The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream
by G.C.Edmondson
Version 1.0
A #BW Release

I

THOUGH HE was given to daydreams of a wooden ship
and iron men era, Ensign Joseph Rate was captain of a
wooden ship in a predominantly atomic navy. And a
sailing ship at that!

The Alice was an 89-foot yawl, engaged in very secret
work which involved countermeasures against enemy
submarines. Since the Alice could move without thump-
ings or engine noises, she was well suited for this kind
of work. Ensign Joe Rate was less suited to be her
skipper.

A year ago he had been one of Dr. Battlement's
Bright Young Men, youngest assistant professor in the
history of Athosburg College.

At the moment he was arguing with Dr. Krom. "If
we don't start hauling your perverted - Christmas tree
out right now there won't be time," he said. "That
squall isn't going to wait."

Dr. Krom sighed and passed a hand through his shock
of white hair. "We could be through in another hour,"
he protested. Joe showed no signs of weakening so the
doctor played his trump card. "Finish these tests to-
day and we'll spend the next two weekends in San
Diego."

A glance at the bulletin board would have advised
the old man that Ensign Rate and the Alice were al-
ready scheduled to spend tomorrow in port. Nothing
could have given Joe more pleasure than not doing so.

Joe knew perfectly well Dr. Krom saw him as a navy-
minded oaf. He reflected charitably that he didn't re-
gard the doctor as a mad scientist. Feebleminded, per-
haps . . . "Will you absolve me if we have to cut it
loose?" He spoke loud enough to be overheard and re-
peated come Board of Inquiry day.

"You won't have to," Dr. Krom said confidently. He
was not a meteorologist.

"On thy head be it," Joe muttered.

Twenty minutes later the yawl was plunging with
that corkscrew motion peculiar to sailing hulls when
stripped of the canvas which steadies them. Sailors
fought to lash the flogging main boom someplace where
Dr. Krom's nightmare would not make the yawl list
quite so soggily aport and perhaps work a trifle less
doggedly at smashing the midships planking.

Krom's Christmas Tree was a fantastic, hydrophone-
studded pyramid which was grunted overboard with
much winching and taking of the Lord's Name in vain
while accomplices in the dinghy exploded half-pound
charges of TNT at varying distances. While the Christ-
mas tree draped from the end of the main boom no
sail could be set, and the Alice listed uncomfortably.

"Be careful," Dr. Krom begged. "Two years' appro-
priation went into that."

"You'd better go below, sir," Ensign Rate said.

"But maybe I can help."

Joe choked back his I-told-you-so as he glanced at
the skinny old man. "Let me handle it," he said. "We
pay taxes too." Joe had learned a little about handling
superannuated genius back in his History Department
days—but not enough.

If getting an education had not exactly meant starv-
ing in a garret, still it had not been easy for Joe. Were
it not for his phenomenal memory the hours he'd spent
keeping body and soul together might have kept the
young man from passing a single course. As it was,

college had seemed to him a mere variation and ex-
pansion on themes he could still quote verbatim from
sixth grade texts. But he had never learned how to out-
guess Dr. Battlement or his daughter. He wondered if
he'd ever be able to handle Dr. Krom.

Ten hectic minutes passed before the Alice's boom
was secured. Under bare poles and with her diesel bare-
ly ticking over, the yawl crabbed into the swell. Krom's
monster hung from a hundred feet of cable and would
be safe, providing the Alice maintained steerageway
and didn't drift into shallow water. The squall blew
the tops from short, steep waves. A thunderhead drew
lightning from a wavecrest a mile away. There hadn't
been time for oilskins and Joe was soaked. "You all
right?" he asked. The helmsman nodded so he ducked
below.	'

Gorson and Cookie were fumbling with something in-
side a bell jar as he passed through the galley. "Coffee,
Skipper?" Cook asked. Joe shook his head. He knew he
ought to say something about the still but they had
been in the navy longer than he. The chief had a theory
that their dried-apple brandy's foul taste came from too
much heat—hence their experiments with low temper-
ature vacuum distillation.

He went into his cabin and rummaged for dry clothes.
In the galley Cookie humped energetically over a hand
vacuum pump while Gorson studied the gleaming cop-
per coil inside the bell jar.

At that moment lightning struck.

Most of the charge bled harmlessly down the Alice's
standing rigging to the waterline, but there was enough
left over to stand everybody's hair on end. Balls of St.
Emo's fire danced merrily about the ship's innards and
the single echoless CRACK was felt rather than heard.

In the galley Cookie and Gorson stared at the melted
coil which crumpled amid shards of the shattered bell
jar. "Holy balls," Gorson mumbled, "Hey Skipper, look!"

But Ensign Rate, clad only in non-regulation skivvy
drawers, was clambering up the ladder.

Seaman Guilbeau stared glassily at the binnacle. The
Alice was 90° off course. The ensign pushed him away
and fought the struggling yawl back up. Schwartz and
Rose, who had been tending the winch, sat up dazedly.
Dr. Krom's bushy head emerged from the forward scut-
tle. "Stop worrying," Joe called. "Your monster's still
with us." He glanced upward to see how much of the
Alice's standing rigging had been cremated by the flash.
There were no loose stays dangling. No one was dead.
He reached for a cigarette and abruptly learned he was
only drawers distant from naked.

The squall was dying now and Joe was troubled by
a feeling that something was wrong. Then he knew what
it was: the wind was blowing from the wrong direction.

Freedy came on deck. "Radio's dead," he reported.

"Both ways?"

The radioman shrugged. "Nothing coming in. Can't
tell if I'm getting out."

The bos'n came on deck and took the wheel. Joe
herded the dazed deck watch below. Cookie was sweep-
ing up the shattered bell jar when he passed through
the galley. "Any other damage?" the cook asked. Joe
shook his head and went into his cabin to finish dress-
ing.

"Mr. Rate—hey, Joe!" Gorson screamed. The skipper
abandoned his coffee and scrambled on deck again.
The bos'n was staring at a ship off the port bow. It was
also a wooden ship, with a single furled square sail.
Bearded faces stared from behind shields which lined
the side. An armored and helmeted man braced himself
at the dragon figurehead and chanted as oars flashed.

"A fine day to be shooting a movie," Joe growled.

The actors shipped oars and drifted toward the
Alice. "How'd you make out in the squall?" Joe shouted.

The man in the bow yelled back. Joe didn't under-

stand him. He yelled again. When Joe didn't under-
stand a second time the bright bearded man threw a
spear. It landed with a thunk and stood thrilling in the
after scuttle. "Hey, take it easy," Joe yelled, "That's
navy property! What studio do you guys work for any-
way?"

Abruptly, bearded and armored oarsmen stood be-
hind the bulwark and more spears winged toward the
Alice. Gorson's mouth opened and he flattened him-
self in the foot-deep cockpit.

"I knew all actors were nuts," Joe muttered. "But
this's carrying Stanislavsky too damn far!"

Helmeted men crowded into the Viking ship's bow,
brandishing half moon axes. The ships were only fifty
feet apart now. Joe scrambled from behind the binnacle
and rammed the throttle forward. The diesel roared
and the Alice strained for her full ten knots. But some-
thing was wrong. She wasn't answering her helm proper-
ly.

Gorson sat up. "Oh no!" he moaned. Krom's Christ-
mas tree still dangled a hundred feet below the Alice's
port side. Straining against it, the Alice swung hard
aport—straight for the boatload of spearhappy actors.
Gorson and Joe knocked each other down in their scram-
ble for the reversing lever. There was a splintering
noise as the Alice knifed into lapstrake planking. The
two men looked at each other. "Shall we jump over-
board arm in arm?" Joe asked.

But things were not finished. Robbed of forward mo-
mentum, the Alice belatedly answered her reversing
gear. As she backed away water rushed into the hole in
the other ship. Men were boiling out of the Alice's
hatches now and the Alice, still shackled to Krom's
Christmas tree, was doing her level best to swing full
circle and ram her stern into the Viking ship's opposite
side. And the reversing gear was stuck again!
Joe had to throttle down before he could kick it into

forward. Water boiled under her stern and the yawl
stopped a scant dozen feet from a second collision.
Gorson meanwhile had sprinted to the winch and was
lowering Krom's Christmas tree to give the Alice a
longer tether.

The Viking ship was settling on an even keel and
Joe realized he would have to cut Krom's nightmare
loose if he hoped to save any of the actors. He hoped
the wetting would cure some of their rambunctiousness.
And what had gotten into the Coast Guard to let a
hundred armor-clad men go asea in this overgrown ca-
noe without so much as a life jacket between them?

He grabbed a life ring and flung it Vikingward. The
bearded actors shied away as if it were radioactive.
Finally one picked it up gingerly with his sword point
and dropped it over the side.

A double bladed axe whizzed and clattered to a stop
beside Gorson. The chief had had enough. He picked
it up and swung. Sheaves squealed and the yawl
righted herself as two years of Dr. Krom's appropria-
tion and a hundred feet of the Alice's cable gurgled
downward. The yawl abruptly took a reasonable attitude
toward steering.

Dr. Krom opened and closed his mouth like a freshly
boated cod but the bos'n still weighed the axe in one
hairy paw.

The armor-ballasted actors made surprisingly little
outcry. The longship gave a final gurgle and left float-
ing oars by way of epitaph. In an hour Joe supposed
he'd be sick but at the moment it was simply unbe-
lievable. Half the the actors had gone down with their
crackerbox ship. He headed back to pick up those who
still clung to oars and water kegs. They yelled things
which sounded vaguely Scandinavian and definitely
insulting. As the Alice approached each man let go of
whatever he held and let his armor pull him down.
Stanislavsky to the last, Joe decided. He wondered

what he was going to say before the inevitable Board
of Inquiry.

"See if Freedy's done anything with the radio," he
said. Gorson nodded and went below. Joe pulled the
cam lifter and the diesel sneezed itself to death. "Drop
anchor," he called. There was a rattle of chain.

"No bottom, sir," Seaman Guilbeau reported moments
later.

"You're kidding."

"No ah ain', sir." The little Cajun was emphatic.

Ensign Rate took a wild look around the horizon.
The coast was hidden in a haze. He dived down the
cabin scuttle.

"Still dead," Freedy reported. "Can't find anything
wrong but all I get is static."

"Try the fathometer."

The radioman flipped switches until a needle inked
across a sheet of graph paper. All the way across! He
switched to the next range. Again the recorder pinned
itself. He switched again and shrugged. "Damned light-
ning must've ruined everything. There's no place that
deep within fifty miles of San Diego."

Since the Alice was required to anchor under unusual
circumstances her chain was extended with a hundred
fathoms of hot-stretch nylon. "We're all out and no
bottom," Joe said. Freedy looked at him unhappily. They
went on deck where Dr. Krom was pacing like the
caricature of an expectant father.

"Drifting," the little man wailed. "We'll never find
it again."

Joe told him about the fathometer.

"Impossible," Krom said. "I corrected the charts for
most of this area myself."

"All right, so you're an expert. What does an anchor
cable all out and dangling straight down mean?" Joe
studied his watch and then the sky. The squall had

blown itself out but the breeze still came at them wrong.
"Look at the binnacle," he said.

The old man studied the compass and frowned.

"What time have you?" Joe persisted.

"2 P.M."

"Pacific Standard?"

"Naturally."

"Look," Joe said. The sun was barely visible through
thin clouds. The doctor frowned as he looked from sun
to compass. "Are you suggesting we've lost three hours?"

"Either in time or in longitude. And now, if you'll
excuse me, I'm going to get the book out and learn
how to take a noon shot."

An hour later the Alice still drifted with one man on
deck. Seven sailors, Dr. Krom, and his civilian assistant,
sat around the galley table. Ensign Rate cleared his
throat. "My noon shot places us way north of where
we ought to be. I'll get a star sight tonight and pinpoint
the latitude. As for longitude, we could be anywhere."

Seaman Guilbeau squirmed. "Ain't we gonna be in
San Diego tonight, sir?"

Rate shook his head. For the last couple of hours a
wild suspicion had been growing on him. "How're we
fixed for food?" he asked.

Cook's Adam's apple bobbed twice. "We're supposed
to be in Dago tomorrow," he protested.

"Well, we won't be. Now how much've we got?"

Cook shrugged his thin shoulders. "I dunno; maybe
ten days."

"Were the water tanks topped up before we left?"

Gorson nodded. "Enough for two weeks, providing
the shower's secured."

"It is as of this moment. How about fuel?"

MM3/c Abe Rose mouthed his cigar. "Enough for
forty hours cruising."

Joe pushed his cap back to an improper angle. "Pro-
viding Cook goes easy on the stove, I suppose?"

The engineman nodded. "Everything runs off the
same tank."

"All right. Now, I don't, want to harp on this, but
it's hard telling when we'll see any more food, water or
oil. From now on if you need a bath use a bucket of
brine on deck. It takes fuel to charge batteries so douse
the record player. No lights unless they're absolutely
necessary. Cookie, what's in the refrigerator?"

"The usual stuff—milk, eggs, meat and butter."

"How about dry provisions and canned goods?"

"You know the navy," the cook said. "Flour, beans,
Spam and fruit."

"All right. Use up the perishables first. As soon's the
box's empty, secure it. That'll save a little fuel."

Cook nodded. "But what happened? How'd we get
so far away from San Diego?"

Seaman Schwartz stuck his unlovely face down the
scuttle. "Something in sight," he said. Everyone followed
Rate up the ladder.

The ship was about a mile away, sailing on a beam
reach. "Came heading straight toward us out of the
fog," Schwartz said. "Soon's they caught sight of us
they sheered off. But what is it?"

Ensign Rate studied the lines of the retreating ship.
He'd never actually seen one before but he thought he
knew what it was. He cringed at the idea of wasting
electricity on the heels of his economy lecture but he
could think of no way to bring in a hundred fathoms of
anchor line without using the electric winch.

While it was whirring in they hoisted the jigger. It
was the first time Rate had ever set sail without using
the engine to keep a heading into the wind. He hoped
the flat sheeted jigger would be enough to weathercock
the yawl while the mains'l was being winched up. It
was, and by the time the last fathom of chain rattled
through the winch the Alice was under all plain sail
and chasing the stranger.

After a moment's internal debate Joe decided against
setting the spinnaker. They could probably catch the
stubby little merchantman without it and he didn't want
to worry about hundreds of yards of flapping canvas,
should they have to come about suddenly.

Visibility was still less than two miles and the ship
had disappeared several minutes ago. Joe thought about
firing up the radar but he didn't want to waste power.
He'd sail an hour toward where they had disappeared
first. He took the helm himself and tried to piece to-
gether what he knew about the other ship and the men
who sailed her.

Dr. Krom lit his pipe. "Looked like something out
of the Hanseatic League," he guessed. All hands
Crowded aft into the cockpit, eager for any scrap of in-
formation.

"It's not a Hanse ship," Joe said.

Dr. Krom raised his eyebrows. He hadn't really ex-
pected this navy-minded oaf to know what he was
talking about.

Joe took a deep breath. "The ship we're following,"
he began, "is a knarr. They averaged eighty to ninety
feet, carried a single square sail on a short, heavily
shrouded mast. Bow and stern are pierced for eight oars
which are used only when docking. The decking amid-
ships is removable to load cargo."

Every time Joe made one of these impromptu lectures
he was dogged by the suspicion that he was a showoff—
the kind of pompous fraud who'd shill for a rigged
quiz show. He knew perfectly well he wasn't a genius;
he was merely cursed with a good memory. But even
Dr. Krom was impressed so he continued. "My noon
shot placed us on a latitude corresponding to the Gulf
of Finland, Davis Straits, Hudson Bay, the Bering Sea,
or the North Atlantic. The knarr was used to transport
merchandise from and to Iceland and the longship, ac-
cording to all the books, was used only on raids between

the Scandinavian peninsula and the British Isles. Since
knarrs bound for Iceland commonly took their departure
from the Shetlands or the Orkneys, I'd guess we're some-
where north of Scotland. And in time, we must be some-
where between nine and twelve hundred A.D."

"Whooee, Mr. Rate, what's a smart man like you
doin' in the navy?"

Joe eyed the little Cajun sadly. What indeed? As a
boy he had patiently cluttered his mind with useless
facts for it was axiomatic that education brought wealth
and position. Once in a while he'd wondered a trifle
worriedly how all this was to come about. Meanwhile,
he'd read more history than was required. It was the
only reading he did strictly for kicks. He'd felt guilty
about this for his father had often told Joe that one
never acquired wealth and position by having fun.

And then Dr. Battlement had channeled the young
man's aimless reading by painting glowing pictures of
the academic life. Joe decided to become a professor.

Various factors entered into this watering down of
the young man's dream. There was his aptitude for
languages, his love of history, and his absolute inca-
pacity to find any joy in transferring dollars from one
ledger to another via the legal loopholery of modern
business.

The decision was not, of course, arrived at overnight.
There were mornings of chill self-analysis while shiver-
ing through Naval ROTC drill. It was an inch by inch
retreat from cherished, if undefined, dreams—a battle
which ended in capitulation when increasingly frantic
study of want ads during his final semester showed
no openings for historians or specialists in dead lan-
guages.

Joe became an assistant. His future was assured. In
ten years his salary would climb nearly to that of a
union plumber. But there were other things entailed in
being one of Dr. Battlement's Bright Young Men. Even

professors cast desirous loots on the opposing sex. Worse
still, they have been known to marry and procreate
their kind. Dr. Battlement had a daughter.

Ariadne Battlement was small, dark, and protective.
Her capable hands were forever refolding the handker-
chief in a father's pocket or straightening the tie of a
Bright Young Man. Joe rather liked her.

But when invitations to dine with the Battlements
became frequent he turned restive. When Ariadne
started sewing his buttons and turning his collars the
young man panicked. After a night of floor pacing and
soul searching he controlled his first blind impulse to
hop a freight. When the office opened at 8 o'clock Joe
was there.

"I want to join the navy," he had said.

The Alice was making eight and a half knots under
all plain sail. Her crew was making countless decibels,
playing endless variations on "impossible; couldn't hap-
pen to us!"

"What more proof do you need?" Joe asked. "Those
lads we rammed were playing for keeps. And Freedy
can't fix the radio. Can you?"

Freedy shook his head.

"There's nothing wrong with it; just no station to hear
or answer us." Joe sighed. They were shocked but he
still couldn't make them believe it. Dr. Krom mumbled
something.

"We'll have our final proof soon." Joe studied his
watch. They had been sailing across the wind for fifty
minutes. "Was the yard squared when they first saw
us?" he asked. Schwartz nodded. "They were running
straight before the wind."

Joe knew he was building a case on very little evi-
dence but the knarr was probably bound for Iceland.
The Norse had only seen the Alice with sails furled
and could have no idea of her true speed. They had

merely operated on the fine old premise that a stranger
was an enemy and taken evasive tactics. Once out of
sight they would probably revert to their original course.
He wondered if the Norse sailors had an hourglass
aboard.

Fifty-eight minutes ticked up on his watch. "Slack
sheets," Joe yelled. With the main boom straight out
the blanketed jib hung limp and the yawl tended to
yaw like a drunken skater from the unbalanced push of
main and jigger.

"There they are!" Villegas yelled. "Dead ahead."

Joe felt the wave of admiration which passed through
his crew. He was acutely aware of his status as a boot
ensign and tried to show no emotion. "All hands lay
aft," he called.

"Something tells me," he began, "that we're going to
need an interpreter. How many languages have we
among us?"

There was silence.

"Gorson?"

"Sir?" It was the first "sir" Ensign Rate had ever ex-
tracted from the bos'n.

"How about you? Norwegian or Swede?"

The bos'n spread his hands. "Used to understand it.
I dunno any more."

"Guilbeau, you speak something that might pass for
French." The Cajun nodded. "Cook?"

"Cain't even talk English good," the cook shrugged.

"Rose?"

"If they're Hebrews I'm your man," the engineman
offered.

"Schwartz?"

"Don't look at me," Seaman Schwartz said.

"McGrath?" McGrath shook his head.

"Freedy?"

"No, sir," the radioman said.

Joe sighed. More and more it seemed he was going to

have to carry the ball. He turned to the civilians. "How
about you, Dr. Krom?"

"Russian, French, German and Hungarian," the ocea-
nographer said.

"No Latin or Greek?"

"They were not required for my specialty."

"Lapham?"

Dr. Krom's assistant was a hornrimmed type straight
from college who had infiltrated the lab's personnel via
its summer employment program. Twenty-five percent
of his time aboard the Alice was spent struggling with
his queasy stomach. The other seventy-five percent,
he was actively seasick. "Pig Latin?" the unhappy young
man offered.

A stern chase is always a long chase but to Joe it was
not long enough. An hour halved the distance between
them and the knarr and he still had not the slightest
idea what he would do when the eventual meeting took
place.

Mixed in with much other reading of ancient source
materials, Joe had once struggled through the old Icelan-
dic cycle and the Jomsviking Saga in parallel columns of
Old Norse and Modern English. Though admirable for
literary and teaching purposes, Joe suspected that his
Old Norse would prove sadly lacking when it came
to more mundane matters. He tried desperately to recall
a few words. Would the men aboard the knarr parley
or would they come out swinging like the longship Vi-
kings? He hoped not. The bad actors must have been
raiding England or Ireland and spoiling for a fight any-
way.

He caught Gorson's eye and they went below to-
gether. "Aside from the rifle and my pistol, what've we
got in the way of weapons?"

The bos'n thought a moment. "You mean like spears?
Say, if we're really back a thousand years they won't
have guns, will they?"

Joe shook his head. "No gunpowder. There was Greek
fire but I doubt if these people will have it. We'll face
axes, swords, spears, maybe bows and arrows."

"What're we going to do when we catch them?"

Joe experimented with an omniscient smile; then he
collapsed. "Nothing in the book covers this situation,"
he said flatly, "But I'd like to know for sure where we
are. Say, are there any charts for the North Atlantic?"

"Pilot charts for all five oceans," Gorson said, "But
nothing that'd be any help getting in and out of a
harbor."

"Oh great!" Joe moaned.

"We're getting close, sir," Villegas called down the
scuttle.

It was late afternoon by now and from the way the
low wheeling sun swung north Joe guessed they must
be near midsummer. "Bring the flare pistol," he told
Gorson. The stubby knarr was shorter than the Alice
but her broad beam and blunt fore and aft sections
gave her a much greater carrying capacity. "We'll come
up on her starboard side," Joe said. "Better hang out
some fenders."

They came within a hundred years of the knarr and
Joe faced a new problem: the Alice was moving twice
as fast. If they grappled something would be torn out
by the roots. The Alice ripped along, passing within
twenty feet of the other ship. They caught rapid
glimpses of a balding, red-faced man at the helm. Bright
bearded men and a pair of boys stared at them. Joe
was surprised to see several women aboard. A dark
haired girl knelt before the fire which blazed in a sand-
box amidships.

Seaman Villegas gave a wolf howl. "Ay mamacita,
que Undo eres!" he panted. The girl looked up sharply.
She was still looking when they passed hailing distance.

A mile ahead the Alice turned into the wind and
dropped her mains'l. Hove to under jib and jigger they

waited for the knarr to catch up. Rate half expected
the vessel to sheer off and try to lose them again but
the dumpy merchantman wallowed steadily forward.
Then he understood why: there were at least thirty
men aboard the knarr and its master had seen only
eleven aboard the Alice. He was ready to trade or fight.
Joe wished he knew which.

He gave the rifle to Cook. The gaunt Tennessean
was the only crew member who had ever been known
to hit anything with it. Irrelevantly, Joe wondered if
his cook had ever target practiced on revenooers. He
kept the pistol for himself.

The summer sun was still high but clouds were ob-
scuring it again. The Alice carried a floodlight in her
shrouds for handling the winch after dark. Joe thought
of turning it on for whatever "magical" effect it might
have on medieval minds. He decided not to—it might
scare them away. Worse, under its glare they would
be perfect targets if the Northmen did not scare.

The knarr brailed up its sail and drifted gently to-
ward them. It bumped and ground for a moment at
the fenders suspended over the Alice's side. Sailors on
both ships tossed lines and fended off with oars and
boat hooks. Joe took a deep breath. "Here goes," he
said, and jumped aboard.

The skipper of the knarr stood stiffly at the steering
oar. He showed no signs of moving, so Joe walked aft.
He wondered about the protocol of the situation. It
might have been better to stand on his dignity and
make the other man board the Alice. The red-bearded
man wore skintight leistrabraekr which exaggerated his
incipient pot. The loose, ill-fitting blouse gave him a
topheavy look.

He scowled ferociously over flowing mustaches whose
tips were several shades whiter from lime bleaching.
As Joe approached he held his awkward leaning posture
on the steering oar. "Hvar ar vi?" Joe asked, hoping he

was pronouncing the words right. Whiskers stared at
him. He tried another tack. "Danamark?" Another stare.

"Erin?"

"Angleland?"

"Scotland?"

Silence.

"Shetland? Orkney? Iceland?" Joe asked desperately.

Whiskers was losing patience. He roared something
and as the sword flashed Joe suddenly understood why
the man had leaned and kept his hand behind him on
the steering oar. Though he had half expected some
such thing, the swiftness of Whiskers' assault surprised
Joe. He saw with instant clarity that the Northman
would bisect him before he could begin to draw the
pistol.

Then a look of blank surprise filled the skipper's broad
face. He slumped back over the oar. The sword slipped
from his hand and clattered to the deck. Good old
Cookie, Joe thought. But he hadn't heard the rifle go
off. He glanced back at the Alice and felt sudden
shame at his imbecility. No wonder Cook hadn't fired.
He was standing directly in front of the Northman.

The red-bearded man arched backward over the oar
and made distressing noises. As the sloppy blouse pulled
tight Joe saw the knife handle protruding from Whiskers'
solar plexus.

A girl burst through the crowd of starers amidships
and lunged at Joe. He nearly beaned her with the
revolver before he realized she was not attacking. "Am-
paro!" the girl screamed. "Rescue me from these pagans!"

Her language was archaic but time does little damage
to Mediterranean tongues. The modern day Spaniard
reads the exploits of El Cid without difficulty whereas
10th Century English sounds more like German.

"For two years I am slave to these pagans. When
you hailed in my language I knew the time for venge-
ance had come. I made ready the knife."

People amidships were beginning to recover. Joe saw
the weapons they had been hiding. In a moment they
would rush him. The girl still lay at his feet, her arms
around his knees. Joe guessed he was already half a
god. He raised his arms like an Old Testament prophet
and began a sonorous chant:

"Gorson, thou whoreson,
Get the flare gun ready
At the count of five,
Fire it straight up.
One."

He bowed deeply and straightened, thrusting his
arms heavenward again. "Two." He bowed again.
"Three, four." From the corner of his eye he saw frantic
activity on the deck of the Alice. Neptune help us if he
cant find it, Joe thought—and said, "Five!"

There was a pop and hissing roar. Under the dazzle
of a parachute flare Joe saw the last of the fight go out
of the Northmen.

"What cargo?" he asked the girl.

"In truth, my lord, I do not know," he said. "It was
loaded before my mistress took me aboard."

"Do you speak their language? Oh for heaven's sake,
stand up!" He undid her clutch from his knees and
pulled the girl upright. She was small and dark but
there her resemblance to the capable Ariadne Battle-
ment ended. The shapeless gray woolen dress would
have been prim and decorous on a girl several years
younger and smaller but now it bulged in all the proper
places. In fact, it threatened to burst in a couple of
them. Her long loose hair was of the blackest black but
her face was not spoiled with the coarseness so often
found among Spanish Gypsy women. It was a demure
little face with surprisingly large eyes which gazed up
at Joe with the humble adoration of a cocker spaniel.
Joe felt protective instincts starting to tingle all through
him.

He remembered with something of a shock that this
fragile creature had just skewered the steersman and
only incidentally saved his life. "I understand something
of the pagan tongue," she said.

"Who's the-" He couldn't think of the word for first
mate. "El numero dos," he finished lamely.

She pointed at a sandy-haired giant with a beard and
mustache nearly as ferocious as the dead captain's. Joe
beckoned with a peremptory thumb. The giant stared
at him. "Tell him," Joe instructed, "to come here or I'll
call down lightning."

She spoke in fluting gurgles until the giant came
running. "Where to, where from, and what cargo?" Joe
asked. She interpreted again and the giant mumbled
an answer. They were out of Orkney, bound for Iceland,
and with a mixed cargo.

"How far out?"

"Two days."

"What're the women and children doing aboard?"

The girl spat. "They couldn't stick Olaf's new law."

Joe's ears pricked up. "Olaf Tryggvasson?"

The girl nodded.

The Norwegian king had forced even the distant Ice-
landers to turn Christian in the year 1000. This must be
990 something or other. "You know the date?" he asked.

"I was taken in the 12th year of Almanzor."
, History was full of Arab kings named Mansour; Joe
wondered which  one  she  meant.   "How  many  years
since the birth of Christ?" he asked.

"How should I know?" the girl shrugged.

The first mate still waited. "Tell him to start getting
some provisions on deck."

The Northman's answer was brief.

"He says trading ships are immune to plunder by
Viking law. Since you choose to disregard the rules of
civilized warfare you can kill him now and load your
own gurgle loot."

Joe decided not to ask what the untranslated gurgle
meant. "If he'd respected my life," he said, "I would
have respected his cargo. As it is, I'll leave him provisions
to reach port. If he holds his mouth right I may leave
him enough teeth to eat them."

A look of disappointment crossed the girl's face.

"But," Joe added hastily, "any funny business and
I'll turn you and that knife loose." He hoped the girl
would interpret properly. Chances were she'd garble it
just for the hell of it. But apparently she didn't The
tall man turned and bellowed orders.

In a moment the midships planking was up and men
passed coarse woolen sacks of rye over the Alice's rail.
Joe would, he imagined, soon be sick of rye bread but
they could live a long time on it, providing he located
fresh vegetables. "Do you bake aboard ship?" he asked
the girl. She waggled her finger in a Latin "no" and
Joe suddenly remembered how the Norse used to bake
hardtack all winter—chewy as a phonograph record
and just about as tasty.

    The Alice didn't have so much as a coffee grinder
aboard. How, Joe wondered, would they make flour?
As a small mountain of rye piled up on the yawl's deck
he calculated that they couldn't possibly use more than
fifteen pounds a day. That meant a hundred and thirty-
three days to the ton. There must already be four
tons aboard the yawl. "Enough," he shouted. He pointed
a finger at the first mate. "Stay there or I'll turn you
into a pumpkin," he threatened, and began exploring
the knarr.

There were twenty scrawny, athletic sheep in a pen
up forward. Joe took eight. Below he found bolts of
heavy woolen cloth. It would bag and shrink horribly
but the knarr's sails seemed to be made of it. Joe shud-
dered to think what some really heavy weather would
do to the Alice's ancient canvas. He took half the cloth.
He checked the knarr's water butts and decided no.

Green  streamers  were visible  through  the bungholes
and they were only two days out!

He found his real treasure in the knarr's dinghy: a
small pair of millstones tied together made up the small
boat's anchor. He was ready to leave when another
necessity caught his eye. He took half the firewood too.

"You know," he said apologetically as they left the
knarr, "we probably won't be heading for Spain." He'd
been about to ask the girl if she wouldn't rather stay
with the Norse when he realized what would happen
to her the moment he left "But you're welcome aboard,"
he added:

"You're Christian?"

"Most of us, I guess."

"I have a few things." The girl gave instructions in
Norse. The first mate shouted all hands in line and the
girl went down the line, pausing before each woman
like a boot ensign on his first inspection. While the
Alice's men watched awedly, women began undressing.
The man gathered their clothes and passed the bundle
on board the Alice. The girl paused again before the
naked, shivering women. Pausing before one, she drew
the knife. Slowly, and with great deliberation, she in-
cised a bloody cross into the older woman's forehead.
The woman glared unblinking while another cross was
etched in each cheek.

Joe stared fascinated, wanting to stop this ritual but
unable to make himself move. After all, the girl had
saved his life. It's a barbarous era, he reflected—and
what must that old woman have been doing to the girl
for the last two years?

Tenderly, and with loving care, the dark hared girl
inscribed another X on her former owner's belly. The
older woman stood erect, her hawk face expressionless.
The girl stood back to admire her work and with a
lightning movement, planted a kick in the middle of
the X. The Norse woman doubled up in silence.

II

THEY LEFT the naked Norse women feeling some joy at
finding themselves still unraped. Joe tacked for an hour
so the knarr, which couldn't sail upwind for sour apples,
would not be tempted to try any deviltry under cover
of darkness. There was still light to read by. They
slacked sheets and the yawl settled down on a SW
course.

And now, what was he going to do with the girl? In
storybook situations the fair damsel was always installed
in the captain's quarters and the skipper played musical
chairs with his officers. But the Alice was already
crowded; she had bunks for the captain and eight men.
The two civilians slept in the galley table settees. Plot-
ting board, charts, and other indispensables, all were
located in Joe's small cubicle. After some thought he
curtained off a corner of the forecastle and hoped ten
men watching each other would prevent nature from
taking its course.

As if he didn't have enough on his mind, now Cookie
was plucking his sleeve. "Cain't burn wood," he was
saying, "That stove's made for diesel oil."

The engineman stuck his head up through the cabin
sole and wriggled out of the engine compartment.

"Can you make this stove burn wood?" Joe asked.

Rose mouthed his cigar stub thoughtfully. "I'll try."

"If you can't, put a tub on deck with a few fathoms
of chain in it. Whatever you do, keep it alee and don't
set the sails afire."

The engineman removed a stovelid and surveyed the
oil burner's sooty innards.

The girl was dogging Joe, bumping into him each
time he turned around. Her name was Raquel. He
wondered if she was typical Tenth Century or if her
gamy odor came from cramped shipboard conditions.
"Villegas!" he called.

Seaman Villegas rolled out of his bunk and staggered
blearily aft.

"Can you understand this savage?"

Villegas eyed her. "If the dame's from Spain we'll
make out," he said.

"Rig a shelter on deck. Get her a bucket and some
soap. She's probably never seen it before, so—"

"Always happy to oblige," Villegas said.

