"I, ah . . . ," Johnnie said. "Yeah, that was me."
Sal jerked a thumb in the direction of the cantina. He gestured constantly and expressively. "Yeah, that's what your gunner said in there. Said you're screamin' 'Use solids, use solids!' and shootin' the crap outa the squid with a rifle. Tony'd 've been gone without that, and hell knows how many others besides."
"Well, I . . . ," Johnnie said. "Well, I'm glad I was in the right place."
"Hey, look," Sal said with a sudden frown. "You don't want to wander around out here in the sun. Come on, I'll buy you a drink or ten."
"Well, to tell the truth . . . ," Johnnie said. "Look, I'm so new I haven't been in the Blackhorse a full day. I've never really seen a base or any ship but a torpedoboat. I'd just—"
"Hey, you never been aboard a dreadnought?" the Angel ensign said, grinning beatifically. "Really?"
"Never even a destroyer," Johnnie said/admitted.
"You got a treat coming, then," said Sal, "because I've got one of the Holy Trinity's skimmer squadrons. Hop on and I'll give you a tour of the biggest and best battleship on Venus!"
Sal swung his leg over the saddle of his scooter and patted the pillion seat.
"Ah," said Johnnie, halting in mid-motion because he was sure Sal would take off without further discussion as soon as his passenger was aboard. "Look, Sal, is this going to be OK?
. . . your son, John Arthur Gordon, has been . . .
"Hell, yes!" the other youth insisted. "Look, nothing's to good for the guy who saved Tony's life, right? And anyway—"
Johnnie sat, still doubtful. The scooter accelerated as hard as it could against the double load.
"—you guys and us 're allies, now, right? Sure it's OK!"
12
There is never a storm whose might can reach
Where the vast leviathan sleeps
Like a mighty thought in a mighty mind. . . .
—John Boyle O'Reilly
"Fasten your belt," Sal ordered, stuffing his cap in a side pocket as he dropped into the pilot's seat of the skimmer bobbing like a pumpkinseed at the end of the ferry dock.
He latched his own cross-belted seat restraints and added nonchalantly, "It won't matter if we flip—there won't be a piece of the frame left as big as your belt buckle—but at least it'll keep you from getting tossed into the harbor when we come off plane."
"Right," said Johnnie, realizing that the scooter ride was going to be the calm part of the trip.
The skimmer had a shallow hull with a powerful thruster, two side-by-side seats, and a belt-loaded 1-inch rocket gun mounted on a central pintle. The weapon could either be locked along the boat's axis or fired flexibly by the gunner . . . though the latter technique meant the gunner stood while the skimmer was under way.
Other recruits had learned to do that, so Johnnie figured he could if he had to. For now, it looked tricky enough just to stay aboard.
Sal touched two buttons on his panel. First the thruster began to rumble; then the bow and stern lines unclamped from the bollards on the quay and slid back aboard the skimmer as their take-up reels whined.
"Hang on!" Sal warned unnecessarily. He cramped the control wheel hard, then slammed it forward to the stop in order to bring the drive up to full power.
The skimmer lifted; its bow came around in little more than the vessel's own length. Within the first ten feet of forward motion, almost nothing but the thruster nozzle of the tiny craft was in the water. A huge roostertail of spray drenched the dock behind them.
"Yee-ha!" Sal shrieked over the sound of the wind and the snarling drive.
The seat back and bottom hammered Johnnie as the skimmer—the ass-slapper—clipped over ripples in the harbor surface that would have been invisible to the eye. He braced his palms against the armrests, letting his wrists absorb much of the punishment and—incidentally—permitting Johnnie to look forward past the vessel's rounded bow. The Holy Trinity was expanding swiftly.
Johnnie knew Sal was giving him a ride as well as a lift—but he was pretty sure that the pilot would have been running in a similar fashion if he'd been alone in his ass-slapper. What Dan had said about hydrofoil crewmen was true in spades about the skimmers.
But it was true at higher levels also. The battle centers of the great dreadnoughts were buried deep below the waterline and protected by the main armor belts. All the sensor data—from the vessel itself and from all the other vessels in the fleet—was funneled there.
The battle center was as good a place from which to conduct a battle as could be found in action. The muzzle blasts from the ship's main guns jolted the battle-center crews like so many nearby train-wrecks, but even that was better than the hells of flash and stunning overpressure to which the big guns subjected everyone on the upper decks. Enemy shell-hits were a threat only if they were severe enough to endanger the entire vessel.