The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream.

by G.C.Edmondson.

I.

THOUGH HE was given to daydreams of a wooden ship and iron men era, Ensign Joseph Rate was captain of a wooden ship in a predominantly atomic navy. And a sailing ship at that!

The Alice was an 89-foot yawl, engaged in very secret work which involved countermeasures against enemy submarines. Since the Alice could move without thump- ings or engine noises, she was well suited for this kind of work. Ensign Joe Rate was less suited to be her skipper.

A year ago he had been one of Dr. Battlement's Bright Young Men, youngest a.s.sistant professor in the history of Athosburg College.

At the moment he was arguing with Dr. Krom. "If we don't start hauling your perverted - Christmas tree out right now there won't be time," he said. "That squall isn't going to wait."

Dr. Krom sighed and pa.s.sed a hand through his shock of white hair. "We could be through in another hour,"

he protested. Joe showed no signs of weakening so the doctor played his trump card. "Finish these tests to- day and we'll spend the next two weekends in San Diego."

A glance at the bulletin board would have advised the old man that Ensign Rate and the Alice were al- ready scheduled to spend tomorrow in port. Nothing could have given Joe more pleasure than not doing so.

Joe knew perfectly well Dr. Krom saw him as a navy- minded oaf. He reflected charitably that he didn't re- gard the doctor as a mad scientist. Feebleminded, per- haps . . . "Will you absolve me if we have to cut it loose?" He spoke loud enough to be overheard and re- peated come Board of Inquiry day.

"You won't have to," Dr. Krom said confidently. He was not a meteorologist.

"On thy head be it," Joe muttered.

Twenty minutes later the yawl was plunging with that corkscrew motion peculiar to sailing hulls when stripped of the canvas which steadies them. Sailors fought to lash the flogging main boom someplace where Dr. Krom's nightmare would not make the yawl list quite so soggily aport and perhaps work a trifle less doggedly at smashing the midships planking.

Krom's Christmas Tree was a fantastic, hydrophone- studded pyramid which was grunted overboard with much winching and taking of the Lord's Name in vain while accomplices in the dinghy exploded half-pound charges of TNT at varying distances. While the Christ- mas tree draped from the end of the main boom no sail could be set, and the Alice listed uncomfortably.

"Be careful," Dr. Krom begged. "Two years' appro- priation went into that."

"You'd better go below, sir," Ensign Rate said.

"But maybe I can help."

Joe choked back his I-told-you-so as he glanced at the skinny old man. "Let me handle it," he said. "We pay taxes too." Joe had learned a little about handling superannuated genius back in his History Department days-but not enough.

If getting an education had not exactly meant starv- ing in a garret, still it had not been easy for Joe. Were it not for his phenomenal memory the hours he'd spent keeping body and soul together might have kept the young man from pa.s.sing a single course. As it was,

college had seemed to him a mere variation and ex- pansion on themes he could still quote verbatim from sixth grade texts. But he had never learned how to out- guess Dr. Battlement or his daughter. He wondered if he'd ever be able to handle Dr. Krom.

Ten hectic minutes pa.s.sed before the Alice's boom was secured. Under bare poles and with her diesel bare- ly ticking over, the yawl crabbed into the swell. Krom's monster hung from a hundred feet of cable and would be safe, providing the Alice maintained steerageway and didn't drift into shallow water. The squall blew the tops from short, steep waves. A thunderhead drew lightning from a wavecrest a mile away. There hadn't been time for oilskins and Joe was soaked. "You all right?" he asked. The helmsman nodded so he ducked below.'

Gorson and Cookie were fumbling with something in- side a bell jar as he pa.s.sed through the galley. "Coffee, Skipper?" Cook asked. Joe shook his head. He knew he ought to say something about the still but they had been in the navy longer than he. The chief had a theory that their dried-apple brandy's foul taste came from too much heat-hence their experiments with low temper- ature vacuum distillation.

He went into his cabin and rummaged for dry clothes.

In the galley Cookie humped energetically over a hand vacuum pump while Gorson studied the gleaming cop- per coil inside the bell jar.

At that moment lightning struck.

Most of the charge bled harmlessly down the Alice's standing rigging to the waterline, but there was enough left over to stand everybody's hair on end. b.a.l.l.s of St.