"You don't have to scrub her back," Joe said firmly.
"Just explain what soap is." He retreated into his cabin
before anybody else could buttonhole him.

The only chart which promised to be of any use was
#1400W. The Hydrographic Office's pilot chart of the
North Atlantic was printed on oiled silk and someone
had been using it for a tablecloth. He scrubbed at the
coffee stain which circumnavigated Ireland and tried
to guess where they were.

If the knarr was two days northwest of the Orkneys
there should be little danger. He fired up the fathometer
for a moment to be sure they were beyond the hundred-
fathom curve and decided to stay on a southwest course.
He went on deck to see if it was dark enough for a star
sight. Someone was giggling in the darkness up near
the bow.

"Just remember penicillin's a thousand years away,"
Joe said grimly. A sheep baa'd in the sudden silence.

He got his sight and made the correction, trying to

remember if Polaris had been nearer or farther from

true north a thousand years ago. A degree or so farther,

he guessed. In any event, the Alice was on a latitude

somewhere between the Orkneys and northern Scot-
land. Until he made a landfall and an arbitrary chronom-
eter setting there would be no way to calculate longi-
tude. He'd have to steer well west where there was less
chance of piling into something after dark. Also, he
decided, the farther west they ran, the less chance of
running into more Vikings.

He left McGrath and Schwartz on deck. Howard
McGrath, in addition to being a good steersman, was
a Bible student. For reasons known only to God he was
also a firm friend of Red Schwartz, whose main in-
terests were fighting and boozing. Though they never
made a liberty together, McGrath was always ready to
put down his Bible and listen disapprovingly to
Schwartz's tales of high adventure.

Gorson and Dr. Krom were drinking coffee when
Joe went below. "Well?" Dr. Krom asked.

"Well what?" Joe wished the old man would go soak
his head.

"What're we going to do?"

"I don't know about you," Joe grunted, "But I'm going
to bed. May the Bureau of Ships have mercy on the
man who wakes me before we sight something!"

He woke with a start as the Alice's motion changed.
The short northern night was over and a bright sun
hung high. He scrambled into his pants and rushed on
deck. Spray wet him as they ploughed into a swell. An
unhappy sheep was complaining in the bow. The wind
had changed and the deck watch was sheeting in to
make good. "Let her out a little," Rate said. "Hold her
south-southwest."

Seaman Guilbeau looked worriedly at him. "Ain't
we headin' for the States, sir?" he asked.

"No," Joe growled, resisting a temptation to mimic
the Cajun's accent. "We'll let the Indians fight it out
among themselves." He glanced at the sun. It would be

at least six hours before he could get a noon shot. Even
then it would be worthless, since he still didn't know
the date. There was probably some way to calculate a
relation between noon shots and the star sight he'd
taken last night but after a moment's reflection Joe de-
cided the mathematics was beyond him.

Gorson and Dr. Krom sat staring morosely into coffee
mugs when he descended into the galley. They didn't
look like they'd changed position since last night. "All
right," he said to the CPO, "you may as well get every-
body in here who's not on watch."

Gorson nodded and yelled his way through the fore-
castle. A minute later Ensign Rate faced the assembled
ship's company. "We have two problems," he began. "To
stay alive, and to get back to our own time. There's no
point in trying to go home. In the first place, there's no
Panama Canal so we'd have to make a passage around
the Horn. Once back in San Diego we could spend our
lives eating acorns and fraternizing with Digger In-
dians. Anyone want to?"

There were no volunteers.

"Now, we have a couple of scientists among us," Joe
continued.

"I'm an oceanographer," Dr. Krom protested. "I know
nothing of time travel."

"Who does? We're going to need peace and quiet—a
place to experiment without having to fight off irate
natives. The Tenth Century wasn't noted for its hos-
pitality, though. No matter where we go, we'll wind up
in some local feud or get ourselves burnt for witchcraft."

The ship's company looked unhappily at him.

"What do you suggest?" Dr. Krom asked.

"We need a harbor—preferably some island without
local politics to worry us. Once we settle down, maybe
we can figure things out." Raquel sat at one end of the
table, eying the proceedings with interest. She had

changed to a cleaner and better fitting dress which, to
masculine eyes, was not nearly so interesting.

"Were you considering Madeira?" Dr.  Krom asked.

"I can't remember whether or not it's inhabited. The
Canaries are out. They had an aboriginal population—
I think they were called Gaunches. But Portuguese ex-
plorers found the Azores uninhabited 400 years from
now. There's anchorage, water, vegetation, and if worse
comes to worse, we can raise mutton." He looked about
the table for signs of disagreement.

Lapham was somewhat greener than usual. "Isn't
there any land closer?" he asked plaintively.

"You need to get your mind off your stomach," Joe
suggested. "How about pooling your electronic talents
with Rose? Maybe the two of you can come up with
a wind charger."

The conference broke up and sailors off watch went
back to the sack. In spite of bright sunshine the weather
was raw, with a dampness that penetrated even the
newest pea jacket. At least they were driving south,
Rate consoled himself. He wondered how soon they'd
hit warmer weather. He wished desperately for a gyro
compass, but the yawl had none. With radio direction
finders navigation had been reduced to the simplest
kind of plotting. Only now there were no beacons to
plot from. He would have to check the compass devia-
tion against the star for even the BuShips knew not
how the magnetic pole had wandered since 1000.

The day wore on and the Alice drove steadily south,
Raquel came on deck in still another dress, this time
with a tight bodice and a skirt which flared to conceal
her bare feet. Her hair was tortured into a saladlike
crown of pins and brooches. "What's that?" she inquired,
pointing at Joe's binoculars.

"They help me see farther."

She grabbed them and put them to her eyes. The
strap was still around Joe's neck so she had to come very

close. Her hair had a warm, clean smell which excited
him as no perfumery ever could. Murderous savage,
he told himself, but he let her lead him about by the
strap as Raquel played with her new toy. If she remem-
bered he was on the other end of the strap she gave no
sign.

He was smelling her hair again when she shrieked
and dropped the glasses. The strap gave Joe's neck a
gallows-thump and he guessed he should have warned
her not to look at the sun. He helped her toward the
scuttle, wondering how it would feel to carry her down
a ladder but halfway there her eyes stopped smarting
and she made the ladder under her own power. When
he reached the galley she was gone.

Dr. Krom came down and drew a mug of coffee. He
passed a hand through bushy white hair and stared
morosely at Joe. After a moment he looked around and
saw they were alone. "Was there something you wished
to discuss in confidence?" he asked.

Joe shrugged. "I have no secrets."

"But you take it so calmly," the old man said. "Is this
something which happens every day? You know, with
these idiotic security regulations one can't know what's
going on in other fields."

Calm! Joe thought. As if every historian had a shot
at getting this close to the Tenth Century! He couldn't
think of what to say to as ... perceptive ... a question
as Krom's, so he didn't bother to reply. A short silence
fell between them.

Finally, Krom asked, "How soon should we reach the
Azores?"

"If the wind holds we might be there in three weeks."

The old man was silent for a moment. "I can't get
over it," he said, "that such a thing should happen to
us!"

"What makes you think we're the only ones?"

Dr. Krom looked up sharply.

"You're an oceanographer, Doctor—surely you know
how many ships disappear each year."

"Never to see America again," the old man muttered.
He caught up Joe's argument. "I disagree most em-
phatically," he said in his lecture room voice. "They've
never showed up again in the wrong time."

"Are you sure?" What alterations have we made on
history? One load of Vikings gone without trace, one
merchant ship set upon by pirates. What are we? A lot
of outlandish foreigners who practice witchcraft. His-
tory's filled with birds of that feather. Besides," Joe con-
tinued, "have we any reason to believe everyone is
displaced into the past?"

Jack Lapham came down the ladder, a shade less
green than usual. "How's the wind charger going?" Joe
asked.

"I started a sketch and before I was half done your
engineman had figured out three improvements."

"There is nothing like working with one's hands to
instill a sense of practicality," Dr. Krom observed. He
was back worrying at Joe's theorizing. "If they came
from the past into the future wouldn't we have anach-
ronisms in our time?"

"Possibly," Joe conceded.

"Then why haven't they been found?" the old man
triumphed.

"Perhaps they're doing the same thing we are."

The old man grew thoughtful. Any sailor who found
himself in a strange place, surrounded by ships and
people he didn't understand, would have done the same;
lay low and hope for the best.

"But you're implying that the process is reversible,"
Lapham said.

"Conservation of energy and all that jazz," Joe said.
"Doesn't your modern physics make all processes re-
versible?"

"Then we can get back!"

"I think so."

"Ah, the confidence of youth," Dr. Krom said heavily.

"Weren't you ever young?" Joe asked.

"A very long time ago," the oceanographer said, and
Joe noticed his accent had grown perceptibly thicker.
He regarded the old man speculatively for a moment.

"I read somewhere that you grew up in a very small
village," Joe said.

Krom nodded.

"Well, my engineman's busy rigging a charger so we
can use the lights and refrigerator. I was wondering if
you and Jack could figure a way to get those millstones
turning. Sooner or later we'll need flour."

"Rye bread!" Krom exclaimed, and in a welling up
of half-remembered smells he was suddenly young.

Joe went on deck, leaving the two civilians sketching
excitedly on bits of paper towel. The sun still shone
and the wind seemed to be holding steady. In spite
of the chill Guilbeau was stripped to the waist as he
struggled with the yawl's wheel. "All hands set the
spinnaker," Joe shouted.

As soon as it was dark he took a sight and worked
out their latitude. Then he went back on deck arid shot
the North Star again. Then he went below and told
Freedy to fire up the fathometer.

"Sixty fathoms," Freedy reported a moment later.

"God!" Rate muttered.

"Something wrong, sir?"

"Not exactly," Joe explained. "Just better time than
I'd expected. We're nearly down to Ireland already, so
we'd better head west until we drop off the hundred
fathom curve. That's the penalty for not knowing the
date: no way to figure longitude except by feeling your
way along the bottom."

He went back on deck and settled the Alice on her
new course. "Take a sounding every ten minutes and

wake me," he said, "if she shoals out to twenty fathoms
or less."

"Right, sir," the bos'n grunted.

Joe went into his cabin and collapsed. Twenty min-
utes later he swung his feet out onto the cold linoleum
and sat, chin in hands, on the edge of his bunk. What
had he forgotten? They had food; they had water. Ev-
erything was going according to plan.

Slowly, he worked back over the last two days. To-
day was, or would have been, Saturday. He wondered
what the Old Man and his visiting brass from the
Bureau of Ships would have to say when the Alice was
not in her proper slip with polished brightwork. The
one good thing about time travel, Joe decided, was that
he didn't have to worry about some admiral stumbling
across Cookie's still. And there was that other business
too:

When Ensign Joe Rate had shown up unexpectedly
with a brand new commission in his hand, there had
not been a single activity in the whole navy which ac-
tually needed a brand new ROTC ensign. Just when
he had seemed doomed to a lifetime of awaiting orders,
someone had remembered the Alice.

Commander Cutlott had been explicit. "Those two
pirates"—he referred to Gorson and Cook—"are prime
contenders for the all-navy cumshaw and looting title."

"Haven't they ever been caught?" Joe had asked in
his innocence.

Commander Cutlott passed a weary hand over his
bald spot. "We're not dealing with amateurs," he
grunted. He leaned forward confidentially. "Things
were bad enough when they confined themselves to
supplies. How often do you find a team capable of
stealing a whole ship?"

Joe's eyes widened.

"Yes," Commander Cutlott sighed. "Using a navy ship
for their drunken parties—women aboard, no less!"

"Really, sir—" Joe began.

"Drunken, naked screaming women!" Commander
Cutlott's voice was rising. "Those god damned pirates
have somehow managed to get the Alice asea with a
full complement of whores. She's been sighted dozens
of times. And yet, whenever I get down to the dock
there she lies with those two freebooters scraping and
painting, looking for all the world like Captain Mahan
might have, if he'd managed to be born without Original
Sin!" The commander's voice had risen a full octave
and he was beginning to chant. "Catch those two fili-
busters and I'll see that you get another stripe."

Even in an atomic navy promotion is neither im-
mediate nor easy. Joe had left the commander's office
with a foreboding of what he might get if he didn't
catch them.

The linoleum in the Alice's cramped captain's cabin
had numbed his bare feet. Disgustedly, he thrust him-
self back in bed and tried to sleep. He had nearly suc-
ceeded when abruptly he sat up, cracking his head on
the bottom of the locker above. The bow!

Holy Appropriation! The Alice had rammed another
ship two days ago and still no one had crawled into
the bow to see if any planking was sprung. He swung
out of bed and grabbed a flashlight.

Galley and forecastle were dark. He picked his way
through them without turning on lights, orienting him-
self by the gentle swish of water and not-so-gentle snores.
The crawl hole between forecastle and chain locker
was barely large enough to squeeze through. He stuffed
the unlit flashlight into the waistband of his skivvy
drawers and pushed himself through. After a moment's
squirming over the jumbled anchor rope his hand
touched warm flesh. He flinched backward.

The sleeper lashed out blindly. Something sharp
grazed Joe's forehead. He cowered back, hands before
his face to ward off another blow. There was a smack

like a cleanly caught ball as a wrist slapped squarely
into his palm. Joe caught it instinctively and jerked.
He threw a right cross into the darkness. It missed and
they wrestled in silent ferocity. He twisted the wrist
until he sensed that the knife had fallen. He was scrab-
bling meanwhile with his free hand for a firmer grip.
His forearm struck teeth which promptly bit him. He
jabbed an elbow at them and eventually caught the
other hand which still flailed.

Spreadeagled figures strained in a silent, horizontal
waltz while he worked his knee between kicking legs
and forced his weight onto the other. Though Joe had
never regarded himself as an athlete, he was overpower-
ing his assailant with surprising ease. The heels stopped
kicking at his back, and he brought the spreadeagled
arms cautiously together until he could rest his elbow
on one and grip the other with the same hand. He felt
about for the fallen flashlight and turned it on.

His attacker was Raquel.

He wondered momentarily why she chose to sleep in
the nude, but even in mid-surprise his first impression
was of the perfect round firmness of her breasts. She
glared up at him and Joe became acutely aware that
his skivvy drawers were not designed for modesty. Why
did he have to be caught in these ungainly garments?
Better to be honestly naked. He dropped the flash; its
soft reflected light bathed her profile in a boudoir-like
glow. She saw Joe's face for the first time.

The glare left her eyes, fading slowly into another
emotion. Her lips were beginning to pout where he had
elbowed. There were teethmarks in his forearm and a
trickle of blood soaked his eyebrow.

Raquel no longer struggled. Joe realized abruptly
what was expected of him. The sight of her was playing
hob with his glandular system, but while he hesitated
he sensed that the moment had passed.

Neither of them moved.  Over their heads a sheep

stamped and baa'd irrelevantly. Joe took his gaze from
her and saw the knife. Stretching across her to reach
for it, he was conscious of flesh sliding over flesh, but
then Raquel had wormed her way out from under him
and was scrambling into one of the dresses she had
used to floor the compartment.

He realized with sudden horror that someone could
awaken at any minute. Or the deck watch could come
below. This situation was bound to contribute little to-
ward his dignity as master of the Alice. Still, there
would be something definitely chicken-hearted about
retreat.

He put on his most severe face and pointed down
at the rope and chain which floored the compartment,
then up at the eye where it threaded through the
deck. "If someone dropped anchor," he said, "you'd
come up through that hole one shred at a time."

Raquel did not understand the Twentieth Century
word.

"Ancla?" she asked.

"Ancora," Joe hissed. He hoped the Latin would get
through to her. "It goes down; you go up!" He made
slicing motions and pointed at the chain. Suddenly
Raquel understood and her eyes grew larger.

Joe remembered why he'd crawled into this hole. He
shined the light around, looking for sprung seams. To-
morrow he'd have the chain tailed out so he could
check the lower half of the locker. Meanwhile, he'd
explored enough for honor's sake. Any moment now
someone would wake up and peer through the open
crawl hole.

"Don't let me catch you in here again," he said severe-
ly, "or I'll turn you into a pumpkin." He tossed the knife
into her lap and backed through the hole. He'd been
in bed several minutes before he realized that he'd
locked his door. He got up and unlocked with silent
thanks that no one had come to wake him. Things like

locked doors got men to shaking their heads whenever
the Old Man's back was turned. He went back to bed
again and, naturally, couldn't sleep.

He realized he'd been taking a lot about the girl for
granted. With a knife and a disposition like that per-
haps even the Vikings had respected her privacy. But
if she was such a scrapper, what had been going on
up in the bow last night?

III

LIGHT GLOWED down the crack of his door. Joe looked
out and saw Freedy at the fathometer. "Sixty fathoms,"
the radioman said. "Cut yourself?"

"Bumped a stanchion," Joe said. He touched the scab
on his forehead and went on deck. McGrath was at the
wheel.

"Day, Mr. Rate," he asked, "are you sure this's only
nine hundred and something?"

Joe shrugged and admitted to himself that he'd only
half believed it up till now. Holy Neptune, what a thesis
I could write on the Vikings! "I'm afraid it's true," he
said.

McGrath muttered something about God. Joe looked
at him. "I don't believe He would let it happen," Mc-
Grath said.

Joe didn't know what to say to that, so he said
nothing.

After a minute or two McGrath said, "Funny—if it
were true I'd be the only Christian in the world."

"It's only a thousand A.D.," Joe protested. "Not B.C."
"I know," Howie sighed. "But Martin Luther wouldn't

be born yet."
Joe turned to hide his grin from the faint glow of the

binnacle lamp. The grin threatened to become a belly

laugh so he went below.

The sun was an hour high when Gorson woke him.
"Bottom's shoaled out to eighteen fathoms," the chief
said. "Are we going to pile into Ireland?"

Joe stuffed an arm into his oilskins and rushed up
the ladder. Bucking steep seas under shortened sail, the
Alice was making as much lee as headway. Freedy
stuck his head out of the after scuttle. "Ten fathoms,"
he yelled.

A half hour passed, then suddenly a gray-green band
was visible as they topped each swell. Joe studied the
Alice's wake and knew they'd never weather it. "Steady
as she goes," he said, and ducked below. As near as he
could guess from the Alice's meager charts, the land
must be Erris Head. 10° W longitude ran straight through
this northwest corner of Ireland, but if the wind held the
Alice would have to run through it too.

They had hoped to make for uninhabited land but
this weather was going to change their plans. Why,
Joe wondered for the thousandth time, couldn't the U.S.
Government afford a full suit of sails? He would have
to put the men to sewing in reef points at the first op-
portunity. Oh well, he philosophized, if it weren't for
some parsimonious clerk I might not be seeing Ireland.
Funny, he thought, but we know more about Greece
in 1500 B.C. than we do about Ireland even three
thousand years later.

Gorson was studying the coastline. "Nothing," he said,
passing the glasses to Joe.

Joe took his own look. "There," he said. "Not much
of a harbor but at least they aren't breaking. It's the

only hole downwind so we haven't much choice." He
tried to remember what he knew about Ireland. The
Norse controlled the east coast, he was sure, but western
Ireland had managed to remain fairly free from Norse
colonization, he thought.

Then he saw the ships.

There were four of them—Viking ships, rowing
straight into the wind. Joe guessed they intended to
round Erris Head under oars, then drive down the Gal-
way coast on a raid. At least, that had been their original
intention. Now, as they sighted the Alice driving straight
toward them, the Norse rested their oars and waited.

Joe looked around for the engineman. Rose was on
deck, along with everybody else. "Better light her off,"
Joe said. Rose nodded and took a fresh bite on his cigar
as he ducked down the scuttle.

The Vikings were less than three miles away. Men
stood by the Alice, ready to take in sail the instant
the engine started. "What in hell's keeping Rose?" Joe
asked.

Gorson came back a moment later. "That fertilizing
stove!" he explained. "When he cut it off the other
day he got the valves crossed up and cut off the engine
too."

"Great!" Joe moaned. "Better get out the rifle." There
was no hope of turning the Alice to tack out of the bay.

"He's working," Gorson consoled. "It'll be ready any
minute now."

Minutes passed and still no engine. He could lower
sail but if he did the Vikings would only start rowing
again and the Alice would be dead in the water. Better
keep canvas on and try to crowd through them.

The gap closed to half a mile. The Vikings waited,
spread evenly before the route the Alice would have
to take. Joe took the wheel and bore steadily for the
gap between the two middle ships. They were less than
a hundred yards apart and he would be exposed to

spears and darts from both sides. "Everybody go below,"
he said, "except Cook. I want you here with the rifle."

Joe and Cookie crouched in the foot-deep cockpit,
waiting for the first spear to fly. The Alice floundered
along, much more slowly than Joe had thought pos-
sible. The two center ships were about seventy yards
distant on either flank They aren't even closing in,
Joe thought.

The Norse could see that, although his rig was a
trifle strange—from somewhere in Arab country by the
looks of those crazy three cornered sails—she was not
rigged for rowing. Once around the headland she would
have to moor or breech and they could finish her off
at leisure.

The engine sputtered and caught. Joe waited a mo-
ment to see if it was going to keep running. The Vikings
were a quarter mile behind them now and the Alice
was nearing the turning point if she was going to moor
in this bay. Heads peeped cautiously out of the fore
and after scuttles.

"All clean," Joe yelled. "Come up and take a sail."
And what were the Norse going to think when they
saw the Alice running dead into the wind without
oars or sails?

The channel was narrower here and the Norse were
following them in. The Alice turned and there was a
scurry to go below again as men remembered the rain
of spears from their first Viking. She was making her
full ten knots now and Joe hoped the lightly built
dragonships would not be eager to ram. He lay face up
in the cockpit, steering with a foot on the wheel. Cookie
rested the rifle over the cockpit coaming. They'd have
to rig some kind of shelter over the cockpit if this was
going to keep up.

A bearded giant threw the first spear. It thunked in-
to the Alice's foredeck and stood thrilling. The rifle
cracked and he crumpled. Joe glanced the other way

and saw a longship racing in. They were going to ram
after all!

Suddenly there was a keening wail. Raquel stood
atop the after scuttle, making snakelike movements and
shrilling something with a poetic rhythm. Abruptly, the
Vikings sheered off, leaving the Alice to chug her placid
way around Erris Head where she could set sail again.
The girl disappeared below.

At least he had longitude. It galled Joe to think that
this information had cost an hour's fuel. Red Schwartz
relieved him at the wheel. "Mr. Rate," he asked, "you
know anything about doctoring?"

Something began to shrivel inside Joe's stomach.
"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Well, Howie ain't much for talking but he's been
acting funny all day."

"Howie?" Then Joe remembered: McGrath. "I'll see
what I can do," he said, which he admitted to himself
was practically nothing. He went below and drew a
cup of coffee. The Bible spouter was stitching a reef
point into the mains'l, along with everybody else. His
thin, ascetic face seemed no more drawn than usual.
Joe wondered if Schwartz were imagining things. Still,
they were buddies ...

It rained that night and sheet lightning flashed about
the horizon. Lightning had got them into this, Joe re-
membered; he wondered if another bolt could get them
out. But the lightning came no nearer. He looked at
the clock and decided it was time for another sight.

The deck watch was sitting in the galley. When Gor-
son saw him with the sextant he got up and followed
Joe. They waited until a wave had passed over, then
dashed up the scuttle. Gorson grabbed Joe about the
waist as he wedged himself against the mizzen. At
that moment the Alice essayed one of her more spec-
tacular rolls and green water swirled over their heads.

"You all right?" Gorson yelled as they breathed air
again.

"Yeah," Joe shouted. "Let's go below."

"Aren't you gonna take a sight?"

"Can't. I just lost the damn sextant."

Dr. Krom looked up when they came below. "That
was quick," he said.

"Practice makes perfect," Joe said absently. He shot
a glance at Gorson and the chief followed him into the
tiny cabin. Gorson's broad brow was screwed into
thoughtful wrinkles.

He squinted shrewdly at Joe and said, "You know,
Skipper, I think I've finally figured the angle on this
operation."

"Oh?"

"It's one of those drills, isn't it? Like that thing the
army's always pulling with a bunch of dogfaces in
screwy uniforms sneaking around. You know—they let
the air out of the C.O.'s tires and slam everybody in
the brig to prove the whole lashup's not paying atten-
tion. It is just a drill, isn't it?" He said grinning.

"Nobody told me," Joe grunted. "If it is, I'd like to
know how they doctored up the whole damn ocean."

The glint went out of Gorson's eyes. "Yeah," he said
glumly, "they wouldn't kill that many guys unless it
was for real." There was a long pause. "So what do we
do now without a sextant?" he finally asked.

Joe shrugged. "Sailors got by for four thousand years
without them." But I didn't, he added to himself.

"Gonna tell them?" The chief gestured toward the
galley.

"They have enough worries now."

"I hope you know what you're doing."

"Have you any ideas?"

The bos'n looked at Joe for a long half minute. "No
sir," he finally said. "You're the captain."

So I am, as long as they believe in me. And now if
I believed ...

They went back into the galley and Joe drew a cup
of coffee. "Cookie, did you wash your socks in this?" he
sputtered.

Cookie looked hurt. "Tain't much as coffee goes but
it ain't bad for burnt rye."

"Ah wish we had some chicory,"  Guilbeau added.

Joe looked at him.

"We just about outa coffee," the Cajun said.

Joe sighed and took another sip. He was trying to
drink it when Raquel came to sit beside him. "Forgive
me," she said. "I wouldn't have used the knife if I'd
known it was you."

Joe thought this over for a moment and decided he
didn't have an answer. Instead, he asked, "What did
you say to those Vikings?"

"I told them you would—" The rest trailed off into
something Joe couldn't understand. She repeated it and
he learned that he was a sorcerer who could call down
lightning. Raquel was silent for a moment. "By the way,"
she finally said, "who are you?"

Joe put his cup down. She was not, he realized, go-
ing to be fubbed off with any Great White Father
routine. She nodded at Villegas who played poker with
Schwartz and Freedy. "The dark one hailed in my
language," she explained. "I thought you were of my
people."

"How much has Villegas told you?"

She shrugged. "He is foolish and thinks only of love."

"I haven't observed him pestering you much."

"I told him I belonged to you and that you would be
angry."

"Oh my God!" Joe moaned. He took another sip of
bitter rye and thought of the inevitable Board of In-
quiry he would someday face.

"He say's women vote," Raquel continued.

Joe waited.

"What does vote mean?"

Joe explained briefly about elections.

"So the women choose your prince and banish him
if times do not prosper?"

"Wellll. .." Joe began.

"Did women make you captain?"

"Not intentionally," Joe said, remembering Ariadne
Battlement. "Where did you come from?" he asked.

She said something and he caught Burgos. He nodded
absently, his mind on the new noise which had sud-
denly added itself to the Alice's creakings and groan-
ings. It was a rhythmic clank-bang as if a piece of
chain were sweeping across the wet deck. Wearily, he
buttoned his oilskins and started up the ladder. Just as
he opened the hatch it stopped. To hell with it, he
thought, and came back down to the galley. Raquel still
sat where he had left her. "But Burgos is over a hun-
dred miles from the sea," he said, suddenly remember-
ing. "How did Vikings catch you?"

She nodded and started to explain. The noise started
again. Joe put his fingers to his lips. The noise didn't
seem to be on deck after all. He crept forward with
a hand to his ear. It stopped again. A weakened chain
plate could dismast them. But it sounded too far for-
ward for that. Maybe the anchor chain was rattling in
its chock.

"When I was eight," Raquel continued, "my father
took me to Santander."

It started again. Joe waved an angry hand and
crept forward. In the forecastle Cookie held a stick of
firewood with a hole drilled through it. One end of
the copper coil from their homemade still projected
through the hole. While sheep crowded around observ-
ing interestedly, Gorson was trying to flare the tube
with a mallet and marlinspike.

Relief gushed through Joe and culminated in a whirl-

pool somewhere beneath his stomach. "Damn it!" he
yelled. "Haven't we got enough trouble without you
playing junior scientist?" And what was the forecastle
going to smell like by morning? But . . . the sheep
couldn't stay on deck in this weather.

"Well hell, sir," Cookie began, "we was just gonna
make some rye whiskey."

"You'll make salt water taffy if I catch you screwing
around with that thing again. Where d'you think our
next load of food's coming from?" He turned and
stamped out of the forecastle. Back in the galley he
absently drew another cup of burnt rye. Raquel still
sat at the table. "Now what were you saying?" he asked.

"Oh go listen to your noises!" she flared, and ran out
of the galley.

Now what got into her? Joe wondered. And what's
gotten into me? He would never again have an op-
portunity to study this period. What would Dr. Battle-
ment have given to question a citizen of medieval Spain
firsthand? But then, she was a woman and therefore
uneducated. A peasant too, which cubed her ignorance.
He could probably get more from a world almanac than
he would ever extract from Raquel about her own
neighborhood. It would be nice to cross paths with an
educated man of this era, but there was little chance of
that. Besides, he had to take the crew to the Azores
and figure this mess out. "To hell with history," he
muttered, and went to bed.

Light glowed down the edge of his door and switches
snapped as Freedy checked the fathometer. The lights
went out again. Had he been too sharp with Gorson
and Cookie? Who ever heard of such a crazy idea for
a vacuum still anyhow? A coil inside a bell jar! The
copper spiral had looked more like Dr. Frankenstein's
patented mummy resurrector.

Holy Appropriation! The more he thought about it
the more possible it seemed. Dr. Krom must be right

after all: the Alice was the first ship ever to disappear
into time. She was the first ship ever to have a screwy
coil set at just the proper angle, with just the proper
radius and spacing inside a partially evacuated bell jar
—and at just the moment when a bolt of lightning had
come along to power the apparatus. Gorson and Cookie's
still was the time machine! He stopped fighting the
idea and immediately slept.

It was still blowing like an Eskimo in Texas next
morning. Cookie's pancakes had a leaden texture so
he guessed Dr. Krom had gotten his mill to grinding
rye. One problem solved; now what about navigation?
Could he design an astrolabe? No, Joe decided. Maybe
Columbus knew how to keep that silly little pendulum
from swinging but Joe knew he'd never get an observa-
tion from the Alice's plunging deck. How about a cross
staff? The trick was to hold the long stick on your
cheekbone and slide the T head until one end touched
a star and the other was on the horizon. He sketched
what he wanted on a paper towel and gave it to Abe
Rose.

"What's wrong with the sextant?" the engineman
asked.

There I go again, Joe thought. He hadn't expected
Rose to know a cross staff from a ripsaw.

"I read a book once," Rose added with a thin smile.
"But maybe I can fix the sextant."

"What sextant?" Joe muttered. He went to look for
Gorson and Cookie. They were in the galley, scowling
into mugs of burnt rye. "Where's Raquel?" Joe asked
after a moment.

"Last I saw, she was looking for a quiet comer to
slash her wrists."

"Seasick?"

Gorson shook his head. "What'd you chew her out
about?"

"Why, I never said a word—"

"That explains it," Cookie said.

"About the still," Joe said after a long pause. "Do
you think you could get it working?"

Cookie's face lit up. "Why shore," he said. "Just give
me a couple of days to sour the mash."

"I mean the way you were doing it before."

Cookie was hurt. "You don't like rye whiskey?"

"If I survive this cruise I'll never look a pumper-
nickel in the face again."

"We ain't got any dried apples left," Cookie protested.

"I'm not interested in booze," Joe said patiently. "I
just want it set up the way it was when lightning struck."

"An idea?" Gorson asked.

"I'm not sure, but we'll have to start somewhere."

"Cain't," Cookie said.

Joe looked at him.

"The bell jar. Hit busted in a million pieces."

Joe sighed and took a breath.  "Rose!" he shouted.

The engineman popped his round face into the galley.
"It's not quite ready," he said.

"Forget the cross staff for a while. Do you have any
of those 5 gallon bottles that Krom's distilled water came
in?"

Rose mouthed his cigar. "I think so," he said.

"We need a bell jar."

The engineman grunted and disappeared.

The Alice drove southward through eight more days
of heavy weather before the still was assembled and
ready. The water bottle's corked neck had been dipped
in paraffin. Its bottom, snapped off where Rose had
flamed a gasoline soaked string, was not perfectly flat.
After abortive experiments with lengths of split rubber
hose, Cookie had sealed it with a gasket of dough.

All hands stood by in anxious silence as Gorson
humped over the vacuum pump. Joe glanced from him

to Cookie. "You're sure everything's just the way it was
the first time?" he asked.

"Yes sir," Cookie said.

"What now?" Gorson asked.

"Keep everything ready and wait for lightning."

Another day passed before Gorson called him from
his bunk. "Line squall building up," the chief said.
"Who's gonna steer?"

"I am," Joe said.

"You're the only guy can navigate this bucket," the
bos'n protested.

"It's my idea so I take the risks."

"But you can't just—"

"Like hell I can't." Joe went on deck. Villegas was
steering and Guilbeau was on forward lookout. They
tied him to the binnacle and went below. The scud of
black cloud was barely two miles away. Forks of light-
ning danced in its depths. The wind died and in the
abrupt calm Joe heard thunder. An immense anvil-
headed cloud bore toward the Alice.

The calm was abruptly shattered by a tremendous
gust which knocked the yawl on her beam ends. Wind
wailed as the Alice, taking every third one over the
bows, tore along with her cockpit filled. Joe took a
deep breath and wondered when he would learn to
fasten the top button of his oilskins. An avalanche of
green water engulfed him and the yawl shuddered.
After a long moment he gulped air again and twisted
his head, feeling for the wind. The Alice was three
points off and still turning. He spun the wheel with a
silent prayer to Mahan's ghost.

Lightning struck.

IV

THE NEXT THING Joe felt was Gorson forcing a vile taste
into his mouth. The squall had passed and the Alice
raced along under single reefed main. Here and there
patches of blue peeped through the clouds. "Did we
make it back to our own time?" Joe asked.

"Dunno," Gorson said, "but I doubt it." He gestured
astern.

They weren't Vikings. The towering sails had a faint
Arabic look. One thing Joe was sure of: he'd know
more soon. Even as he looked the strange fleet gained
on the Alice.

