kpit to reload. A short sword struck the Moor on the back of the neck and in the corner of his mind Joe said a prayer for all men who die not for honor or patriotism, but because some s...o...b..

tells them to.

The rifle cracked and another legionary fell off the bridge. Joe began firing again. Roman discipline was beyond belief. The pistol was empty again. He swung it, trying to knock the sword out of the hand which darted from behind that shield. The shield edge came up smartly under his chin-and that was the end of the fight for Joe.

IX.

UP TILL now he hadn't really believed. He had plodded blithely along with some blind, Pollyanna-like faith that everything would turn out all right. The Moors had been a lackadaisical lot compared with these Romans.

He studied them covertly through his eyelashes, pre- tending he was still unconscious. They had hard, curve- less faces-all slabs and angles-with the humorless look of pure fanaticism.

Someone kicked him. He struggled to his feet and

immediately a bra.s.s-knuckled fist knocked him down again. Romans pa.s.sed like ants in an endless stream down the after scuttle and up the forward, inspecting and looting.

This is it, Joe thought. These slab and angle faced Romans would not be so easily bamboozled as Vikings and Moors. A hobnailed boot rolled him over again.

"Qui' e' ma'ister?" the boot's owner asked. The scholar- ly corner of Joe's mind noted that even this early the Roman lower cla.s.ses were dropping their s's and g's.

"Ego sum," he answered.

"Not are-were," the Roman corrected. He led Joe across the korax and Joe glanced briefly at the island.

How could it lie there, primitive and peaceful, when his own world had just come crashing to an end? And where, he wondered briefly, was the caique? But the Roman was whacking him across the b.u.t.tocks with the flat of his sword. Joe stumbled off the end of the korax, onto the catwalk, and made his way aft to the p.o.o.pdeck.

There, enjoying the bright morning sunlight, sat a man in a folding chair, behind a folding desk, on which lay a great many unfolded papers. The breeze kept fluttering the papers and he had them weighted down with sword, dagger, his gold collar, and his bra.s.s knuck- les. With his left hand he slid pebbles in the slots of an abacus-like gadget of terra cotta while scribbling sums on a wax tablet with his right. From the look on his face, things weren't adding up. "Now what?" he growled.

The marine explained.

"Speak Latin?" the man behind the desk asked.

"A little."

"Where from?"

"America."

"Where's that?"

"About 4000 Roman miles west of the Pillars of Her- cules."

"I'll bet," the Roman grunted. "What's your name?"

"Josephus Rate."

"You don't look like a Jew."

"I'm not. I'm an American. If it'll clarify things, my great grandfather was born in Brittania."

The Roman fixed one unblinking barracuda eye on him.

"Others of my line came from Germania and Hi- bernia."

"Quite a mongrel, aren't you?"

"You Romans aren't exactly pure any more." From the other's pained look Joe knew he had struck a nerve.

The Roman gave him a long, hard stare, then barked an order. Joe found himself propelled back amidships.

The oarmaster put him at one of the starboard top bank oars. At last he was getting firsthand knowledge of the question which plagued every scholar a century fore and aft of Mahan. His limp right hand was thrust into a manacle. An armorer riveted it shut, missing once with the hammer and skinning Joe's knuckle. The cuff fastened with a foot of chain to the heavy five-manned oar. Joe was outboard, facing forward next to the oar- lock. Who said the Romans never invented anything, he wondered?

Greek and Phoenician penteconters needed skilled oarsmen-and a man couldn't learn to row in a day.

With three men on each lower oar and five on each upper, this quinquereme required only one oarsman to each. The other two or four faced each other and followed his stroke. The stroke man was not chained.

Joe wondered if he was a trusted slave or working for wages.

They were an odd lot, ranging from a bluegum Nu- bian to several blond Scandinvavian giants. Joe tried to guess the language. Here a Latin word cropped up, there a phrase in Greek koine. It was beyond Joe. An artificial language, he guessed, like Legion French, the