The Lost Warship Read online

  CHAPTER III

  The Return of the Dove

  There were dozens of the great bird-lizards flapping about the ship.Either they thought it was an enemy, to be attacked and destroyed, orthey thought it was something to eat. In either event, it was to beattacked. They were attacking it. They would circle it, flap heavily toa point above, then launch themselves into a glide, fanged mouth open,screaming shrilly.

  The anti-aircraft gunners knocked the beasts out of the air with ease.

  On the bridge a group of tense officers watched the slaughter withoutbeing greatly interested in it. They knew that the guns of the Idahowere proof against any creature of earth, sky, or water, in this world.They were not afraid of the beasts of this strange time into which theyhad been thrust.

  The scouting plane was still out, searching the waste of water for land.

  The officers of the Idaho were all thinking the same thing. CaptainHiggins put their thoughts into words.

  "Mr. Michaelson," the captain said slowly. "I can't argue with you. I amforced to believe that somehow we have been forced back in time. HoweverI am charged with the responsibility for this ship. Back where we camefrom, the Idaho is needed. I want to get her back where she belongs. Howcan we accomplish this?"

  The scientist hesitated. He did not want to say what he had to say. Heshook his head. "I question whether or not we can accomplish it," hesaid at last.

  "But we _have_ to return!" Higgins protested.

  "I know," Michaelson said sympathetically. "The problem is _how_!"

  "You mean there is no way to return?"

  The scientist shrugged. "If there is, I do not know of it."

  "But can't you make any suggestion? After all, this is your field.You're a scientist."

  "This is my field but even I know little or nothing about it. Almostnothing is known about the true nature of the space-time continuum. Onlyrecently have we even guessed that such things as space-time faultsexisted. We were hurled through this particular fault by accident, theresult of an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Whether we canduplicate that accident, and whether it would return us to our owntime--I just don't know. Nobody knows."

  The officers of the Idaho received this information with no sign ofpleasure. Craig felt sorry for them. After all, some of them had wives,all of them had friends back in the United States. Or was it _forward_in the United States, in the America that was to be? It was hard toremember that Columbus had not as yet sailed westward, would not sailwestward for--how many hundreds of thousands of years?

  All human history would have to unroll before there was an America. Ifthe theory of continental drift was correct, there might not even be anAmerican continent, it might still be joined to Europe. Babylon andNineveh, Karnak and Thebes, Rome and London--there were no such citiesin the world, would not be for--

  * * * * *

  The men on this ship were probably the only human beings alive on earth!Men had not yet become human, or maybe hadn't. The Neanderthal Man, theCro-Magnons, maybe the Java Man, the Piltdown Man, had not yet appearedon the planet!

  "As I understand it," an officer said, "we were sailing directly acrossa space-time fault when the explosion of the bombs sent us through thefault? Is that correct?"

  "That is correct," Michaelson answered.

  "Then why don't we locate this fault and set off some explosions of ourown?" the officer suggested. "Is there any chance that we mightreturn--home--that way?"

  "I don't know," the scientist frankly answered. "Maybe it would work,maybe it won't. We can certainly try it, and if it fails, nothing islost. Meanwhile I will go over my data and see if I can find some way ofaccomplishing what we desire."

  Michaelson went below. The Idaho was brought around. Immediately aworried officer posed another problem.

  "How are we going to find that fault?" he asked. "We can't see it. Wecan't feel it. How are we going to know when we have reached the rightplace?"

  "We'll search the whole area," Higgins said. "We haven't moved far andlocating the fault ought not to be too difficult. For that matter, weare probably still in it."

  The officers moved quickly and efficiently to put his orders intoexecution. The plan was to put the ship in the same position she hadoccupied when the bombs struck, then use the small boats to plantexplosive charges in the water around the battle wagon, charges whichcould be electrically exploded from the ship. Captain Higgins moved towhere Craig was standing. He took off his cap and wiped perspirationfrom his forehead.

  "What do you make of this?" he asked.

  Craig shrugged. "I pass," he said.

  "But--one minute we were part of a task force and Jap bombers werehaving a go at us. The next minute--" Higgins looked helpless. "Damn it,Craig," he exploded, "things like that can't happen!"

  "They aren't supposed to happen," the big man grimly answered. "We justsaw one of them happen."

  "But--" Higgins protested, "surely we would have known about thesespace-time faults, if they existed. Other ships would have fallen intothem."

  "Maybe other ships have fallen into them," Craig suggested. "In the lastwar the Cyclops vanished without a trace. There have been other ships,dozens of them, that have disappeared. And, for that matter, how is thecommander of your task force going to handle the disappearance of theIdaho?"

  "I don't know," Higgins muttered.

  "He is going to have to report the loss of the battleship. What will hesay?"

  "What can he say?"

  "He'll search the area, for survivors and wreckage. When he findsneither the only conclusion he can reach will be that the Idaho wasinstantaneously sunk with the loss of all hands. Remember we were underattack at the time. Remember that intense blue light that flared aroundthe horizon? To the men in the other ships that light may have lookedlike an explosion of the magazines of the Idaho. The admiral commandingyour task force may report that a bomb seemingly passed down the smokestack of the Idaho and the resulting explosion touched off the powdermagazine."