He tried to stand up. Panic flashed through him as
muscles refused to obey; the lower half of his body felt
asleep. Cold sweat gushed and ran in little trickles in-
side his oilskins. He took a deep breath and strained
again. He felt nothing. Then he saw his foot move and
knew he was not permanently damaged. Little by lit-
tle, he felt control and feeling return. "Better let us
take you below," Gorson was saying.

"Below, hell!" Joe snapped. "I'm still captain of this
ship. I want to know what the lightning's done to her
this time."

The standing rigging still good. Cookie appeared from
nowhere. "Nothing happened to the still," he said. Joe
tried again and found he could sit up. His legs itched
horribly and he fought the impulse to scratch.

Dr. Krom swam into his narrowed vision. "Are they

friendly?" the old man asked, glancing back at the ships.

How should I know? But captains and gods were ex-
pected to know all things. "Judging from this century's
past performance, I'd say we didn't have a friend in
the world," he said.

Raquel was crowding up. She's worried about me,
Joe thought. Why should she worry over an invincible
god? The look of tender concern she wore made him
almost forget what she had done to the Norse women.
She studied the fleet which pursued them. "Do you
recognise them?" Joe asked.

"Moors," she said.

He wondered what Moors were doing this far north
—but the real question, he realized, was just how far
north they were. The cross staff had conned him into
believing he was off Portugal, but if it were spring in-
stead of late summer, with days getting longer instead
of shorter, he could be wrong—wrong enough to tangle
with a fleet coming back from the Slave Coast.

They were driving east, probably into the Mediter-
ranean. Moors were supposed to be more sophisticated
than their Christian neighbors but Joe doubted if their
civilization had progressed to the point of respecting an
unknown flag. The high lateen rigs bore an amazing
resemblance to ships he had seen in Indian Ocean
travelogues and would, he suspected, beat very handily
to windward. Anyhow, they were too well spread out
for the Alice to pull something fancy like circling be-
hind them to gain the weather gage.

Schwartz and Villegas were already hoisting the spin-
naker up on deck. If they could gain headway the Alice
might slant off and try to lose them. Maybe the Arabs
wouldn't search too hard for one small and not very
profitable looking ship.

Under all sail, they skated on halfmile sleighrides
down following seas. Stays thrummed and all hands

watched nervously, wondering how soon the spinnaker
would blow out.

Two hours passed and it was still in its boltropes. The
Moors should have been well behind by now—instead,
they were gaining. Joe studied the leading ship in his
binoculars. Swarthy, ragheaded men with satanic beards
stared back with equal interest. He thought wistfully
of the engine but the Alice was already over her natural
speed. The engine would slow her down.

Raquel appeared beside him. "What do you know
about them?" Joe asked. Her tirade was too fast for him
to follow but the meaning was clear. They held half
of Spain in the Tenth Century. "Do you speak their
language?" Raquel shook her head. "Perhaps they'll un-
derstand yours?" Clearly, she was not interested.

"Why do you wait?" she asked.

Joe gave her a look of bleak inquiry.

"When will you call down lightning?"

Gorson joined them in the stern. "What's she saying?"
he asked. Joe translated, wondering if all gods were
troubled thus with unreasonable demands from their
worshippers. There was a moment of silence as Gorson
picked his teeth. "I don't think it'll work," he finally
said.

"Nor do I," Joe agreed, "but we can give it the old
college try. How many flares are left?"

"I'll go see."

"Are they real Arabs?" McGrath asked.

Joe was about to explain that they were Moors when
he realized the god shouter wouldn't know the dif-
ference. "Here's your chance to kill a few Infidels and
rescue the Holy Sepulchre," he said.

McGrath stared at him.

"Either we win our own little crusade or we're liable
to be converted."

"Converted?"

"Would you rather be a live Moslem or a dead Chris-
tian?"

"What's a Moslem?"
"A Mohammedan," Joe explained.
Gorson came back. "Eleven flares," he said.
Cook appeared with the rifle. "Ninety-one rounds,"
he reported, "but I think we gonna need more'n that."
Joe had nearly a box of pistol ammo. Kill a man with
each shot and we'll take care of two ships, he thought.
Just find a way to clobber the other twelve and we've
got it made.

Dr. Krom  and his  seasick assistant appeared.  "Do
you think they'll attack?" Lapham asked.

"Of course not," Gorson growled. "As soon's they see
our papers they'll apologize for bothering us."

The effects of the lightning were nearly worn off and
Joe was thinking in high gear again. "Get Rose," he
said. Lapham went below and returned in a moment
with the engineman. "How long would it take to string
some bare wire around the gunwale?" Joe asked.
"Well bless my bacon, cried the rabbi."
Joe stared at the usually dour engineman.
"My uncle's a Zionist," Rose laughed. "He'd get as
big a charge as they're going to if he knew I was about
to fry some Ayrabs."
"How big will it be?"

"Two kilowatts ought to take the curl out of their
whiskers."

Joe remembered their last brush with the Norse off
Ireland. "Will we be having any last minute engine
failures?"

"If we do I'll cut my throat," Rose promised.
And ours too, Joe thought.
"What will you use for wire?" Dr. Krom asked.
"The input transformer from your Christmas tree."
"No!" the old man screamed. "Half of my appropria-
tion went into that—" Abruptly, he remembered where

he was. "I'll show them how to get it apart," he said
quietly.

Gorson and Cookie were already lashing sticks of
firewood to the Alice's stanchions. Not bad, as long as
they stayed dry. If green water came over the rail some-
thing would blow up anyway. If it worked they could
dream up something permanent. The Moors gained an-
other quarter mile while Joe was thinking. Not the
slightest chance of holding out until dark now. To hell
with all this running, Joe thought. He was ready to meet
the Tenth Century on its own terms.

Wires were soon strung and there was time to bring
the dinghy aft. With it lashed to the boom crutch the
steersman's back was protected from arrows or what-
ever the Moors would throw. Joe studied the arrange-
ment and had mattresses lashed to the dinghy's sides.

The leading Moor was only a mile away. Joe counted
a fifteenth sail just coming over the horizon. "We're
ready, for once," he said. "When they come in range
we'll try a couple of flares to put the fear of Allah in
them. Maybe we can set fire to their sails. When they
come close I want everybody below. I'll be protected
at the wheel and I don't want any sightseers getting
hurt. They may have slingers aboard, so keep the port-
holes shut."

The leading ship was two hundred yards away, com-
ing up slowly on the portside. "Another fifty yards
and they'll start throwing things," Gorson muttered.

Joe rested the gun on the taffrail and took careful
aim a hundred feet above the towering lateen sail.
There was a pop and hissing roar as the flare curved
in an arc which seemed sure to connect. The sail was
white—linen or possibly cotton. Joe hoped it would
burn. But the parachute opened too soon.

The flare floated gently into the water a few feet
behind the speeding felucca. Impressive as it might have

been in northern twilight, the blazing pinpoint was con-
siderably less than lightning-size in bright afternoon.

"Another good idea shot to hell," Gorson mumbled.

Joe handed him the flare pistol. "Go below," he said.
"Things may get a little hairy now." He wasn't really
worried though. He hadn't expected much of the flares.
Thank Neptune the electric fence was ready. As he
took the wheel he heard the generator start turning.

There was a twanging thunk as a catapult unwound
on the Moor's foredeck. Something the size and shape
of a garbage can sailed in a high trajectory toward the
Alice and Joe knew with a sick certainty that if a stone
of this size struck squarely it would go nonstop through
deck and keel.

The missile struck amidships, shattering a portside
stanchion. As fragments crunched across the deck Joe
saw it had been a large clay pot. The hot wire from
the broken stanchion was dangling overboard. Over-
loaded generators screamed and a smell of burning in-
sulation came from belowdecks. And that, Joe knew, was
the end of his electric fence.

The broken pot was sending up blue flames and
clouds of stinking, sulphurous smoke.

Great Mahan's ghost! The slightest whiff of flame
will melt that nylon spinnaker sheet in less than— Flut-
tering slowly like a manta ray, the spinnaker rolled for-
ward and wrapped itself over the bow. Joe struggled
to keep the yawl on course as she lost speed.

Gorson had a bucket and was sloshing water at the
firepot. There was a warning creak and the mainsheet
started running through its blocks. Joe threw the wheel
hard aport, hoping he could spill wind before the
boom came around and wiped out the standing rig-
ging. Men came boiling out of the scuttle to fight the
fire. Smoke blew aft as the yawl slowly turned. There
must be unslaked lime mixed with it, joe decided, for
even under water the firepot burned.

From the corner of his eye Joe saw the Moor was
also turning. Wind spilled from the huge lateen and
both ships lost way. The felucca drifted down toward
them. They had the fire nearly out before a grapnel,
whizzed and thunked into the Alice's cabintop. A mo-
ment later ragheaded men with Mephistophelean beards
swarmed over the yawl's decks.

And the most amazing part of it was that nobody-
was hurt. An immense Negro with pointed teeth was
tickling Joe with the tip of a yataghan before he had
time to remember his pistol. Joe's happiness at being
alive was tempered by the knowledge that he was cast
in a mold of less than John Paul Jones' proportions.
They counted on me to see them through. What must
they think of their captain now? The Alice's men were
lined up on deck, stunned and unbelieving. What will
happen to Raquel? Joe wondered.

With the deck secured, several ragheads ventured
below. Minutes of tense silence passed, then a Moor
stuck his head out of the forward scuttle and shouted*
A moment later someone in a more elegant burnoose
and a turban several shades whiter leapt the breach
between the felucca and the Alice.

Clean Turban had a widow's peak showing under
his turban. His beard shone black and curly; it was
trimmed very short and came to a neat point. Just like
a Nineteenth Century portrait of Satan, Joe thought.
The Moor looked at the Alice's men contemptuously
and asked something in raucous Arabic. When no one
answered he tried another language.

"I'm captain," Joe said in English. The Moor didn't
understand but it got his attention. It occurred to Joe
that Arabs of this period studied Aristotle. He tried to
remember some Greek. "Ego imi keleustes." No, damn
it!—that meant oarsmaster. What did he want to say?
"Navarchos." But there was no sign of understanding.
"Magister," Joe essayed. Maybe this joker knew Latin.

Again it was no soap. He tried Raquel's Tenth Century
Spanish and light dawned in the Moor's eyes. "Chris-
tiano?" he asked. The Moor pronounced it with a kh
sound like the Greek Chi.

"Some of us are."

"What land?"

"America."

The Moor frowned. "Almeria?" he asked.

Joe shook his head. "It lies west of here."

"I have heard of this land," the Moor said thought-
fully. "But the people are savage with hair like a black
horse's tail. What do you here?"

"Blown off course. Our food is nearly gone." Might as
well get in a line about how little loot we have to offer.

"Why did you throw fire at us?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

The Moor shrugged.

"Where are you heading?" Joe asked.

"Malaga. Our cargo sells at Granada."

"Black men?"

The Moor nodded.

"You've taken care not to kill us. What will you do
with us?"

The slave trader shrugged again. "Isn't that obvious?
Your ship is strange," he reflected. "Still, it'll bring more
money than the lot of you." He frowned at the Alice's
crew. "How many did you lose?"

Joe puzzled for a moment, then saw what the Moor
was driving at. "I lost no men."

"It would take twenty hands to hoist the mains'l
alone." the Moor said contemptuously, "and Allah only
knows how many to set that which blew away."

"Of your men, yes," Joe agreed. "But we have—" He
was about to say magic when he realized that an Allah
fearing Moslem might decide magicians were better off
dead. "We're skilled sailors," Joe amended. "Our ways
are different."

Clean Turban stroked the underside of his beard.
Joe tried to guess what was on his mind. The Moor
couldn't understand how the yawl sailed. His felucca
was a mankiller with no winches and only primitive
blocks in her rigging. She'd probably lost a few men
on the run up from the Slave Coast. With a load of
unbroken Negroes, Clean Turban needed every man
for safety. Other ships were drawing up now but he
had no intention of sharing his prize. He waved them
angrily on. "What weapons have you?" he asked.

"None," Joe lied. He was acutely aware of the pistol
in his belt. Thank Neptune he hadn't used it or they
might all be dead. Why hadn't he been searched? Per-
haps because no one aboard the Alice wore a sword or
dagger and pockets hadn't been invented yet. He
glanced at the crew and counted his meager blessings.

The Moor was going to wonder about the pistol soon
unless Joe drew his attention elsewhere. He took the
binoculars from around his neck.

"What is that?" Clean Turban demanded.

"A gift with which Allah has favored us. I must invoke
the Hundredth Name and then you shall see."

Holding the binoculars before him like a chalice, Joe
bowed and chanted:

"These boys never saw a pocket.
Keep your hands at attention
Or the jig is up.
Amen."

"Amen," Clean Turban responded.

"Amen," Cook and Guilbeau chorused.

"If you are among the blessed you will see. But there
is danger here. Do you face Mecca five times daily?"

Clean Turban nodded.

"Do you fast on the appointed days?"

"Certainly."

"Have you eaten the flesh of unclean animals?"

Clean Turban shook his head.

"Have you lusted after pagan women?"

The Moor hesitated a moment before answering.

"You may catch a glimpse of the Prophet's throne in
Paradise. But if there is falsehood and evil in your
heart—" Joe paused dramatically. "—Then Allah will
strike you blind." He fiddled surreptitiously until the
binoculars were out of focus and handed them over.
Clean Turban put them clumsily to his eyes. "I see
nothing," he said.

"You are not looking toward Heaven," Joe explained.
He pointed up and the Moor turned. Eventually, with
Joe's help, he lined up on the sun and dropped the
glasses with an ululating howl. Joe caught the strap and
swung them back over his own neck. "See," he said
comfortingly, "you are not such an evil man after all.
Allah has only warned you. You are not blind, are
you?"

Clean Turban blinked tears and released a shudder-
ing sigh of relief. "Truly," he said, "you are men of the
One God." He turned and shouted instructions. Mo-
ments later a bent old man with scanty white beard
was handed over to the Alice along with several prayer
rugs and bundles. The boarding party started going
back aboard the Felucca. "The imam and I will travel
with you," Clean Turban said, "along with ten men-
at-arms." Which was not exactly what Joe had hoped
for, but it was better than being murdered

"All right," he shouted, "turn to and remember to keep
those hands out of your pockets."

Gorson started wrapping a long splice into the main-
sheet while the others, realizing that even under new
management the ship had to be worked, went forward
to take in sodden pieces of spinnaker. With patience and
a great deal of stitching something might be salvaged.

Something else had been bothering Joe: Raquel was
nowhere in sight. He looked around the deck again

and his suspicion was confirmed. Not only was the girl
missing—so was Howard McGrath.

An hour passed before Gorson rove the mainsheet.
The hindmost of the slavers was nearly abreast. With
a little luck, Joe thought, they might dawdle behind
until there were only the twelve men aboard to deal
with. The prize crew had marveled over blocks tad
sheeting winches. The yawl's wheel was a mystery for
men who had known only tillers but a young man, ap-
parently son or nephew to Clean Turban, took it. After,
a few spins and one near jibe he steered without dif-
ficulty.

Joe and Clean Turban faced each other across the
galley table. Dr. Krom sat in a corner and surveyed
the aged imam across the gulf of no common language.
They had guided Clean Turban and the imam on tour
of the electronic gear and had, with Freedy's collusion,
managed to give the Moors a shock here and there to
discourage meddling.

"What's that?" the Moor wanted to know. He was
pointing at the vacuum still. Joe gave some fanciful
explanation, only half paying attention to what he was
saying. As carefully as possible he had searched for
Raquel and McGrath. He wanted to ask if anyone had
gone overboard in the melee but that would give them
away for sure. Clean Turban and his men had been
surprisingly decent so far. Prolonged conversations in
English might change their attitude.

He still had the pistol stuck in his belt. He could
perforate Clean Turban and the imam point blank, but
there weren't shots enough to take care of all the guards.

Clean Turban was looking thoughtfully at Joe. "Didn't
you say you had no weapons?" he asked.

Joe held his breath. The pistol seemed to swell in his
belt until it assumed the proportions of a rocket launch-

er. "We are peaceable men," he said. "Pirates are un-
known in our waters."

Clean Turban smiled evilly. "And yet you throw fire?"

Joe gave a cracked laugh. "It's not a weapon," he
explained. "We use the flares for signaling." How many
left? To hell with them; sacrifice anything to relieve
Clean Turban's mind. He got the flare pistol and ex-
plained its workings. Clean Turban was doubtful until
Joe explained what a parachute was and why it held
the flare up.

The imam said something in Arabic and Joe sudden-
ly wondered if he understood Spanish. If he did Joe
might be on thin theological ice. Some kind of miracle
which didn't set well with the Koran could easily get
the lot of them axed for sorcery.

"You're traders," Clean Turban said, "yet I see no
stock. What do you sell?"

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Seconds passed
and still Joe could think of no answer. After this stall it
had better be good! "A rare commodity," he finally said.
"More precious than gold or ivory, worth more than silk
or pepper. Our stock weighs nothing and takes no space
in our ship. Yet it is worth more than the finest oils of
Macassar."

Clean Turban looked at him with a light, cynical
smile. "What can possibly be so precious?" he asked.

Joe smiled back at him and answered, "Knowledge."

When an avalanche of Infidels swept across the Alice's
deck one quick look was sufficient for Howard Mc-
Grath. Joe's warning about crusades had made the situa-
tion woefully clear to Howie—and he wasn't very in-
terested in dying just at this moment. There was great
commotion on deck, footsteps and much shouting in the
Devil's tongue. Below decks, Howie raced about fran-
tically. The chain locker was too open and obvious. Be-
sides, that murdering heretic of a girl had her clothing

in there and if he had to touch it Howie knew he could
be sick.

He scurried through the ship, searching for a hiding
place. Captain's quarters would be the first place they'd
look. Lazarette? Full of rye and there wasn't room.
Rushing to look for another place, he stumbled on the
cabin sole. Rose must have been working on the engine,
for the lineoleum covered floorboard was slightly out
of place. There was, Howie remembered, barely room
to stretch out alongside the engine.

He kicked the floorboard over a little farther and
dived. Abe must've had a mattress down here while he
worked, for the landing was soft. Too dark to see for
sure. Then inexplicably, the mattress snarled and sat
up to jerk the floorboard back in place over their heads.

Howie's flesh crawled. His whole being wanted to
erupt and run shrieking from this den of iniquity. Not
enough to be penned in darkness with a murdering pa-
gan. On top of it all she had to go and be a woman!

What would his mother say? But Howie faced the
dreadful choice between should and must, for the foot-
steps were belowdecks now. Directly over his head
someone was shouting in Satan's tongue. With Death
standing over him and Eternal Damnation wedged tight-
ly beside, there was only one thing left: Howie fainted.

The captain of the Alice had no time for such luxuries.
Clean Turban was apparently satisfied with his cock
and bull yarn about a Point Four program, but it was
chow time. The Moors wouldn't eat off plates. Cook
finally put half the sheep in a dishpan and passed it up
on deck with a few loaves of bread. "Fewer dishes to
wash," he philosophized. Joe couldn't remember whether
Tenth Century Arabs drank coffee. After a taste, Clean
Turban's men passed up the burnt rye brew in favor of
water. They sat around the dishpan, digging in with
right hands, and emitting volcanic belches after each

mouthful. "I'll get some bicarb," Cookie offered. "When
do we jump 'em?" he added under his breath.

"They like your cooking," Joe explained. "They're be-
ing polite." He tried to throw in a mysterious smile in
answer to the second question.

The Alice had been built with accommodation for
ten. With Krom and Lapham aboard she carried twelve
—Raquel made thirteen. Clean Turban and his imam
brought it up to fifteen. And then there were ten men-at-
arms. But it turned out that the Moors did not care
for bunks, so the Alice's men slept undisturbed. The
weather was clearing and with the Moors standing
watch it began to look as if the Alice's crew might get
a full night's sleep for once. Joe took a final turn around
the deck and Gorson clutched his sleeve. "What're we
going to do now?" the chief demanded when he had
pulled Joe behind the dinghy.

"I don't know," Joe said. He was shocked at the sud-
den realization that he hadn't been giving much thought
to the matter of escape. "Something will turn up," he
said comfortingly. Gorson grunted and disappeared.

Clean Turban's young relation was still at the wheel.
He steered confidently by the wind, ignoring the bin-
nacle in front of him.

"Do you know what that is?" Joe pointed at the com-
pass. The steersman smiled and shook his head. Joe
started to explain about compasses until the young man
said something in Arabic and shook his head again. This
one, at least, didn't know Spanish. But he knew where
he was going.

Joe sighed and headed for his cabin. He found the
white bearded imam squatting on his bunk, peering
with much interest into the pages of Bowditch's Naviga-
tion. "Can you read it?" Joe asked.

"No," the imam replied to Joe's surprise. The old
man had given no indication of understanding Tenth

Century Spanish. "But the diagrams and numbers make
me suspect its subject matter."

Joe collapsed into the chair. Throughout the afternoon
he had alternated between hope and despair. Now he
knew the imam was going to accuse him of sorcery.
The storm, the responsibility of command, the nights of
interrupted sleep, all had led him past exhaustion. Was
that why he had given up so easily? He wondered if
he could have made a better fight of it and tortured
himself with thoughts of all the things he might have
done. He had saved their lives—most of them, any-
how. If McGrath and Raquel were alive it was only a
matter of time before they'd be caught. And when they
were, Clean Turban might be less inclined to trust him.
The imam was still looking at him with peculiar intent-
ness in his rheumy eyes.

"There is no joy in losing," the old man said.

"How would you know?" Joe muttered.

The imam laughed a short hard cackle. "Do you
think I was born a holy man?" he asked.

Joe stared.

"You claim to be a stranger," the old man continued.
"I don't read your language but your maps are de-
tailed and, I suspect, somewhat better than our own."
He laughed dryly. "Are you Moslem?"

"There are very few Moslem in our country," Joe
hedged.

"Christian?"

"I doubt it," the young man sighed. "Three equals
one always looked like unsound mathematics to me;
I've never made much sense out of the Trinity."

The imam smiled. "Then you believe in one god who
does not go about splitting himself into disconnected
particles?"

Joe thought a moment. "There was a Jew in our land
whose name was—" In search for words he unthinking-
ly translated a proper name into its roots. "One Stone

spent a lifetime studying the nature of God. Before he
died he left us the Unified Field Theory. It proved that
everything was controlled by the same law and that
there can be no exception to the Law. I believed this
man."

"I think," the imam said slowly, "that you are a
Moslem."

"Suppose I were," Joe sighed, "what would it gain
me?"

"I was born on an island which your map calls Corfu."

"You must've been Christian!" Joe exclaimed.

"Slave or free, we go on living," the old man con-
tinued. "I truly believed in the divinity of Christ and
in the Holy Trinity."

"What changed your mind?"

"I was fourteen when they took me from my father's
sardine boat. I spent two years as a camel boy in
Alexandria.

"No, I wasn't mistreated. My master was a simple,
devout man who prayed daily for my guidance and
conversion. When he died I was willed to the mosque
and there a muadhdhin taught me to read.

"Conversion—" He waved a scrawny hand and spat.
"I learned Arabic years before I could read my native
Greek—which, incidentally, you pronounce very poor-
ly. As a Christian I might still be drawing water and
hewing wood. As it is, I've passed a pleasant and
scholarly existence. God may judge me in the next life.
Let Him do it in the knowledge that I made the best of
this one."

"You think I should turn Moslem?"

"What can you lose?"

"My men and my ship."

"Already gone. But if you'll be circumcised and pro-
fess Islam I may be able to keep you together. As long
as you're together, who knows?"

"Why do you tell me this?"

The imam stroked his scant white beard and shrugged.
"Two reasons. I had four wives and twenty-one sons,
no counting how many daughters. It's hard to remember
their faces. Age makes fools of us all. But with each
year I remember one face more clearly."

Joe looked a question at him.

"I remember an old woman who died in Corfu, never
knowing what became of her son. I was an only child,
you know."

Joe was silent for a long moment. Suddenly and ir-
relevantly, he remembered Ariadne Battlement. The
last he had heard she was knitting socks and turning
collars for another Bright Young Man.

"Sidi Ferroush is a fool," the imam said, "but he is a
kind fool."

Joe boggled for a moment, then realized the imam
referred to Clean Turban. "What was the second reason?
he finally asked.

"I have seen perhaps a hundred books in my life-
time, but never any like yours. I would hear more of
your land. Oh, yes," he added parenthetically, "do not
use that thing you keep trying to hide in your belt.
Things will turn out better than you expect."

V

HOWIE CAME to in cramped darkness and immediately
wished he could faint again. The engine was digging
cruelly into his back but it bothered him not so much
as the softer protuberances which rubbed against his

front. He was facing the she-devil—that much he could
tell even in darkness. And she also faced him. But why,
oh merciful God, did they have to be jammed in here
end to end?

He felt cautiously about, trying to move a fraction of
an inch away and cringed when his hand touched for-
bidden fruit. But if the she-devil intended to seduce
him her tactics were highly unorthodox. A knee came
in violent contact with his nose. Minutes passed while
he breathed through his mouth, waiting for the fountain
to clot. He wanted to snuffle or blow but Satan's emis-
saries were talking right over his head.

All dead now, Howie thought, remembering his ship-
mates. They weren't true Christians but they were
friends. Then abruptly he recognized Joe's voice speak-
ing in an unknown tongue. He was alive! The young
skipper was not a true Christian either but his quiet
competence always made Howie think wistfully of the
father he had never known. He felt better already. Mr.
Rate had coped with everything so far—he would cope
with this. But how soon?

The she-devil squirmed and Howie was reminded
of their desperate position. He discovered that her dress
had crawled higher than it had any business crawling.
He tried to move away and again his hand contacted
forbidden fruit, round and firm like half a melon. Again
her knees jabbed at his clotted nose.

Howie fought his arms down past the she-devil's body
until he could encircle her flailing legs. There was no
room to retreat, so he advanced, squeezing with all his
strength. Still she struggled. Knees pummeled his cheeks
like calking mallets. The she-devil would not stop knee-
ing him! It was almost as if she didn't want him to touch
her. There was only one move left: Howie bit.

His incisors met in a particularly tender place just
above the kneecap and the flailing immediately
stopped. She lay stiff, trembling slightly like a newly

saddled filly. Howie moved a cautious hand. Maybe he
could find that confounded skirt and pull it down.

But the farther his hand moved the more softly in-
teresting things became. I won't pull it down just yet.
Howie decided. If he was to fight the Devil it would
be well to familiarize himself with the Devil's weapons.

The she-devil squirmed again, shifting position with
a thoroughly delightful wriggle. Tingling fire passed
through Howie's virgin loins. I'll move my hand just a
little farther, he decided. At that instant sheet lightning
flashed through his closed eyes. Sparks and pinwheels
banked billiard-like round the inner corners of his skull
and he gave a yelp of outraged surprise. It wasn't only
his nose she'd smashed; it felt like the treacherous she-
devil had bitten off the tip of his big toe! He froze,
waiting for someone to tear up the floorboard and dis-
cover them, but after several minutes it appeared that
no one had heard. There was a long, thoughtful, silence
while Howie dwelt on many things.

Even as Joe Rate, he came to the belated conclusion
that this she-devil was less freewheeling than would
appear at first glance. She had not, Howie suddenly
realized, the slightest intention of seducing him. The
knowledge left him shaken to the very core of his being,
for if she were defending her virtue then Howie's wan-
dering hand had sinned him into a very tight corner.
How could he ever make amends to God and Mother
for attempting to lead this fair flower astray?

Why, she could probably be led down paths of right-
eousness and become a true Christian! But that was
beside the point. He had wrong this girl. There was but
one way to make amends. He would marry her.

The thought shocked him but there was no avoiding
it. Come to think of it, hadn't St. Paul suggested it was
better to marry than to burn? Howie could no longer
hide even from himself the ardor with which he burned.
It would not be pure sacrifice on his part, he decided.

But if he were to marry this fair flower he must first
save her from the Infidel. A wave of shame swept
through Howie as he realized that his betrothed was
witness to this shameful, rodentlike cowering in dark-
ness. He felt the strength of God flowing into him. It
was time to act. But what was he to do? Why was Mr.
Rate taking so long?

Joe and the imam still faced each other across the
minuscule cabin. "What kind of a weapon is it?" the
imam asked.

Joe took the pistol reluctantly from his belt. "Fire
burns in a closed place," he explained. "The smoke
pushes a piece of lead out of this tube."

"Ingenious," the old man said. "How far will it throw?"

Joe thought a moment, trying to remember if the
Arabs used yards. Probably not. He spread his arms
wide and said, "Fifty times this distance." He tossed
the pistol into the drawer below his bunk with a care-
less gesture.

The old man was impressed. "I should like to visit
your country."

"So would I," Joe added with a sad smile.

The imam grinned wolfishly. "You can bamboozle
Sidi Ferroush with yarns about a far continent, but I
have talked with a man who went there. It is a worth-
less land, filled with howling savages and strange sick-
nesses. I do not think you were blown off course. Nor
do I think you are lost. You have charts and you have
bits of crystal ground Archimedes fashion. No." The
imam laughed his short hard cackle. "I believe in God
but I do not expect to see Paradise through a burning
glass."

Joe realized dimly that he was not at his best with
an open mouth but he couldn't get around to closing it.

"You do not come from the Worthless Continent," the
old man continued. "Your ship and tools are too fine

for savages. Besides, you look like Roumi—Europeans.

"If I were still young and believed in the fabulous
kingdom of Prester John— But alas, I am old and a
cynic. Yet, I would give the remaining years of my life
to know from whence you come."

"You'd never believe me," Joe said.

"Probably not," the old man conceded, "but that will
not make me stop listening."

Joe took a deep breath and began. It was a garbled
account, punctuated with skippings back and forth as
he remembered details, interrupted often with fum-
blings for words Joe didn't know and ideas which had
never existed in Tenth Century Spain.

In the last few days Joe had become more proficient
in the language—really more of an uniflected Latin
than Spanish. As he told his tale one corner of his mind
reflected on how he was slipping into a new pronuncia-
tion with vowel sounds all different from what he'd
learned in school. Abruptly, he broke off and began
chanting:

"Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit. .."

The imam looked at him with a slight, quizzical
smile.

"So that's how it sounded!" Joe marveled, his face
lighting with the first and only love of his life. "Latin's
a dead language in our time, you know. We could only
guess at how it sounded.

"Litora multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem lunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et—"

He continued, rolling over Virgil's meter with rising
confidence. "No wonder the empress fainted the first
time she heard it!"

"I begin," the old man said, "to believe your fantastic
tale."

Joe looked at him.

The old man began chanting in a regular, even meter
and Joe listened, tormented by a feeling that he could
almost understand. The old man stopped abruptly. "It's
changed from his day to mine," he explained. "But that's
how I think he might have sung it."
"Again!" Joe said with mounting excitement.
The imam repeated, and abruptly the harsh syllables
fell into meaning for Joe. Tears started in his eyes as
he remembered Dr. Battlement. How many years would
Old Prof have given to hear the Iliad in Homer's ac-
cents?

"I see you recognize it."
Joe nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
The imam was silent for a moment. "You have the
advantage," he finally said.
"How?"

"We are history—to be read in any book. You are
the future which is read in no book."

"I'm afraid I can tell you little," Joe said. "And I
wonder if I should tell you anything. I might change
the course of history and erase my own present."

The imam shrugged. "I will change no history. I am
an old man with no hunger to gratify but curiosity. He
laughed his single cackle again. "I doubt if I am impor-
tant enough to be inscribed in the histories, so I won't
ask the date of my death. But you could tell me, I think,
what were or will be the fates of Islam and Christendom."
"That brings me to a problem which has plagued me
since this whole thing began. What year is this?"
"376."

The 376th year of the Hijra, Joe calculated, would
bring it to about 998 A.D. "What month?" he asked.

"The Arab month is lunar and wanders all over the
seasons. At the moment I can't remember what it would
be by the Greek Calendar."
"Has the summer solstice passed yet?"
"Oh yes, 70 days ago."

So it was late summer after all. Where, Joe wondered,
had he slipped up in his navigation? He reached ab-
sently for a cigarette and belatedly realized he was
violating his own order about hands out of pockets. Oh
well, he philosophized, the old buzzard had seen through
everything else he'd tried to pull. He lit it with a side-
long glance to see how the old imam would react to
matches. The old man merely watched interestedly
without comment. Joe offered him a cigarette but the
old man waved it away with a typically Greek gesture.
When the smoke drifted his way he coughed.

"A disgusting habit," Joe conceded. "Let's go on deck
where the air's fresher."

Dr. Krom and Lapham were sleeping on the settees
in the darkened galley. The oceanographer stirred and
muttered an angry phrase in Hungarian. He'll sleep bet-
ter tomorrow, Joe thought. We'll all sleep better when
I pass the word. With a little luck the imam can swing
an appropriation and some back comer of the Alhambra
for us to carry out a few experiments. All they would
have to do was keep Mr. Big happy with an invention
once in a while—an improved hour glass or something
fancy in the way of weapons. He wondered if he could
manufacture a parachute flare out of pitch and sulfur
and whatever else would be available.

"How many of your people understand this language?"
Joe asked.

"Most of them were born in Spain," the old man said.

They made their way up into the Alice's bows, pick-
ing their way past sleeping Moors. The helmsman and
two huge Negroes who leaned on scimitars in the yawl's
waist all greeted the old man respectfully. Joe sat on
the anchor winch and the imam squatted on deck be-
side him. All sails were drawing in the starlit night
and Joe's admiration for the Moorish helmsman in-
creased. He took a final puff on his cigarette and be-

gan telling the old man what had happened in the
world since 998.

Howie lay facing his betrothed in the darkness. The
strength of God was with him but what was he to do?
There was, he decided, but one thing. Mr. Rate had
made it clear: Kill a few Infidels in your own private
crusade. How else could he recover his tarnished honor
or repair the damage his sinful, wandering hands had
done?

Cautiously, he pushed up the floorboard and caught
a glimpse of Dr. Krom's bushy white head on the settee.
Didn't even throw his body overboard, Howie thought,
but then the old oceanographer released a snore and
he was forced into another rapid revision of his beliefs.

