Seas of Venus(31)

Here on the Holy Trinity, sleeping crewmen had only a simple bed and a locker for a modicum of their personal effects—but the bunks were individual, and they were clamped to the deck at comfortable distances apart. Sleeping quarters in the domes themselves were far more cramped for any but the richest and most powerful.

Sal began clattering down a companionway. "No elevators?" Johnnie asked as his own boots doubled the racket on the slatted metal treads.

"We'll go up by the bridge lift," Sal said. "Most of 'em are shut down, like I said . . ."

He looked back over his shoulder with his wicked smile. "Besides, I can't think anyplace I'd less like t' be than trapped in an elevator cage because the power went off when the ship was getting the daylights pounded outa her."

They'd reached the lower-deck level, but Sal kept going down. He waved at the huge, dim shapes beyond the companionway. "Generator rooms for the forward starboard railguns," he said.

The companionway ended on the platform deck. The air was dank and seemed not to have stirred for ages. Instead of a single long passageway, the corridor was broken by watertight doors every twenty feet. For the moment, they were open, but a single switch on the bridge or battle center could close them all.

"Next stop, A Turret magazine," Sal said cheerfully. "How do you like her so far?"

So far she seems dingy and brutal and no more romantic than a slidewalk installation, Johnnie thought.

"She's really impressive," he said aloud.

The armored wall of the barbette enclosing the magazine was sixteen inches thick. The mechanism opened smoothly, but it seemed an ungodly long time before the drive unit withdrew the hatch far enough that the hinges could swing the plug out of the way.

"How long does it take to open it by hand if the power's off?" Johnnie asked.

"Hey, this is a battleship, not a ass-slapper," Sal laughed. "Things take time, right?"

The powder room was circular, with spokes of sealed, side-facing pentagonal bins in double racks built inward from the walls. The two ensigns had entered one of the wedge-shaped aisles between racks. Above them was a track-mounted handling apparatus, empty at the moment.

The air had a faint, not unpleasant odor. The room could have been a linen store.

"There's a four-man crew in each powder room during action," Sal explained as he unlatched one of the bins. "If everything's going right, they just sit on their hands . . . but with the shock of the main guns firing, stuff jumps around like you wouldn't believe."

Johnnie grinned tightly. "And that's if the other guys' shells aren't landing on you, I suppose?" he said.

Within the bin—filling it to the degree a cylinder could fill a pentagonal case—was a powder charge sheathed in transparent plastic.

"The inner casing's combustible," Sal noted. "But then, if something penetrates to the magazine, you got pretty big problems already."

"It's huge," Johnnie said, looking at the garbage can of propellant.

"And that's a half charge," Sal said complacently. "A full charge takes two bins—over twelve hundredweight. And if you think that's something, the shells—"

He pointed at the steel floor, indicating the bilge-level shell room beneath them.

"—weigh thirty-six hundredweight apiece. How'd you like to be where they land?"

The center of the powder room was a ten-foot diameter armored shaft. Waist-high hatches, big enough for men but intended for the powder charges, were positioned at the center of each aisle where they could be fed by the automatic handling apparatus—or, in an emergency, by the sweating human crew struggling with charges on a gurney.

A ladder led up from the powder magazine in a tube beside the hoist shaft. Sal strode to it and began to climb. "Come on," he directed. "This leads to the gun house."

"Isn't this hole dangerous in case the powder explodes?" Johnnie asked.

Sal laughed. "It's the blow-off vent," he explained. "The idea is, maybe it'll channel the blast up instead of blowing the sides out."

Johnnie blinked. "Will it work?" he asked. "The vent?"

"I'm just as glad I'll be a mile or so away if it comes to a test," Sal said. He laughed again, but his words were serious enough.

The vent plating was relatively light—two-inch, thick enough to redirect the powder flash which even the heaviest armor couldn't contain. Sal opened the hatch into the turret's gun house while the vent continued up its own angled path to the deck through the barbette wall.

"This," said Sal, rapping his knuckles on the barbette armor, "is a thirty-two-inch section, just like the turret face. Because it's above the main belt, you see, so it may have to take a direct hit by itself."