The 22nd Golden Age of Science Fiction Read online

“Are you sure?” Higgins questioned.

  “Positive,” the scientist answered.

  Craig looked at the sea. He lit a cigarette, noting that it was the last one in the package. He drew the smoke into his lungs, feeling the bite of it.

  Marooned in time, forever!

  CHAPTER IV

  Silver on the Sea

  Night had come hours ago. Craig stood on the deck, watching the sea and the sky and the stars in the sky. Up overhead the constellations had changed. They were not the familiar star clusters that he knew. Completely blacked out, the Idaho moved very slowly through the darkness. Her speed was kept to almost nothing because the charts of the navigators were useless. The charts had been made in that far future which the battle wagon had quitted forever and they revealed nothing about this sea. There might be a mile of water under the ship. She might be scraping bottom. The navigators were going mad worrying about what might be under the ship. Captain Higgins was going mad worrying not only about what might be under the ship but about what might soon be over it, when the mysterious planes returned. The pilot of the scouting plane had been rescued. He had not lived to tell what he had found.

  Craig was aware of a shadow near him but he thought it was one of the crew until the match flared. It was Margy Sharp. She was lighting a cigarette.

  A sharp reprimand from an officer caused her to drop the match.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “Why can’t I smoke?”

  “Blackout,” Craig said.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the girl spoke.

  “Where have you been?” Craig asked. “I looked around for you but I couldn’t find you.”

  “In the hospital,” she said. “Helping out a baffled doctor.”

  “How is English?” Craig asked.

  “English has been dead for hours,” she said. “I’ve been with Mrs. Miller.”

  “Oh! How is she?”

  “Fine. But the doctor almost went nuts. He said it was the first time in naval history that a baby had been born on a battleship. He seemed to think it violated the rules of etiquette, or something. It was a girl,” she went on, a little breathlessly now, as if talking about babies made her excited. “Mrs. Miller said she was going to name it Margaret, after me. Isn’t that nice? She says her husband will be worried to death about her and she wants to use the ship’s radio to send him a message. Do you think she could do that?”

  “Do I—” Craig choked. “Listen, girl, do you know what has happened?”

  The tone of his voice alarmed her. “No,” she said quickly. “I don’t know. What has happened?”

  She had been busy down in the hospital bay, too busy to wonder what was going on up above. Craig told her the whole story. She listened in incredulous amazement. He had to tell it twice before she began to understand it. And then she didn’t believe it.

  “You’re kidding me,” she said.

  “Sorry,” Craig answered. “But I’m not kidding.”

  “You mean—you actually mean we’re back somewhere in the past?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But—but what are we going to do?”

  * * * *

  The big man shrugged. “We’re going to wait and see what happens. That’s all we can do. Wait and see.” There were tones of excitement in his voice.

  “You sound pleased about this,” she challenged.

  “I’m not pleased,” he quickly corrected her. “I’m sorry for Mrs. Miller and for Margaret, for you, for Captain Higgins, and the men on the Idaho. But as for myself—well, I’m not sorry. This is the ultimate adventure. We have a new world to explore, new things to see. I know hundreds of men who would give an arm to be dropped back here into this world. I’ve met them in every mining camp I ever saw, in every trading post on the frontiers of civilization, in every corner of earth. They were misfits, most of them. I’m a misfit, or I was, back in our time. I didn’t belong, I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a business man, I never would have made a business man. I couldn’t have been a lawyer or a clerk or a white-collar worker. But here—well I seem to belong here. This is my time, this is my place in the world.” He broke off. “I don’t know why I am telling you all this,” he said shortly.

  She had listened quietly and sympathetically. “You can tell me,” she said. “Remember, back in the life-boat, when I told you we were two of a kind? I didn’t fit in, either, back home. I belong here too.”

  She had moved closer to him, in the soft darkness. He could sense her nearness, sense her womanliness. He started to put his arms around her.

  “Well,” a voice said behind him.

  Craig turned. Voronoff stood there. “What do you want?” Craig said.

  “From you, I want nothing,” Voronoff answered. “I was not speaking to you. I, at least, have not forgotten about the water.”

  “The water?” Craig said puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

  “The water that wasn’t in the cask we had in the life-boat,” Voronoff answered. “The water that you drank in the night when the rest of us were asleep.”

  “Damn you—” Craig said.

  Voronoff walked away. Craig made no attempt to follow him. He had completely forgotten about the water. With an effort, he got his temper under control and turned back to the girl.

  She had turned away and was looking at the sea. When Craig spoke, she did not answer. A moment before, a warm magic had been between them. Voronoff’s words had changed the warmth to coldness.

  * * * *

  That night the lookouts on the Idaho were constantly reporting that the ship was being shadowed. Overhead in the darkness were planes, silent planes. The lookout occasionally spotted them against the moon.