His betrothed hissed something and pulled the floor-
board back down. If this marriage were to be successful,
Howie decided, it was time for him to assert his au-
thority. With unbounded confidence. Howie pushed the
floorboard up again and climbed out. He motioned
Raquel to stay down by the engine but she scrambled
out to stand beside him.

They faced each other in the dim nightlight, wonder-
ing what next? They couldn't stand here forever. Howie
decided. He tried the door to Mr. Rate's tiny cubicle,
and found it empty. He drew Raquel in and bolted the
door before turning on the light. Mr. Rate kept a pistol
in here somewhere—the question was where? I'll start
with the top drawer, he decided, and there it was on
the first try!

The pistol was loaded. But there were hundreds of
Arabs aboard and only six shots. He rummaged through
the other drawers but couldn't find the extra ammuni-
tion. He had to act soon, for the strength of God was
upon him and Howie had a feeling that if he waited too
long it would leave him. Besides, he decided, the pis-
tol was all wrong. The first shot would bring them all

upon him. He needed a quieter weapon. "Do you have
a knife?" he whispered.

Raquel looked at him blankly.

Howie made a slicing motion across his throat and
pointed at her. Light dawned in his betrothed's eyes.
Her hand went inside her bodice in a lightning gesture
and reappeared with a short, double edged blade.
Howie held out his hand but she refused, shaking her
head. He realized she was right. If God sees fit to take
me I can't leave her to a fate worse than death. He put
a finger to his lips and, after turning out the light,
opened the door.

The galley was still quiet. He tiptoed forward to the
drawer where Cookie kept a small paring knife, a
French chefs knife, a boning knife, and a cleaver. He
turned and bumped into Raquel. "I told you to stay
in the cabin," he hissed, but again she refused to under-
stand English.

Howie crept forward into the darkened forecastle
and searched for the bunk above his empty rack. Red
Schwartz awakened with a startled grunt which Howie
stifled with a pillow. His eyes opened and saw Howie
offering him the boning knife. Schwartz was instantly
awake; he took the knife and swung his bare feet
down onto the cabin sole without a word.

Howie held up the remaining knives in mute ques-
tion. Schwartz put a hand over Arnie Cook's mouth and
shook the gaunt Tennessean gently. Cookie sat upright,
cracking his head on the upper bunk. Seeing his French
knife and cleaver, he instantly picked the French knife.
"Where's Mr. Rate?" he whispered, but they didn't an-
swer.

"What the bastardly—" Gorson erupted when they
woke him. He tore hands away from his mouth. Then
he saw the cleaver and shut up.

Howie and Schwartz headed for the forward scuttle
as Gorson and Cookie tiptoed for the after ladder. Why,

Howie wondered, didn't Satan's men bother to post a
man belowdecks? This carelessness could only mean that
God was on Howie's side. Gorson, pondering the same
question, decided the Moors felt contempt for any men
who would give up with as little fight as they had.

"—and then in 1571," Joe continued, "a coalition of
Christian states put an end to Moslem expansion at the
Battle of Lepanto." He reached absently for another
cigarette and reminded himself that he had less than a
pack remaining.

"Yes," the imam probed, "and was Christendom then
unified again?"

But Joe's sailor half was watching the faint flutter
which had developed in the luff of the mains'l. He
glanced back just in time to see the Moor steersman go
flying overboard. Someone—it looked like little Guil-
beau—had the wheel and was already pulling the Alice
back on course.

There was no mistaking the meaning of that sight.
Joe's muscles tensed, but instead of the adrenalin of
battle he found guilt and shame coursing through him.
He should have been leading this insurrection himself,
instead of discussing history.

He turned, ready to throttle the old man, but the
imam had also seen what happened and merely
watched with a lively interest in his rheumy eyes. They
stared at each other in silent surmise while Joe cursed
his indecision. This was the enemy! He should throttle
him and then have a go at those bescimitared Negroes
who lounged in the waist.

While he fluttered in indecision one of the Negroes
glanced aft and saw Guilbeau at the wheel. The Negro
shouted a single questioning word and abruptly an
ululating fiend charged him. Still staring, Joe realized
that it was McGrath. The little god shouter plunged his
knife twice into the African's midriff, then spun to the

other who had finally awakened to danger and was
swinging his scimitar.

Gorson and Cookie were moving forward now to cov-
er little Howie. In the bow there was shouting and a
confused melee as Moors awoke to struggle with the
Alice's men who boiled up out of the forehatch.

Joe and the imam stood side by side watching the
fracas. The scimitar was descending and Joe could see
that Howie's brief moment of glory would end in a
mercifully quick death before Gorson or Cookie could
rescue him. Then the scimitar faltered and its well
aimed stroke merely mangled the god shouter's ear.
Raquel and her knife again!

Clean Turban was amidships now, shouting to rally
his men. Few answered. Little Howie had disentangled
himself from the Negroes who lay gasping their life out
on the Alice's deck. Shaking his head, he cast a semi-
circular sprinkle of blood and his wild eye fixed on the
imam. "In the name of Our Lord, Jesus Christ!" he
screamed, and sprang to kill another Infidel.

Joe fought through layers of paralysis. "No!" he
shouted. "No, Howie, not this one!"

But the strength of God was in Howie and he wasn't
listening. Joe pushed the old man behind him and held
up his hand. "Halt, damn it!" he said, and realized how
ridiculous he must look. Howie's glazed eyes still fixed
on the imam as if he could go through Joe without see-
ing him. Intensely aware of his own disarmed state,
Joe reached for the knife and felt its tip move across his
cheek bone. Howie's hand lifted him clear of the deck
without deflecting appreciably from its course toward
the imam.

"No!" Joe yelled again. He whacked the heel of his
free hand across the back of Howie's neck. He swung
twice more before the little steersman slumped to the
deck. The old imam still watched with the same de-
tached interest when a moment later something struck

Joe from behind and he followed Howie's downward
course.

When he came to Gorson was bending over him—a
grinning Gorson whose ear was nearly as mangled as
Howie's, and who dripped blood from a bash parallel-
ing his collarbone. "What happened?" Joe mumbled;
then he remember the imam.

"All our people are alive," Gorson said.

"And the Moors?"

Raquel crowded through the Alice's men. "The imam
lives," she said. "He told me he was born Christian."

"How many others?" he asked.

"Two surrendered."

Joe wondered if Clean Turban was among them. He
caught sight of the imam. "And Sidi Ferroush?" he
asked.

The old man shook his head. "The helmsman was his
son. He preferred to die fighting."

All's fair in love and war, Joe tried to tell himself, but
he couldn't rid himself of the sickness within him. "It
was not of my doing," he said, looking at the aged imam.

The old man's eyes glinted understanding. "You are
almost as poor a captain as I am a priest," he said. "But
neither of us chose the role we play in God's little farce."

With silent thanks that none of the Alice's men un-
derstood, Joe struggled to his feet and nearly collapsed
again from the throbbing at the back of his head.

"Easy, sir," Gorson was saying, so Joe allowed himself
to be led below, wondering if his failure was as ap-
parent to everyone else as it was to himself. Cookie
handed him a cup. He drank and gasped.

"What is that?" he wheezed.

"You said it was all right to set up the still again,"
Cookie said.

"Oh Jesus!" Joe moaned. What would Commander
Cutlott have to say when they met again? He limped

into his cubicle. Lying down didn't help any. The Alice
was his again—through no effort of his own. The same
problems faced them—only more so.

The Azores were now two hundred miles farther up-
wind, and there were four more mouths to eat up their
groceries and drink their water. Unfriendly mouths at
that. For all he knew, one of those Moors was boring
holes in the Alice's bottom at this moment. Why couldn't
he have stayed in Dr. Battlement's history department?

Abruptly he remembered the Alice was still heading
east. Every hour on this course meant five hours beat-
ing back. After the yawl was hauled about, tacking
southwest, he found Rose and asked how much oil was
left.

"Maybe thirty-five hours," the engineman said. Joe
hoped they wouldn't be caught again on a lee shore.

Then he remembered Howie. He'd have to congratu-
late him or something, if he'd calmed down. With a
sudden grin he reflected that the god shouter was the
only man in the navy who rated the Crusader's Cross.

When Joe went below Gorson was drinking burnt rye
in the galley, glaring at the imam and two Moors who
accepted their fate with equanimity and squatted in
the opposite corner of the galley.

"Chief," Joe said, "do you think McGrath rates a
medal?"

Gorson choked and sputtered over his rye, then so-
bered. "How'd you happen to pick him to spread the
word?"

Joe didn't have an answer ready. Lousy captain-
not even a good liar. The imam and Dr. Krom were
both looking at him. Joe was too young to realize that
age did not automatically bring omniscience. Nor did
it occur to him that the imam didn't understand English
and that Dr. Krom understood nothing.

"I didn't pick him," Joe said in a lame voice. "I was
working a different angle. Had us set up for a laboratory

and a little peace and quiet once we were safe in
Granada. The mutiny was Howie's show."

Gorson whistled. "I guess he does rate a medal."

McGrath stuck his head down the scuttle. "Squall
brewing," he said. "Might be lightning."

Cookie, hop to it with the still."

"Agin?" Cookie asked despairingly.

"We ain't gonna have any sails left if you keep steer-
ing into these squalls," Gorson grumbled.

"Shorten sail and heave to," Joe decided. "We'll all
go below this time." He passed a hand over his face
and discovered someone had taped the cut made by
Howie's knife.

Little Howie was very quiet. Halfway in shock, Joe
guessed. He wondered if the little steersman remem-
bered what he had done or realized that Joe had rabbit
punched him. He looked carefully but the little man's
eyes were blank. Nor did he flinch when Joe swabbed
his mangled ear with merthiolate.

Raquel smelled clean for a change. "For what is the
red paint?" she finally asked.

"It heals wounds quicker."

"Put some on his toe," Raquel said.

The god shouter's big toe was swollen. A blue patch
radiated from two indentations in the nail. Like teeth
marks, Joe thought. The skin was unbroken though, so
he didn't waste merthiolate.

"Here," Raquel said, pulling her ankle length skirt
up to expose her knee. Joe painted the odd shaped
wound just above her kneecap. "Looks like another bite,"
he said.

"It is."

Guilbeau stuck his head down the scuttle. "Be heah
any minute," he said.

"Everything tied down topside?"

The Cajun nodded and swung down the ladder, dog-
ging the hatch behind him. Joe glanced forward where

Gorson and Cookie fussed over the still. Gorson nodded.
All hands crowded into the galley, waiting excitedly for
what the lightning would bring. Not much, Joe feared—
at least it hadn't the last time. Then another horrible
thought struck him.

He hadn't been too sure of his position before this
fracas with the Moors. Now, with all this driving east,
how far was the African coast? Or the Spanish coast?
"Freedy," he said, "how about firing up the fathometer?"
He went into his cubicle and looked at the pilot chart,
wishing for the hundredth time that it were some kind
of a chart with proper soundings. Even a hundred
fathom curve would help.

There was a thrumming of rain. A sudden explosive
blast knocked the Alice on her beam ends. Then the
yawl righted itself and began facing up to the squall.

Cookie humped over the still while Gorson watched
anxiously. "Ninety-two fathoms," Freedy called. He had
to yell to make himself heard over the squall.

Abruptly, the bottom dropped out of creation. Books
and papers floated off the chart table and hung in mid-
air, just as Joe himself floated off his chair. The Alice
wasn't even rolling—she was falling, straight down on
an even keel. The fall ended abruptly with a tremen-
dous crunching splash and myriad clatters as objects
within the Alice once more sought their proper level.
Joe settled back into his chair with a spine-shattering
thump. The binoculars whizzed past his nose and
landed on his lap.

Out in the galley the imam and Dr. Krom sat upright
and ashen in one corner. Gorson and Cookie were look-
ing dazedly at the still, whose bell jar was miraculously
intact. Freedy puckered his tiny mouth and god-
damned something while banging his fist against the
fathometer. "Ninety-two fathoms a minutes ago," he
grumbled. "Now the damned thing reads sixteen."

"Switch ranges," Joe suggested. He was trying to get

the hatch open, but it wouldn't budge. Water trickled
around its edges. Abruptly he realized it was stuck from
the weight of solid water on the other side. At least
thirty seconds had passed since the smash, but the yawl
was still under water!

He took a deep breath and reached for a cigarette.
He was out of them—damn it! He looked cautiously
around to see if anyone else had noticed the dripping
hatch. They were recovering from the jolt and begin-
ning to wonder about the strange silence. There was
neither sound nor feel of the sea. There was no doubt
in Joe's mind now; the Alice was making like a subma-
rine!

Water would be leaking through the deck openings
into chain locker and through the charlie noble, a steady
trickle coming down the rudder post. If they were at
any depth the valves in head and bilge pumps would
rupture. No, he guessed, if they were that deep the
hatch would be stove in.

He stared at it, afraid to call anybody else's attention
lest the whole crew panic. Water trickled slowly around
the hatch. Water trickled down Joe's forehead and a
cold prickle oozed between his shoulder blades.

VI

THERE WAS a sudden waterfall roar as the Alice broke
the surface. Joe released a tremendous breath. He forced
the hatch and clambered topside. In spite of everything
the Alice's close reefed sails were intact. Everything

was   there   except   the   bloodstains   on   deck—and  the
dinghy.

Joe peered hopelessly into the dark, overcast night.
No sign of the small boat. They'd have to swim ashore
if they ever got to the Azores.

   "Secure the still," he told Gorson. "There won't be
any more lightning tonight."

Guilbeau took the wheel and they shook out a couple
of reefs to speed the yawl southwest. The wind was
veering now and she ran more freely. "Steady as she
goes," Joe told the Cajun and went below.

Freedy was still thumping and god damning the
fathometer. "No matter what I do, it reads sixteen," he
grumbled.

"We're probably over the steeple of the First Baptist
Church of Atlantis," Joe said. "Wake me if it shoals out
to eight." Hoping he inspired more confidence than he
felt, Joe shut himself in his cubicle and again studied
the damnably insufficient pilot chart.

He must be close to Gibraltar—but was he north or
south of it? Either way, he consoled himself, the Alice's
southwest course would carry her clear of any land. He
stretched out carefully on his bunk and tried to find
some position where the back of his head wouldn't throb
quite so badly. He had almost found it when someone
knocked and opened the door. "Eight fathoms," Freedy
reported.

Joe pushed past him and scrambled topside. Nudging
a startled Guilbeau away from the wheel he spun it
and spilled wind. "I've had enough thrills for one day,"
he said. "Drop anchor."

While they took in sail and unlashed the anchor the
Alice drifted another quarter mile. Just as the anchor
chain started rattling she ran gently aground.

The next few minutes were somewhat chaotic. Joe
went into a frenzy of sounding, looking for a shore
with his feeble batteried flashlight, asking Rose for the

thirtieth time when he was going to get that anomalous
engine started. Eventually it did and the Alice chugged
sedately away for a couple of miles while Freedy tossed
a lead and chanted soundings. When Joe thought they
were in deep enough water he finally allowed the an-
chor to be dropped again.
So much more fuel gone,

Dawn was rosy fingered as a Homeric couplet. Joe
glanced at his wrist. Should've bought a new watch
long ago but sentiment attached him to this venerable
relic. Get it cleaned again if he ever got back. He
looked around the Alice. Two miles west of her an-
chorage, a small island jutted from the sea. Goats grazed
on its sparse vegetation and the almost vertical shore-
line was crisscrossed with their tracks. All hands stared
at this unexpected miracle.

"We could use some meat," Cookie suggested.

"Yes," Joe said absently. "But can we spare the bul-
lets?"

"Another thought occurs," Dr. Krom's pedantic voice
injected.

"I know," Joe said. "Where there are goats there's
water."

"How do we get ashore without a dinghy—or even if
we had one?" Gorson asked after studying the sheer
cliff face.

They weighed anchor and the Alice ghosted along
in the light morning air, tacking around a headland.
Freedy stood in the bow tossing the leadline since he
no longer trusted the fathometer. "Six fathoms," he
chanted. "Five and a half . . . seven . . . nine ... no bot-
tom at ten."

They had passed over some ridges. Joe studied the
island's contours and tried to guess which way they
would continue under water. "There it is!" Gorson
shouted.

The yawl ghosted on to the southeast side where the
crater opened, offering a perfect horseshoe inlet. A tiny
rock pinnacle extended from its center, like a lopsided
pencil point. The harbor was perhaps two hundred
yards across and here on the island's inner surface goats
had not wrought as much havoc with the vegetation.
Tiny patches of green showed between rocks. One rift
in the crater wall had eroded into a canyon lined with
scrub oak.

"No bottom at ten," Freedy called again.

"How we gonna anchor?" Gorson asked. "Wind shifts
south and we've had it."

"Perhaps," Joe said. He took the wheel and headed
the Alice toward the pinnacle. Throwing it hard left,
he spilled wind and lost speed so that the yawl's bow
drifted by within jumping distance. Grooves in the rock
hinted that other mariners had tied up here.

Joe stripped to his skivvie drawers and jumped over-
board with the stern line. To his surprise, the water
was warm. Now that he noticed it, the weather this
morning was definitely not what it had been for the
last couple of weeks. He swam ashore but once there
could barely pull himself up the steep bank.

Gorson jumped in and helped him. They struggled a
hundred yards to a gentler slope at the bottom of the
minuscule canyon, then heaved until the Alice came
drifting ponderously after them. Eventually her stern
was made fast to one of the tiny oaks.

"If there's a spring it'll be up there," Gorson said.
They hadn't gone more than a hundred feet through
the scrub oaks before Joe wished he'd had his shoes
thrown ashore. But the ridge couldn't be more than
a quarter mile. To hell with it, he decided; if Gorson
could make it barefoot he could. The wind flapped his
wet skivvies over his thighs and gave him a slight chill.
Within another hundred yards he was sweating.

The canyon was narrow and steep but fortunately for

their bare feet it was covered with soil instead of rock.
Close-cropped grass grew under the umbrella-like cov-
ering of oak whose lower leaves had been browsed clean
by goats. "Odd," Joe muttered.

"What?" Gorson panted.

"We've had seagulls with us during the wildest weath-
er, yet here's a perfect roosting place and not a single
bird."

They plodded upward until they found the spring.
It was so small that its overflow did not form a visible
stream but seeped downward through the canyon's small
triangular cross-section of soil. It was a clear, semicir-
cular pool in the rocks, about the size of the Alice's gal-
ley sink, and with a clear, sandy bottom. Joe flopped
down and lowered his face for a cautious sip. "Tastes
clean," he said. "With the island uninhabited, chances
are it is."

"Uninhabited?" Gorson repeated.

Joe looked up. Facing them across the tiny clearing
stood a girl. She was tanned but of an obviously blonde
race. She wore her hair in a braid which had been
twisted into a high crown held in place with thorns.
She wore a necklace and bracelets of some blue stone.
She wore nothing else. Joe stared awestruck, waiting
for her to shriek or run. She watched them with an
expectant, hopeful expression.

Joe glanced down. "Caught in my drawers again,"
he muttered.

"What?" Gorson asked.

"Nothing," Joe said.

The girl beckoned. When they still stared she ap-
parently tired of standing. She lay down in the short
cropped grass and waited.

Gorson exploded into laughter. "What a place for a
whorehouse!" he roared. "I wonder how business is?"

Something, Joe kept telling himself, is wrong. In the
first place, there shouldn't be any island here. And now

this! He wasn't dreaming. He was sweating and out of
breath and his feet hurt. Gorson couldn't possibly laugh
that loud in a dream. They went around the spring to
where the girl still reclined in the grass.

"Do you speak English?" Joe asked.

A pleading smile.

"Ask if she's got a private room somewhere," Gorson
said.

Joe tried again in Raquel's Tenth Century Spanish
but the girl only smiled. "Oh hell!" he said, "this isn't
really happening." He turned around to reassure him-
self—and faced two more naked girls.

"Holy Neptune," Joe muttered.

The girl recognized a god's name: "Roumanu'?" she
asked.

Roumanu—Roman!

"No," Joe said. "Non sum Romanus."

"Ah." There was polite disappointment in the girl's
tone.

"Are you?"

"Roumanu ego?" She gave a fluting laugh and slipped
into some form of bastard Greek which Joe could follow
only vaguely. He sighed and tried to keep his eyes on
her face. Damn women! Maybe he'd stumbled into a
Tenth Century nudist colony. When in Rome . . . His
eyes strayed back to those firm, upward pointing—

"Where are we?" he asked. "What is this island?"

It sounded like Phryxos and rang no bell with Joe.

"What's she saying?" Gorson asked.

"I'm trying to find out where we are. Where's Spain?
Hispania—Iberia. Lusitania?"

She shrugged and those pink tipped things jiggled.

"Where's Africa?"

Understanding glinted in the blonde's eyes. She
pointed. Joe stared and did a double take. Unless the
sun was crazy, this blonde was pointing due south.

"Where's Rome?" he persisted. She pointed vaguely

west. "Impossible," Joe said. "We're in the Atlantic."
But a horrible suspicion was growing on him. That
warm water—this balmy climate. And what was a vol-
canic island doing in this part of the Atlantic? "Quo
modo appallatur hoc mare?" he asked—how is this sea
named?
"Agaios"

"Aegean!" Joe shook his head. Even without a sextant
he couldn't be that far off. But another thought struck
him. "What year is this?"
The girls stared.
"Are you Christian?"
No reaction.

"Moslem?" Still no reaction.

Joe knew damned well he'd been in the Atlantic last
night. The last jump in space had also been a jump in
time. Was this one? How was a history professor to
know when people wouldn't keep track of time? "Who
is your god?" he asked.

The first girl had given up wriggling in the grass and
came around the pool to join the other two. "Aphrodite,"
she said.

"Venus," the other girl corrected. "He speaks Latin."
"It figures," Joe muttered. He passed a hand over his
eyes  and tried again.  "What," he  asked,  "is  Caesar's
name?"

"Gaius Octavius."

Joe felt a thrill of recognition. That tied it down to,
let's see ... He took over in 31 B.C. and died in 14 A.D.
But there were too damn many Gaii in Roman history.
"Is this Gaius the adopted son of Julius Caesar?" The
girls nodded.

"What're they saying?" Gorson asked.
"Later," Joe said.   By  one  felicitous  stroke  he had
located  them  within  forty-five  years—but  this,  as  he
recalled, was a turbulent time, even though the Romans

preferred to regard it as the Augustan Peace. Another
thought came.

"Augustus?" he asked.

The girls looked blank.

"Is Gaius Octavius called Augustus?"

The girls were unsure.

"Is he young?"

They nodded.

And that tied it down: Gaius Octavius took over in
31 B.C. In 27 he assumed the title Augustus. Joe de-
cided to quit while he was ahead.

"Is this a nudist colony?" Gorson asked. "Why aren't
they wearing clothes?"

"Forget to ask," Joe parenthesized. "How many of
you are there on this island?"

The girls preferred not to understand. "How many
you?" one finally countered.

Joe decided it was his turn to avoid an answer.

Gorson was frantic. "What're they saying?" he in-
sisted.

"Getting information's like pulling teeth," Joe ex-
plained, "but I think—" He was about to say they'd
gone back another thousand years, then—he didn't quite
know why—he decided not to.

"How many you?" the girl was insisting.

"Many," Joe said. "Brave men, well armed. Where is
your camp? Are you natives?" He was only talking to
two girls now. He wondered when and where the others
had disappeared. "We were on our way to Rome," one
girl explained.

"Where from?"

The name was meaningless to Joe. "Were you going
to Rome or being taken there?" Again the girls opted
not to understand. "Do you want to go Rome or back
home?"

"Rome!" they clamored. "Rome, Rome! No home,
Rome!"

"What's all this about Rome?" Gorson asked.

"The girls want to go."

"What was all that pointing awhile ago?"

"Trying to get my bearings," Joe said hastily. "We'd
better get back down before they start worrying."

"But why no clothes?"

"A good question," Joe decided. He asked.

The girls gave him an odd look. "Hot," one finally
said. "Same as you." Again Joe was reminded that he
and Gorson wore only gape-fronted skivvy drawers.

"Well," he said awkwardly, "we'll see you later. Got
to get back to the ship, you know."

"Stay," the girls insisted. One grabbed Joe's arm and
rubbed against him.

"Really," Joe said, "We must be going. We can, uh
talk about it later." He turned around. "Gorson! On
your feet now, let's go!" He caught the chiefs arm and
dragged him off downhill.

There was a noise below them, a murmur of male
voices, a tramping of feet. Joe felt a sudden shriveling.
Their only path back to the Alice was cut off.

Girls hove into sight again, skipping gaily up the path
with the agility of the island's goats. Behind them scram-
bled the entire crew of the Alice.

Joe stared aghast. They were all there—Cook, Guil-
beau, Freedy, Rose . . . The Moorish prisoners scram-
bled along with the rest, all with eyes only for the naked
blondes. Even Dr. Krom and the imam panted along
in the rear of the pack, a highly unpaternal gleam in
their ancient eyes.

"Whaddaya think of that?" Gorson marveled.

Joe didn't know what to think. The girl was pulling
on his arm, rubbing against him again. "Do you have
anything to eat?" he finally asked.

The girl had been in business long enough to realize
that some hungers were stronger than others. "Goat,"
she said. "Snared one last night."

The men of the Alice came momentarily to their
senses at the sight of Joe and Gorson.

"Ain't you ever seen a woman before?" Gorson
growled.

"Not for several weeks," Guilbeau answered.

"How many girls are there on this island?" Joe in-
sisted.

"Enough to go around," one of them answered.

"Any men?"

"Been some time since the men've had liberty sir,"
Gorson suggested.

"There'll be time enough for that later. We've got to
get water aboard and try to catch some of these goats.
Here, now, all hands come back here!"

Guilbeau had caught a blonde and they collapsed in
a giggling heap behind a rock. Several new girls had
appeared, all wearing only anklets and bracelets. One,
Joe noted, was not blonde. She was dark and looked
like a slightly more voluptuous version of Raquel. She
was squirting wine from a goatskin into Dr. Krom's
mouth.

And where was Raquel? She must have stayed alone
aboard the Alice. He looked for Gorson but the chief
had disappeared. So had the blonde who clung to him.

"All hands now, come on and stop this foolishness.
We've got to get to work!" The clearing was empty.
Joe walked away from the spring and stumbled into
a hollow between two oaks. "Beat it!" Schwartz snapped.
"Go find your own girl."

Joe wandered incredulously around the clearing. He'd
lost complete control. Neptune curse all women! No
wonder no captain in his right mind would have
them aboard ship.

Joe's historian half had been probing for several min-
utes. What was the name of the island where Circe
turned Ulysses' men into pigs?

Rounding another boulder, he came across the aged

imam. A redhead with a half-sprouted figure was feed-
ing him grapes. The grapes were very small and the
corners of the imam's beard dropped dark purple stains.

So what's wrong with me? Joe wondered. After all,
it is a good liberty port. He looked around but there
were no unattached girls in sight. Oh well, he sour
graped, at least he wouldn't be on sick list nine days
from now. He wondered what Raquel was doing back
on the Alice. He ought to go back down and see if she
was all right. But why go alone? In an hour or two he
could pry the men loose and they could come back
with a load of wood or water or something.

For the time being no one was going to listen to him.
He would only make things worse by flapping around
like a mother hen. Might as well climb to the top of
the ridge and get a look around. If they really were in
the Aegean there might be another island in sight.

He climbed slowly to the top of the ridge, acutely
conscious by now that he should have gone back for
his shoes. There was neither soil nor tree above the
spring but the black volcanic rock had weathered so
that the broken-bubble edges of its numerous small
caves did not cut his feet.

After fifteen minutes of leisurely climb he topped
the ridge and sat. The tiny horseshoe harbor and a
miniature Alice were laid out below him like a scale
drawing. While he watched, a faint gust rippled the
harbor's narrow surface, the ripples breaking as they
crossed the long painter stretching from the yawl's bow
to the pinnacle. The Mediterranean, as he recalled,
was not much for tides. That was one less worry. He
looked about the cloudless horizon. A faint smudge to
the northwest might be land but he wasn't sure.

Going down was harder than climbing up. His
stubbed toes were bleeding by the time he reached the
spring.

The fine edge of the Alice's collective appetite was

dulled by now. They had emerged from their several
nooks for a more leisurely debauch. The goat revolved
over a small fire. The Alice's men, paired off with the
blondes and single brunette, were guzzling wine.

Gorson reared up on one elbow to stare blearily at
him. "Shay, Mr. Rate," he asked, "what year we in?"

There was sudden silence as every eye fixed on Joe.

Damn you, Gorson. Ishtar shrivel your gonadia! He
had planned to break the news gently. Or had he in-
tended to tell them at all? They stared, suspicious now
and distrusting. He sighed and took the bull by the
horns. "Last night," he said, "remember that bump
when we stayed underwater so long and all at once
Freedy got a different fathometer reading? It must've
been working right after all." A bell was beginning to
ring somewhere in Joe's head but he ignored it. "This
time we came out at low tide or something. Anyhow,
we weren't at sea level."

"What year is it?"

"I don't know. About 28 or 20 B.C."

"Before Christ?"

Joe started to explain about Augustus.

Gorson turned to the rest of the crew. "Know what
I think," he said, "I think he done it on purpose. He's
a history nut. He wants to go on back instead of getting
us home!"

The silence was more ominous now. Lapham, Dr.
Krom's college boy assistant, looked uneasily at Joe.
"Is it true?" he asked.

"No," Joe said distractedly, for he was suddenly aware
that he knew how their time jumps were happening.

"When you gonna take us home" Rose asked.

"How should I know?"

"You're supposed to know everything," Gorson
growled.

"I know one thing," Joe snapped. "If you want to get
home it'll be easier after you've forgotten these trollops

and got some water in the Alice's tanks. And how about
snaring a few dozen goats so we can dry the meat-
providing the Roman coast guard doesn't patrol here
too often."

The blondes were restless with all this talk. They had
the entertainer's instinct for crisis even if they didn't
understand the language. One appeared from nowhere,
bearing several fresh skins of wine.

"Three cheers for Mr. Rate," Cookie yelled. "It's been
at least a month since I've had a liberty like this!"

Gorson swayed to his feet. "You can't get away with
this," he growled. "I've read the book. I know my
rights." From four feet away the brunette squirted an
unerring red jet into Gorson's mouth. He choked on the
wine and began coughing. While the others were still
laughing Joe walked off.

What were these girls doing here in the first place?
Where was all that wine coming from? It took a press
and vats to make wine. This island was honeycombed
with caves but he was sure none was big enough to
hide that land of installation.

Away from the noise of the party, he collapsed on
the shady side of an oak and piled handfulls of damp
leaf mold over his bleeding toes. He'd probably get
hookworm or bilharzia but he was too disgusted to
care. He dozed off and dreamt of a triumphal march
through the streets of Rome. The triumph dissolved
into a gladiatorial display with Joe on the wrong end
of the sword. He woke abruptly and rolled off the rock
which had been stabbing him.

The sun had gone down and the hours of inactivity
without clothing or cover had left him thoroughly
chilled. He clambered stiffly to his feet and limped
back up to the spring. There was no sound now. The
Alice's men sprawled in weird attitudes around the
demolished goat. Joe shook one. He grunted but did
not waken. Worriedly, Joe made the rounds. All were

breathing but he didn't believe they could be so uni-
formly drunk. Thank Neptune he hadn't tasted the
wine.

There was not a girl in sight.

With a sinking in his stomach, Joe realized what was
up. Should have stayed awake, he told himself. Should
have gone down to the Alice. But he hadn't. Come to
think of it, what could he have done alone? He threw
branches on the embers where the goat had barbecued
and when that blazed up he found the broken bottom
of an amphora the girls had kept wine in. The spike
bottomed jar fragment held about a gallon.

Straddling Gorson, he poured a gallon of spring water.
The bos'n sputtered. By the third slosh he was on his
feet and swearing.

"Yes, I did it," Joe said. "Now listen you turgid
testicled slob—you bigmouthed yourself into this, now
bigmouth yourself out. You're captain from now on."

Gorson gazed blearily about the clearing and saw the
Alice's men. Abruptly, he was wide awake and sober.
"Jesus, what do we do now?"

Joe savored his moment of glory. "One of the first
things you can do is stand at attention when you ad-
dress your captain."

Gorson gulped. "Yessir," he said. "I'm sorry sir, I—"

"Get these men on their feet and let's get back to
the ship."

Gorson grabbed the amphora bottom and started
carrying water. Ten minutes later they stood in the
firelight. Dr. Krom's bushy head fitted his sheepish
look. "All right," Joe growled, "you've hit your first
foreign port on this cruise. You've been rolled and
you've probably all got a dose. Are you ready to go back
aboard?" He stopped and looked at them carefully.
Raquel, he knew, was aboard the Alice. Someone else
was missing. "Where's McGrath?"

"His Holiness stayed aboard," Villegas said.

The cold knifed deeper into Joe's stomach. McGrath
had been increasingly unstable since that clout on the
head. Was Raquel safe? At least the little god shouter
hadn't stampeded ashore after those blonde trollops.
He remembered the tooth marks and Raquel's cryptic
comment. They'd been alone all day. But what the hell,
he thought, she can take care of herself. If she wants to.

The Alice's men still stood in a numbed group, awak-
ening slowly to their position. They had carried no
weapons to begin with. Now their pockets were empty.
Joe put them to gathering rocks. When each had filled
his pockets and bagged a few inside his shirt they lit
firebrands. The oak would not blaze long but with luck
it would light them partway down the hill.

Joe's feet were so sore by now that he could hardly
walk. Ought to make Gorson carry me. But he didn't
They started down the valley. Joe tried to remember
if there'd been a moon last night. It was very dark now
under the oaks and they had not progressed a hun-
dred yards before a torch went out. Halfway down the
slope the last brand was extinguished. They fumbled
along, bumping into trees, stumbling over roots.

There was a splash as Red Schwartz abruptly found
himself neck-deep in the bay. He splashed a great deal
and took the Lord's name in vain before he caught an
outstretched hand and pulled himself back ashore. They
fanned out, searching for the Alice's mooring line. They
didn't find it.

"Gotta be here," Gorson was grumbling. There was
a worried tone in his voice. "Whole canyon's not a
hundred yards wide. How could we miss it?"

