Far to seaward, a storm or the broadsides of massed battlefleets thundered. The jungle responded with a fluting cry that seemed even more terrible because of its supernal beauty. Wilding shivered.
"I could maybe get Number One fan spinning, sir," said Leaf. "The blades are dinged, that's all. But we can't pressurize the plenum chamber with just one fan."
"You've studied this stuff, haven't you?" Brainard said.
"There aren't any skirts left to patch, anyhow," Caffey said morosely. He massaged his chest where the crash harness had held him during the multiple impacts. The gesture reminded Wilding of how much his own ribs hurt.
"Where's Holman?" Newton asked. "When's he comin' back for us?"
The coxswain sounded curious rather than aggrieved. He stared out to sea.
There was no sign of K67's consort, but the surface boiled in a natural frenzy. Living things devoured one other and the flesh of creatures the salvos had killed.
"Wilding!" Brainard snapped. "You studied surface life, didn't you? Your file said you did."
Wilding turned around, blinking in surprise. The CO had been talking to him. . . .
Brainard's face was hard. Not angry, but lacking any sign of weakness or mercy. The ensign was three calendar years younger than Wilding himself, but Brainard had been born with a soul as solid as the planetary mantle. He belonged here, and maybe the other crewmen did as well; but Hal Wilding would vanish into this environment as swiftly as the tags of bloody froth where the sharks fed.
"Yessir, that's right," Wilding said aloud. He heard with horror the crisp insouciance with which he clothed his words. It was the only protection he had, and it was no protection at all. "I have some course work in ecology."
Brainard wasn't one of his Twelve Family acquaintances, before whom Prince Hal needed to conceal serious endeavor. "Ah, I completed a degree program, as a matter of fact."
Wilding looked up at the jungle humping into the white sky behind them. "I don't have a great deal of specific knowledge, though. The rate of mutation here is so high that new data is generally obsolete by the time it's catalogued."
"I'll tell you where that bastard Holman is," Caffey muttered to the coxswain. "He's left us here because he's too chickenshit to risk coming ashore to take a look for us."
Brainard turned and pointed his right index finger at the torpedoman. "Drop that," he said quietly. "Nobody's been abandoned."
"That last salvo may have been right on top of them," Wilding suggested. He tried to remember the moments in which the man-made waterspout swelled to engulf K67. "They were—"
"Drop that!" Brainard repeated, the syllables sharp as gunshots. Wilding's tongue and heart froze.
"We aren't K70's problem," Brainard continued softly. "We're our problem. We're alive, we've got our equipment. So we're going to make things all right."
"We got fuel for three months, just running the auxiliary," Leaf said. His voice was surprisingly perky considering the shape he'd been in minutes before.
"If the auxiliary don't pack it in, you mean," retorted Caffey.
"We should be all right for food," Wilding said, pretending that he didn't believe the torpedoman's gloom was a realistic assessment of their chances. "We can supplement emergency rations with the flesh of most of the animals. Maybe even a few plants."
"The laser communicator can double as a portable," Brainard said, ignoring everyone else's comments. "Is it still functioning?"
"Look, Fish," Leaf said to the torpedoman, "the auxiliary'll still be running after you 'n me 're fertilizer. Anyway, I could rig Number One motor to power the air system."
Wilding unlatched the laser unit and lifted it so that the prongs feeding power were free of the jack on the bottom of the chassis. The self-contained module had its own sighting and stabilization apparatus. It was supposed to be capable of an hour's continuous operation on its integral batteries.
Wilding switched the unit on. It ran its self-test program without hesitation. "Checks out," he said and lowered it into its cradle again. A weight of fifteen pounds made the module portable but not exactly handy.
"Hey!" shouted Yee from the gun tub. "Hey!"
Everyone turned to follow the line the twin guns pointed to starboard. Thirty feet from K67, a bubble of methane rose to the surface of the bog and plopped.
Twenty feet beyond, in line with the wrecked torpedoboat, a six-foot dimple in the marsh marked the spot a previous bubble had burst.
Yee fired a short burst. The muzzle blasts flattened a broad arc of the nearest vegetation. Explosive bullets cracked into the reed tops with dazzling flashes. The gun tub would not depress low enough to rake the semi-solid ground.