“The glue will harden even more as time goes by,” Dr. Quotabusta told him. “I can’t be responsible.”
The Captain’s scathing answer was aborted by the whoosh of the ship’s intercom. Mister Jewish answered it. He listened a moment, said “Right away!” and hung up. Then he walked over to the Captain and whispered urgently in his ear.
“Hell!” Captain Maldemerde exclaimed. He and Mister Jewish started out of the wheelhouse. "You come with us!” the Captain ordered Dr. Quotabusta.
Curious, I tagged after them to the radio shack. A young officer was standing there, distraught and pasty-faced. A second officer was slumped over the equipment table, his outstretched hand a couple of inches from the telegraph sending-key, his eyes wide open and staring.
Dr. Quotabusta examined him briefly. “He’s dead all right,” he announced.
“Brilliant diagnosis,” the Captain said sarcastically. “But why is he dead?”
“Some sort of sudden shock. A heart attack, maybe. Or perhaps a cerebral stroke. It’s hard to tell without a more thorough examination. We may not know for sure until after the autopsy.”
“Meanwhile the ship-to-shore messages of the passengers are piling up,” Captain Maldemerde noticed. “Push the corpse out of the way and start sending them,” he told the young officer.
“Don’t touch that key!” Mister Jewish said sharply. He had been standing quietly, his eyes taking in the situation. Now he took a large, rubber eraser and pushed the cadaver’s elbow with it until the hand grazed the telegraph key.
Immediately there was the sharp crackling of electricity. The corpse’s hand jumped back to its original position as if it was still alive. “That’s what killed him,” Mister Jewish said quietly. “Somehow the generator wire got hooked directly into the key, and when he touched it, he electrocuted himself.”
“Why am I plagued by this inefficiency?” the Captain railed.
“It may not have been inefficiency.” Mister Jewish looked hard at the Captain. “It could have been an accident. On the other hand. . . .”
“We’ll have to notify the Port of New York Medical Authority,” Dr. Quotabusta said.
“No!” The Captain’s voice rang out like a gunshot. “We keep this among ourselves. That is an order! We tell the Port Authority nothing. We cannot afford the delay. We report nothing, and we sail at midnight.” He turned to the young officer who was still standing there as if mesmerized by shock and fear. “You fix the equipment right away. Then send the passengers’ messages out immediately. I’m promoting you to Chief Radio Operator.”
The young officer scurried over to the equipment and began checking out the circuitry.
“Captain, do you think—?” Mister Jewish started to say.
“What do we do with the corpse?” Dr. Quotabusta interrupted him. “In a day or two it’s going to get pretty gamey.”
“Do I have to solve all your problems?” Captain Maldemerde was scornful. “Put it on ice!”
“On ice? You mean in the refrigerator room, sir? Where we store the caviar?”
“Next to the red caviar,” the Captain specified. “Away from the black caviar. I’m particularly partial to black caviar.” He turned on his heel and left the radio shack with Mister Jewish in his wake.
I followed them out on deck. Mister Jewish was talking to the Captain in a low, urgent voice. “. . . too young and inexperienced to take over as Chief Radio Operator,” I overheard him saying. “He has no sea experience and he was flunked out of Annapolis.”
“For what reason?” the Captain inquired.
“He failed his course in Naval Communications.”
“We haven’t time to find a replacement,” Captain Maldemerde decided. “He’ll just have to do.”
“But Captain. . . .”
I lost the rest of what Mister Jewish was saying as they moved out of earshot. The ship was a bedlam of Bon Voyage parties now. They had spilled out of the staterooms and merged to crowd the decks to overflowing. For the umpteenth time the brass band on the dock was blaring out “Auld Lang Syne.” Guy Lombardo6 would never have recognized it.
Somebody tossed a lei around my neck and screamed “Aloha!” in my ear. Someone else grabbed me from behind and held a bottle of champagne to my lips while I gurgled a few healthy swigs. A girl with a pretty, clean-scrubbed face framed by a black cowl, her figure lost in the folds of a nun’s habit, fell to her knees in front of me, wrapped one arm around my legs, and proceeded to unzip my fly.
“Hail Mary!”I said reverently.
“Are you Catholic?” She fumbled inside my jockey shorts.
“No, Sister. But you are, aren’t you?”
“No.” She found what she was looking for and withdrew it.
“If you’re not a Catholic nun, Why do you wear that outfit?” I asked.
“I’m a Sister of the Zodiac.” She spread the folds of her robe until I could see that it buttoned down the middle. She undid the buttons between her breasts.
“All the Sisters of the Zodiac dress this way.” She backed me up against a bulkhead until I was flush up against her, my exposed organ hidden in the folds of her robe, snuggling between her naked, unseen breasts. “It’s our habit,” she added.
It looked like I was getting into the habit. “Sisters of the Zodiac? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them. Is it some kind of new cult?” I inquired.
“It’s not new. It’s five thousand years old. We believe in astrological predetermination.” She squeezed her breasts around me securely, locking me in.
“Is this some rite the Sisters practice?”
“Oh, no. We have no sex dogmas pro or con. We don’t practice chastity, and—”
“Somehow I knew you didn’t!”
“—and we don’t have fertility rites.” Her breasts were sliding up and down, the nipples nuzzling my groin.
“Isn’t this kind of public?” I called her attention to the mob milling around us on the deck.
“Everybody’s too drunk to notice.” She slid her hand down inside the waistband of my pants and squeezed my behind. “What’s your astrological sign?” she wanted to know.
“Libra.”
“Libra! I knew it! This meeting was meant to be! I’m an Aries!” She ducked her head and quickly kissed the tip of my penis as it emerged from between her breasts on the upthrust. “I’m Sister Stella.” She finally got around to introducing herself.
“Steve Victor. Hi, Stella.”
“Call me Sister.” One of her hands was still probing my bottom. The other had vanished inside the folds of the robe in her lap as she knelt there.
“If you insist. But under the circumstances it makes me feel incestuous. . . . Are you an American?” I asked, swelling up hard inside her hot, perspiration- slicked cleavage.
“Australian.”
“Is this a custom of the bush country?” I panted.
“You’re nowhere near the bush country,” Sister Stella panted back. “You just leave the bush country to me.” The arm attached to the invisible hand buried in her lap was moving like a piston.
I angled my body to catch one of her breasts between my thighs and squeezed it. The hard nipple seared against my flesh. “Why don’t we go to my cabin and finish this up in comfort,” I suggested.
“Oh, no! I’m a virgin!”
“A virgin? I thought you said the Sisters of the Zodiac have no vows of chastity.”
“That’s right. It’s a matter of personal choice.”
“You sure don’t come on like a virgin!” Her breasts were massaging me like a Pulmotor.
“I don’t see why virgins shouldn’t have as much erotic fun as everybody else,” Sister Stella told me. “Besides, playing this way helps me keep my virginity because I’m rarely frustrated. . . . Now I do wish you’d stop talking,” she added. “It distracts me.”