Joe glanced back uphill at the faint glow where
they'd left the fire. It was not the fire he was seeing.
The moon was about to rise from behind the ridge. It
did and there was no sign of the Alice.

Weaponless, miserable, hungover, they looked hope-

fully at Joe. "Does anyone think this is my fault?" he
needled.

The imam and his Moors huddled to one side, looking
even more disconsolate. Joe decided not to rub it in.
The moon rose higher until its direct rays illuminated
the pinnacle in the small harbor's center. And there they
saw the Alice. Someone had cut the stern line and taken
up on the bow line. It was a good hundred yards to
the yawl's stern. Joe turned to the imam. "Ask your men
if they can swim," he said.

"Why ask?"

Dr. Krom would probably have a heart attack if he
tried. "How about the rest of you?" The navy men
nodded. "Can you do it with rocks in your pockets
and come up fighting?" This time they weren't so sure.

Joe put them to gathering logs. There was neither time
nor tools to make a raft but they could swim the
trunks out, using them to rest on. He tried to imagine
what they would face aboard the Alice. The girls would
all be there, of course. Soft and alluring as they might
seem, Joe suspected they would be a match for ex-
hausted hungover men trying to pull themselves aboard
the Alice. And what if they had a few men of their own
along?

Again he wondered how they'd happened to land
on this island. If the girls had been going to Rome they
must've been shipwrecked or marooned. If shipwrecked,
what sort of miracle drowned the whole crew while
they saved not only themselves but apparently hun-
dreds of gallons of wine?

Retaking the Alice was not going to be easy. But . . .
whoever boarded her had to sail her away. Engines
would be an impenetrable mystery. Perhaps the halliard
winches were also beyond them. Had they already dis-
covered they couldn't sail her? Probably just waiting for
a wind. He was composing a silent prayer for continued
calm when the first ripple of breeze bit them from be-

hind. The Alice could cut loose and drift out of the
harbor mouth now.

"Will you get on the ball with those logs?" he snapped.
A rumble and splash answered him as they finally
manhandled one into the water. "All hands in and
see if it'll support us."

It could, so they began swimming. "Not crossways,
for Christ's sake!" Joe growled. "Turn it lengthways."
Strung along both sides, they paddled with one hand
and kicked their slow way toward the Alice.

What had happened to Raquel and McGrath by
now? Something else bothered him too. It kept bother-
ing him during the twenty minutes it took to paddle out.
Finally, as the log bumped gently into the Alice's stern,
he remembered the name of the island where Circe
had turned Ulysses' men into pigs. It was Aeaea.

VII

THE LOG bumped again and Joe mentally cursed. No
one seemed to be standing watch. Gorson and Cookie
had already pulled half the crew on deck. The log
bumped a third time and Joe forced himself between
it and the stern. The breeze kept pushing it toward
them but he couldn't cast it adrift until everyone was
aboard. He wondered why the Alice stood stern to the
breeze until he came aboard and saw that she had
drifted round and round until the bow line was hope-
lessly snarled. The pinnacle was grinding paint away
from the bow. "Women!" he muttered.

The deck was deserted. Gorson went forward with
half the men while Joe led the remainder to the after
scuttle. With rocks at ready they oozed down both
hatchways and converged on the galley.

The forecastle was dark. The only light aboard glowed
dimly in the curtained galley. Joe stood in the after
hatchway and saw Gorson staring aghast from the fore-
castle. Between them the galley was stuffed with girls.
Not nude—naked was the only word.

Facing a bulkhead, Howard McGrath cringed in one
corner. He had both arms firmly over his face. Raquel,
still wearing a dress, sat with the other girls, listening
intently to an enormously fat woman dressed in the
remains of a flowing, Grecian style garment. She
squatted crosslegged on the settee and spoke in an un-
known language.

When she glanced up and saw Joe her bulging cheeks
rearranged themselves into a smile which exposed sev-
eral gold teeth. "Tell me, sonny," she said, "did Al Smith
win or are we still stuck with Prohibition?"

I'm going nuts, Joe thought dazedly. But he realized
he was cutting no ice with the crew by standing there
looking stupid.

"Cat got your tongue, sonny?" the fat woman asked.
"From the looks of the still I'd say we're still in pro-
hibition." A tremendous sigh rippled up and down her
abdomen. "It's been a hell of a while since I had a
drink of good stuff."

"Wha— What year are we in?" Joe finally managed.

"Couldn't say, sonny. When I first hit town I looked
for a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Near's I make it,
there ain't a Christer in town."

Gorson elbowed through the mass of naked femininity.
"Where you from?" he asked the fat woman.

"Windy City," she wheezed. "You can call me Ma
Trimble. Sorry about making you swim, sonny—I wasn't
expecting the navy.

"Why didn't you come back for us?"

"We were going to if we ever got untangled from
this danged rock. Hell, sonny, I never could drive a
flivver, much less a boat."

McGrath squirmed in his corner. Still hunched with
arms over eyes, he turned. "Mr. Rate," he asked, "is
that you?"

"Sorry about him," Ma Trimble said. "One of my
girls chunked a rock at him when we came aboard.
When he came to—"

McGrath peeped out cautiously. He immediately
ducked his head between his knees again. "I thought I'd
gone to hell," he said muffledly.

Red Schwartz stepped over a couple of blondes and
lifted the befuddled puritan to his feet, half carrying
him into the forecastle.

Joe surveyed the packed galley helplessly. "What did
you intend to do with my ship?" he asked.

Ma Trimble shrugged. "Anything beats starving to
death on a rockpile. How was I to guess you were
Americans?"

"But how are we all—don't you have beds or any-
thing ashore? And damn it, Mrs. Trimble, you're going
to have to get some clothes on these girls."

"Look who's talking," the old woman laughed.

Joe glanced down at his shorts. "We can't all sleep
here," he said. "How did you happen to land on this
island, anyhow?"

Ma Trimble waved a pudgy hand. "That, sonny," she
warned, "is a long story."

It was indeed, and Ma Trimble told it complete with
expansive gestures and colorful expressions that set Mc-
Grath to trembling anew. What it all boiled down to
was that Ma Trimble had grown a bit desperate when
three of the best customers at her establishment had
gone blind from the booze she served. The booze was

sold to her in accordance with what the mob politely
called an "exclusive contract," and Ma had no desire
to cause the boys to lose their politeness—but if only
there were some way to make the stuff drinkable!

A friend came to the rescue. He knew, he said, a
guy who'd "studied chemistry down at Joliet," and this
unworthy gentleman thought he could rig up a rectify-
ing still to salvage the stuff. Ma Trimble grasped at
the straw, the still was constructed on a houseboat out
on Goose Island, and—
WHAM!

She awoke alone, afloat on an endless blue sea. Lake
Michigan's sky could not possibly be this blue. Besides,
Ma suspected Lake Michigan was not salty.

Four days passed before a trader from Britain took
her off the sagging houseboat. Despairing of ever realiz-
ing a plugged denarius from this fat old savage, he
deposited her bedraggled and friendless on Tyre's wa-
terfront.

Ma Trimble was the type who would land on her
feet anywhere, and that included ancient Tyre. Even
so, there were several terrible months while she learned
the language, the angles, and the local law's blind
spots. It was nearly a year before she acquired a tiny
crib and stocked it with a sloe-eyed, shopworn Syrian
bint of some fourteen winters. She taught the girl a
couple of Midwest tricks which hadn't as yet caught
on in the Middle East, and the establishment flourished,
adding four more girls in the course of time.

One of her most frequent customers was one Publius
Suilius Libellus, the Roman Colonel of this gook gar-
rison town. He was, in fact, such a good customer that
when Ma Trimble pointed out the many advantages he
could gain by taking Ma and her girls to the Big City—
as opposed to the disadvantages of Ma's confiding all
she knew to Publius' wife, the daughter of his com-

manding officer—Publius then and there decided he'd
always wanted to get back to Rome.

The Astarte was still in sight of Tyre's chalk cliffs
when it began blowing, and there wasn't much the
crew could do about their course, which was now in the
general direction of Athens. By the fourth day out,
though, a cone-shaped island thrust itself inexorably out
of the sea before them. A wreck was obviously un-
avoidable, so Publius, a Roman soldier to the end, had
himself and his wife lowered in a boat along with the
crew, abandoning Ma and her girls along with the
doomed Astarte as he made for shore.

It was a small boat which went under, however,
swamped by a huge wave. Four of Ma's girls continued
pumping water from the Astarte's bilges with the ship's
bucket and chain apparatus, while one of them prom-
ised a white rooster to Hecate. Without pressure on her
helm the ship wallowed straight for vertical cliffs. The
girl upped her offer to two roosters. When the cliffs
were a hundred paces away she made her final firm
bid of five roosters.

The ship slipped easily into a small, horsehoe-shaped
harbor.

They got some wine ashore and removed their sup-
plies up to the spring. Next day they'd return to the
half-sunk hulk and dive for their clothes. That night
the storm front collapsed and sea level raised two inches.
The hulk floated gently away.



Joe stretched and looked around the Alice's crowded
galley. McGrath had returned to the galley doorway
and permitted his eyes to rest for longer intervals on
the naked blondes, an odd, almost calculating expres-
sion on his face.

Now that he had his ship back, Joe wondered what
he was going to do with the women. "We'll, maybe we

can give you a lift someplace where you can catch a
boat for Rome," he said hopefully.

Ma Trimble gave a short, hard laugh. "Not on your
tintype, sonny. It would've been rough enough with
protection. You won't catch me going there without old
Publius."

"But what can I do?"

"You're navy, sonny. You can take a distressed Ameri-
can citizen home where she belongs."

"But what about these—" He groped for a word to
describe the girls.

"It'll look awful funny if you leave 'em behind," Ma
Trimble said. "Mr. Hoover'd call 'em refugees."

Joe looked helplessly around the Alice. Freedy and
Rose focused their attention on the ceiling. McGrath
studied Joe with an odd, eager look. Guilbeau and Vil-
legas were silently communicating with a couple of
girls. So was Schwartz. Dr. Krom and his civilian as-
sistant studied the cabin sole. Cook glanced at Joe and
shrugged. Gorson added his own shrug. "I think we're
stuck, sir," he said.

The imam and his boys understood nothing so Joe ig-
nored them. Raquel had picked up some English; he
wasn't sure how much. Remembering all the dresses
she'd taken from the Viking women, he said, "How
about getting these girls covered up?"

Raquel nodded and visibly thawed toward him.

"All right," Joe said. "Gorson, take a couple of men
and get that bow line untangled." The moon was high,
so they had little trouble warping the Alice back ashore.
Joe posted watches and went to bed.

Dawn brought a strange boat to the harbor mouth.
Joe studied it through binoculars. Nobody aboard. The
caique was typically Greek, with high bow and a fiddle
pegged stern post like a gondola. Joe wondered how
far the eighteen footer had drifted from its fishing vil-

lage. And why couldn't it have turned up last night
when he'd needed a skiff?

He turned the Alice inside out and found no chlorine
tablets. The spring water was sweet but the rocks were
lined with moss. In three weeks time the Alice would
draw green streamers from her faucets. There was
neither time nor dry wood to boil it all.

McGrath edged up, still wearing that odd, eager look.
"Mr. Rate," he asked, "why can't we stay here?"

"Too close to Roman shipping lanes," Joe answered.
"The coast guard's liable to drop in on us any day."

The little god shouter nodded and walked silently
away.

Joe put the girls and all hands to relaying water
downhill in such buckets and amphorae as were avail-
able.

"How about wine?" Ma Trimble asked.

Joe was not entranced with its vinegary, turpentined
taste but it might keep the water from turning. Mixed
with water it would also be less likely to make the crew
turn. "Pour it in the tanks," he said, and inspected Ma
Trimble's cheese. It was white and hard, could be crum-
bled only with a mallet. Joe hoped it didn't carry dys-
entery. The wheat flour she'd saved would help relieve
their diet.

Rose produced a hammer and saw. He and Gorson
began rigging bunks in every corner.

Goats overran the island, but one bullet was worth
more than one goat. Joe wondered if they had an archer
aboard and learned the Moors were all swordsmen.
Slinging, he learned after a few wild throws, was hope-
less—and the goats were too smart to walk into a pit-
fall.

He was unenthusiastically considering a catapult
zeroed in on the trail when Dr. Krom edged up apol-
ogetically. "They drink water, don't they?" the old man
asked.

Joe cursed himself and began fencing the spring.
Three days later they had no difficulty running down
goats. Cookie and Lapham rigged drying racks and
organized Ma Trimble's girls to keep seagulls from steal-
ing the meat. None appeared. Joe was mildy surprised.
Birds were abnormally sensitive to air pollution. He
wondered if the extinct volcano was still giving off a
trace of gas which scared them away. The water was
chilly and the weather noticeably rawer on the open
side of the island. He asked Dr. Krom about it and the
old man thoughtfully inverted test tubes in the water
around the Alice.

Next day the water in the tubes had been partially
displaced by something. The old man sniffed one and
spent several hours fussing over the others with his small
cabinet of reagents.

A week passed and they had flour, rye, and dried
meat. The mid-harbor pinnacle's rope-worn grooves left
Joe scant hope that they could remain long unvisited
here. Shortly after supper Red Schwartz edged up to
him. "Mr. Rate," he asked, "you seen Howie today?"

"Why no, wasn't he off with the woodcutters?"

"He didn't come ashore this morning. I thought you'd
kept him aboard on some other detail."

"Hell turn up."

Dr. Krom ambled up in his stiff, old man's gait and
proffered a bottle. Joe sniffed and wrinkled his nose at
the reminder of frosh chemistry and hydrogen sulfide.
"Out of the water in this crater?" he asked.

Krom nodded. "Nearly a cubic centimeter in only
forty-eight hours."

At least Joe now knew why there hadn't been any
seagulls. He caught Raquel's arm as she hurried by and
asked her to put some girls to mending the Alice's tat-
tered sails.

To Ma Trimble life was basically a freeload. Raquel
had taken over the girls and even gotten the mountain-

fleshed madam to do a little work on occasion. Joe
found himself depending more and more on her and
noted that she stank less often. Come to think of it, since
the blondes had come aboard she had been positively
radiant. What gave?

That night they brought a half-dozen goats aboard
and tore down the fence around the spring. With any
luck the fresh meat would last to Gibraltar. Joe climbed
the volcano's peak and studied the sky. Wind blew
briskly outside the harbor. He debated getting under-
way this evening, then remembered the girls would still
be sewing on the mains'l. Abruptly, he remembered
Schwartz's god shouting friend. What was with McGrath?

The sun had set an hour ago but he could still see
the island clearly save for a tiny stretch just outside
one of the horseshoe wings which enclosed the harbor.
He wondered what McGrath was doing alone. Tired
of all the fornication aboard the Alice? Joe felt a fleeting
sympathy and wondered why he too desisted. The
girls were attractive and eager. So far no one had re-
ported sick. To whom was he being faithful?

He took a final look around. There was no sign of
life on the island. Schwartz and Gorson were waiting
worriedly when he reached the Alice. "Isn't he back
yet?" Joe asked.

McGrath was still lost. Should have talked to him,
Joe thought. The boy had had that odd, half awakened
look since Ma Trimble's naked legion had piled aboard.
Maybe they'd whacked him too hard and some of the
Outer Darkness was seeping in through a crack in his
skull.

"It's been over twenty-four hours," Schwartz said.
"Maybe he drowned or fell into one of those caves."

Joe sighed. He wondered if he'd been too anxious
to study the past. Could he have gotten them out of
here a day or two earlier?

"—a search," Gorson was suggesting.

"Right. Make up some torches. I'll see if there's a
glimmer left in the flashlight." It was dark. The galley
would have seemed deserted had it not been for the
snickers, giggles and rustlings which came from all
corners. Something seemed to be wrong with the latch
on Joe's cubicle. He twisted again and the knob .sud-
denly opened.

The flashlight wasn't in the shallow drawer under
the chart table. Must be in his bunk. He fumbled and
felt legs in darkness. "Now who the hell?" After an
eternity he found the light switch. He blinked several
times before recognizing Howie McGrath. Then he no-
ticed what the little god shouter held in his hand. Joe
looked straight into the muzzle of his own pistol.

VIII

HOWARD McGRATH had been born illegitimate—Sadie's
Sin, as his guilt-holy mother had kept calling him.

Don't look at girls or you'll burn in hell, she had said.

Don't touch whiskey; it's the Devil's Drink.

Don't say naughty words or God won't love you,

Mother won't love you.

Don't touch.

Don't drink.

Don't say.

Don't think.

DON'T!

That confused business of the woman, the snake and
the apple: somehow it all led to little Howie, born evil,

who must fight constantly lest the evil within him break
out and carry him to everlasting hellfire.

His mother had not cried when he left home. The
navy was the heaven of Satan's darlings and Howie
was predestined.

The first few weeks in boot camp had been undiluted
horror but Howie knew a greater horror was yet to
come: evil companions would lead him into sin and
degradation. They would force him to drink whiskey!

He had been surprised and vaguely disappointed
when no one invited him to debauchery. All told, his
first liberty turned out to be as dull as the rest of
Howie's short, hyper-sheltered life.

Came sea duty, the Alice. Red Schwartz was not on
the side of the angels. Red was going to fry in hellfire
forever but he didn't seem to care. Whiskey-drinking,
fornicating, hell-raising Red had survived five and a
half years in the navy. Chances were he would last
twenty-four and a half more. Schwartz taught him all
the things he hadn't learned in bootcamp and privately
vowed he would someday squire this shivering young
wretch through a brothel. But the time was still not
ripe.

McGrath remained as virgin as a national forest. Some
day he was going to see Red Schwartz washed in the
Blood of the Lamb. But not just yet. If Schwartz were
saved, Howie would be deprived of his only sinful
pleasure—shuddering over Schwartz's embellished ac-
counts of San Diego's Babylonian quarter.

While he remained aboard the Alice and the women
remained in San Diego it had been easy to avoid sin.
But with warm lithe women, all aquiver with sinful
bulges, bumping into him in narrow passageways, sleep-
ing practically within reach-
Satan had buried him under an avalanche of naked
women!

Yet as he listened to Ma Trimble's  long, rambling

story it gradually occurred to Howie that these girls
were from the Holy Land. That language must be the
language Jesus spoke! Maybe they had seen Him. No,
the time was a few years before Christ's birth. No point
in going to Israel . . . but perhaps something greater
offered itself. If he were to go to Rome, now . . . how
much trouble would it be to locate young Pontius Pilate?
Once he found him, and with Mr. Rate's pistol...

It was going to require cooperation from these girls.
They seemed to have no English among them. Howie's
opportunity came when all hands were lugging water
down from the spring. She was small and dark, unlike
the others. Though long past her apprenticeship, some
accident of nature had given her a line of lip and jaw
which suggested that the world was a very large and
somewhat too complicated place for her. Had Howie
stopped to analyze it, he would have realized she re-
sembled nothing so much as a darker and less god-
bound version of his mother. They stumbled down the
trail together, each bearing an amphora of water. Point-
ing to himself, he said, "Me Howard."

She stared.

"Howard—my name's Howard."

It came out "yugger" when she said it. Pointing at
her, he made a questioning mumble. Had he possessed
a more detailed knowledge of Semitic vowel shifts
Howie might have felt a premonitory shudder at her
name. To him it sounded like Leilat'.

Lillith put down her water jar and squatted to rest.
These nautae had been more insatiable than a mob of
Roman dogfaces just in from desert patrol. And after
putting in a full night's work this water detail was giving
her aches in places she scarcely remembered. She had
been about to tell this nauta to go bugger Pluto, but . . .
Oh well, these young skinny ones hadn't the staying
power of a starving rabbit. She lugged her amphora

around behind a tree where it wouldn't be seen from
the trail. Howie followed.

It was hot and she'd been running around this island
naked for the last three weeks. Today she wore one of
Raquel's high collared, long sleeved dresses—just the
thing for an Iceland winter. She untied the waist cord
and turned round so Howie could unbutton her. After
a moment she turned again to see what was keeping
him.

The idiot had some kind of miniature parchment book
in one hand and a stylus in the other. Lillith was an-
noyed. Slowly it dawned on her that he hadn't turned
her down; he hadn't even understood her offer. What
did he want?

She undid the top two buttons at the back of her
neck and fanned a little air into the bodice. Then she
turned to Howie. "Anachnu Yuggerti?"

"Yes," Howie said, "I'm Howard. Anaknoo Leilat'?"

Soon he knew the words for eye, nose, mouth, arm,
hand. Lillith fanned her bodice again and taught him
the word for button. She ballooned out the heavy wool
and blew into it. This damned tent was suffocating
her! She fanned the skirt up and down.

He learned words for toe, foot, and ankle. Breathing
rapidly, he progressed to knee. Howie had not realized
learning a language could be so interesting. It was get-
ting ungodly hot in this little hole between the oak's
roots. He began to sympathize with Leilat' in that heavy
woolen thing. She taught him the word for dress. Point-
ing at his belt, she said the word for buckle.

Howie was sure he'd never remember the words but
she gave him no time to stop and review. Leilat' caught
his hand and drew him toward her. She had another
lesson in mind for him—and since it was Howie's first,
it went very quickly.

In spite of Ma Trimble's change in plans, Lillith had
no interest at all in visiting some outlandish country no

one had ever heard of. She wanted to go to Rome. Ob-
viously so did this timid young soul. Therefore . . .

Lessons progressed. Howie became obsessed with the
magnificence of his plan: they would take the Alice
to Rome and after he'd settled P. Pilate's hash there
would be time to swing around by the Holy Land and
give John the Baptist a briefing on his mission in life.
Mr. Rate had been a history professor. He would be
handy for taking care of details. Mr. Rate would go
along with the plan, and the Alice's men would do
whatever Mr. Rate told them. Mr. Rate wouldn't balk
at a chance for Salvation. But some obscure instinct
made Howie decide perhaps he'd better get hold of the
gun first.

Joe felt neither shock nor amazement as Howie un-
folded his magnificent project, only a bored sense of
corroboration. It was so magnificently logical. His only
wonder was how in hell he was going to get the pistol
away from this addled god shouter.

"It's a big decision," he finally said. "When it comes
to salvation each man should choose for himself. You
wouldn't want me responsible for sending a man's soul
to hell, would you?"

Howie shook his head.

"Well, let's call them in one at a time and tell them
your plan. Those that don't want to go can stay on the
island."

Howie thought a moment. It sounded fair.

With his eye on the revolver which wobbled in How-
ie's sweaty hand, Joe opened the door a crack and
called Gorson. The chief crowded into the tiny compart-
ment. "What the hell—?" Abruptly he shut up, wonder-
ing if Joe's kick had shattered his ankle.

"Go ahead Howie; I'm sure the chiefs interested."

Howie told his story more smoothly this time, dwell-
ing long on the glories of Salvation. Gorson listened

noncommittally. When Howie was through and his blaz-
ing eyes awaited a decision for God or Satan the chief
glanced at Joe for a hint. "Well," Joe said rapidly, "it
looks like you have two of us with you. Who should
we call next?"

"Cook, by all means," the chief said.

The pistol had not left McGrath's hand. They were
already jammed in like boots in a chow line. He opened
the door a crack and called.

Cookie tried but there wasn't room in the tiny com-
partment. He had seen the pistol so Howie could not
let him retreat. They faced each other for a tense mo-
ment.

"Tell you what," Joe said. "Howie, why don't you
put the pistol in your pocket and follow us up on deck
where we can get a breath of air?"

Howie was uncomfortable by now. He appreciated
Mr. Rate's thoughtfulness. Up on deck they could reach
some agreement. He had to be on his way soon. Sud-
denly he remembered— "Just to show God you're on
his side, we'll smash the still on the way up."

Gorson gasped.

"Don't you want to?"

The bos'n looked imploringly at Joe. "It's not the
booze, Howie," he finally said. Then he remembered
the god shouter had no particular interest in returning
to the Twentieth Century. He opened his mouth a
couple of times but nothing came out.

"Ain't another piece of copper tubing like that in the
whole world," Cookie protested.

"We can talk it over later," Joe suggested. Sooner or
later this madman would fall asleep. How much damage
would he do beforehand? In the back of Joe's mind
lurked the uncomfortable thought that they might have
to kill Howie. "Why do you want to destroy the still?"
he temporized.

Howie was shocked. "Why Mr. Rate, you know it's
against regulations. Whiskey is the Devil's Drink!"

"Well yes," Joe hedged, "but that still's made out of
government property. You know, I'd be so busy filling
out forms and writing reports, I don't know how I'd
ever find time to help you with this Roman business."
"Sure, kid," Gorson contributed, "you know how it is
with those reports and paperwork. Why, old Command-
er Cutlott would have a hemorrhage."

Howie was not buying it.  His  eyes twitched from
Gorson to Cookie to Joe. Joe wondered why he had
never before noticed how much white  they  showed.
"No," Howie said firmly. "The still has got to go."
"But can't we—?"
"Now!"

Joe opened the door and slowly stepped out. Dr.
Krom crowded in front of him and waved test tubes.
"Later," Joe said, and kept walking.

Dr. Krom wouldn't be brushed off. "Urgent," he was
saying. "Must act immediately."

"What do you know about urgency?" Joe muttered.
Another step and there was Krom again, clutching at
his sleeve. The old man was in a real flap; his English
had dwindled away into pure Hungarian.

"Nyet, nyista, whatever the hell it is in Magyar—no,
damn it!" Joe said. "Later."

There was a tinkling crash behind them. There goes
the still. But all was not yet lost—they'd replaced one
broken bell jar. But if that copper coil ever went over
the side . . . Slowly, Joe turned.

The god shouter was backed up against the bulk-
head, describing wild wavering arcs with a handful of
pistol. "Don't Howie," Joe said.  "You're here to save
souls, not send them to hell before they can choose."
"I've got to get to Rome."
"All right, all right. Has anyone said no? Look at all

these poor souls seeking the light. Give them your mes-
sage. I'll interpret."

Howie frowned an instant, then began repeating his
private evangel. After a moment Joe interrupted. "Esta
loco," he said, "Procuren no hacerle dano. Non compos
mentis. Non respondit actas suas." He tried again in
Greek, urging them not to kill the Salvation-addled
Bible belter.

Howie had the heavenly reward bit down pat by now.
Oh well, as long as he keeps talking, Joe philosophized.
But that thrice accursed pistol still wobbled around,
describing in great flamboyant arcs the riches of heaven.
Howie raised both hands in a gesture of benediction
and the pistol pointed momentarily upward. Joe caught
movement from the corner of his eye—a whistling hiss
as Raquel's knife removed the thinnest slice from How-
ie's already mangled ear. The pistol went off!

Ma Trimble screamed. Immediately the blondes made
it an a capella choir. Howie stared at the pistol, wonder-
ing if he had caused all that noise. Something heavy
struck him in the forehead. The imam hefted another
cup. "Takes one to catch one," he said with a wolfish
grin at Joe.

Fragments of heavy, handleless navy cup lay about
the shattered savior. His forehead bulged as if a third
eye were ready to open. Raquel stepped over the
crushed crusader and retrieved her knife. That's the
second time she's saved my life, Joe thought.

Schwartz crowded up. "Mr. Rate, what're we gonna
do?"

"Can't let him run around loose. Get some merthio-
late and cotton."

Dr. Krom crowded up again, waving a test tube and
spouting Magyar. "Later," Joe said, but the excitement
had blown a fuse somewhere in the old man. "Cookie,
fix him up."

Cookie nodded and returned a moment later with a

half cup of cloudy liquid. Dr. Krom took the cup ab-
sently and drank it. He coughed and abruptly spoke
English. "Most urgent," he began. Abruptly, his eyes
crossed. He sat heavily on the settee.

"Foreigners just ain't got no stomach," Cookie ob-
served.

"Did we leave anything ashore?" Joe asked.

Gorson shook his head. "What're you gonna do with
him?" he asked, pointing at McGrath.

"How should I know?" Joe snapped. He knelt again.
McGrath's pulse was steady and regular. He peeled
back eyelids and both pupils were the same size. No
blood from nose or ears. "Lapham!" he yelled.

"Sir," that young man asked, "what did you give Dr.
Krom?"

"A drink. Get the hammer, saw, and find some nails."

"I'll try, sir."

The young civilian had suddenly started sirring him.
Why? He caught Cookie's eye and they bore the young
god shouter forward. "Any of your things in the chain
locker?" he asked Raquel.

She shook her head.

They made McGrath as comfortable as possible atop
the jumble of nylon line. Lapham reappeared with
some odds and ends of lumber. "Leave room between
these slats so we can feed him," Joe said.

Where was Gorson? Joe went on deck and found the
chief fumbling in the darkness, trying to shackle the
mains'l headboard onto its halliard. "Girls were sewing
this afternoon," he explained. "It's unbent."

It was nearly midnight. Working in the dark, they
could take all night bending on the mains'l and then
run the risk of tearing it. In daylight it would only
take minutes. "Get some sleep," Joe said. "We'll get
underway at dawn." The bos'n nodded and went below.

Joe took a deep breath and reached for a cigarette.
When would he remember there weren't any? He

needed a shave too but they'd been out of soap for three
weeks and he kept putting off the thought of another
scrape with that same old blade.

Were they ready for another try at the Azores? He
wandered around the yawl's deck, testing the standing
rigging with his hand. It was stainless so there was no
rust problem, but the Alice had taken several hard
knocks. Were there any incipient cracks in shackles or
turnbuckles? He meandered up into the bows and ran
a speculative hand over the forestay. Someone scooted
aside to keep from being stepped on. He squinted and
saw Raquel. "Sorry about crowding you out of the chain
locker," he said.

"I have not slept there for some time."

"Oh?" Too hot, he supposed.

"I do not enjoy what goes on in the forecastle."

"Nor I," Joe agreed. "Perhaps they'll settle down when
we get to sea."

"Haven't we worked hard enough here?"

Joe sighed. He hadn't realized how weary he was. He
sat and leaned against the anchor winch. Ought to go be-
low, he knew, but all that rustling and giggling filtered
into his cubicle. It was cooler up here and the moon
was just setting beyond the harbor mouth. His head
was resting on something soft but he was too tired to
see what.

Somewhat later he heard people moving quietly along
the deck but again his exhaustion wouldn't let him
care why anyone would be throwing things into the
caique he'd salvaged that morning.

He woke to the bleary realization that Raquel had
sat all night cradling his head in her lap. She felt him
move and dumped him unceremoniously on deck. He
scrambled to his feet and started yelling the Alice's
crew awake. He stopped with an "all hands" choked
crossways as he saw what Raquel stared at. Less than
twenty feet away a large bireme was moored. At least

eighty oars were visible on Joe's side. Through the oar
ports he caught glimpses of rowers. They looked mean.

He dived down the forward scuttle, dragging Raquel
after him. "Stay below," he shouted. "Let's get the hell
out of here!" Hurling blondes like a berserk snowplow,
he lifted the floorboard over the engine.

Rose spun valves. He opened fuel cocks, water cocks,
and exhaust cocks. The starter began grinding. Nothing
happened. Rose gave a disgusted grunt and reached
for the ether bottle. He poured a capful into the air
intake. The diesel gave a shuddering explosion and
roared into life.

"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 cockpit. He oozed out into the foot-deep
cockpit, hoping the Romans couldn't see him. Abruptly,
he burst from the cockpit'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 cockpit.

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 cockpit.
The Romans would be casting off their own lines soon.
Would he ever outrange those damned 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 damned girls out of the way!" He dived
into his cubicle, searching for the pistol. Damn 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 cockpit 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 brass-knuckled fist knocked him down
again. Romans passed 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 classes 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 buttocks with the
flat of his sword. Joe stumbled off the end of the korax,
onto the catwalk, and made his way aft to the poopdeck.

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 brass 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

sort of bastard dialect which develops whenever stran-
gers are thrown together.

He had finally succeeded in thoroughly and irre-
mediably botching things up. And, he reflected, it
was all his own fault. Why couldn't he have gotten out
of here last night? Under jib and jigger the Alice would
have been twenty miles away by now and with daylight
he could have set the main.

Too tired! This was what happened to captains who
could afford to get tired. He took a deep breath and
tried to drive the mind sapping despair out of his
body. What was he going to do? Mutiny?

That, he suspected, he would not do. He climbed on
the narrow bench, standing as straight as the chain
would permit. The imam was five oars ahead of him.
Gorson was chained to an oar on the portside. The rest
of the Alice's men were scattered throughout the lower
bank.

What had happened to Ma Trimble and her girls?
They would switch allegiance at a moment's notice
anyway—why worry? He wondered how he would
stand up under the strain of rowing. How would he
take the oarmaster's lash?

He looked aft again. Gorson was sunk in apathy, his
head resting on his oar. Raquel forced her way to the
top of his unwilling mind. Ma Trimble's blondes were
of this era and capable of looking after themselves.
But Raquel— From where he sat amidships no female
was visible. He squinted through the thole hole down
at the Alice.

Roman nautae were fumbling helplessly with her run-
ning rigging. They had the jigger raised after a fashion,
though its luff puckered and bagged like Maggie's
drawers. Great snarls and Irish pennants festooned the
mainmast. They had not fathomed the mysteries of the
winch ratchet, nor had they managed to raise jib or
mains'l.

Someone shouted and they cast off the Alice's stem
line. A moment later they bunched in the bow and,
ignoring the electric windlass, began hauling the Alice
hand over hand toward the pinnacle which moored her
bow. Not understanding the why of the chain locker's
deck eye, they piled line in a great tangled heap atop
the winch.

An expectant rustle ran through the oar benches. Bet-
ter pay close attention, Joe decided. There was a double
blat-snort from an offkey trombone. The anchor man
on each oar began unlashing the oar behind him. Joe
hurried with the lashings but he was too late.

CRACK! The noise numbed his eardrums like a pistol
in a small room. He felt his shirt rip between his shoul-
der blades. That mad corner of his mind admired the
skill of an oarmaster who could create such a devastat-
ing effect without harming his animals. He was still
fumbling with the strange knots when the CRACK came
again. It ploughed an inch-long furrow across the point
of his shoulder blade.

