"What can he say?"

"He'll search the area, for survivors and wreckage. When he finds neither the only conclusion he can reach will be that the Idaho was instantaneously sunk with the loss of all hands. Remember we were under attack at the time. Remember that intense blue light that flared around the horizon? To the men in the other ships that light may have looked like an explosion of the magazines of the Idaho. The admiral commanding your task force may report that a bomb seemingly pa.s.sed down the smoke stack of the Idaho and the resulting explosion touched off the powder magazine."

Craig paused and in growing perplexity watched what Higgins was doing.

The captain was vigorously kicking the steel wall of the bridge. He was pounding his right foot against it as if he was trying to kick it down.

There was a look of pain on his face. Craig watched for a second, then grinned.

"Does it hurt?" he said.

"Yes!"

"Then it must be real," the big man suggested.

Higgins left off kicking the wall. Craig knew _why_ he had been kicking it--to a.s.sure himself that the wall was really there. Higgins was a man in a nightmare but instead of pinching himself to see if he was awake, he kicked the wall.

"d.a.m.n it!" the captain muttered. "Why did this have to happen to us?"

"Destiny," Craig mused. "Fate. How did the steamer I was on happen to get bombed? How did I happen to be in the life-boat that wasn't machine-gunned? How did we happen to get picked up? The only answer is fate."

"That's a darned poor answer," Higgins said.

"It's the only answer," Craig replied. "Your dove is coming back."

"What? Have you gone wacky on me?" the startled captain answered.

Craig pointed to the sea. Barely visible on the horizon was a tiny dot.

"Oh, the plane," the captain said, watching the dot. It was moving swiftly toward them.

Craig watched it, a frown on his face. "I thought you sent out only _one_ plane," he said.

"That's right. I did send one."

"Well," Craig said slowly, "unless my eyes have gone bad, three planes are coming back."

"What?--But that's impossible?" Higgins s.n.a.t.c.hed a pair of gla.s.ses, swiftly focused them on the plane. It was still only a dot in the sky.

Two smaller dots were following swiftly behind it.

"Maybe a couple of those lizard-birds are chasing it?" Craig hazarded.

"Nonsense!" the captain retorted. "It can fly rings around those things.

Those lizards are too slow to keep up with it. But there is something following it."

Higgins kept the gla.s.ses to his eyes, straining to see the approaching dots.

"If those things are planes," he muttered, and there was a note of exultation in his voice, "then Michaelson, and his talk of s.p.a.ce-time faults, is nuts."

What Higgins meant was, that if the two dots were planes, then what had happened to the Idaho had been an illusion of some kind. Planes could exist only in a modern world. They were one of mankind's most recent inventions.

The stubby-winged scouting plane from the ship was easily visible now.

It was driving h.e.l.l for leather for the Idaho. Craig watched it with growing apprehension.

"That pilot is running away from something," he said.

"Impossible!" Higgins snapped.

The plane swept nearer. It was flying at a low alt.i.tude. The two dots were hard on its heels. They were overtaking it. And--they were no longer dots.

"Planes!" Higgins shouted.

Craig kept silent. They were planes all right, but--He saw something lance out from one of them. The scouting plane leaped upward in a screaming climb. Something reached toward it again, touched it. It began to lose alt.i.tude. It was still coming toward the Idaho but it was on a long slant.

"It's being attacked!" Higgins shouted, pain in his voice.

Over the Idaho the call to battle stations rolled. Again the mighty vessel surged to the tempo of men going into action.

The scouting plane was dropping lower and lower. It hit the water. One of the pursuing ships dived down at it.

The anti-aircraft batteries let go. For the second time the Idaho was defending herself. Thunder rolled across the waters.

The attacking plane was within point-blank range. Mushrooms of black smoke puffed into existence around it, knocked it around in the air, caught it with a direct hit.

A gigantic explosion sounded.

A ball of smoke burst where the plane had been. Fragments floated outward, slid downward to the sea. There was not enough of the plane left for identification.

The second plane lifted upward. For the first time Craig got a good look at it. His first impression, illogical as that was, was that it was a j.a.p ship. When it lifted up he got a good look at it. It wasn't a j.a.p plane. No marks of the rising sun were visible on its body.

Craig saw then that it wasn't a plane at all. It had stubby, sloping wings, but the wings were apparently more for the purpose of stabilizing flight than for the lift they might impart. It looked like a flying wedge.

He could not tell how it was propelled. If it had a motor, he could not see it.

It was fast, faster than greased lightning.

Apparently its pilot had not noticed the battleship until the barrage of anti-aircraft fire had destroyed the first plane. Not until then did he even know the Idaho existed. Like a bird that had been suddenly startled by the appearance of a hawk, the plane leaped into the air. Sh.e.l.ls were still bursting around it. It went up so fast it left the barrage completely behind. Its climb was almost vertical. It rose to about twenty thousand feet, leveled off. Twice it circled the battleship, ignoring the sh.e.l.l bursts, that tried to keep up with it.

Then it turned in the direction from which it had come. It was out of sight in seconds.

There was silence on the bridge of the Idaho.

"Holy cats!" Craig heard an officer mutter. "Somebody is crazy as h.e.l.l.

_We_ don't have planes that will fly like that and I know d.a.m.ned good and well they didn't have them a hundred thousand years ago!"

Was Michaelson wrong? Was he talking through his hat when he said the Idaho had been precipitated through a time fault into the remote past?