  * * * * *

  Craig paused and in growing perplexity watched what Higgins was doing.The captain was vigorously kicking the steel wall of the bridge. He waspounding his right foot against it as if he was trying to kick it down.There was a look of pain on his face. Craig watched for a second, thengrinned.

  "Does it hurt?" he said.

  "Yes!"

  "Then it must be real," the big man suggested.

  Higgins left off kicking the wall. Craig knew _why_ he had been kickingit--to assure himself that the wall was really there. Higgins was a manin a nightmare but instead of pinching himself to see if he was awake,he kicked the wall.

  "Damn it!" the captain muttered. "Why did this have to happen to us?"

  "Destiny," Craig mused. "Fate. How did the steamer I was on happen toget bombed? How did I happen to be in the life-boat that wasn'tmachine-gunned? How did we happen to get picked up? The only answer isfate."

  "That's a darned poor answer," Higgins said.

  "It's the only answer," Craig replied. "Your dove is coming back."

  "What? Have you gone wacky on me?" the startled captain answered.

  Craig pointed to the sea. Barely visible on the horizon was a tiny dot.

  "Oh, the plane," the captain said, watching the dot. It was movingswiftly toward them.

  Craig watched it, a frown on his face. "I thought you sent out only_one_ plane," he said.

  "That's right. I did send one."

  "Well," Craig said slowly, "unless my eyes have gone bad, three planesare coming back."

  "What?--But that's impossible?" Higgins snatched a pair of glasses,swiftly focused them on the plane. It was still only a dot in the sky.Two smaller dots were following swiftly behind it.

  "Maybe a couple of those lizard-birds are chasing it?" Craig hazarded.

  "Nonsense!" the captain retorted. "It can fly rings around those things.Those lizards are too slow to keep up with it. But there is so
methingfollowing it."

  Higgins kept the glasses to his eyes, straining to see the approachingdots.

  "If those things are planes," he muttered, and there was a note ofexultation in his voice, "then Michaelson, and his talk of space-timefaults, is nuts."

  What Higgins meant was, that if the two dots were planes, then what hadhappened to the Idaho had been an illusion of some kind. Planes couldexist only in a modern world. They were one of mankind's most recentinventions.

  The stubby-winged scouting plane from the ship was easily visible now.It was driving hell for leather for the Idaho. Craig watched it withgrowing apprehension.

  "That pilot is running away from something," he said.

  "Impossible!" Higgins snapped.

  The plane swept nearer. It was flying at a low altitude. The two dotswere hard on its heels. They were overtaking it. And--they were nolonger dots.

  "Planes!" Higgins shouted.

  * * * * *

  Craig kept silent. They were planes all right, but--He saw somethinglance out from one of them. The scouting plane leaped upward in ascreaming climb. Something reached toward it again, touched it. It beganto lose altitude. It was still coming toward the Idaho but it was on along slant.

  "It's being attacked!" Higgins shouted, pain in his voice.

  Over the Idaho the call to battle stations rolled. Again the mightyvessel surged to the tempo of men going into action.

  The scouting plane was dropping lower and lower. It hit the water. Oneof the pursuing ships dived down at it.

  The anti-aircraft batteries let go. For the second time the Idaho wasdefending herself. Thunder rolled across the waters.

  The attacking plane was within point-blank range. Mushrooms of blacksmoke puffed into existence around it, knocked it around in the air,caught it with a direct hit.

  A gigantic explosion sounded.

  A ball of smoke burst where the plane had been. Fragments floatedoutward, slid downward to the sea. There was not enough of the planeleft for identification.

  The second plane lifted upward. For the first time Craig got a good lookat it. His first impression, illogical as that was, was that it was aJap ship. When it lifted up he got a good look at it. It wasn't a Japplane. No marks of the rising sun were visible on its body.

  Craig saw then that it wasn't a plane at all. It had stubby, slopingwings, but the wings were apparently more for the purpose of stabilizingflight than for the lift they might impart. It looked like a flyingwedge.

  He could not tell how it was propelled. If it had a motor, he could notsee it.

  It was fast, faster than greased lightning.

  Apparently its pilot had not noticed the battleship until the barrage ofanti-aircraft fire had destroyed the first plane. Not until then did heeven know the Idaho existed. Like a bird that had been suddenly startledby the appearance of a hawk, the plane leaped into the air. Shells werestill bursting around it. It went up so fast it left the barragecompletely behind. Its climb was almost vertical. It rose to abouttwenty thousand feet, leveled off. Twice it circled the battleship,ignoring the shell bursts, that tried to keep up with it.

  Then it turned in the direction from which it had come. It was out ofsight in seconds.

  There was silence on the bridge of the Idaho.

  "Holy cats!" Craig heard an officer mutter. "Somebody is crazy as hell._We_ don't have planes that will fly like that and I know damned goodand well they didn't have them a hundred thousand years ago!"

