Chapter 10: Mayday, Mayday

Getting a ship’s boat berthed inside the ship in the air is tricky work under the best of conditions; the way the wind was blowing by now, it would have been like trying to thread a needle inside a concrete mixer. We submerged after the ship and went in underwater. Then we had to wait in the boat until the ship rose above the surface and emptied the water out of the boat berth. When that was done and the boat berth was sealed again, the ship went down seventy fathoms and came to rest on the bottom, and we unsealed the boat and got out.

There was still the job of packing the wax into skins, but that could wait. Everybody was tired and dirty and hungry. We took turns washing up, three at a time, in the little ship’s latrine which, for some reason going back to sailing-ship days on Terra, was called the “head.” Finally the whole sixteen of us gathered in the relatively comfortable wardroom under the after gun turret.

Comfortable, that is, to the extent that everybody could find a place to sit down, or could move about without tripping over somebody else. There was a big pot of coffee, and everybody had a plate or bowl of hot food. There’s always plenty of hot food to hand on a hunter-ship; no regular meal-times, and everybody eats, as he sleeps, when he has time. This is the only time when a whole hunter crew gets together, after a monster has been killed and cut up and the ship is resting on the bottom and nobody has to stand watch.

Everybody was talking about the killing, of course, and the wax we had in the hold, and counting the money they were going to get for it, at the new eighty-centisol price.

“Well, I make it about fourteen tons,” Ramón Llewellyn, who had been checking the wax as it went into the hold, said. He figured mentally for a moment, and added, “Call it twenty-two thousand sols.” Then he had to fall back on a pencil and paper to figure shares.

I was surprised to find that he was reckoning shares for both Murell and myself.

“Hey, do we want to let them do that?” I whispered to Murell. “We just came along for the ride.”

“I don’t want the money,” he said. “These people need every cent they can get.”

So did I, for that matter, and I didn’t have salary and expense account from a big company on Terra. However, I hadn’t come along in the expectation of making anything out of it, and a newsman has to be careful about the outside money he picks up. It wouldn’t do any harm in the present instance, but as a practice it can lead to all kinds of things, like playing favorites, coloring news, killing stories that shouldn’t be killed. We do enough of that as it is, like playing down the tread-snail business for Bish Ware and the spaceport people, and never killing anybody except in a “local bar.” It’s hard to draw a line on that sort of thing.

“We’re just guests,” I said. “We don’t work here.”

“The dickens you are,” Joe Kivelson contradicted. “Maybe you came aboard as guests, but you’re both part of the crew now. I never saw a prettier shot on a monster than Walt made--took that thing’s head off like a chicken on a chopping block--and he did a swell job of covering for the cutting-up. And he couldn’t have done that if Murell hadn’t handled the boat the way he did, and that was no easy job.”

“Well, let’s talk about that when we get to port,” I said. “Are we going right back, or are we going to try for another monster?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “We could stow the wax, if we didn’t get too much, but if we stay out, we’ll have to wait out the wind and by then it’ll be pretty cold.”

“The longer we stay out, the more the cruise’ll cost,” Abdullah Monnahan, the engineer, said, “and the expenses’ll cut into the shares.”

“Tell the truth, I’m sort of antsy to get back,” Joe Kivelson said. “I want to see what’s going on in Port Sandor.”

“So am I,” Murell said. “I want to get some kind of office opened, and get into business. What time will the Cape Canaveral be getting in? I want a big cargo, for the first time.”

“Oh, not for four hundred hours, at the least,” I said. “The spaceships always try to miss the early-dark and early-daylight storms. It’s hard to get a big ship down in a high wind.”

“That’ll be plenty of time, I suppose,” Murell said. “There’s all that wax you have stored, and what I can get out of the Co-operative stores from crews that reclaim it. But I’m going to have a lot to do.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Dodging bullets, for one.”

“Oh, I don’t expect any trouble,” Murell said. “This fellow Ravick’s shot his round.”

He was going to say something else, but before he could say it there was a terrific roar forward. The whole ship bucked like a recoiling gun, throwing everybody into a heap, and heeled over to starboard. There were a lot of yells, particularly from those who had been splashed with hot coffee, and somebody was shouting something about the magazines.

“The magazines are aft, you dunderhead,” Joe Kivelson told him, shoving himself to his feet. “Stay put, everybody; I’ll see what it is.”

He pulled open the door forward. An instant later, he had slammed it shut and was dogging it fast.

“Hull must be ruptured forward; we’re making water. It’s spouting up the hatch from the engine room like a geyser,” he said. “Ramón, go see what it’s like in the boat berth. The rest of you, follow him, and grab all the food and warm clothing you can. We’re going to have to abandon.”

He stood by the doorway aft, shoving people through and keeping them from jamming up, saying: “Take it easy, now; don’t crowd. We’ll all get out.” There wasn’t any panic. A couple of men were in the doorway of the little galley when I came past, handing out cases of food. As nothing was coming out at the instant, I kept on, and on the way back to the boat-berth hatch, I pulled down as many parkas and pairs of overpants as I could carry, squeezing past Tom, who was collecting fleece-lined hip boots. Each pair was buckled together at the tops; a hunter always does that, even at home ashore.

Ramón had the hatch open, and had opened the top hatch of the boat, below. I threw my double armload of clothing down through it and slid down after, getting out of the way of the load of boots Tom dumped ahead of him. Joe Kivelson came down last, carrying the ship’s log and some other stuff. A little water was trickling over the edge of the hatch above.

“It’s squirting up from below in a dozen places,” he said, after he’d sealed the boat. “The whole front of the ship must be blown out.”

“Well, now we know what happened to Simon MacGregor’s Claymore,” I said, more to myself than to anybody else.

Joe and Hans Cronje, the gunner, were getting a rocket out of the locker, detaching the harpoon and fitting on an explosive warhead. He stopped, while he and Cronje were loading it into the after launcher, and nodded at me.

“That’s what I think, too,” he said. “Everybody grab onto something; we’re getting the door open.”

I knew what was coming and started hugging a stanchion as though it were a long-lost sweetheart, and Murell, who didn’t but knew enough to imitate those who did, hugged it from the other side. The rocket whooshed out of the launcher and went off with a deafening bang outside. For an instant, nothing happened, and I told Murell not to let go. Then the lock burst in and the water, at seventy fathoms’ pressure, hit the boat. Abdullah had gotten the engines on and was backing against it. After a little, the pressure equalized and we went out the broken lock stern first.