We counted sixteen ships in dock that looked as though they might do for our purposes. We had to rule out that the newer ones and the reconverted jobs. I mean, after all, U-235 just lasts so long, and you can steam around the world on a walnut-shell of it, or whatever it is, but you can’t store it. So we had to stick with the ships that were powered with conventional fuel - and, on consideration, only oil at that.
But that left sixteen, as I say. Some of them, though, had suffered visibly from being left untended for nearly a decade, so that for our purposes they might as well have been abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic; we didn’t have the equipment or ambition to do any great amount of salvage work.
The Empress of Britain would have been a pretty good bet, for instance, except that it was lying at pretty nearly a forty-five-degree angle in its berth. So was the United States, and so was the Caronia. The Stockholm was straight enough, but I took a good look, and only one tier of portholes was showing above the water - evidently it had settled nice and even, but it was on the bottom all the same. Well, that mud sucks with a fine tight grip, and we weren’t going to try to loosen it.
All in all, eleven of the sixteen ships were out of commission just from what we could see driving by.
Vern and I looked at each other. We stood by the MG, while Amy sprawled her legs over the side and waited for us to make up our minds.
‘Not good, Sam,’ said Vern, looking worried.
I said: “Well, that still leaves five. There’s the Vulcania, the Cristobal-’
‘Too small.’
‘All right. The Manhattan, the Liberie and the Queen Elizabeth.’
Amy looked up, her eyes gleaming. ‘Where’s the question?’ she demanded. ‘Naturally, it’s the Queen.”
I tried to explain. ‘Please, Amy. Leave these things to us, will you?’
‘But the Major won’t settle for anything but the best!’
‘The Major?’
I glanced at Vern, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘look at the problems, Amy. First we have to check it over. Maybe it’s been burned out - how do we know? Maybe the channel isn’t even deep enough to float it any more - how do we know? Where are we going to get the oil for it?’
‘We’ll get the oil,’ Amy said cheerfully.
‘And what if the channel isn’t deep enough?’
‘She’ll float,’ Amy promised. ‘At high tide, anyway. Even if the channel hasn’t been dredged in ten years.’
I shrugged and gave up. What was the use of arguing?
We drove back to the Queen Elizabeth and I had to admit that there was a certain attraction about that big old dowager. We all got out and strolled down the pier, looking over as much as we could see.
The pier had never been cleaned out. It bothered me a little - I mean I don’t like skeletons much - but Amy didn’t seem to mind. The Queen must have just docked when it happened, because you could still see bony queues, as though they were waiting for customs inspection.
Some of the bags had been opened and the contents scattered around - naturally, somebody was bound to think of looting the Queen. But there were as many that hadn’t been touched as that had been opened, and the whole thing had the look of an amateur attempt. And that was all to the good, because the fewer persons who had boarded the Queen in the decade since it happened, the more chance of our finding it in usable shape.
Amy saw a gangplank still up, and with cries of girlish glee ran aboard.
I plucked at Vern’s sleeve. ‘You,’ I said. ‘What’s this about what the Major won’t settle for less than?’
He said: ‘Aw, Sam, I had to tell her something, didn’t I?’
‘But what about the Major -’
He said patiently: ‘You don’t understand. It’s all part of my plan, see? The Major is the big thing here and he’s got a birthday coming up next month. Well, the way I put it to Amy, we’ll fix him up with a yacht as a birthday present, see? And, of course, when it’s all fixed up and ready to lift anchor -’
I said doubtfully: ‘That’s the hard way, Vern. Why couldn’t we just sort of get steam up and take off?’
He shook his head. ‘That is the hard way. This way we get all the help and supplies we need, understand?’
I shrugged. That was the way it was, so what was the use of arguing?
But there was one thing more on my mind. I said: ‘How come Amy’s so interested in making the Major happy?’
Vern chortled. ‘Jealous, eh?’
‘I asked a question!’
‘Calm down, boy. It’s just that he’s in charge of things here so naturally she wants to keep in good with him.’
I scowled. ‘I keep hearing stories about how the Major’s chief interest in life is women. You sure she isn’t ambitious to be one of them?’
He said: ‘The reason she wants to keep him happy is so she won’t be one of them.’
The name of the place was Bayonne.
Vern said: ‘One of them’s got to have oil, Sam. It has to.’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘There’s no question about it. Look, this is where the tankers came to discharge oil. They’d come in here, pump the oil into the refinery tanks and -’
‘Vern,’ I said. ‘Let’s look, shall we?’
He shrugged, and we hopped off the little motor-boat onto a landing stage. The tankers towered over us, rusty and screeching as the waves rubbed them against each other.
There were fifty of them there at least, and we poked around them for hours. The hatches were rusted shut and unmanageable, but you could tell a lot by sniffing. Gasoline odour was out; smell of seaweed and dead fish was out; but the heavy, rank smell of fuel oil, that was what we were sniffing for. Crews had been aboard these ships when the missiles came, and crews were still aboard.
Beyond the two-part super-structures of the tankers, the skyline of New York was visible. I looked up, sweating, and saw the Empire State Building and imagined Amy up there, looking out towards us.
She knew we were here. It was her idea. She had scrounged up a naval engineer, or what she called a naval engineer - he had once been a stoker on a ferryboat. But he claimed he knew what he was talking about when he said the only thing the Queen needed to make ‘er go was oil. And so we left him aboard to tinker and polish, with a couple of helpers. Amy detached from the police force, and we tackled the oil problem.
Which meant Bayonne. Which was where we were.
It had to be a tanker with at least a fair portion of its cargo intact, because the Queen was a thirsty creature, drinking fuel not by the shot or gallon but by the ton.
‘Saaam! Sam Dunlap!’
I looked up, startled. Five ships away, across the U of the mooring, Vern Engdahl was bellowing at me through cupped hands.
‘I found it!’ he shouted. ‘Oil, lots of oil! Come look!’
I clasped my hands over my head and looked around. It was a long way around to the tanker Vern was on, hopping from deck to deck, detouring around open stretches.
I shouted: ‘I’ll get the boat!’
He waved and climbed up on the rail of the ship, his feet dangling over, looking supremely happy and pleased with himself. He lit a cigarette, leaned back against the upward sweep of the rail and waited.