  Was Michaelson wrong? Was he talking through his hat when he said theIdaho had been precipitated through a time fault into the remote past?He had said they might be a hundred thousand years in the past, or amillion years--he didn't know which. The appearance of the lizard-birds,the great winged dragons of mythology, had seemed to prove that thescientist was correct.

  Did these two mysterious planes, of strange shape and design and withthe ability to fly at such blinding speed, prove that he was wrong?

  Was it possible--the thought stunned Craig--that they had beenprecipitated into the future?

  The winged dragons belonged to the past. The planes, theoretically atleast, belonged to the future.

  "Something is crazy!" Captain Higgins said. "Go get that scientist," hespoke to one of his aides. "I want to talk to him."

  * * * * *

  Michaelson came to the bridge and listened quietly to what Higgins hadto say. His grave face registered no emotion but his eyes were grim.

  "I can definitely tell you _two_ things," he said at last. "One of themis that we are not in what could be called the future."

  "But those two planes were better than anything we have invented!"Captain Higgins insisted. "The airplane was not invented until 1907.This _has_ to be the future."

  "_Men_ invented airplanes in 1907," Michaelson said. Ever so slightly heemphasized the word "_men_."

  Higgins stared at him. Slowly, as he realized the implication of whatthe scientist had said, his face began to change. "What are you drivingat?" he said, his voice a whisper.

  Michaelson spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "The Wright brothersinvented the lighter-than-air ship early in the twentieth century," hesaid. "They were the first men to fly a plane, the first men of ourrace. But how do we know what happened on earth a million years ago, andI can definitely tell you that we are at least a million years in thepast? The history that we know fairly well does not cover a span of morethan five thousand years. How can we be certain what happened or did nothappen on earth millions of years ago?"

  The scientist spoke quietly, his voice almost a whisper. "We are beforethe time of the airplane. Yet we find airplanes? What do you think thatmight mean?"

  "I--" Higgins faltered, his mind flinching away from facing the unknowngulfs of time. He forced his mind to heel. "It means there are peoplehere in this time," he said huskily. "People, or _something_, who knowhow to make planes."

  Michaelson nodded. "That would be my conclusion," he said.

  "But that is impossible," Higgins flared. "If there had beencivilizations in the past, we would have a record of them. I mean, wewould have found their cities, even if the people had disappeared. Wewould have found traces of their factories, of their buildings--"

  "Would we?" Michaelson asked.

  "Certainly. Don't you agree with me?"

  "Not necessarily," the scientist said. "You are forgetting one importantfact--the size of a million years. A million years from now will anyonebe able to find New York? Chicago? London? The steel mills ofPittsburgh? I think not. In that length of time, the action of the rain,the frost, and the sun will have completely destroyed every sign thatthese places once existed. Besides, the continents we now know may havesunk and new ones appeared. How could we locate the ruin of Pittsburghif the city were at the bottom of the Atlantic? A million years agothere may have been huge cities on earth. Man is not necessarily thefirst race ever to appear on the planet."

  Craig, listening, recognized the logic in what Michaelson had said.There might have been other races on earth! The vanity of men blindedthem to that fact, when they thought about it at all. They wanted tobelieve they were the most important, and the only effort of creation,that the earth had come into being expressly for their benefit. Naturemight have other plans.

  Michaelson had suggested a logical solution for the dilemma of airplanesand flying dragons existing in the same world.

  Craig saw the officers glancing uneasily in the direction from which theplanes had come. Off yonder somewhere below the horizon was _something_.They were worried about it. Against the beasts of this time, the Idahowas all-powerful. But how would the Idaho stack up against the_something_ that lay below the horizon? Or would the ship be able toescape back through the time fault before the threat of the mysteriousplanes became greater?

  Out around the ship, small boats were planting charges of explosive. Oneboat was dashing out to the wrecked scouting plane to rescue the pilot.

&
nbsp; "We have to see if we can get away from here, at once," Higgins said."We have to set off those explosives and see if they will force us backthrough the time fault."

  They had to get away from this world. There was danger here. Planesthat flew as fast as the one that had gone streaking off across the skyrepresented danger.

  Higgins ordered the planting of the explosives to proceed at thedouble-quick.

  "I said I could definitely tell you two things," Michaelson spoke again."One of them was that we are in the past, millions of years in thepast." He spoke slowly, his eyes on the busy boats around the ship. "Areyou not interested in the second of the two things I said I could tellyou?"

  "Yes," said Higgins. "What is it?"

  The scientist sighed. "It is that we will never be able to return to ourown time!"

  "What? But--we are planting mines. If the explosion of the Jap bombssent us through the time fault, maybe a second explosion will send usback through it."

  Michaelson shook his head. "I have investigated the mathematics of it,"he said. "It is impossible. You might as well call in your boats andsave your explosives. The fact is, we are marooned in this time,_forever_!"

  Marooned in time, forever! The words rang like bells of doom. Maroonedforever. No chance of escape. No hope for escape.

  "Are you sure?" Higgins questioned.

  "Positive," the scientist answered.

  Craig looked at the sea. He lit a cigarette, noting that it was the lastone in the package. He drew the smoke into his lungs, feeling the biteof it.

  Marooned in time, forever!