Seas of Venus(12)

The vibration of L7521's drives and hull reached a harmonic. For a moment, it seemed as though the vessel herself was screaming with mad laughter as she rushed toward the western horizon.





6


Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard,

when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his

foam-mountains on the sea.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson





Johnnie reflexively set the gunsight controls to search mode—then realized he wasn't alone in a simulator where he'd be graded by electronics. He looked at his uncle in embarrassment, poising his hand to switch back to direct targeting.

Dan raised an eyebrow.

"Ah, was that right?" Johnnie asked. "The sights?"

In search mode, the holographic sight picture relayed the image from the masthead sensors above the cockpit, the highest point on the little vessel. At the moment their image was a three-dimensional radar panorama: 320O of empty sea, with a sprinkling of low islands on the northern and northwestern horizon.

"Sure," said his uncle. "Isn't it what your simulator told you to do?"

"Yeah, but . . ."

L7521 was running at speed, slicing over the swells like an amusement-ride car on rails. Froth and flotsam snapped by to either side of the hydrofoil at startling speed, contrasting queasily with the large-scale hologram which scarcely changed at all.

"John, I designed your training programs myself," Dan said. "They couldn't cover everything, but what they taught you is Blackhorse standard."

He grinned, devil-may-care Uncle Dan again. "Life can't cover everything either, lad. Though it took me a while to figure that out myself."

Johnnie traversed the guns ten degrees, using the left-grip control, to swing them to the marked bearing of one of the distant islands. He then touched the right grip, bringing the sight picture back to direct.

For a moment, the hologram was an electronic image of the sea itself. Then the hydrofoil crested a swell and the sights centered on a blur of a gray slightly darker than that of the water. Johnnie dialed up the magnification to its full forty powers and thumbed in stabilization. The gun barrels rose automatically as L7521's bow slid into another kilometer-wide trough.

Just before the gunsight's direct viewpoint was covered by waves, the men in the gun tub saw something with jaws of yellow fangs lift above the vegetation and stare toward them. Nictitating membranes wiped sideways, dulling the eyes.

An image of sea water rose to fill the gunsight. Johnnie switched back to search mode.

He looked at his uncle, hunched below the tub's armor in the assistant's seat. The halo of spray from the steerable front foil soaked Dan as thoroughly as it did the younger man, but there was no sign of discomfort on his smiling face.

"You've been planning for . . . for years to do this, haven't you?" Johnnie said. "Bring me into the Blackhorse as soon as you could—twist the Senator's arm."

Dan shrugged. "The training programs? I wouldn't have forced you, lad. You wanted to learn, so you might as well learn the right way. Even the Senator agreed with that. Otherwise you might have run off and joined some jackleg outfit that'd get you killed—if you were lucky."

The implications of what he'd just heard spread across Johnnie's mind like the base of a slime mold, then burst into feculent words: "You don't think I'm good enough for a real company, Uncle Dan? You don't think I could get into the Blackhorse without you pulling strings?"

The older man shook his head. "Wrong wording," he said calmly, as though he were unaware of the shock and horror behind his nephew's flat statement.

"You don't think that any real company's going to enlist the son of A. Rolfe Gordon against the Senator's will, do you?" Dan explained. "War's a business, Johnnie. Admirals put their lives on the line, sure; but they're gambling on a lot more than the chance of getting killed. Nobody competent—nobody competent enough to command a successful company—would offend the most powerful politician on Venus."

"He may not be for long," Johnnie said in mingled regret and anger. "Heidigger and Carolina won't let him stay if they win."

"Even then no fleet is going to offend the Senator for nothing," Dan continued. "Nobody in the history of Venus has been able to do what your father's already managed—a free association of three domes, forced by the populace and against the will of the oligarchs who'd been running the show until then."

"But if he fails—" Johnnie said.

"If he fails this time," his uncle said, riding over the interjection, "there's still the chance he'll be back in power later. Politicians have long memories—and so do Admirals."