He finally slipped the lashing. There was another flat
blat and he stumbled hastily backward to avoid being
crushed between his own oar and the bench. Someone
began pounding a drum. After a couple of strokes Joe
began to get the feel of the rise, one step forward, fall
back on the bench.

The oar was clumsy as a telegraph pole. Most of its
power came from inboard where the unchained oars-
men guided the stroke, walking three steps fore and aft.
He barked a single unintelligible word at Joe. On the
next stroke Joe pushed harder.

Another discordant blat. They stopped, backing water
with one reverse stroke. Joe pushed the wrong way,
working against the four men.

CRACK! This time the lash bit deeper.

They rested, awaiting the next signal, and Joe glanced
covertly at the man who held the whip, studying the

graying, shaggy haircut, the jutting chin with its week-
old growth of black beard, engraving this face in his
memory. What had become of his detached historian's
viewpoint? That ignorant clod was merely doing his
job. Joe shrugged. The welts began to throb. His scholar-
ly detachment departed, along with several of his boyish
illusions.

The trumpet blatted and the drum began thumping
again. Rise, push forward, fall back again—this time
very slowly. There was a slight jerk and he guessed
the hawser between the quinquereme and the Alice
had gone taut. The drum thrumped more rapidly.

They towed the Alice out of the horseshoe harbor
and around the island. Joe burst into torrents of sweat-
ing. Once around the island, the full force of the wind
hit them. They headed northwest, dead into it.

Even amid his distractions Joe found an instant to
marvel over the change. It was at least fifteen degrees
cooler outside the harbor. He was still sweating but
the wind kept his clothes dry. What, he wondered,
would happen if they suddenly stopped rowing? Prob-
ably pneumonia. But the galley showed no signs of
stopping so he continued his rise, push forward, fall
back on rubbery legs, wondering if the other oarsmen-
Slaves was the word; he was a slave. Were the others
as tired as he or would he harden to this Me and be-
come an unthinking rising, pushing, falling animal—
another piston in the galley's enormous inefficient en-
gine?

Though he had not noticed it, the drum had been
slowing down. The galley alone was a rough go into
the wind, and the Alice's external ballast and deep
draft did not make for easy towing. They were still
in sight of the island when, after four hours of suggest-
ing and hinting, the quartermaster finally got this bit
of information into the landlocked skull of his captain.
Came a final despairing blat and oarsmen abruptly

collapsed, leaving unshipped oars to dangle. Before Joe
had time to worry about pneumonia he was uncon-
scious.

Some one had him by the hair. He opened bleary eyes
and recognized the man with the whip. Must remember
that face. Someone was standing on the catwalk above
them. It was the man who'd questioned him from be-
hind a deskful of papers.

"Can you make that ship go?" the Roman asked.

Joe stared, still half asleep.

"Don't waste my time," the Roman snapped. "You
had that ship moving without sails in the harbor. Can
you do it again?"

Joe stared, trying to focus on the Roman. Why did
the showoff have to wear polished armor at sea, aboard
his own ship?

"Useless!" the Roman snapped to his quartermaster.
"Back to the island and beach it. Burn it and we can
at least get something for the iron."

Joe snapped out of his lethargy. They were going to
destroy his only link with the past. Or was it the future?
"No!" he shouted. "No, I can sail it It's too valuable to
burn. I can make you rich!"

The Roman gave him a contemptuous glance and
strode off down the catwalk. Joe collapsed across the
oar again.

Without the Alice's vacuum pump and still there was
no hope of seeing the Twentieth Century again. Nor
would his historian fraction ever see more of the ancient
world than the inside of some prison where slaves were
quartered during the winter months when navigation
was dangerous. He was slipping off into dreamless,
hopeless sleep when someone shook him again.

To hell with it! They'll wear me out and throw me
overboard. Let them beat me to death right now. But
the shaking wouldn't stop. There were clanks and ham-

merings. He opened his eyes in time to see a chiseled
rivet head pop off the single manacle.

"Come on," the armorer was saying in atrocious Greek,
"don't keep the kybernetes waiting."

Walking down the catwalk, Joe suddenly realized
what Christians meant when they spoke of being born
again. He tried to attract 'Gorson's attention but the
chief lay crumpled over his oar.

The Roman captain still sat in his folding chair.

"We are not magicians," Joe began, "but our arts re-
quire years of training. I'll need some of my men."

"How many kinds of fool do you take me for?" the
Roman snapped. "You'll teach Roman sailors or go back
to your oar."

Joe's confidence evaporated. He glanced astern at
the Alice and the island. They had drifted back toward
it and were less than four miles away now. "I don't
know how much damage you've done," he said. "It may
take time to get things working right. Can you set sail
and tow us away before we ground?"

The captain shot a questioning glance at his oar-
master, who sputtered a rapid sentence in Greek. The
captain nodded. "We'll go back into the harbor again.
Will that suit you?"

"Well enough," Joe agreed.

"And while you're being towed back you can give
my men their first lesson in your devious barbarian
arts. I'm going aboard too and see what your bucket
looks like."

Another beautiful plan shot to hell. Oh well, it was
better than being chained to an oar. He thought guiltily
about the others, the imam and old Dr. Krom . . .
and Raquel?

Nautae hauled on the hawser and jumped aboard.
Joe sprang after them and a moment later the captain,
still in polished armor, came down a rope ladder. A

striped sail bellied aboard the galley and nautae paid
out the hawser slowly.

Joe went below, followed by the captain and six
nautae. One look at the Alices interior made him want
to cast his manly inhibitions aside and weep. The Ro-
mans had gone through her like army ants, taking every-
thing not nailed down and several things that were.

There was not a single bunk with a mattress in it.
Every book, chart, binoculars, dividers, pencil, was
gone from Joe's cubicle. Tools and spare parts were miss-
ing from Rose's engine lockers.

Cups, plates, pots, spoons, knives, and forks had dis-
appeared from the galley, along with the stove lids.
Not a can of food remained in stores. The lazarette
had been emptied of the last grain of rye. Gorson and
Cookie's empty foot lockers were gone. Even the port-
hole curtains had departed.

"I can't run the ship this way," Joe said. "
"You'll run it this way or go back to your oar!"
"Then let's  go," Joe said,  and turned to  leave the
ship.

The Roman captain lost his air of certainty. "You
want to be chained to that oar again?" he asked.

"Why promise what I cannot do? You've stolen too
many pieces."

The Roman bit his lip and pondered. "Can you run
it alone if I bring things back?"

"I don't know. Get every last scrap back aboard and
I'll try."

The Roman thought a moment. He suspected that if
he could just understand some of this gadgetry it could
be very useful. Burning her for iron, on the other hand,
would scarcely pay his docking fees in Piraeus. "Which
things do you need?" he asked.

Joe shrugged. "Each man in my crew has his own
skill. I cast a horoscope and tell them which star to
follow. They work the ship."

The Roman's face was settling back into the planes
and angles of Roman intolerance. "And you alone can-
not make this ship go?"

"I didn't say that," Joe said hastily. "But it will take
longer. What do I need? How the hell should I know?
I need everything. Do I get it or not?"

The other surveyed him a moment in frosty inde-
cision. "All right," he finally grunted. "But none of your
own men and no tricks." He rattled orders in a Greek
too fast for Joe and nautae began overhanding the
hawser. Joe glanced at the electric winch and shrugged.
Why run down batteries? After much heaving and
grunting the Alice nuzzled up under the galley's stern.
The Roman captain climbed up the ladder.

Joe glanced at the sun. Another couple of hours day-
light, he guessed. Since losing the sextant he'd had no
way to set his watch. He glanced at it.

Why, the dirty thieving sons of bitches!

It wasn't much of a watch but to Joe's father it had
represented considerable sacrifice on the day his son
graduated. In memory of this Joe had kept it long past
the day when he could have afforded something better.
He thought fleetingly of his father—how hard the old
man had worked, how easily the world had swindled
him out of his meager earnings. And now the world had
gotten away with his graduation present to his only son!

Joe squinted at the galley and decided it was time
to stop seeing both sides of every question. He turned
his attention to the six nautae who chattered to each
other in some kind of Greek.

Jerking a peremptory thumb, he strode to the Alice's
bow. "Down this hole," he growled. "Don't pile the
anchor line on deck, you miserable philosophers." He
poked a couple of feet through the deck eye and stood
back. Nautae stared. "Get on the ball!" Joe roared, and
drove his fist into the nearest nose.

Blood spouted and the sailor dropped into a crouch.

Joe stood erect, arms folded across his chest. The nauta
knew a captain when he saw one. He shrugged and
went to work.

The galley turned and lowered sail. Oars flashed
raggedly as exhausted men took up the beat. The Alices
people were still chained to them. What was he going
to do?

They would have to wait until the stores were back
aboard. Trying not to worry about Raquel, he went
below.

The Romans had lifted the floorboard over the en-
gine. Joe began studying the maze of pipes and valves,
trying to figure out the short cuts Rose had taken when
he shut off the galley stove. Why, he wondered, weren't
history teachers required to know more of practical
mechanics?

They were nearly in the harbor now so he guessed
he could safely open the valves which allowed sea water
into the heat exchanger and out of the exhaust. How
much fuel was left? The day tank glass showed half
full, enough for two or three hours running. He opened
the valve at its bottom and waited to see if anything
around the engine started dripping. So far so good.
The lifter bar was up. Better leave it that way until
the engine was spinning. What shape were the bat-
teries in? Would it start?

He looked about the tiny compartment and breathed
a silent prayer of thanks. The can of starting ether was
still there, one of the few things the Romans hadn't
pilfered. Nothing was dripping so he decided to leave
all valves open. Was everything right now? Water valve
open, exhaust gate valve open, lifter bar up . . . The
engine should roar into life as soon as he switched in
the starting batteries and dropped the lifter. Forgetting
anything?

Holy hell! Abruptly, he realized what was wrong.
They would have made good their escape this morning

if line hadn't fouled the screw. No wonder the galley
hadn't been able to tow the Alice! How many hundred
feet of line draped in tangled festoons from the yawl's
screw?

A tuba blatted and he felt the Alice lose way. Moments
later they tied to the pinnacle and the Alice was warped
up alongside. The korax was lowered to her deck again
and a working party started transferring the loot back.
Joe spent the next couple of hours frantically sorting
and directing packers to deposit things somewhere near
their proper place. It would take weeks to get things
where they belonged. He suspected the Romans were
holding out everything small enough to hide.

Eventually the double column ceased flowing back
and forth across the korax. Joe snatched a mattress and
a couple of blankets and stuffed them into his cubicle.
He was thinking guiltily about the Alice's men still
chained to oars.

Morning came and his problems were still there.
Nautae munched round loaves of bread. "Where's mine?"
Joe asked. They started to give him the stupid treat-
ment again but something about the young man's stance
made the mangle-nosed one reconsider. He produced
Joe's loaf from the folds of his himation. Joe wolfed
down his bun—much harder than he'd expected—and
wondered if one was all the others had eaten. Probably.
Roman efficiency would make a galley slave's breakfast
indivisible and as small as the difference between life
and death.

He had to do something soon or he would be back
pulling an oar without another chance. No use teaching
Romans the fine points of sailing into the wind. The
Roman captain expected a miracle that could be ac-
complished only with the diesel. He turned abruptly
to the nautae and stopped. He wanted to ask if there
was a diver among them but couldn't remember the
Greek. Come to think of it, he didn't remember the

word in Latin either. "Scitisne nature?" he finally asked.
They looked Greek and Greeks used to skindive for
sponges. The man whose nose he'd flattened seemed
to be some kind of a leader. "You," Joe said. "Down to
the bottom and bring me a rock."

He was given the stupid act again. It worried Joe.
Maybe they really didn't understand Latin. But sweet
reasonableness was not characteristic to commanders
of this period. Joe pushed the man overboard.

The nauta hit the water with arms and legs going like
windmills. A second later he came up gasping. "Swim,
damn it!" Joe growled. The nauta was putting on a
good act. He choked and swallowed water before go-
ing down again. Several seconds passed this time before
his head broke water and the Greek's pasty complexion
finally convinced Joe. Disgustedly, Joe tossed a line.
The Greek was too far gone to grab it.

"Everything happens to me," he growled, and jumped
in. A moment later he had the line secured around the
unconscious nauta and those aboard dropped their stu-
pid act long enough to pull them in.

It took several minutes of Holger-Nielsen pumping
before the Greek finally coughed and vomited a half
gallon of water along with his breakfast. "Go back
aboard the galley," Joe said when the Greek sat up.
"Stay there and tell the skipper to send me a—" Damn
it, what was the word for diver? "—someone who
hunted sponge." The nauta nodded sickly and vomited
once more before crossing the korax.

Joe waited but there was no sign of a replacement
for the waterlogged nauta. "Damn them all," he grunted
and went to sorting the Alice's stores. Somewhere there
had been a diving outfit. The air tanks were long since
empty but with the faceplate Joe might be able to
hack away a few strands of nylon between breaths.
But where was the faceplate?
He found the tanks and regulator buried in a pile

of gear dumped in the Alice's cockpit, but the face
mask was still gone.

The more Joe thought about it the madder he got.
He swung himself onto the korax and marched across,
down the catwalk and aft to the quinquereme's poop-
deck. "Where's the magister of this bucket?" he roared.

The oarmaster appeared and rasped something in
Greek. Joe stiffened his arms to keep from killing the
man who'd whipped him. "I defecate on your meta-
physical tongue," he said. "Can't you speak Latin?"

"Somewhat better than you," the oarmaster said sharp-
ly. "And what's the idea of using up my men? You
think they're cheap?"

The Roman captain erupted from the stem castle.
"I'll castrate the next man who awakens me!" he prom-
ised, then caught sight of Joe.

"Why doesn't a Roman keep his word?" Joe grated.

"And what do you mean by that?"

"I mean everything small enough to hide is hidden.
If you want that ship to run, give it back!"

"What specifically do you want?"

"Everything. At the moment I'm looking for a face-
plate."

"A what?"

Joe tried to describe it. The Latin for glass didn't
mean the kind you could see through. What had they
called mica? Lapis specularis! "If I don't get it your
thieving thugs have stolen a ship from you."

The Roman captain sighed. The marines were Ro-
mans; if he couldn't keep them in hand he might as
well open an artery. "Fall in!" he trumpeted.

Seconds later he scowled at them. "One article of
loot is missing. You will fall out and return with full
packs. You will march single file around the capstan.
If this barbarian does not find the article he needs you
will all swim home. DisMISS!" the Roman spun sharp-

ly, still at attention. "And you," he said to Joe, "will
wait aboard the prize."

To his own infinite surprise, Joe saluted. He turned
bemusedly and ambled forward along the catwalk. Gor-
son was awake now. Joe caught his eyes but the chained
chief's look was expressionless. Where were the women?

The sun was nearing noon before a work party
clumped across the korax and deposited a small pile of
odds and ends in the cockpit. The faceplate was there.
His watch was not. So be it, he decided—a life for each
jewel, a hundred for the hairspring. He turned to the
nautae who watched. "Give me a knife."

The stupid act again.

"God damn you all! He rummaged through the pile
again, and found one of Cookie's boning knives. Some-
one had apparently been trying to cut wire rope with
it. Where in hell was the stone? Twenty minutes passed
before he found it and another twenty in honing. He
stripped, tied the knife to his wrist, and donned the
faceplate.

The water was warmer than usual, and oddly murky.
Tiny bubbles rose from the bottom. He remembered
Dr. Krom and his test tubes. Was the old man still alive?

He pawed his way downward and was shocked to feel
barnacles. When had the Alice been hauled out last?
The water was ungodly murky. He could scarcely see
his hand before the faceplate. He swam under her keel
and swore, blurping a gob of water inside his faceplate
as another barnacle snagged his back. He came up on
the far side and breathed. No wonder he couldn't see;
the Alice was in the quinquereme's shadow.

Resignedly, he climbed back aboard and crossed the
korax again. The Roman captain was busy with lunch.
"Don't bother me," he said. "Tell him your troubles."

Joe explained to the quartermaster.

"So what do you want me to do?" the quartermaster
asked.

"Put a gang ashore. Warp her around until I can see."

The quartermaster considered a moment. "All right,"
he grunted. "Go back aboard so I can raise the korax."

By the time the Alice was relocated, nearly two hours
had passed. Joe dived sporadically, working by feel.
The tightly wound nylon was not as hard to cut as he
had expected.

And now the Alice, at least, was out from under the
korax's iron spike. All afternoon he racked his brains
but no plan came to him. The pistol was not among the
items returned. He wondered if they recognized it as
a weapon or if it had gone overboard. The rifle was
gone too. They'd had experience with the weird and
wonderful weapons of barbarians. A rifle was not so
far removed from a blowgun that Romans could not
deduce its purpose.

The water was muddier know. Bubbles rose until each
wavelet was capped with dirty brown foam like the
dregs of a Bockfest. Dr. Krom must've seen something
of this in his test tubes. Joe wondered if it were a
periodic phenomenon or whether something unusual was
abuilding.

From time to time he brought up strands of nylon,
mainly to satisfy Roman curiosity and convince them
he was not whittling holes to scuttle the yawl. The
nautae remained on deck and didn't help him aboard
when he came up for a rest.

Line had whipped round and round the shaft until
the ball was bigger than the screw. The outer layers
had been easy, for each blind stab had severed a strand.
Closer to the shaft each miss dulled the knife. He tried
once to get the nautae to sharpen another knife so he
could alternate but they were putting on their stupid
act again. Diving in the tepid water had done away
with much of his stiffness from rowing but he'd only
had that one small loaf to eat in the last twenty-four
hours. When would he be fed again? It was late after-

noon before he hacked the final twist and felt the
wheel turn free. He surfaced and crawled wearily back
into his clothes.

The five nautae watched him silently. Their dirty
black headcloths and bloused up, topheavy himations
gave them an odd, birdlike look, like hooded vultures.
He went below, mentally running over the engine start-
ing procedure again.

The sun had gone down but they would have moon-
light in half an hour. He checked the valves again to
make sure the nautae's curiosity hadn't sabotaged his
arrangements. The engine was ready. Or was it? He
ran through everything once more and finally, with a
silent invocation to Mahan's ghost, threw the switch.
The engine spun vigorously until he whanged over the
lifter bar, then groaned nearly to a standstill. He was
reaching for the ether when it suddenly roared into
fullthroated life.

A glance at the ammeter showed how hungry the
batteries were. He wondered about Rose's wind charger,
then remembered there had been practically no wind
inside the sheltered harbor. After a couple of tentative
surges the diesel settled down to its steady racketing
pound. Joe went on deck and threw in the forward
clutch.

The Alice tugged at her stern line. He reversed and
was satisfied that no line remained tangled. He pulled
the lifter bar. In the sudden silence a sound came
clearly from the quinquereme. A girl was screaming.
The hooded vultures regarded him speculatively in
gathering darkness. Joe found a length of nylon line.
He made it fast to the mainmast and tailed the strand
aft, along one rail, tying it down with marline stops
every yard or so. He tailed the line across the stern,
up the opposite rail, up and around the mizzenmast
on the same side, then back to the rail and almost to
the mainmast again. There he tied an overhand knot

before running the line aft through the mooring eye.

A light bobbed on the harbor's surface. It neared and
Joe recognized the galley's longboat. Still in armor, the
Roman captain stumped aboard the Alice. He was
backed up by a pair of particularly ugly marines. One
of the oarsmen handed up a basket and lit another
torch before handing up the one in the longboat's bow.
"Ready?" the captain asked.

"I can make the ship move. Where were you going
yesterday?"

"Piraeus."

"How far?"

"Five hundred stadia."

Eight to the mile, Joe thought, and calculated rapid-
ly. To keep the Roman from disbelieving him, he dou-
bled his estimated time. "If we leave right now, I can
have you docked tomorrow afternoon."

The hooded vultures were gobbling bread from the
basket. Joe kicked them sprawling and helped himself
to three loaves.

"One apiece," the Roman captain snapped.

"They'll get their share when they work for it!" Joe
snapped back. "Are you ready?"

The Roman decided not to make an issue of it.

"Have them cast off their stern line." While the Ro-
man shouted orders Joe uncleated the line which teth-
ered the Alice's bow to the galley and bent it onto his
previously strung line.

"Cast off and ready," the Roman said. "What makes
all the noise?"

"Have you seep the oil which flows from the earth
and makes burning springs?"

"Yes, near Sinai."

"The noise of its burning pushes the ship." Joe threw
the switch to demonstrate and the arm diesel started
immediately. He backed slowly around the pinnacle,
taking care not to foul the stern line. The moon rose

over the jagged crater top and he hoped his maneuver
would come off properly before it got too light. "Douse
the torch," he said.

"Like hades I will! You must think I trust you."

"All right," Joe growled. "But tell those useless sons
of bitches to stand back astern and sing out when that
line comes taut. I don't want to tear something out by
the roots getting under way."

The Roman captain condescended the tremendous
gap which separated him from a nauta and relayed
Joe's order. The Alice had drifted backward until her
stern was within a length of the galley's bronze ram.
There were a couple of hundred feet of nylon between
them and Joe had been keeping a careful eye on its
floating mass lest the Alice foul her screw again.

"Here we go," he said, and shoved the lever into for-
ward. The Alice gathered way rapidly. Joe made sure
she was headed for the harbor mouth and would clear
the pinnacle, then squatted in the foot-deep cockpit
to study the tachometer and ammeter. "If you're in-
terested . . ." he hinted. The Roman knelt beside him.
The marines fingered their swords nervously and stood
on either side of their chief.

"Let me know when it comes taut," Joe yelled at the
hooded vultures. At that moment it did. There was a
sputter like a string of wet firecrackers as marline stops
tore loose along the rail. Line whiplashed over Joe's
back where he knelt with the Roman commander. Ma-
rines and nautae gave startled yelps.

Joe had thought the closing loop would whip them
overboard, but he'd underestimated the power and
stretch of nylon. The Alice took up the full dead weight
of the galley and shuddered. The line stretched its full
twelve percent. The slipknot closed before vultures and
marines had time for another yell. The vultures made
strange sucking sounds as their insides burst and splat-
tered over the Alice's deck. The two marines had been

standing a foot lower in the cockpit—they merely lost
their heads.

Joe stared. He hadn't imagined it was going to be so
messy. The Roman captain took in the situation almost
as quickly as Joe, but not quickly enough to duck the
steel reversing lever Joe wrapped around his fine Ro-
man head.

Bisected bodies jerked and quivered about the Alice's
stern. Thanking Mahan the torch had gone overboard,
Joe corrected course. They were just passing through
the harbor mouth. He stumbled and cursed and kicked
a pair of legs. They skidded overboard, dragging bloody
viscera with them.

He wondered if anyone aboard the galley knew what
had happened. They'd find out soon enough. He throt-
tled down. How much fuel could he save without slow-
ing enough to encourage some inquisitive soul to haul
in the tow line?

The Roman captain groaned and stirred. Joe did
things with short pieces of line. Then he snapped the
end of the main halliard to the line joining the Roman's
wrists.

The Roman came to. He tried to sit up as Joe began
cranking the winch. He pronounced several words Joe
had never heard before as the halliard came taut and
began dragging him across the deck. "What do you ex-
pect to gain by this?" he demanded.

Joe continued cranking until the Roman was lifted
into a sitting position. With feet lashed to the bottom
of the mizzen mast and wrists over his head, the Ro-
man could sit but was forced off balance if he tried to
stand and lower his arms. When Joe was sure his cap-
tive wasn't going anywhere he throttled down and
began hauling in line as the galley coasted up to the
deep drafted yawl. It drifted within fifty feet of the
Alice before its speed matched that of the idling diesel.

What was  going on aboard the galley? He waited

tensely but no face peered down over the bow. With
an uneasy glance at the bronze ram which pointed
straight at the Alice's screw, he cracked the throttle
another notch. Now what?

They were a mile south of the island by now and
the wind was offshore. One less worry. He was going
to have to attract an audience. He went below and
rummaged. The Romans had stolen the trouble light
along with everything else but he thought he'd seen
a marine bring it back.

God must have been on his side, Joe decided, for it
lit when he plugged it in. He snaked the cord back
up on deck and hooked the caged lamp between the
Roman's wrists.

"Hail them," Joe said. "Good and loud. Tell them to
send my people back. You might also mention that if
that galley unships one oar I'll sink it immediately."

"And what do I get out of the deal?"

"If my people are alive and well you might live. If
not I'll vivisect you."

"Won't work," the Roman snapped.

Joe considered the Roman a moment, then kicked
him where it would do the most good. The ropes would
not let the Roman bend double. He writhed and twisted
like a maimed snake, and after a moment vomited.
"You don't understand," he explained. "Those blood-
thirsty pirates wouldn't give a plugged drachma to ran-
som the whole Roman Empire."

"Whose life would they value?"

The Roman thought a moment. "The quartermaster's
a Roman too. But maybe the oarmaster."

Joe reached for the light between the Roman's wrists
and cursed when he burnt his fingers trying to unscrew
it. Incredibly, there was still no one looking down at
them over the galley's bow. Were they all asleep? No,
there had been a murmur of voices somewhere aboard
the larger ship. Abruptly, a man screamed. His voice

rose slowly through soprano and ended with an abrupt,
rabbit-like whistle.

Joe grabbed the Roman by the forelock and they
faced each other in the moonlight. "If that's one of my
people," Joe promised, "you are going to make several
noises like that. Even then, I may not let you die."

The Roman said something short and pungent which
Joe didn't understand. Joe pulled a belaying pin from
the mizzen ring and brought it down sharply on the
Roman's kneecap. When the Roman had caught his
breath Joe began a steady gentle tapping on the broken
kneecap. "All right," he finally gasped. "What do you
want?"

Joe spun the wheel hard right and paid out line.
When the Alice had drifted around broadside to the
galley and headed in the opposite direction he de-
clutched. "Now yell. Tell that quartermaster and oars-
master to get over here in the skiff, alone, and on the
double."

"I don't know whether I can make them come alone,"
the Roman hedged.

Joe began tapping on the kneecap again. The Roman
began shouting. Minutes passed before the rope ladder
tumbled down from the galley's stern castle and moon-
light silhouetted one man climbing down into the skiff.
"Why only one?"

"I don't know. I told them both to come," Joe hefted
the belaying pin. "I did," the Roman insisted. They sat
in uneasy silence until the skiff bumped beneath the
Alice's stern.

A cloaked and hooded figure tossed up a painter.
Joe cleated it and extended his left hand. As the man
grasped it and swung up on deck Joe jerked. He
brought the belaying pin down smartly on the other
man's neck.

The oarmaster came to dangling back to back with
the Roman.

"Where's the quartermaster?" Joe asked.

The oarmaster gave a short hard laugh. "Dead," he
said. "One of your trollops did him in a few minutes
ago."

"Which one?"

"The blackheaded one that kept herself so filthy no
man would touch her—until Harpalus got suspicious and
caught her smearing herself in fish and seagull blood."

A great light burst in Joe's mind. So that explained
the gamy stink. Whenever things got dangerous Raquel
copied the skunk and kept her person unclean but in-
violate. He laughed involuntarily. But now she was in
real danger! "Yell back and tell them not to harm
her!"

"Not on your life," the oarmaster grunted. "Old Har-
palus deserved a cleaner death than she gave him."

Joe remembered the welts on his shoulders. "Have
you ever felt a whip?" he asked.

"Yes, damn you!" the oarmaster replied in his Greek-
tainted Latin. "I've been a slave in my time."

Joe hooked the light between their wrists. He cranked
the main halliard winch until they dangled, swinging
gently through the catenary arc which suspended them
from maintop to mizzen butt. "Tell them to get my
people over here in one piece." He tapped the Roman
on the kneecap again.

The Roman started yelling orders, and after the oar-
master had considered the situation for a moment he
joined in.

There was hammering aboard the galley. Manacles
being unriveted, Joe guessed. "Now hear this," he said.
"All hands report on board immediately."

Minutes passed and no one came. Joe picked up the
belaying pin. They started yelling again.

Still nothing happened. Maybe he should have taken
more hostages before showing his hand.

Then there was a faint splash amidships and Joe spun

in horror. He'd known these Greek swabbies were divers
—why hadn't he been prepared for something like
this? They were probably all around the ship now. And
he hadn't so much as a knife at hand!

X

HE CREPT forward toward the sound of splashing. A
head popped up and Joe raised the belaying pin.

"Permission to board sir?" the head asked. Joe re-
leased breath in an explosive sigh. Gorson had swum
around to the enlisted men's side. He clambered over
the rail, faced aft, and saluted. Then he faced Joe and
saluted again. "Good to see you, sir," the chief said.

Joe returned his salute and nodded.

"Mr. Rate," the chief asked, "aren't we going to show
the flag?"

The question took Joe by surprise. "Quite right," he
said after a pause. "See to it."

As Gorson turned Joe saw fresh welts across the bos'n's
back. There was also a crease across his head where
the whiplash had gouged a furrow and reopened his
mangled ear.

The bos'n found the flag stuffed in a pile of blankets.
He was running it up when two more heads bobbed
up on the enlisted men's side. "Permission to board, sir?"
Villegas asked. Freedy followed him. As they faced aft
and saluted Joe began to understand what power these
ceremonials had over the minds of men.

While Villegas was rowing back for a load of non-
swimmers more heads popped up. Rose, Cookie and

Guilbeau climbed dripping over the enlisted men's side
and saluted. As befitted a civilian, Lapham came over
the officer's side and faced aft, seeming to be all knees
and elbows. He blinked rapidly and blew his nose be-
fore facing Joe. "Ready for duty, sir," he said in a strange
quavering voice.

Another head popped up along the enlisted men's
side. It was Raquel. Unbound black hair lay wetly over
her back and shoulders. The coarse woolen dress clung
beautifully. "Permiso to boar', sair?" she asked.

Joe swallowed and returned her salute. Raquel
glanced briefly at the dangling Roman and his oar-
master, then turned back to Joe with an enigmatic look.

Joe had forgotten them. He went forward and un-
latched the winch until they could sit again.

The Roman studied Joe with a new respect "What
is that bloody rag you worship?" he asked.

"A symbol," Joe explained, "of the slow-footed, butter-
fingered, bungling Great White Father whose stupidity
we curse daily."

"A strange way to worship one's gods."

"Yes, isn't it? Takes an experience like this to under-
stand what's really going on when you stand at atten-
tion while the squadron's father image runs up a bloody
rag."

"Barbarians," the Roman muttered.

To Joe's surprise, Dr. Krom was still alive. The old
man wept without shame as he faced aft. Ma Trimble
was lifted aboard with much grunting and wheezing.
She stood a moment facing aft in silent awe. "Sonny,"
she asked, "what are the extra stars for?"

"What about your girls?" Joe asked. "I've only seen
eight or ten so far.

Chins, breasts and abdomens quivered as Ma Trimble
laughed. "Stop worrying sonny," she said. "Most of your
swab jockeys've settled down with one or another. The

odd girls decided they'd rather take their chances with
the Romans. Of course, I can call 'em over."

"Oh no!" Joe said quickly. Thank God the Alice
wouldn't be quite so crowded now.

There were nineteen persons aboard: himself, Gor-
son, Guilbeau, Cook, Rose, Villegas, Schwartz, and
Freedy. Raquel was there, along with Ma Trimble and
seven of her girls. Ten men and nine women. Who was
the odd man? Twenty-four hours ago Joe would auto-
matically have considered himself the odd man.

Cookie was the only man without a companion. Even
Dr. Krom was paying archaic, old world courtesies to
Ma Trimble's trembling bulk.

"How come no girl?" Joe asked the gaunt Tennessean.
"Already got a wife."
"She'd never know," Villegas hinted.
"I would," Cook said.
Joe regarded him with new respect.
Red  Schwartz  had  latched  onto   one  of the  more
spectacular blondes. "All here but one," he said.

Joe also remembered McGrath. "Yeah," he said glum-
ly. All but one. But it wasn't quite true. The imam had
not been of the Alice's original company but Joe had
a special affection for the old man—an affection which
extended to the young Moors who had so lightheartedly
accepted their new master. They had died for the Alice.
The imam's aged heart had beaten its last in the gal-
ley's under bunk. Chained three oars aft, Dr. Krom had
seen this worn part discarded from the galley's immense,
inefficient engine and wondered if he would be next.
Joe unsnapped the main halliard from his captives'
wrists. "One of my men is dead," he said. They sat, not
bothering to look at him. Joe worried at their bonds
with a pair of scissors. Cookie went below for a knife.
Eventually the line parted. The hostages stood un-
surely, rubbing their swollen wrists. The Roman's ar-
rogance was returning with his circulation. "A Roman

has kept his word," he sneered. "Now we shall see if a
barbarian keeps his."

Joe fingered a welt high on his shoulder and won-
dered how many stripes it had taken to still the old
imam's heart. "I keep my promises," he said, and pushed
them overboard. They were still tethered to the mizzen
mast and the line was short enough to hold their feet
out of water. After some preliminary splashing they
arched themselves and held their heads above water
by grasping their ankles.

Joe surveyed them dispassionately, noting with in-
terest how the planes and angles of the Roman's face
blurred into new and softer lines as he understood he
was about to die.

The moon hung low in the west now. Almost morning,
Joe guessed. The galley still drifted with all oars shipped,
a hundred yards away. Both ships had drifted until
the island lay three or four miles east. The hostages'
heads drooped lower until only their faces were out of
water. A wavelet washed over and they coughed, strug-
gling to raise their heads for a clean breath. Cookie came
on deck with the knife.

It was over. He had his ship back and most of his
people. "Cut them loose," he grunted.

Cookie slashed. They struck out for the galley, swim-
ming clumsily because they were still bound together
by the feet. Dr. Krom appeared beside Joe. "I don't
wish to interfere," he said deferentially, "but we really
should be leaving. Do you remember those test tubes?"

Joe nodded absently. The two swimmers were halfway
to the quinquereme. Abruptly, they stopped swimming
and started yelling.

"Leaving? Oh yes," Joe remembered. "Rose, light 'er
off."

"Yes sir!" Rose twiddled topside controls and the
warm diesel started immediately.

