Seas of Venus(130)

The assistant torpedoman opened his mouth in amazement.

"Don't feel bad," Leaf added. "It happens a lot."

Caffey belched and poured himself another beer. "It happens a lot to newbies," he said.

Both noncoms were relaxed and buoyant again. The motorman slid his own glass over to be filled.

"You didn't know Ted Holman, kid," he said, "so I'll tell you: he didn't have any balls. His brother kept pushin' him t'be a hero, but Teddy just wasn't cut out fer that. There's less chance he ran K44 in ahead of us than there is this glass is gonna turn t' gold in my hand."

He raised it, then drank. "Nope, still beer."

Caffey laughed. "I'll tell you something else, kid," he said. "I don't believe K44 circled around and came back, neither."

"But they had to come back," Bozman exclaimed. "They torpedoed the Wiesel. I know that happened!"

"We did for the Wiesel," Caffey said.

He raised his left hand to silence Bozman's certain protest. "I know, the console was shot away for our fish lost guidance—but that don't mean they stopped and rolled belly up. Tonello aimed the boat for a hand's-off run, and the Wiesel wasn't doing any maneuvering the way she was caught in the channel like that."

"Ted Holman's welcome to be a dead hero," the motorman said between swallows, "seeings as he's dead. But I figure K44 took a shell up the ass as she ran."

"You can't outrun a bullet, after all," Caffey agreed philosophically.

"I tell you," said Leaf, watching the patterns his blunt fingertip drew in the condensate on his glass. "I'd sooner have a skipper with the guts to still do the job when the shit hits the fan. It's safer. And sooner or later in this business, the shit always hits the fan."

"Hell, in life," the torpedoman muttered.

"Lieutenant Tonello was a goddam good skipper that way," Leaf said. He slid his empty glass to Caffey.

"And you know?" he continued. "I think this new kid Brainard may be even better."





18


May 18, 382 AS. 1118 hours.




K44 rested in a tidal pool, though the bar a quarter mile to the north was submerged at this stage of solar attraction. Brainard stared over the portside rail. The water was so clear between waves that when he spit, his subconscious expected to see the gobbet dimple the sandy bottom. Instead, there was a splash.

A dozen tiny fish, scarcely more than teeth with fins, converged on the spot. They continued to froth the surface for minutes after they must have been certain there was no prey to justify a battle.

Other iridescent fish prowled among the fragments of crab armor which littered the bottom in a wide fan to seaward. Occasionally a fish found a further scrap of meat to worry from the chitin. Others flashed in to attack their lucky fellow while his jaws were engaged with the scavenged tidbit.

Officer-Trainee Wilding stumped around the cockpit to join Brainard. The enlisted crewmen waited for orders with evident concern.

Brainard knew they were worried. He knew that he had to decide what to do . . . but his whole universe had overturned when he learned that the commander of K44 hadn't saved his life. Maybe Fate had done so, maybe there was a friendly God; and maybe the whole universe was a game of chance in which men were chips, not players.

Wilding leaned against the rail and took a deep breath. His face looked pale; cold sweat flecked his skin. He wedged the rifle into the corner where his body met the railing, then gestured at the bottom with his right index finger.

The officer-trainee was doing better since he got a solid plastic deck underneath him. Not physically better. Physically, he looked worse than the rest of them, and they all looked like yesterday's corpses.

The fever had stopped twisting Wilding's mind. Even when he dragged his thoughts through delirious pathways, he still managed to save all their lives, though. . . .

"At least having the moray here limits our problem to one," he said. "Otherwise there'd be hundreds of crabs trying to get at us. That'd be a lot worse."

"Rifle bullets aren't going to kill an eel that big," Brainard said. He turned around and nodded to the men. "Leaf's right, though. I won't chance using the grenade with two torpedoes down in the plenum chamber."

Those were the first words he'd spoken since he learned about the torpedoes. The relief on the faces of his crew was palpable.

"Maybe we could patch the holes from outside the skirts?" Wheelwright offered.

"Don't be a bigger fool 'n God made you, kid," the motorman snapped without real malice. "It's pressure that holds the patching film in place. Stick it on from the outside, and it'll just blow free when we fire up the fans."