  The fact that the planes flew silently, like shadows in the night, perturbed the lookouts and their uneasiness was communicated to the crew. No one would have much minded planes that made the proper amount of noise, but ghost planes that made no noise at all were dreadful things. The silent planes scouted the ship, then seemed to disappear. At least they were no longer visible, but whether or not they were still hidden somewhere in the sky, no one knew. They made no attempt to bomb the ship, or to attack it in any way. This seemed ominous.

  The Idaho carried four planes of her own. One had been lost. Before dawn, Captain Higgins ordered another catapulted into the sky, to search the surrounding area. This plane went aloft. It was not attacked or molested. The pilot, by radio, reported the presence of a large body of land very near. Navigators, consulting their charts, discovered that this body of land was not on any of their maps.

  Dawn, that hour of danger when an attack might reasonably be expected, came. The crew of the Idaho stood by their guns, waiting. No attack came.

  The sun rose. Still there was no attack. The ship, moving very slowly, entered an area where the surface of the sea seemed to have turned to silver. This effect was caused by some oily substance that floated on the water, a new phenomenon to officers and men alike.

  On the horizon the land mass the pilot of the scouting plane had reported was dimly visible, a range of forested hills sloping upward to mountains in the background, the rim of some mighty continent of the old time. Later, millions of years later, only the tops of these mountains would remain above the sea, to form the thousands of islands of the Pacific.

  * * * *

  Craig breakfasted below. He came on deck just as the alarm sounded. The crew raced to their stations. He discovered the cause of the alarm.

  Overhead, at a height of thirty to thirty-five thousand feet, was a plane. It was shadowing the ship. It made no attempt to attack. Craig went to the bridge. Captain Higgins had been on the bridge all night. He was still there. He greeted Craig wanly.

  “We’re being watched,” Higgins said. “I don’t like it.”

  “Anything we can do about it?”

  Higgins s
quinted upward through his glasses. “Too high for ack-ack. No, there is nothing we can do about it. And I’m not sure we want to do anything about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re not fighting a war here in this time,” the captain answered. “We don’t want to fight, if we can possibly avoid it.”

  “It may be a problem to avoid fighting,” Craig said. “Remember, they shot down the pilot of your scouting plane.”

  “I remember,” Higgins said grimly.

  “Of course, we could surrender,” Craig suggested.

  “How would you like to go to hell?” Higgins said.

  “It was only an idea,” Craig grinned. “But I don’t like this business. We don’t know what we’re trying to avoid fighting, or what strength they have, or how they will attack, if they attack.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Higgins answered. “But I didn’t choose it. Damn them, if they’re going to attack, I wish they would get on with it!”

  Over the huge ship the tiny plane circled. Every man on the Idaho knew the situation was nasty. They were being watched. There was nothing they could do to stop it. The shadowing plane was above anti-aircraft fire. The warship could not hide from it. There was no protecting destroyer to lay a friendly smoke screen to shield them from the eyes in the sky. Meanwhile, somewhere around them a hidden enemy might be marshalling forces to destroy them.

  “Have you tried to contact them?” Craig asked.

  “I tried to reach them by radio all last night,” Higgins answered. “There was no answer. The radio operators say there are no signals in the air. This, plus the fact that they have not attempted to answer our signals, forces me to the conclusion that they have not discovered radio. Of course they may use wave bands beyond the range of out receivers—Hello! What’s that?”

  From somewhere near them a shout had sounded.

  Leaning over the edge of the bridge, Craig saw a sailor on the lower deck. The man was also leaning over pointing down toward the sea. He shouted again and turned upward toward the bridge. His face was white with terror.

  “What is it?” Captain Higgins demanded.

  “It’s—It’s that silver stuff on the surface, sir,” the sailor answered. “It’s—it’s eating the sides of the ship sir. It’s eating the ship.”

  The Idaho was still in the area of the bright substance that floated on the surface of the sea. Captain Higgins raced from the bridge down to the main deck. Craig followed him. By the time they reached the spot where the sailor was standing several other officers had gathered. They were all staring down at the sea.

  Craig leaned over the rail, looked down. Horror tightened an iron band around his heart.

  * * * *

  At the waterline, a great gash had been eaten into the steel hull of the Idaho. The plates of the ship were the best grade of chrome steel, heat-treated and hardened. They were designed to withstand the battering of sixteen-inch shells. The steel in them was the toughest metal that had ever come out of Pittsburgh.

  Where the oily, shiny substance touched it, the steel was crumbling away.

  “Acid!” Craig heard an officer gasp. “That’s what the silver stuff is. Acid! They sprayed it on the sea.”

  “They plotted our course and set a booby-trap for us.”

  “That can’t be an acid,” someone protested. “It is impossible to secure a concentration of acid on the surface of the sea strong enough to eat holes in steel.”

  “Maybe it’s impossible but it sure as hell has happened!”

  Each passing wave tossed the oily liquid against the hull of the Idaho. It hissed softly when it struck and promptly began its deadly work. What was happening below the waterline was not visible. Probably no damage was being done there because the acid was on the surface and did not touch the areas below the waterline. But enough damage was being done above the water! Pits two inches deep were already appearing in the steel sides of the ship.

  “Full speed ahead!” Captain Higgins ordered.

