“Translate.”
“They ask where they are, and what we want.”
“Tell them welcome to Bermuda. Say I’d like to speak to their commander.”
The message was relayed and a figure stepped forward. A woman.
“Why is she all covered up like a man?” her mother asked.
“Perhaps her breasts are deformed. What does it matter?” Mandakusala said peevishly. This woman looked like nobody’s fool. “Tell her we request permission to come on board.”
Most of the men were leaning over the rail, their eyes bulging out as if they’d never seen women before. They hooted and waved and blew kisses with shocking immodesty. The captain stood apart with two men who must be her advisors. One was short and plump. The other had a thin black mustache. Their eyes bulged too, but there seemed a glimmer of intelligence in them as well.
A crate of wine was set before her and Mandakusala tore open the lid. She tossed a bottle upward to waiting hands. To the translator she said, “Say we wish to entertain them. We have wine for them. And food as well.”
The metal ship’s men were almost rioting. Their captain was swearing angrily at this lapse of discipline, but they paid her no mind. Her advisors looked uncertain and confused.
She had them. She could feel it.
“Throw down your ladder!” Mandakusala called. She smelled the roast coming up behind her. “Look — we bring you a feast!”
But then, inexplicably, the small round one’s eyes widened with horror. He pointed. Others turned to look. Mandakusala turned as well, but there was nothing to see. Only the roast.
But there was nothing strange about the roast. Nothing! It was a plump Northern infant boy, roasted with an apple in its mouth, one of several that had been taken in a raid on a Gulf Coast fortress.
The men were backing away from the rail.
“Grappling hooks! I want grappling hooks and line! Close with that ship!” Mandakusala cried.
But the hooks and lines had been stored below, and by the time they were out, the metal ship was coruscating with green fire. One of her crew threw a line anyway, and screamed as the power flowed down the rope to burn her black from the inside out.
Two great bolts of lightning slammed into the sky, and the ship was gone.
Mandakusala stared at the roast, lying forgotten on the deck. A flesh taboo. Could it be as simple as that? Had she lost everything — power and wealth and eternal glory — simply because these strangers were vegetarians?
Old Ayapasara hobbled up behind her, and coldly said, “Your own command. Forty warriors. And you couldn’t take a ship away from a crew of men!”
Mandakusala closed her eyes.
Her mother was never going to let her hear the end of this.
Isaac
“What did you do?” Isaac asked. “How did you know to do that? Where are we?”
“I don’t know where we are. I ordered the engine room mate to apply power to the Tesla coils, removing us from immediate danger. And I knew to do that because I could read their Captain very clearly. I watched how she held herself and when she gave commands. She wasn’t a savage, but the commander of a disciplined crew.” There was a note of respect in her voice. “Did you notice how swiftly they obeyed her?”
“Well, I — ”
But Hopper was speaking to a petty officer: “The Captain and the other officers are missing and must be presumed dead. That makes me the ranking officer. I want all hands on deck immediately. The mission is over. We need to take our bearings, find out how many of us are left, and get this extremely valuable top-secret bucket back to Philadelphia.”
“Ensign, do you have any idea where we are and what’s happening to us?” Isaac liked to remind people in positions of power of their own ignorance.
“At this point, Mr. Asimov, I’m considering this theory: that an interaction between the current in the coils and some unknown factor or factors is affecting the physical state of the ship, causing a change like a phase transition.”
Isaac saw that she was observing him shrewdly; evidently her ability to read minds was not limited to half-naked Amazons. To his excruciating embarrassment, he found himself blushing.
“Do you have any thoughts on that, Mr. Asimov? Ideas are your provenance, I’ve been told.”
“Well, Grace, I’m afraid that the physics is pretty damn difficult, if you’ll pardon my French, so — ”
“That’s Ensign Hopper to you, Mr. Asimov!”
Asimov wilted in the heat of that basilisk glare, and hastily said, “Yes, Ensign Hopper.”
He didn’t apologize, though. He might stand corrected, but he would not apologize. “I agree that what happens to the ship is like a phase transition, when matter changes from being a solid to being a liquid or a gas. Except instead of a transition between different states of matter, this is a transition between matter and time. There’s some unknown physical property involved in the way the ship interacts with space and time. It retains its solidity when the current isn’t running through it, and sublimates into gray-green gas when it is. We could be in the future or the past or even in some other universe.”
“So why do some people get stuck in the walls, when others don’t?”
“Um…could be anything. Body chemistry? Rubber shoes? Blood type?”
“Figure it out, Mr. Asimov. It’s time you and Mr. Heinlein earned your keep. Because I don’t think we’re going to just sail back to Philly without some serious brain-cell work.”
Isaac asked again, “Where do you think we are?” And where, for that matter, was Heinlein? He had disappeared.
“In one sense, we’re pretty much where we’ve been headed all along. See those clumps of seaweed?” The ocean was festooned with tangles of weed. “Sargassum. We’ve overshot Bermuda and we’re now in the Sargasso Sea. The question is when is now?”
Peering over the rail, Isaac saw something moving at the bow. It was Bob Heinlein, the crazy son of a bitch, crawling the huge degaussing cables.
The still, seaweed-filled water ahead of the ship’s bow stirred, then churned. Heinlein didn’t notice. A huge tentacle lifted from the water and reached for him.
Bob
He was right! He thought he had glimpsed an extraneous cable from the deck, when everyone else (including, Bob noted with satisfaction, Grace) had eyes only for the Jane Russells on those cannibal women. But he couldn’t be sure without going over the rail for a closer look. And here it was, most definitely an extra, smaller cable, no thicker than Bob’s arm, twined amid the larger cables, which were plenty large enough for a surefooted and experienced seaman to stand on.
Whoops!
Bob clamped both arms around a cable, as his traitorous right foot dangled in midair. Steady. The footing’s slick, but that’s no reason to fall. Keep your wits about you. He set his foot back on the cable, tested his weight, took a deep breath of salt spray — and suffered another childish coughing spasm. Damn it! It was like breathing underwater down here, only feet above the waves. But at least the seasickness was kept at bay by the constant wind — the same wind that threatened to sweep Bob off the cables, and into the sea….
Bob pondered his next move. He had to find out where this cable led, and where it came from. Initially he had planned to Jim Hawkins his way completely around the ship, if necessary, but now…. What was that splash? Nothing important, probably. Best to keep his mind on the task at hand.