Things  were finally  happening  aboard the  Roman

ship. Oars unshipped and stroked rapidly toward the
two swimmers. Joe threw in the forward clutch and
spun the wheel, idling the Alice gently upwind so they
could make sail. Dead ahead the island silhouetted in
the faint beginnings of dawn. "Look," Dr. Krom said.
A thin tendril of smoke issued from the crater.

But Joe was looking elsewhere. The quinquereme had
quickstroked to full speed. Nearing the two swimmers,
she tossed out a spar for them to cling to and raced on
without missing a stroke. The bronze ram was less than
a hundred feet away, aimed straight for the Alice's
midships. Joe rammed the throttle home.

He thumbed his nose as the Alice walked away from
the undermanned galley. Once more he was heading
south, toward the mouth of the Aegean. One right turn
at the Sea of Crete and they wouldn't stop till they
reached the Azores. Saving the diesel for emergencies,
he could outrun anything the Romans could send against
him.

Water tanks were still full, thanks to the Roman
ignorance of pumps. He wondered what would have
happened if they had discovered all that wine. While
the Alice's men traced out lines and undid the Roman
snarls in standing and running rigging, Cookie squared
away the galley and put girls to grinding flour.

They were a mile ahead now and the galley was
turning back toward the oarmaster and captain, who
still clung to a floating spar.

Raquel hadn't said a word to Joe since boarding, yet
some instinct told him their relationship had changed.
Bloodthirsty savage, he'd called her. How could he have
known what lay so close beneath his own civilized ex-
terior?

Then the engine stopped.

The quinquereme was completing its pickup, about
a mile and a half behind them. Joe wondered if the
engine's noise could carry that far upwind. His ques-

tion was answered when the immense striped sail
dropped from its yard and bellied. The bronze ram
lifted and began throwing twin wings of spray. "Make
sail!" Joe shouted.

"Be a few minutes yet," Gorson answered. "Those
sons of bitches unrove the mainsheet."

Dawn was a little brighter now and the island was
clearly outlined some five miles astern. "None too soon,"
Dr. Krom was saying. "Look at that smoke."

Joe went to see what had happened to the engine.
"Day tank ran empty," Rose explained.
"I didn't know how to fill it," Joe apologized.
"The engine drives the transfer pump."
Joe began to worry. "And without fuel to start the
engine you can't pump fuel into the day tank to run
the engine to—"

Rose laughed. "I'll drain a cupful somewhere." He
grabbed a wrench and crawled deep into the Alice's
bilges. "Don't worry," his muffled voice came back, "I'll
find a plug soon."

The galley had closed to less than a mile. Joe studied
its bow wave and wondered if the Alice could outrun
this light drafted vessel downwind. If it came to that
the Alice could come about and tack until the oarsmen
were exhausted.

"How much longer with that sail?"
"Any minute," Gorson said cheerfully. The galley was
making a good nine knots now and the plume of smoke
which rose directly behind her gave Joe the momentary
impression of a destroyer preparing to ram at flank
speed. He was starting down the after scuttle again
when he heard the starting motor grind. The diesel
coughed raggedly and the glass tube on the side
of the day tank began filling. He went on deck to see
what the galley would try.

"Not going to conk out again, is she?"

"If she does I'll turn Christian," Rose promised.

The galley was within three hundred yards, gaining
rapidly. Joe opened throttle and headed crosswind to
take the weather gage.  Instantly, the sail brailed up
and oars flashed as the galley turned.  But the Alice
was faster now and had no difficulty staying on the
larger ship's stern. He caught a glimpse of the Roman
captain, livid with rage as he shouted orders.

A catapult twanged and the stone splashed short.

This is ridiculous, Joe thought. He didn't want to
waste fuel playing tag, yet the Roman wouldn't give
up. The quinquereme was more solidly built than that
Scowegian dragon ship. Joe might get the worst of it
in a ramming match. To hell with it. He'd lead them
off cross wind for a while, then set every stitch.

Another stone plunked short of the Alice. Joe cracked
the throttle a trifle wider. "Look!" Dr. Krom was point-
ing at the island, now dead ahead.

It reminded Joe of the Bikini movie. A visible shock
wave moved through the clear morning air. A mile high
pillar of smoke was already beginning to mushroom.
How long before the tsunami reached them?

"All hands below!" he screamed at the spellbound
deck force. "Dog everything tight!" He pushed Dr.
Krom through the scuttle and dived after him. Thank
God they hadn't set sail! And the Alice, at least, was
heading into it. "In your bunks," he yelled. "Shut it
off, Rose."

The shock wave struck. There was no sound, just a
feeling like the end of the world. Somewhere in the
loudest silence he had ever known Joe heard a tinkle
of broken glass.

There were ominous creakings and groanings, a hum
which ended with a snap like an overturned guitar
string. If that's the backstay we need a mast. The nearest
suitable timber would be in Gaul. How many weeks
to find a stick and shave it down? No, by Mahan—the

Bible mentioned cedars in Lebanon. But there wasn't
fuel even to reach there.

The tsunami struck—a vertical wall of water which
poured over the bow before the yawl could lift. Water
poured through the slide behind him. Floorboards tilted
slowly from beneath his feet and he hung from the lad-
der. Girls screamed. The bow raised slowly, majestical-
ly skyward. Joe surveyed the wriggling mass below him
and wondered why in hell they hadn't gotten in their
bunks.

He heard water gurgling down the cockpit's self-
bailing drains. The Alice came to an even keel and after
a moment he opened the scuttle and scrambled on deck.
The others streamed behind him and surveyed the tur-
bulent, mud-colored sea. There was neither splinter nor
corpse of the Romans.

He turned ruefully to Dr. Krom. "I see why you
wanted to leave."

The old man grinned, looking suddenly young. "All
my life I have lived with fear. First, it was the simple
fear of starvation. Then came Hitler and new fears. All
my life I have fought fear, seeking only to align myself
with the lesser evil. Did you know the Communists
also tried to buy me?"

What kind of confession was the old man leading up
to?

"Freedom began the day I realized you were in com-
mand—that I could in no way influence events." The
old man smiled inwardly. "To be a leader is always to
be alone. Chained to an oar, I suddenly knew I was
free—for the first time in my life. I knew the island
would explode but I could not act so I did not care."

Ma Trimble crowded up. "Quite a band, sonny," she
said. "Did you shoot off one of them atomizer things?"

Dr. Krom laughed and probed layers of fat with his
forefinger, poking in the general direction of Ma Trim-
ble's ribs. "Do you realize," he asked Joe, "that this

blithe spirit has never heard of Hitler, Stalin, or Krush-
chev?"

Ma Trimble gave the scientist a kittenish glance and
they moved off together.

The island was visibly changed. The mushroom had
torn and was streaking over the Alice. The wind blew
due south and deposited a fine ash over the Alice
and the surrounding sea.

"Make sail," Joe said. "First reef until things settle
down."

It was nearly noon before they sighted land, ten de-
grees off the starboard bow. Joe reflected a moment.
The Roman had been heading due west for Athens.
They were possibly fifty miles south of that position
now. He studied the inadequate pilot chart and cursed.
Here he was, a historian professor traveling through the
islands where so much of the western world's history
had been made. Which was this? Was it the Paros
which shuttled back and forth between Athens and
Persia so many times? Could it be Naxos, where the
god Dionysus picked up Ariadne after Theseus stood
her up? Maybe it was Amorgus, where the Roman
emperors sent their poor relations, or Kinaros, famous
only for its artichokes. It couldn't be Kos, birthplace of
that father of quacks, Hippocrates, or he'd have run
aground long ago.

"Freedy," he yelled, "fire up the fathometer."

"Two hundred fathoms," Freedy reporter a moment
later.

Joe slapped a hand to his forehead and went below
to the chart again. He decided to head south and try
to thread his way out of this cluster of Cycladean is-
lands. Even if he had the fantastic luck to catch a fisher-
man, these smaller islands changed names every twenty
years. Every other one was Iraklia, Herakleon, Her-
culaneum, or some such thing, all named after the
omnipresent hero. Cape Malea, the southernmost tip

of the Peloponnese, couldn't be more than another fifty
miles south. And if the Roman had been heading west
for Athens this morning, it must be at least a hundred
miles west.

They rounded the island, whatever it was, and two
hours later another appeared. Joe took the BuShip's
name in vain. He could be three different places in
the Aegean and still see two islands this far apart on
this course. Damn the navy's meaching economy with
charts! If he ever got back he'd write letters and damn
the promotions.

Things were finally shipshape again. Not as ship-
shape as they had been, for all her arms and many
other bits of the Alice were gone forever. From now on,
Joe decided, he'd keep plenty of sea room. If the wind
held and if all his other guesses were right, they'd clear
the passage between Kithera and Andikithera just about
daybreak. The next obstacle in their westward run
would be Sicily.

The Alice galloped along on a broad reach under all
plain sail. There had been disturbances and tidal waves
throughout the day but it seemed to be over now. The
Alice's people were tired unto stumbling. They'd had
several hours less sleep than Joe during the last forty-
eight. Tired as he was, he was still the freshest man
aboard.

"All hands sack out," he said. "I'll take the wheel." He
wanted to steer awhile—not to spare the crew so
much as to be alone. When had he last had an interval
of peace and quiet? He needed to think. This time
travel business: there was something odd—well, it was
all odd, but there was something even more than pecu-
liar about it. He had thought it was the lightning and
the still. Thank Mahan the Romans had brought back
all the parts for the still. . . . But something else came
into it.

Lightning, yes. And the copper coil inside the still's

vacuum chamber obviously had something to do with
their jumps. But what else? If it were this simple every
moonshiner would have ended up in the Roman army.
There had to be another factor—something which ex-
isted only aboard the Alice. The standing rigging might
serve as some sort of antenna. Even though not con-
nected with the still, there might be some resonance
between them.

Assuming time travel was an electromagnetic phe-
nomenon—but how did he know there wasn't some
entirely new form of energy involved? To dislocate an
object in time must require an enormous expenditure
of energy. That was where the lightning came in. What
else? Radio? Freedy hadn't turned it on since they'd
skipped back to an era without transmitters.

The moon rose and silhouetted the Alice. It was a
clear, cloudless night and the horizon betrayed no hint
of land. It would have been nice to check his reckon-
ing with the fathometer and make sure they were in
the deeps off northern Crete but he hadn't the heart
to wake Freedy.

Fathometer ... By Mahan, that was it! Joe thought
back carefully, reconstructing the events preceding each
time jump. Each time the still had been set up; each
time lightning had struck. But what had been the trig-
gering factor? The fathometer! How, Joe wondered,
could a sonic echo from its transducer heterodyne with
whatever lightning was feeding through the still's coil
produce the time travel effect? Whatever it was, it
was beyond him. But it seemed to work. How could
he reverse it?

If he set up the still and fathometer and waited for
another lightning flash, according to past experience, he
wouldn't be home—he'd be another thousand years
backward, about the time of the Trojan war. A hundred
years before Solomon would get around to building his
temple. Good God, what a chance . . . Joe sighed and

pulled the Alice back on course. His first obligation was
to his people and ship. If he ever got them home . . .

Gorson came on deck, yawning and stretching. "Still
two-thirty degrees?" he asked.

Joe nodded. "If you spot any small islands, try to
keep them astarboard."

"By the way," Gorson asked, "what became of those
Roman swabbies you had aboard?"

"They died."

"All at once?"

Joe explained briefly about the looped hawser, then
went below before Gorson could ask any more questions.
How had he been able to do such things? His one
undergraduate adventure had been the time he'd or-
ganized an anti-vivisection campaign and the biologists
had landed on him like a ton of tormented tomcats. He
felt his way through the darkened galley, marveling at
his own bloodthirstiness, admitting to himself that it
had taken no great effort of will to perform this auto da
fe. He remembered the horror with which he'd
watched Raquel carve her initial in the Viking woman.
Oh well. . . . He closed the door to his cubicle and
turned on the light. After staring at the narrow, monastic
bunk for a moment he sat on it and took off his shoes.
"What the hell were you expecting?" he muttered, and
flipped the light out.

Dawn brought one of those bright sunny days when
sails draw well and seagulls sing hymns to the sun-
when porpoises, filled with joie de vivre, crisscross the
bow and startled anchovies waste millions of tailpower
frothing Homer's wine-dark sea. Cookie fried over a
hundred rye pancakes—light, fluffy ones, thanks to some
yeasty miracle—and though the butter was long gone,
he had produced a sweet syrup, vaguely reminiscent
of dried apricots.

Guilbeau was steering. Joe, after a glance at a morn-
ing worthy of the young King David's harp, decided

to hold his meeting on deck. He reviewed the time
travel business and explained his hypothesis of the night
before.

Freedy pursed his little mouth. "How do we keep
from going farther back in the past?"

"A good question," Joe said. "My guess is it takes
power to drive anything out of its own time and that
no matter how far away, that person or thing must al-
ways have an affinity for his proper position in time.
Perhaps if the same process which dislocated him in the
first place were repeated, but without power. ..."

Lapham's Adam's apple bobbed several times. "You
mean the lightning?"

"Right," Joe said. "It was the still and, I think, the
fathometer which got us in this fix, coupled with a
couple of googol watts from a lightning discharge."

Dr. Krom broke in excitedly. "Let's try it—what can
we lose?"

"Nothing we haven't already lost," Schwartz said.

"No one else objected, so Joe said, "Gorson, you and
Cookie set up the still. Try to get everything like it was
when we tangled with those Vikings off Catalina or
Iceland or wherever.

"Freedy, make sure your gear's all there. Whatever
you do, don't turn anything on!

"Rose, how are the batteries?"

"Half charge," the engineman said. "If the breeze
holds and the windmill doesn't give out they'll be up
in another day."

"Everyone spend the day thinking over my theory.
How many things can go wrong? After you come up
with your objections I'll spring mine. If that doesn't
scare you to death we'll throw the switch tomorrow."
He glanced automatically at his wrist and remembered
his watch had gone down with the Romans. Damn
them; I might have been willing to let them live if it
hadn't been for that.

Raquel appeared beside him. "You expect more trou-
ble?" she asked.

"No," Joe said, "but I didn't expect to get out of
television range of San Diego the day I sailed. In-
cidentally, how much English do you understand nowa-
days?"

Raquel shrugged. "Your language is like the Viking
tongue but I think it is worse. I still know only a few
words."

Villegas must have filled her in about the meeting,
Joe guessed. Like every Latin gentleman, he preferred
blondes and had set up bunkkeeping with one. Still,
Joe felt an obscure discomfort and wished the great
lover would keep away from Raquel. Not that Joe had
any intentions, honorable or otherwise, but ... He
couldn't make up his mind just what he was butting.

The day wore on and no sight of land. Where were
they? He was sure he'd passed Cape Malea by this
time. How could he have managed that without sight-
ing land? They'd be passing across the Ionian Sea's low-
er end soon, maybe already. He wondered how it would
be for pirates, remembering that Julius Caesar had
been taken and held for ransom here.

They had roast goat that afternoon. Surprisingly like
venison, Joe decided. They had been horribly short of
fats and the rye bread dipped in hot tallow was de-
lectable. The Alice was still well fixed for rye and
meat but the island had contributed little or nothing
in the way of greens, thanks to the same goats they
were now eating. Joe ran his tongue over his teeth and
wondered if it was imagination that made them feel
slightly loose. How long before someone blossomed out
with a genuine case of scurvy?

The still was ready. Radio and fathometer were still
complete, if only because the Romans hadn't been able
to imagine the cost of a power transistor. Joe turned in
and threshed about in his bunk. Chances were when

he got everything set up and threw the switch, nothing
would happen. If something did there were about eigh-
teen thousand things that could go wrong. The first
jump had taken them from the Pacific to the Atlantic;
the second had landed them in the Aegean. The re-
verse should take them back home—maybe.

He flipped on the light for a look at his watch. Damn
it, would he never remember it was gone? He climbed
wearily into his pants and hoped there would be some
burnt rye in the coffee pot. If the fire hadn't died down
in the range it might even be warm.

Lights were on and all hands sat waiting in the galley.
"What time is it? Why's everybody up?"

"Homesick, sonny," Ma Trimble said. "Everybody's
waiting for you to get off the pot."

Joe stumbled toward the coffee pot which, thank
Mahan, was full. Somewhere in the back of his mind
had lurked the hope that with warm bunks and carnal
satisfactions the Alice's crew would not be in such a
hurry to get home. As the only historian aboard he
had, he realized now, been indulging in wishful thinking.
"Hasn't anyone any objections?" he asked.

Silence.

"Well," he continued, "the first jump took us from
off California to somewhere between Norway and Ice-
land. The next one dumped us in the Aegean. Why?
Maybe we hang in limbo while the Earth revolves be-
neath us." He shrugged. "Anyway, each jump has moved
us east. Now take a look at the map. If this next jump
proves true to form the Alice is going to have one
damn rough time sailing down Mt. Ararat."

Shocked silence.

"But we got everything all ready to go," Cookie final-
ly protested.

"Okay," Joe said, "if everybody's willing, so am I.
But remember, the biggest deserts on Earth lie due

east. The Golden Horde of Fu Manchu couldn't dig
a canal across the Gobi,"

There was silence for another moment; then Dr. Krom
protested, "But do you know?"

"Of course not," Joe snapped. "I'm guessing like every-
one else. What time is it, anyway?"

"About dawn," Gorson said. "Guilbeau, relieve
Schwartz."

The Cajun nodded and climbed into his peacoat

"Batteries at full charge," Rose suggested.

A faint hint of daylight glimmered through the port-
hole. Joe didn't want to jump. He was haunted by the
suspicion that he was forgetting something very impor-
tant. He needed more time to think. Maybe he could
get Freedy to check over the electronics gear again.
He was trying to think up a reason to stall when
Schwartz's raucous voice yelled. "Land!"

Ten seconds later all hands stared at a rocky promon-
tory off the starboard bow. Where in blazes were they?
Joe was willing to bet his commission they'd passed
Cape Malea. This couldn't possibly be Sicily. He studied
the point and wondered how far out that rocky spine
would shoal. If the Alice headed any farther south she'd
be sailing by the lee. Nothing for it but to haul every-
thing in close and jibe.

"Want a sounding?" Freedy asked. "I can turn on the
fathometer."

"With everything set up for a jump? Hell, no."

They hauled in the mainsheet and were wrestling
with the spinnaker pole when Joe first saw it come
streaking from behind the point. The ship was light
and carried a single bank of oars. "Liburnian," he
grunted. Caesar used them for dispatch boats. A sec-
ond galley came from behind the point and shot to-
ward the Alice.

"Dammit," Gorson moaned, "The s.o.b.'s must crawl
from under every flat rock."

Freedy stuck his head up through the companionway.
"You sure it's deep enough here?" he asked.

Joe gauged the wind against the quick-stroking Li-
burnians. "We're in deep enough," he said. "Turn on
the fathometer."

XI

HOWARD McGRATH had not been having it easy. The
night before the Alice had been taken by the Roman
ship, he and Lillith had escaped in the caique, but right
now, with the wind abeam, the little vessel was about
as stable as a bicycle. Out of bits of cordage they had
finally rigged a couple of slings which permitted him
and Lillith to dangle rapidly varicosing buttocks out-
board of the windward gunwale while steering with the
sheet rather than the lashed sweep.

After several eternities they reached Piraeus and
brailed up sail. There being no proper thwarts, Howie
had been at something of a loss until Lillith stood facing
forward with her pair of oars and taught him how to
row. In the hour and a half it took them to make land
he felt circulation returning little by little to his cinctured
lower extremities.

Instinct guided Lillith away from the moles where
customs men swarmed over the large ships. They rowed
slowly, toward a more ancient section of the harbor
where small boats reeked of ancient fish while their oc-
cupants mended nets and addressed each other in equal-
ly pungent koine.

Howie had acquired a minimum of Aramaic in the
last week but this was his first contact with the language
of the New Testament. How, he wondered, would they
get by here?

Lillith, using the few Aramaic words Howie under-
stood, managed with much arm waving to explain that
she would do the talking and that he had best pretend
to be her slave.

Howie saw the wisdom of this: slaves were not ex-
pected to fight and these bruisers looked as if they'd
like nothing better. They inched along the mole to a
vacant space large enough for the caique's bow. Howie
scrambled over the slimy stones and tied up. By the
time he had helped Lillith up onto the dock an im-
mense crowd had gathered.

Howie glanced embarrassedly at his ragged dunga-
rees. He must be wearing the only pants in town. He ran
a hand over his sunburned chin and wondered when
he'd find a razor to take off the half dozen bristles which
sprouted there.

Lillith addressed the gawkers shrilly. Had Howie
known more of the language he would have known
her Greek was almost as atrocious as his Aramaic. But
she got the idea across. Soon fishermen bid briskly
against each other. One dumped a few staters and a
large handful of copper oboloi into the pockets she made
of her tattered skirt. She handed him the caique's paint-
er.

The crowd dispersed. Howie studied Lillith's legs
and desire rose in him for the first time since they'd
sailed. But there were too many people. Glancing about
at the few women's long skirts, he saw Lillith was con-
spicuous, brazen, or both. He pointed at the money
and at a pocket in his dungarees. Lillith gave him a
swift glance and surrendered the coins.

She started down the narrow street and Howie, after
she had hissed and pointed a couple of times, fell in

behind as befitted a slave. The street was cobbled with
uneven stones which threatened to sprain his ankle with
every step. It was not over ten feet wide at best and
upper floors extended until the street caught less than
enough sunlight to dry the stinking mounds of rubbish
and offal which collected beneath balconies.

The lower story was mostly open-front shops, selling
weird things at whose use Howie could only guess. He
muttered an unchristian word as his toe stubbed an-
other cobble. Why hadn't he brought his shoes?

Lillith was used to going barefoot but she fared little
better. Abruptly she stopped before a display of sandals.
Moments later they had two pairs, and half of the cop-
per coins were gone. A few doors farther they stopped
again and Howie squatted for nearly an hour while
Lillith tried on robes until she found one which showed
off her sultry complexion to advantage.

In considerably less time she picked a himation.
Howie put it on but refused to remove his trousers.
Lillith, after some venomous asides, led the way again.
Howie's denimclad legs attracted stares from those
Athenians who had not yet seen everything. He strug-
gled with the himation. Lillith was suddenly walking
much faster. Eventually, he got the bulky garment
bunched up around his waist, more or less as others
seemed to wear it.

They left the docks and the fishy smell was gradual-
ly displaced by an all-pervading odor of onion, garlic,
and the rancid stink of olive oil. When had he eaten
last, Howie wondered. The smell grew stronger and he
felt suddenly faint. Lillith stopped so abruptly that he
bumped into her and Howie saw that one of the open-
fronted shops had an immense soot-blackened cauldron
in which oil smoked and little brown things sizzled.

The cook was a small, suspicious man with kinky black
hair. His eyes became human only when Lillith ex-
tracted money from the hypnotized Howie's pocket.

Then the little man grabbed chunks of dough and
twirled them pizza fashion before dumping fried sau-
sage and a handful of onion in the midst of each.
When each gob of dough was rolled back into a ball he
dropped it in. Howie could not take his eyes from the
cauldron. After an eternity of waiting for them to cool
Howie and Lillith wandered on down the street, dodg-
ing porters, pack mules, and an occasional VlP's litter.
They were leaving Piraeus now, starting the six mile
walk up between the remains of the famous long walls.
Howie felt better since he had eaten. But with his
stomach full, he became even more cognizant of how
long it had been since he had last slept. Lillith had
catnapped while he steered constantly. He looked wist-
fully for some place to sleep but every nook in the
ruined walls was filled with lounging sailors, drovers,
or bands of half-drunk students out picnicking.

Howie plodded behind, seething inwardly as students
caught sight of Lillith and made loud remarks which
required no translation.

Two miserable stumbling hours later they finished
the uphill walk to Athens. Howie was so exhausted that
he took no notice of the stoa through which they
trudged, save that he was startled by the gaudily
painted statue of a naked young man about to fling a
plate at somebody. He had always thought statues were
left in the natural white of marble.

Lillith stopped before a building which reeked of
steam and oil. Well scrubbed men lounged before the
building. Those downwind moved when Howie and
Lillith sat down.

The silver coins were all gone and only a handful of
copper oboloi remained. Howie wondered if there'd be
enough for a room in whatever these foreigners had in
the way of a hotel. He was going over his meager
vocabulary, trying to find a way to ask Lillith, when he
noticed a small, bright-eyed man studying them intent-

ly. Howie stared back. The little man's chlamys fit
better than most of the citizenry's and was woven of
finer material. Howie glanced at Lillith. She too had
noticed the man's glance. Jealous anger boiled through
Howie at the suspicion that they had been communicat-
ing for some time.

Abruptly, he remembered he was pretending to be
a slave. The sooner he got to Rome, the better, Howie
decided. He didn't think he was going to like Greeks.

The little man moved toward them. Lillith gave
Howie a warning glance and he lapsed into immobility.
The conversation was long and repetitive, due to Lil-
lith's imperfect Greek, but eventually the little man pro-
duced a silver stater. Other loungers gathered to watch
the bargaining and offer ribald comment

Lillith extracted the last of the money from Howie's
pocket and spread it beside her. Pointing to coins and
extending fingers, she indicated her price. Howie's anger
disappeared, overwhelmed by a numbing shock. He
was seeing Lillith in her true light for the first time-
peddling herself like a common— He couldn't bring
himself even to think the word.

The little man's eyes burned more brightly. He licked
his full red lips. Lillith, with a gesture of finality, picked
up her coins and tossed them down the front of her
dress. The little man knew when he was licked. He
produced a handful of staters. Howie's eyes bulged.
He knew how much they'd gotten for the caique and
how far it had gone. But this—why, it must be ten times
as much!

And she could make all this money just for— Lillith
dumped the silver down the front of her dress. It was
wrong, of course; she shouldn't do it. But then, they
did need money. And it would only take a little while.
He brightened as he reflected that he now had a
steady source of income which could take them both
to Rome. And since he was going to Rome for a good

cause . . . Come to think of it, Jesus hadn't hesitated to
accept Mary Magdalene's earnings.

Lillith pointed at the entrance of the building. He
recognized the word for bath. Or was it wash? He'd
have to make himself scarce anyway while Lillith per-
formed her part of the bargain.

The bright-eyed little man propelled him toward the
bath attendant. Howie let himself be led into the first
chamber. The attendant took his clothes and left him
to doze in drowsy, comforting steam. He woke abruptly
from a dream of carnal delights to discover the attend-
ant scraping him with a strigil—like a wooden curry-
comb. After awhile he was propelled into the next
room, a swimming pool full of warm water. He joined
the men who squatted there and fell asleep.

The attendant fished him out and slapped his back
till he was through coughing and choking, then led
him into the next room. The attendant pushed him in-
to the cold pool. By the time he had splashed his way
to the other end he was wide awake. To his surprise,
the bright-eyed little man was waiting for him. Howie
looked for his clothes but the little man had him by
the hand and was leading him to a curtained-off al-
cove.

Thirty seconds later the little man burst through the
curtains immediately in front of Howie's foot. "Jehovah
smite thee!" Howie raged. "Isn't the girl enough? Jesus
rescue me from this den of iniquity!"

The little man stood at a safe distance, lower lip
trembling as he stared at this berserk apparition.

A crowd gathered immediately. Hadn't these Greeks
anything to do but stare? One elderly man detached
himself from the crowd and edged toward Howie.
"Didst say Jesus?" he asked.

Howie stared.

"Art thou Christian?" the old man continued. "Me-
thought thy tongue rang haply of mine own."

"Who are you?" Howie croaked.

"Alas," the old man sighed, "once I was Brother Wil-
libald of Glastonbury—until that Satan inspired Al-
chemist talked me into arming his copper coiled Alem-
bic." The old man sighed again. "The Abbey may now
possess the Philosopher's Stone and know all the Arts
of transmuting Base Metals into Gold but alas—will
Brother Willibald ever again drink the brown October
Ale?"

 "He paid her good money," Howie said. "What's he
doing here?"

Brother Willibald smiled sadly. "Alas, poor Wight,"
he said. "That Flower of Evil sold not herself. 'Tis thou
who art soldi"

It was impossible; Lillith would not do such a thing!
Then he remembered: it had been her idea that he
pretend to be slave, her idea that he walk behind. Come
to think of it, just about everything since she had
broken him out of that cage aboard the Alice had
been her idea. There was but one thing to do with peo-
ple like Lillith. Through his chosen instrument, Howie,
the Lord of Hosts would strike her dead.

He reached for the revolver and remembered he no
longer had it. He had nothing—no sandals, no chlamys,
not even his dungarees!

The old man still faced him, looking for all the world
like Howie's Old Testament-tinted concept of the father
he'd never had.

"Strooth, thou'rt sold," Brother Willibald said. "Wilt
thou accept the Penance with true Christian Fortitude
or wilt thou rail against the Path which thy God hath
set thee?"

Brother Willibald's question took Howie unawares
and abruptly shattered several of his more cherished
illusions. Now, he finally remembered that his God had
existed even before Christ. He was naked before his

enemies, but not beyond jurisdiction. He was being
punished by the merciful, compassionate, all powerful
and eternal God—the Secret Named God of Abraham
and Isaac, the God of Israel, God of Christ, God of
Howie, God of Mercy, God of Vengeance.

He had been only too ready to sell, or at least rent,
Lillith. Abruptly he burst into ragged cackling laughter.
He was still giggling and whooping hysterically when
the hot-eyed little man nudged him into the cold pool.
The chill sobered Howie. He climbed out considerably
chastened to face his owner. "I've sinned and I'll pay,"
Howie said. "I'll do whatever he says except one thing.
Even God would never make me do that."

Brother Willibald interpreted. The crowd marveled
at Howie's amusing display of foreign obstinacy with
varying degrees of amusement and cynicism. The hot-
eyed little man's lips began trembling again. He asked
another question and when Brother Willibald answered
at some length his shoulders drooped.

"He had no other Work for thee," Brother Willibald
interpreted.

Howie found it in his heart to be vaguely sorry for
his owner. After all, Lillith had cheated both of them!
Brightening, Howie turned to Brother Willibald. "May-
be you could buy me?"

"God's Wounds!" the old man groaned. "Had I such
Gold I'd buy myself."
Howie stared. "Are you—?" he began.
Brother Willibald sighed. "I'd not been a day in this
Cradle of Democracy before I was seized as a foreign
Pauper and auctioned. Alack!" he sighed again,  "and
nevermore to taste the brown October Ale." He mum-
bled incoherently for some moments, then noticed How-
ie again. "Mayhap I'll resolve thy Plight," he said. He
spoke rapidly to Howie's owner. The hot-eyed little man
nodded and shambled sadly back toward the hot room.
Brother Willibald found Howie's chlamys but mis-

understood the young god shouter's demand for his
pants. It did not occur to Howie to say trousers, hosen,
or bracae. Resigned to the loss, he strapped on his
sandals. Brother Willibald led him out of the baths and
around the block, up a flight of stairs. There Brother
Willibald knocked and the door was unbarred by the
loveliest creature Howie had surveyed in all his eighteen
years.

She was short, more petite than Lillith, and her diaph-
anous stola displayed a tiny waist beneath firm breasts.
Her long black hair was in a single braid, piled vo-
luptuously into a crown. The face beneath that crown
looked on Howie with every indication of delight. She
led Howie into the atrium and signaled him to wait.

"Who is she?" Howie asked.

"Doth Chloe please thee?"

Howie was too stricken to answer.

Brother Willibald smiled a small secret smile and
said nothing.

Another woman entered the room. Though there
wasn't the slightest resemblance, her stern, forbidding
attitude reminded Howie of his mother. She surveyed
the young god shouter from all angles, looked at his
teeth, and questioned Brother Willibald.

By the time the old man turned and said, "My Lady
will buy thee," Howie felt six inches shorter.

Remembering Chloe, Howie brightened. Brother Wil-
libald showed him around and Howie tried to shake
the girl from his mind long enough to remember which
room was which. He was shown a pile of straw in the
kitchen for the servants.

"How many are there?"

"Thou, I, the cook, and Chloe."

Howie worried until the cook turned out to be a
walleyed old crone with a slightly crooked back.

"Our Nightwatchman died," Brother Willibald ex-
plained. " 'Tis best that thou sleepest now."

Considering the day's adventures, it was commend-
able for Howie's conscience that he lay awake all of
thirty seconds. He had no way of knowing the hour
when somebody shook him gently awake.

After mumbling incoherently and rubbing his eyes he
saw Chloe, more desirable than ever, carrying a lamp
which looked like a shallow teapot with a wick coming
out the spout. It silhouetted her lithe young body be-
neath the transparent stola.

She led him from the kitchen's discordant snores.
They tiptoed across the atrium to another room and
Chloe blew out the lamp. Howie groped blindly before
his questing hands found her again. She had removed
her stola and rubbed against him in pristine nakedness.
Howie shucked his chlamys and they performed mu-
tual explorations. Preliminaries ended abruptly and mat-
ters became more serious.

Two hours sleep were not enough to make up for
forty-eight hours without. Some minutes later those ex-
ploring hands shook Howie rather abruptly. He yawned
and sighed in the darkness, remembering the daylight
glimpse of Chloe. Again the night-game began. The
farther it progressed the more puzzled Howie became.
Chloe was small, with smooth firm flesh. Could these
tremendous buttocks be hers? Would her belly wrinkle
and droop? Could those firm breasts yield like masses of
unbaked bread beneath his fingers?

He retreated to his side of the bed and sat, trying
not to vomit. Was it the walleyed cook? No; she was
shorter than Chloe. With a sinking feeling, Howie real-
ized he had traded a master for a mistress,

He was feeling sorry for himself when he remem-
bered Brother Willibald's remark about penance.

"I got myself into this," Howie gritted. "I'll get my-
self out!" He threw himself back into bed and cleaved
unto the unknown quantity.

Then something like a wet sandbag hit him in the
small of the back and he knew no more.

On the Alice, all hands were gazing anxiously at the
two Liburnians. "Go below!" Joe shouted. "We're going
to jump and I don't want anybody washed overboard."

"Who steers?" Gorson asked.

"I do. Freedy, you ready?" he yelled down the scut-
tle.

"All ready, sir."