  Their hope was to get out of the area covered by the acid and to get out of it quickly. But—the patch of silver was miles in extent. And there was no way to determine exactly how much damage had been done to the ship. The line of corrosion extending around the hull might have weakened her so badly that she was unseaworthy.

  Captain Higgins took the only possible course. He ordered the ship to make for land.

  * * * *

  Two hours later the Idaho was resting in a natural harbor between low hills. A river emptied into the sea here. Captain Higgins had grown years older as he took the ship into the mouth of the harbor. He had no charts of the place, no way of knowing how much water was available, or whether there were hidden reefs waiting to rip the bottom out of the ship. He took her in blind, the hardest job any ship’s master ever has to face.

  Like a wounded lion, the Idaho was seeking a place where she could lie up and determine how badly she had been hurt. In entering the harbor she was going into what might easily be a death trap but if she stayed outside, her weakened hull might give away and she might go down with all hands.

  Higgins sent his engineers in boats to determine how much damage had been done to the hull. With his officers, he waited on the bridge for the engineers to report. There was none of the acid on the surface of the harbor.

  Craig heard the chief engineer report.

  “The hull is so weak that the ship may sink at any moment, sir. An effort to move her might crumble the plates. Holes in the sides six to eight inches deep, sir.”

  The captain’s hands on the rail of the bridge tightened until the knuckles showed white.

  “Very well,” he said. “Beach her.”

  “Beach her, sir?”

  “Yes. If we stay here, we may find more of that acid sprayed on the water, in which case the ship will sink.”

  The crew began preparations to carry out the orders. The Idaho was done, finished, ended.

  High overhead the single watchful plane still circled.

  Higgins shook his fist at it. “Damn you—” he said. “Damn you—”

  The Idaho was carefully brought into the mouth of the river until she touched bottom. Fortunately the bottom was sandy mud. The ship sighed and settled herself into it like a tired sea monster coming out of the ocean to die. Everyone on board her knew that this was the ship’s last resting place. Her steel bones would remain here until they rusted away. As the ship’s keel grated on the bottom, Captain Higgins looked like a man who is hearing his own death sentence but his back was stiff as a ramrod and his chin was high.

  CHAPTER V

  The Ogrum

  “Exploring parties ashore,” Captain Higgins ordered.

  “With your permission,” Craig said, “I should like to be a member of one of those parties.”

  “Certainly,” the captain said. “I’ll do even better than that—I’ll put you in charge of one of them.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Craig said. In accordance with the best naval tradition, he kept his voice emotionless, but his heart leaped at the thought. He was going to lead a squad of blue-jackets ashore!

  He was assembling his group when Michaelson, wildly excited, came dashing up. “I understand you are taking a squad ashore!” the scientist excitedly panted.

  “That’s right,” Craig answered.

  “I want to go along.”

  “You want to go along?” Craig glanced toward the nearby shore. Above the swamps bordering the river one of the lizard-birds was flapping. It was carrying in its taloned claws something that looked like a small monkey. Now and then coughing grunts came from the swamp, evidence of the beasts lurking there. “You want to go into that?” Craig questioned.

  “Certainly,” the scientist vigorously answered. “This is the opportunity of a life-time. We shall have a perfect chance to observe the flora and
fauna of this time. We shall see them alive. No other scientist ever had a chance like this.”

  “You mean you will have a fine chance to be gobbled up,” Craig said grimly, nodding toward the shore. “That’s jungle country.”

  “You are taking these men into it,” Michaelson protested.

  “They volunteered,” Craig answered.

  “So do I volunteer,” Michaelson said.

  “All right,” Craig said, grinning in spite of himself at the impetuous way this scientist flung himself into what at best could only be a nasty situation. “Get yourself a gun and come along—” He broke off to stare at the second person who was approaching him.

  It was Margy Sharp. She went directly to the point. “How about me volunteering too?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m damned,” Craig said.

  “Does that mean I can go?”

  “It does not!” Craig said emphatically. “It means I’m astonished that you should have taken such sudden leave of your senses.”

  “Why can’t I go?” she challenged.

  “Because you’re a girl,” he answered. “And because you would be in the way. No sale, Margy. Not today and not any other day if I have anything to say about it. You stay here where you belong.”

  “You damned men have all the fun,” the girl said bitterly, turning on her heel. Craig watched her walk directly to Captain Higgins and make the same request and he observed the astonishment of that naval officer. But in spite of his astonishment, the captain was quite able to say “No.”

  The last he saw of her, she was leaning over the rail watching the small boat put out for shore. He waved at her. She thumbed her nose in reply.

  Looking back as they neared the shore, Craig saw she was still standing at the rail. He also heard the boom of the ship’s catapult and saw a plane launched into the air. Captain Higgins was sending out a plane to scout the surrounding area. Craig knew what the captain was worried about—the place from which those cursed silent airplanes came.

  High in the sky, he could see one of the silent floaters keeping its vigil over the Idaho.

  “We’ll cross the swamp and reach the hills,” Craig directed.