Chapter 4

Silver on the Sea

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

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

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

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

“Blackout,” Craig said.

“Oh, it’s you,” the girl spoke.

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

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

“How is English?” Craig asked.

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

“Oh! How is she?”

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

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

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

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

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

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

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

“Exactly.”

“But--but what are we going to do?”

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

“You sound pleased about this,” she challenged.

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

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

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

“Well,” a voice said behind him.

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

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

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

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

“Damn you--” Craig said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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