The sail was all in, piled on deck in untidy mounds.
Time enough to furl it if the jump was successful. The
Liburnians quickstroked and Joe knew they could, for
a short time anyhow, make better time than the Alice
under power. The jump had damned well better work!
"All right," he yelled, "throw the switch!"

The twisting, wrenching sensation was over in one
subliminal flicker, like a misplaced frame in a movie.
The Liburnians had disappeared; the Alice was now in
broad daylight and a calm sea.

Then he noticed Howard McGrath. The little god
shouter was tangled in a heap of sail, and as he re-
gained consciousness he began again his befogged and
halfhearted attempts at lovemaking. Only when his head
had cleared completely did he realize that the unesthetic
heap of sail was not his recently-acquired mistress.
Howie stopped suddenly, and stared around at the
speculative, amused faces of his shipmates as they strag-
gled up on deck.

Howie's return was the last thing Joe had expected
at that moment. Afterward he tried to analyze what
went on inside his head at that moment. The young
god shouter's appearance neither surprised nor mystified
him. It must have been the sudden fruition of long sub-
conscious cerebration—a mushroom of knowledge which

burst into awareness after days of patient, probing sub-
terranean growth. In other words, intuition.

Sympathetic magic, Joe sneered, for his explanation
was about as scientific as sticking pins in dolls or re-
moving warts with separated bean halves. But, magic
or not, Joe knew Howie had returned because he was
part of the original ship's company. Something—aura,
field, mystique—held them together and strove to re-
place everything sooner or later back into its own proper
time.

Joe thought of the teeming mass of time mongrels
belowdecks with a little shiver of foreboding.
"Where are we?" Gorson asked.

"Search me," Joe said. "At least we're away from
those f—" He stopped horrorstricken at the realization
that he had been about to modify "Liburnians" with a
present participle unbecoming an officer, gentleman, or
professor of history. He'd have to watch himself if he
ever hoped to lecture again.

Raquel came on deck. "Cuando estamos?" she asked.
Joe was amused that her precise Latin mind asked not
where, but when they were. She stood upwind and
her usual gamy stink was replaced by a fresh, unper-
fumed odor of healthy female. Joe remembered the
oarmaster's explanation of her former fetors and
grinned.

Freedy's tiny mouth formed a report. "Everything
looks fine. Still's in one piece. Nothing on the radio
though; I swept every band."

Joe sighed, then brightened. After all, it had taken
two jumps to get here. Maybe something limited them
to thousand-year jumps. If so, they must be roughly
back in Raquel's time. He looked around again. The
sea rippled under a full sail breeze which drove them
gently toward a bright, half-high sun. A slight ground
swell hinted at shallow water but there was neither land

nor breakers. He looked at the compass and tried to fix
the time of day.

It didn't look right. Reaching into the binnacle, he
wiggled the gimbals. It wasn't stuck. He spun the wheel
and the compass card swung obligingly. He eased back
on course and looked at the sun again. The weather
was too balmy; he wasn't in the Arctic. Where else
could the sun swing so far north?

He groaned.

"What's wrong?" Cookie asked.

Joe pointed at the compass.

"Ah don't git it."

Gorson crowded up and peered into the binnacle.
"I do," he said sickly.

"Right," Joe said, "Only Mahan knows where, but
we're in the southern hemisphere."

Gorson sighed tiredly. "You guys furl those sails," he
said.

Joe nodded. "Run the jib and jigger up for steerage-
way." He turned the wheel over to Guilbeau and went
below.

Raquel stood in the doorway in his cubicle, silently
watching as he pored over inadequate charts, looking
for any salt water in the southern hemisphere which
lay out of sight of land and shallow enough for a
ground swell. The southern hemisphere was mostly wa-
ter and they could be just about anywhere.

"You worry?" Raquel asked.

Joe turned to explain. "Do you know the world is
round?" he asked.

"I have heard it said."

"Do you believe it?"

She shrugged. "I am still not sure whether I believe
in you."

"Well, anyhow," Joe said, "I'm not sure when we are.

Maybe in your own time. But we're on the wrong side
of the world."

"What will you dor

He shrugged. "Keep trying. What else can I do? I'm
sorry I couldn't take you home."

"Home?"

"Your own time. Wouldn't you like to see your parents
again? Didn't you have a young man before you left
home?"

It was Raquel's turn to sigh. "So long . . ." she said.
"I had no thought of ever seeing home again. Perhaps
they still live."

"The young man?"

"Man? Ah; I had no novio. Once a boy stood below
my window. My father investigated. His family was
not suitable so the boy was told not to walk down our
street again."

Cook produced rye bread and dried goat stew. All
hands crowded in the galley. "So now what?" Dr. Krom
asked.

Joe explained his theorizing about thousand-year
jumps.

"What proof have you?" the old man asked.

"As much that I'm right as you have that I'm wrong,"
Joe said, and silently damned the quibbling old man.
Holy Neptune but he was tired! Would he ever get
enough sleep?

Abe Rose choked down a lump of stringy meat and
cleared his throat. Behind the black whiskers his mouth
was slightly lopsided, as though still clamped around
an imaginary cigar. "Why not jump again and see if
we can pick up something oil the radio?" he asked.

Joe was tempted to turn in but remembered what
a night's sleep had cost him the last time. "Square away
the galley and set up the still," he said.

He went on deck again. The ground swell was un-

changed and there was still no land. The sun was slight-
ly lower and farther left so he guessed it was midafter-
noon. Time jumps were getting his stomach as con-
fused as jet travel.

Raquel appeared and they faced each other across
the lashed wheel. "You are tired," she said.

Joe agreed. "That's the principal recompense for be-
ing captain."

"You did not wish to take the other girls," she pur-
sued.

"No," Joe agreed.

"Why did you take me?"

"Why uh . .. Well, you saved my life."

"Is that all?"

"What can you expect?" Joe asked. "Admittedly, love
at first sight is a great time saver, but I'd known you
all of five minutes when you came aboard." He paused.
This wasn't coming out the way he meant it to. How
could he explain this gradual growth of confidence—
his increasing ease in her simple, often pointless con-
versation? "After a time . . ." be began. What he wanted
to say was how nice it was to be around someone who
was quiet when he needed silence—someone who made
no demands nor expected him to solve all problems.
He glanced up and she was gone. "Damn it!" If she
had just stuck around another moment he felt sure he
would have found a way to say it. Oh well, some day
he'd have more time.

The horizon was clear, the sea calm. At last they
would be making a jump under less than frantic cir-
cumstances. This time Joe would be below, watching
every dial and meter. Sooner or later he would control
this phenomenon.

Dishes were cleared away. Inside its makeshift bell
jar the still sat amidships of the galley table. The Alice's
crew and Ma Trimble crowded into an attentive circle.
The blondes regarded the prospect of another jump

with monumental apathy. They scattered about the
yawl, fixing each others' hair, mending clothing. Up
by the chain locker one blonde unraveled a tattered
jersey. Joe wondered what she intended with the yarn.
Not socks for sure; the Mediterraneans hadn't invented
them yet.

"All set," Gorson reported. He humped over the vac-
uum pump. Cookie regarded the bell jar and slapped
a dough patch over one point where the seal threatened
to rupture.

Joe felt his stomach tighten. Would they materialize
in the middle of a desert? Or a hundred feet above or
below it? "You may fire when ready," he said.

Freedy flipped the switch. Nothing happened. They
waited for tubes to warm up. Still nothing. Freedy
flipped the gang switch up to middle range and began
cranking up the pot. Abruptly, vision shimmered for a
microsecond and Joe felt that now-familiar twisting, as
if gravity had gone off for half a heartbeat.

The blondes glanced up from their hair fixing. The
girl unraveling a sweater up by the chain locker had
disappeared. Up on deck, Joe guessed. He went up
through the after scuttle and for a moment wondered
if he hadn't imagined the twisting sensation. The Alice
still sailed herself under jib and jigger, beating gently
toward the sun in a calm sea. Then he noticed: the
ground swell was gone—they were in deep water!

Judging from the cloudless sky, they must be well off-
shore. He glanced at the binnacle and released a long-
held breath. They were in the northern hemisphere.
It was the emptiest ocean Joe had ever seen. The
sky had a strange, leaden color and the sun shone like
molten brass. Gently rippling water stretched in all
directions toward a horizon which curved upward until
the Alice seemed alone at the bottom of an immensely
empty blue bowl. Which ocean, Joe wondered? There

was not a bird in the sky, nor a weed in the water. He
took a final glance around and went below.

Gorson and Cookie had dismantled the bell jar so it
was safe to turn on the other gear. "Three hundred and
ten fathoms," Freedy reported. "No scattering layer."

"Tried the radio?" Joe asked.

Freedy's little mouth flew open. "Hadn't thought of
it," he confessed, and flipped switches. Joe waited not
very hopefully for the set to warm up. He knew there
were immense stretches of practically sterile ocean, yet
something about that absolute emptiness worried him.
Maybe he'd read too many stories of atomic doom, but
if he had overshot and landed ahead of his own time . . .
He wished there were a geiger counter aboard the
Alice.

Gorson nudged him and pointed at the barometer.
Abruptly, Joe understood the emptiness and that weird
yellow light, the absence of birds. How many hours did
he have? He tried to remember what he knew about
hurricanes and typhoons. According to the barometer
this was going to be the granddaddy of them all.

The radio warmed up and Freedy started at the
shortest band. Aside from clicks and pops of atmos-
pheric electricity, nothing came in. Then Howard Mc-
Grath was pulling Joe's sleeve.

Still wearing nothing but a pair of borrowed skivvy
drawers, he hunched his shoulders and humped his thin
body unhappily. "Mr. Rate," he whispered, and glanced
about embarrassedly. "Mr. Rate," he whispered again,
more urgently now, "it hurts when I pee."

Joe clapped a hand to his forehead. Closing eyes
tightly, he searched for an adequate phrase. None came.
He lowered his hand and his elbow caught Ma Trimble
in the ribs. "Talk yourself out of this one," he growled.

"My girls were clean when they came aboard," Ma
Trimble snapped. "You think I don't know the signs?"

Joe turned to Howie.  The  god shouter swallowed

and looked miserable. "I don't know, sir," he said. "May-
be it was Chloe, or the old lady. You see, I—"

"Spare me the details," Joe groaned. "You must've
really spread that old gospel around." He turned to Ma
Trimble, who still huffed like a catscratched bulldog.
"You've had the experience," he said. "You can hold
shortarm inspection."

Freedy still gaped at the unhappy god shouter.
"Well?" Joe asked.

The minuscule mouthed radioman went back to twirl-
ing knobs. Abruptly he pursed his lips and stopped.
After a moment the fuzzy, faintly audible noise broke
into dots and dashes. Joe could not recognize a single
letter. Freedy was also puzzled. Gorson abruptly took
charge. "Get a fix!" he snapped, and reached for the
direction finder.

Joe rushed into his cubicle, then returned. He couldn't
lay out a line of position unless he knew where the
signal came from. "Can you read it?" he asked.

Gorson gave him a wry look. "No, but I know what it
is."

Joe waited.

"Kana code," the bos'n grunted. "Imperial Japanese
Navy Headquarters, Tokyo."

"What year we in?" Cookie asked. "You s'pose we're
still at war?"

"Unless it hasn't started yet," Gorson said. "I led the
working party that blew up that transmitter."

Freedy switched to another band. Minutes later the
RDF left them in no doubt of their position. The Alice
lay between thirty-six and thirty-eight degrees north,
and approximately a hundred sixty degrees west. The
transmitters were too far away to get a closer bearing
but no one cared. A thousand miles north of the Hawai-
ian Islands there was little chance of running aground
or into anything else, save possibly the Japanese fleet.
It was New Year's Day, 1942.

XII

THEY FACED each other, stunned. They had followed
the yawl's meanderings uncomplainingly throughout an-
tiquity but a mere twenty years staggered them. Some-
where at this minute, Joe thought, my mother's wheeling
me around in a stroller. My father is just about to be
swindled out of his partnership in the restaurant.

Gorson broke off the revery of his own hectic life in
the early days of the war. "What do we do now?" he
asked.

Joe glanced around at Ma Trimble's blondes and felt
an unreasoning anger at the casualness with which they
combed, mended, and chattered. Might as well get
one thing over, he thought. "All hands assemble for a
shortarm inspection. Ma Trimble's the expert." He re-
treated to his cubicle and closed the door.

1942. He couldn't stay here, he knew. Joe had read
extensively in the newspaper files of this period. If the
Alice showed up in any American port they'd all rot
in prison camp while some birdbrained bureaucrat tried
to figure the angles behind the Axis sending out a load
of saboteurs with such a weird cover story.

No, not even in prison, Joe decided. They'd be lucky
if they weren't shot.

And that miserable god shouting eightball had man-
aged to get himself a dose. Even if there had been
any medicaments aboard the yawl Joe would have been

afraid to use them. He reviewed all his theories,
hunches, and superstitions about time travel.

They were about twenty years from their starting
point—which, all things considered, was pretty good.
So far he had learned how to separate forward from
reverse. He wondered if further refinements were pos-
sible and wished he could understand what Einstein
had said about time. Damn it, if only he could learn to
separate logic from magic in his thinking!

What was time? All this talk of rhythms and streams
and fourth dimensions sounded to Joe like the learned
balderdash of scientasters who concealed their ignorance
behind Greek-rooted redundancies. Whatever it was,
only one time really existed for Joe, for the Alice, and
for the Alice's original company. That was their own
time: mid-twentieth century. Everything else was his-
tory and no matter how real to those who lived in it, it
would never be real to Joe. Only 1965 was his.

The future.was equally nonexistent, except as a series
of extrapolations—a branching of probabilities, a bud-
ding of possibilities from the only true and real time:
Joe's present.

If the future were equally nonexistent to the ma-
chine, perhaps it would not or could not venture for-
ward beyond its own time.

But it was confusing. Did Raquel and these blondes
and all the others know they had been living in the
past? Probably not. It was their present and only the
past for Joe. Maybe a machine built in their time would
reject any later era as impossible or unreal. If so they
could jump again and cut down the remaining distance
to their own era!

Joe smiled momentarily. They could still make that
Saturday inspection. But, he sobered, there was not one
shred of evidence to prove his theory. Well, what could
he lose? Not much, considering that typhoon was due
any time now.

Holy Neptune! He'd forgotten about the barometer
and that brassy sky. He opened the cubicle door and
brushed past Ma Trimble as she tried to say something.

It was dead calm now, without a sniff of wind. The
late afternoon sun was an immense flaming ball, as if
no protective atmosphere separated it from the Alice.
The sea had a sluggish, oily look and the Alice's sails
slatted gently as she rocked in an old swell which came
from the southwest. In the direction of the swell the
horizon was different—as if some gigantic hand had
pried sky and sea apart and was now driving a thin
black wedge in between.

Joe glanced absently at his wrist. Damn those watch-
stealing Romans! How much time had he? He went be-
low and after one unbelieving glance at the barometer
yelled for Gorson and Cookie. "Set up the still—make
it quick!"

Gorson and Cookie stared dumbly, with eyes like
catatonic spaniels. The rest of the crew was mute and
worried. Ma Trimble was solemn. "Well, what's wrong?"
Joe snapped. "Everybody got a dose?"

Ma Trimble shook her head and her chins quivered.
She dabbed at her eyes with an oversized man's hand-
kerchief. Gorson cleared his throat and swallowed a
couple of times. "Three girls gone," he said. "No sign
of them anywhere. Abishag, Miriam—"

"Abishag—she the one who was unraveling a jersey?"

Rose nodded unhappily and held out a ball of yarn.

Joe remembered how the girl had disappeared at the
moment of the jump. He thought she'd gone on deck.
Why hadn't all the girls gravitated back to their own
time, just as Howie had been snatched back to his?

The bell jar and coil must set up a field. Close to it,
you're safe, but get so far away . . . The girl had been
leaning against the chain locker bulkhead—almost in
the Alice's bows. Abruptly, Joe stopped, realizing what

news they were trying to break to him. He drew a deep
breath and looked for a place to sit.

Gorson nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Raquel too."

"You're sure?" he finally asked, and knew they were.
Damn it, why did she have to go now? Up on deck
awhile ago he'd been—well, what? It wasn't— He
sighed. Well, it just wasn't fair. He could see it all now.
She hung out in the chain locker. Whenever things
went wrong she crawled into her hole just as he crawled
into his cubicle. Why hadn't he guessed earlier why
she flaunted that gamy stink? More important, he should
have realized what those intervals of cleanliness meant.
If he had said the right things she wouldn't have run
off to the chain locker. Why had he put it off?

He felt his insides tense at the anticipation of pain.
It was going to hurt, he knew. Each day the aching
would grow and swell. The emptiness inside him would
grow until one day the thin shell would crumple and
there would be nothing left of Joe. He wondered what
the crew of the Alice would do if he were to tear his
hair and scream quadrilingual blasphemies.

"Sir," Gorson was saying, "the barometer—"

Holy hell, the typhoon!

Someday he would have time to mourn. Someday
her name would be graven with letters of fire in some
dark and secret corner of his duodenum. But for the
time being he was captain of the Alice.

"Guilbeau, Rose, Schwartz, and Villegas, on deck!
Take in all sail. Dog everything down ready to jump.
Gorson and Cook, rig the still. Freedy, you know what
to do."

He went on deck. The giant was prying horizon and
sea farther apart. The black wedge could not be more
than minutes away from the Alice. "Step lively with
that sail!" he yelled, and began lashing the wheel.

Instructions were unnecessary. The Alice's people
knew the weather and their captain were both ready

to break. "I won't think about it," Joe muttered, and
helped punch the tattered mains'l into a neat furl.
There isn't time to think. He took a final look at that
widening black wedge before following his people down
the after scuttle.

The deck was secured, the hatches dogged. Gorson
and Cookie were at the still. Freedy's hands poised
over the fathometer. "Everything set where it was last
jump?" Joe asked. Freedy nodded. "All right, let's try
it."

The switch clicked and all hands waited for the
warm-up. Joe reviewed all the countless possibilities for
disaster. I won't think about her. So far the Alice had
always fetched up afloat. Did their time machine have
a special fondness for salt water or was each jump
straining the law of averages? Five continents and seven
seas; you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.
I won't think about her.

Nothing was happening.

"Move back to zero," Joe said, "and start ranging out
again."

"Right," Freedy grunted. The instant his hand touched
the knob Joe felt that now familiar twisting. Past,
present, future? At least they were at sea. The Alice
was rocking violently. He'd better get on deck and
set a little canvas to steady her.

Two jumps away from her now. Did she land safely
or spend her final hour treading water lonely leagues
from land? I won't think— His head emerged from the
scuttle and he found himself staring at a blank gray
wall. He glanced up straight into horrified faces which
stared down at him from the deck of a destroyer. The
destroyer was at flank speed, passing the Alice's port-
side with barely four feet to spare. He glanced about
and realized even this horror could be magnified.

Six destroyers had been steaming two abreast. Now
they were peeling off at impossible angles as radar or

bow lookouts sighted the Alice. The last destroyer in
the starboard column had apparently not gotten the
word; her knifelike bow pointed unerringly at the Alice's
mizzen mast. She was a length and a half away,
making all of twenty-two knots!

Joe dived down the after scuttle, scattering the
blondes who headed up it. Thank Neptune the bell jar
was still set up. The red pilot light glowed on the
fathometer. Brushing Freedy aside, he spun the range
selector. All hands poured on deck to see what had
spooked him.

Cringing against the crash to come, Joe spun the dial
frantically. Agonizing seconds passed before he again
felt that shimmering flicker which meant they had
jumped. Was he getting used to time travel or was the
sensation getting weaker? Three jumps away from her.

He stuck his head out of the scuttle, wondering what
new disaster would present itself. The Alice's crew
stood and sat in various attitudes of numbed stupefac-
tion. Gorson struggled to his feet when he saw Joe.
"That tin can," he croaked. "I know those guys!" The
chiefs eyes were showing too much white. "Jesus!" he
muttered, and began wilting. Joe caught him and low-
ered the bos'n gently. So he knows them. Had he known
them a month ago or twenty years ago? The tin cans
had looked fairly recent but— Abruptly Joe remem-
bered the telltale bulge of a piece of super-secret elec-
tronic gear. That gadget hadn't been operational six
months ago.

The sun had an early morning look and, after a glance
at the compass, he decided they were still in the north-
ern hemisphere. Freedy still mumbled and counted his
fingers. Joe gave him a despairing glance and went
below. After turning off the fathometer and letting air
in the bell jar he turned on the radio. Is she alive some-
where?
This time the air was full—not just short and long

wave, but all the UHF and VHF channels which had
not existed twenty years ago. Down in one corner some-
one was single sidebanding. These return jumps were
apparently a logarithmic progression. Or was that it?
Each one, at any rate, grew shorter as they approached
their own time. He wondered if he were days or weeks
away. Chances were that lessened twisting sensation
meant this last jump away from the destroyer had
only covered a week or two.

He found a news broadcast and began swinging the
direction finder. Mellifluous, pear-shaped tones revealed
territorial encroachments on five continents. Fine Ital-
ian hands penned notes in Cyrillic to the Secretary-
General.

Joe decided he was either due east or west of the
transmitter. When would that mealy-mouthed commen-
tator shut up long enough for station identification?
He glanced absently at his wrist. Damn those Romans!

Abe Rose came down the after scuttle. "I see we're
home," he grunted.

"How do you know?"

Rose gave a humorless hah. "I'd know that prevaricat-
ing son of an unnatural union between Barry Goldwater
and Daddy Warbucks if I heard him in Katmandu. And
considering the wattage on which he defiles us Demo-
crats, I'd say we aren't a hundred miles from San
Diego."

Howard McGrath came below, looking pale and un-
happy. He was followed by Dr. Krom, who helped Ma
Trimble down the scuttle. Tears shimmered in her eyes.
"All gone but Ruthie," she sniffled. "We'll be next."

Ruthie—that was the blonde who'd shared Villegas'
bunk. Again Joe was reminded of Raquel.

"—and so we come to the end of KLOD's political
powwow for this day, March 2, 1965—"

March 2—why, tomorrow was the day—Command-
er Cutlott's crowd would be holding inspection. And

oh God, what a mess the Alice was in! Foul-bottomed,
topside paint peeling, spear, axe and catapult scars in
her deck, half her gear missing and the other half
rotten—

"All hands turn to," he yelled. "We've got to get this
bucket shipshape."

He'd have to go over the yawl from stem to stern
and get rid of anything the blondes had left. Things
were going to be hard enough to explain without get-
ting into that right off! He'd start with the lazarette,
which was just about as far as he could get from the
chain locker. I won't think of her.

The lazarette was empty. Joe stared. The last time
he'd looked it'd been full of sacked rye. Then he real-
ized what happened. With each jump the Alice's hold
on these extratemporal articles had become more tenu-
ous. Finally, they had gone the way of the girls, the
way of— He climbed down into the compartment to
see if a dress or sandal had been left behind.

The lazarette was empty, save for Gorson's and Cook-
ie's immense foot lockers. Why they needed these emp-
ty trunksized boxes aboard ship he would never know
unless— No, he'd looked several times and they'd al-
ways been empty.

Well, they were nearly back to normal. All the Alice's
original people were aboard. There remained only Ma
Trimble and one blond to explain away. Villegas could
sneak them ashore before inspection time.

Howard McGrath was looking down into the lazarette.
"Mr. Rate," he complained, "I can't hardly pee at all!"
"I'm fresh out of aspirin. Have you tried prayer?"
Joe climbed out of the lazarette and hesitated as he
saw how utterly crushed the young god shouter was.
"Oh, keep your shirt on," he growled. "You'll be in a na-
val hospital in twelve hours. When you get out I'll see if
I can't get you a medal." He glared into the mist. When
could Point Loma loom up through the coastal fog?

Why'm I poking around like this? he wondered. Gor-
son had enough sense to get anything incriminating out
of sight before inspection. He went into his cubicle and
opened the "want book" and inventory sheets. How
would he ever make them come out? I won't think of
her.

He buried his head in his hands. He should, he sup-
posed, be thankful it had ended this way. After all,
how could she have fitted into faculty life in a college
town? Like it or not, he was a professor. Subconscious-
ly, he had always known he would never make a career
of the navy. He had had his little fling; now he would
tuck his tail between his legs and scuttle back quietly
into Dr. Battlement's History Department. He'd be a
year behind his contemporary bright young men so far
as seniority and tenure went, but... I won't think of her.

The Alice's motion had changed. He stripped the
makeshift curtain (something else to replace before in-
spection) from his tiny porthole and saw a tug drift
slowly past the Alice. There was a gentle bump as some-
one fended off. He was ready to go on deck when
some instinct made him hesitate. What was Gorson up
to? Why hadn't the bos'n warned him they were sight-
ing someone?

Straining his head against the bulkhead, he caught
a walleyed glimpse of a scow piled high with unsmelt-
able bits of antique aircraft, electronics gear too ob-
solete to be useful but too secret to be surplused to the
unsuspecting public who paid for it. The after part
of the scow was nearly awash with cases of shells and
small arms ammo. While Joe watched, a small crane
lifted two foot lockers from the Alice and strained two
identical but much heavier boxes back aboard the yawl.

"Oh fine!" Joe muttered. He'd finally found out what
Commander Cutlott wanted to know. His future was
assured if he wanted it. What was in the two foot
lockers? Something the navy was quite willing to heave

overboard but which could land the bos'n and Cook
in Mare Island for turning a fast buck at less cost to
Uncle than some retired admiral's perfectly legal lobby-
ing.

How did they intend to get the loot ashore? Didn't
they realize the kind of going-over this poor old bucket
would get tomorrow? Commander Cutlott had been
awfully nice about finding a boot ensign a job, but Joe
didn't see how he could throw Gorson and Cookie to
the wolves after all they'd been through together. He'd
have to warn them to jettison the stuff before they
reached San Diego.

It was nearly dawn before the coast came into sight.
In spite of the foghorn's twin-toned blat and the light-
house's glimmer they crisscrossed the entrance several
times before picking up the last buoy. The Alice began
her slow way up the channel.

When they finally docked at 0900 a schooner twice
as large as the Alice was crowded into the slip op-
posite. Joe gave her a look of fleeting envy. The Baleen
had been built specifically for oceanographic work, with
a fiberglass hull impervious to rocks, rot or worms. She
was furnished with everything to keep forty men in
fresh-water showered comfort for six months at a stretch.
Why couldn't he have had something like that? Joe
wondered. He sighed, consoling himself that she was
twice as cumbersome and no faster than the weddy-
bottomed Alice.

He trotted down the dock to the guard shack and
telephoned for a corpsman to haul the god shouter and
his gonococci off to the Naval Hospital. Then he stopped
at Ship's Service long enough to buy soap and razor
blades for all hands. By the time he got back, he hoped
Villegas would have the two women out of the way.
There was still a faint wine-pink tint to the water in
spite of the hose from dockside which was now topping
up their tanks. A faint hum of blower told him the

galley stove was again operating on oil. He guessed
Rose had promoted enough hose to make that connec-
tion too.

There was still an hour before Commander Cutlott's
inspection party was due. They'd all at least be shaved
by then. Coming out of the shower, he twitched his
nose unbelievingly. Could that be real coffee? He went
to the urn and drew a cup. Wonders of wonders, it
was! "Where'd you get stores already?" he asked.

Cookie glanced furtively at the mountain of supplies
waiting to be stowed aboard the larger ship. Joe grinned.
The Baleen would never miss a couple of pounds. He
hurried into his cubicle and struggled into a dress uni-
form. It hung sacklike and he realized how much weight
he'd lost—how much they'd all lost, come to think of it.

He went on deck and saw Commander Cutlott at
the end of the dock. The commander, his adjutant and
yeoman were accompanied by a captain and a rear
admiral.

Villegas hissed from the lazarette hatch. "Cover it up,
sir," he said.

"You'll suffocate," Joe whispered.

"Please sir, cover us up!"

"Oh no!" Joe groaned.

Commander Cutlott walked briskly down the dock,
wearing a smile which became fixed as he came closer
to the battered, unpainted yawl. By the time he boarded
the Alice he was not smiling. After a round of saluting
he got down to business. "Well, Mr. Rate," he snapped,
"did you find what we were looking for?"

Joe hadn't expected Commander Cutlott to sound off
in front of everyone about the looting problem. He was
still fumbling for an answer when he noticed the strange
captain's face go through an astonishing transforma-
tion. Odd, Joe thought, I've never really seen a face
turn purple before.

"You!" the captain roared. "Gallivanting around in a
restricted area, interfering with maneuvers—"

Joe remembered Commander Cutlott's warning: Gor-
son and Cookie had been using the ship for drunken
ladyfests. He remembered how naked blondes had
poured out on deck to watch the destroyers sheer off
and several things were suddenly clear.

The admiral was giving him a long, hard look. "Tell
me, young man," he asked, "how do you put up that
many women on a ship of this size?

"What I'd like to know," the captain added, "is how
you pulled that razzle dazzle on our radar? There wasn't
a blip two seconds before I spotted you. I spent four
hours looking for survivors!"

Commander Cutlott glared unbelievingly at his pro-
tege. "I speak more in sorrow than in anger," he said.
"Where are they?"
"Who, sir?" Joe asked.

"The women, damn it! Up with that hatch!"
"Hatch, sir?"

"The one you're standing on."
"Would you like to inspect the galley, sir?"
"No, I would not like to inspect the galley, sir. Now,
up with the hatch!"

Resignedly, Joe stood aside. Freedy and Commander
Cutlott's yeoman stooped to lift the hatch.

Seaman Villegas, Ma Trimble and Ruth sat on two
immense foot lockers and blinked into the sudden sun.
Villegas still wore the tattered dungarees which had
lasted him throughout the Alice's peregrinations. Though
his smooth face scarcely required shaving, his overlength
hair sufficed to give the Mexican a faintly piratical
aspect.

Ruth wore the ill-fitting remnant of one of Raquel's
dresses. She had ripped the skirt off at mid thigh.
Whenever she sat it hiked considerably higher. But the

inspecting party's attention focused on Ma Trimble's
quivering bulk. "Hello, boys," she said brightly.

The rear admiral looked at Joe.

"Shipwrecked," Joe began. "We had to—"

"Oh, stow it!" the admiral growled. "Which one of
you has the Oedipus complex?"

A navy vehicle parked at the dock end and a sailor
in whites walked toward the Alice. "This where I'm
supposed to pick up somebody with a dose of clap?" he
yelled.

XIII

THE SUN sank in the west. Gorson stretched and de-
cided they'd done enough painting for one day. He
went below to see how Joe was making out with the
ship's accounts. "It could be worse, sir," he said com-
fortingly.

"How?" Joe wondered. The god shouter's infirmity
had gotten him off to the naval hospital. Jack Lapham
and Dr. Krom had stood on their constitutional rights
as civilians and stalked angrily ashore. Ma Trimble and
her sole remaining blonde were off somewhere being
questioned. Joe could guess what would happen. They'd
deport the blonde to Tijuana and the Mexicans would
deport her right back when it turned out she couldn't
speak Spanish either. And wouldn't they have a great
time making sense out of whatever story Ma Trimble
told them!

The rest of the Alice's crew was restricted, pending

investigation. There might be no liberty for a long time,
providing no one believed Ma Trimble's story. And if
someone did, I'affaire Alice would be stamped TOP
SECRET and their restriction might be even longer.
I won't think—but he couldn't stop thinking of Raquel.
Why did romantic novels always harp about heart and
soul? It was the abdomen which felt the pangs of un-
requited love. Already the empty feeling was changing
into that nervous churning which would soon mean ul-
cer. "How could things be worse?" he repeated.
 The bos'n grinned around his first cigar in two thou-
sand years. "Well," he said, "at least they didn't open
the foot lockers."

Joe slapped a hand to his forehead. "Over the side,
quick!"

"Come see what's in them."

Joe   followed   the   bos'n   aft   to   the   lazarette   and
watched while he opened one. Neatly wrapped in water-
proof paper lay a disassembled machine gun. The space
around it was taken up with two tommy guns, a dozen
carbines,  and  Neptune  knew  how many  pistols.  Joe
gasped. "You guys planning a revolution?" he asked.
Gorson shook his  head. "No, but we know an In-
donesian capitalist who is."
"What's in the other box?"
"Ammo."

Joe released an explosive breath. "You've convinced
me," he said. "It could have been worse!" His eye
strayed about the dimly lit dock as Gorson slammed
the foot locker and locked it. He eyed the mountain
of groceries still waiting to be loaded aboard the Baleen.
Careless of them. Nor was there any use telling his own
people to leave them alone; they'd lived too long on
rye bread. Besides, the Alice's inventory had to be
balanced somehow.

A suit of sails in clean new bags lay jumbled with
the mountain of groceries. Gods, how he could have

used some canvas for the Alice! He wondered how
much trimming it would take to make them fit. Oh
well—if only we could plan things and make them work
out according to plan ... He wondered if Raquel were
alive somewhere. Maybe she'd landed back in her own
time or even, remembering how Howie had landed
back aboard the Alice, could she have gravitated back
aboard the Iceland-bound knarr whence he had rescued
her?

The moon broke through clouds and balanced itself
atop the Cortez Hotel's lighted elevator shaft. It re-
minded him of their last night on the nameless volcanic
island. Could he recognize its altered outline after two
thousand years? Big deal! As if the navy'd ever send
him to the Aegean again.

As a history professor— He saw himself taking a
sabbatical thirty years from now, doddering about
Greece on a budget tour, wondering if the cheese would
agree with his ulcer. Another pang shot through his
insides.

He sat a silent moment, remembering Raquel and
those wasted moments in the chain locker. Anger boiled
over and threatened to leak around his eyes. If only he
could do it over again—only do it right this time!

Abruptly, a new thought seeped into his hindsighted
reverie. He looked up and saw the chief still standing.
Gorson studied him with a most peculiar expression on
his broad face.

"Chief," Joe said," do you still have that bell jar and
still hidden somewhere?"

Gorson looked around the newly painted Alice. His
eyes took in the Baleens mountain of yearlong supplies,
then rested for a moment on the foot locker loaded with
guns and ammunition. He grinned. "I was wondering
how long it'd take you to think of that," he said.