Emo's fire danced merrily about the ship's innards and the single echoless CRACK was felt rather than heard.

In the galley Cookie and Gorson stared at the melted coil which crumpled amid shards of the shattered bell jar. "Holy b.a.l.l.s," Gorson mumbled, "Hey Skipper, look!"

But Ensign Rate, clad only in non-regulation skivvy drawers, was clambering up the ladder.

Seaman Guilbeau stared gla.s.sily at the binnacle. The Alice was 90 off course. The ensign pushed him away and fought the struggling yawl back up. Schwartz and Rose, who had been tending the winch, sat up dazedly.

Dr. Krom's bushy head emerged from the forward scut- tle. "Stop worrying," Joe called. "Your monster's still with us." He glanced upward to see how much of the Alice's standing rigging had been cremated by the flash.

There were no loose stays dangling. No one was dead.

He reached for a cigarette and abruptly learned he was only drawers distant from naked.

The squall was dying now and Joe was troubled by a feeling that something was wrong. Then he knew what it was: the wind was blowing from the wrong direction.

Freedy came on deck. "Radio's dead," he reported.

"Both ways?"

The radioman shrugged. "Nothing coming in. Can't tell if I'm getting out."

The bos'n came on deck and took the wheel. Joe herded the dazed deck watch below. Cookie was sweep- ing up the shattered bell jar when he pa.s.sed through the galley. "Any other damage?" the cook asked. Joe shook his head and went into his cabin to finish dress- ing.

"Mr. Rate-hey, Joe!" Gorson screamed. The skipper abandoned his coffee and scrambled on deck again.

The bos'n was staring at a ship off the port bow. It was also a wooden ship, with a single furled square sail.

Bearded faces stared from behind shields which lined the side. An armored and helmeted man braced himself at the dragon figurehead and chanted as oars flashed.

"A fine day to be shooting a movie," Joe growled.

The actors shipped oars and drifted toward the Alice. "How'd you make out in the squall?" Joe shouted.

The man in the bow yelled back. Joe didn't under-

stand him. He yelled again. When Joe didn't under- stand a second time the bright bearded man threw a spear. It landed with a thunk and stood thrilling in the after scuttle. "Hey, take it easy," Joe yelled, "That's navy property! What studio do you guys work for any- way?"

Abruptly, bearded and armored oarsmen stood be- hind the bulwark and more spears winged toward the Alice. Gorson's mouth opened and he flattened him- self in the foot-deep c.o.c.kpit.

"I knew all actors were nuts," Joe muttered. "But this's carrying Stanislavsky too d.a.m.n far!"

Helmeted men crowded into the Viking ship's bow, brandishing half moon axes. The ships were only fifty feet apart now. Joe scrambled from behind the binnacle and rammed the throttle forward. The diesel roared and the Alice strained for her full ten knots. But some- thing was wrong. She wasn't answering her helm proper- ly.

Gorson sat up. "Oh no!" he moaned. Krom's Christ- mas tree still dangled a hundred feet below the Alice's port side. Straining against it, the Alice swung hard aport-straight for the boatload of spearhappy actors.

Gorson and Joe knocked each other down in their scram- ble for the reversing lever. There was a splintering noise as the Alice knifed into lapstrake planking. The two men looked at each other. "Shall we jump over- board arm in arm?" Joe asked.

But things were not finished. Robbed of forward mo- mentum, the Alice belatedly answered her reversing gear. As she backed away water rushed into the hole in the other ship. Men were boiling out of the Alice's hatches now and the Alice, still shackled to Krom's Christmas tree, was doing her level best to swing full circle and ram her stern into the Viking ship's opposite side. And the reversing gear was stuck again!

Joe had to throttle down before he could kick it into

forward. Water boiled under her stern and the yawl stopped a scant dozen feet from a second collision.

Gorson meanwhile had sprinted to the winch and was lowering Krom's Christmas tree to give the Alice a longer tether.

The Viking ship was settling on an even keel and Joe realized he would have to cut Krom's nightmare loose if he hoped to save any of the actors. He hoped the wetting would cure some of their rambunctiousness.

And what had gotten into the Coast Guard to let a hundred armor-clad men go asea in this overgrown ca- noe without so much as a life jacket between them?