Ian invited himself and five of his women over to breakfast, a bit of a crowd for the small breakfast room. I had the meal set up on a big porch that overlooked the ocean. Or that is to say, I moved the party out to the porch and breakfast was waiting for us.
It was another beautiful day. Actually, the weather on San Sebastian was usually great, barring the odd hurricane, and those were fun, too. I knew I couldn't be hurt. Who would invent all this stuff if I wasn't here to do it?
"Tom, the girls tell me there are some nine-meter racing yachts in the harbor. My crew and I challenge you and yours to twice around the island. What do you say?"
"Well, sure. Barb'll line up our four best sailors and we'll take you on. Care to make a wager on it?"
"A bet, Tom? How? When you have everything possible in a material sense, what significance can there possibly be in winning or losing money?"
"Huh. You got a point there. Okau. My complete Poul Anderson collection up against your Harley. Assuming they're still in Michigan."
"Hardly a fair bet, Tom, but then it's not going to be a fair race. You've forgotten that I'm a whiz at fluid dynamics, whereas you've never even had a course in it. And what is sailing but simply applied fluid dynamics? I'm going to beat your socks off."
The twelve of us were walking across the drawbridge in yachting garb when Hasenpfeffer ran up. His bandage was gone and his nose looked as straight as ever.
"What are you gentlemen up to? There's work to be done!"
"Well then, you better get cracking, son, because you get to handle it all by your lonesome! We're going to go ride on some sailboats!"
Actually, I'd never been sailing before.
"But don't you realize our obligations to these people? And what they can do for us?"
"Look, I don't remember signing any contracts and I like what they're doing just fine." I had my arms around Barb and Tammy, and gave them both a squeeze.
"Oh, that, certainly. But look, look here." Hasenpfeffer was vigorously sticking a pencil into the fingers of his left hand. "That hurts, I tell you. It hurts painfully."
"Then stop doing it, stupid!"
"No, Tom! He's telling us that the nerves in his hand have regenerated, that their medical technology is better than ours."
"So?"
"So then they might be able to get me back my foot and you your hair."
"Good idea. Somebody make us some doctor appointments for right after the boat ride. And thinking about it, I want to ride horses down to the harbor."
Two cowgirls promptly rode up with a dozen empty horses. We saddled up and left a frustrated Hasenpfeffer standing in the plaza.
"Tom, maybe we should have invited him along."
"So send one of the girls back with an invite. But he won't come. He's too busy pontificating with the local bureaucrats."
The palaces were at the north end of the island, and we were a good hour riding to the city. The land between was flat and fertile, with well-tended fields and orchards. We passed one big dairy farm, but mostly it was all in fruit and vegetables.
The few farmers we saw were smiling, well-built fellows, and the one woman I saw driving a Ford tractor was as beautiful as any of the dozen girls in our party.
The city did not have the usual suburban sprawl of single-family homes. The fields stopped where a half mile of parks started, and where the parks ended, high-rise buildings began.
No, that's not quite true. The parks never actually stopped, but continued right through most of the city. It was a city without streets. Sidewalks, yes, but no provisions were made for motor vehicles unless you drove on the lawns. There weren't any cars at all.
"Subways," Ian said. "These buildings all have to be connected with subways. Somebody really spent with a lavish hand. . . ."
"Well, maybe not. Remember what you were saying once about cheap tunneling and underground highways?"
"Hey, yeah." Ian obviously regretted being on the surface. "We'll have to explore the things on the way back."
We were attracting a fair amount of attention. People were leaning out of windows, waving. The park around us was starting to fill up.
"Barb, if we get involved in a ticker-tape parade, I'm turning back. Somehow, tell everybody to just go about their usual business."
"Yes, Tom," she said, and glanced at her watch. Without any one individual doing anything unusual, the crowds quickly thinned out.
Most of the city was high rise, but there was a certain eclecticism about it. No two buildings were alike, and there was a cluster of amusement sections, "Old Town," "China Town" and "Greek Town," which had a feeling of brand new quaintness, sort of like a world's fair.
Yet, despite the phoniness of it all, the city of Morrow was truly beautiful, with sweeping modern structures and meticulous copies of every great piece of architecture in the world.
And it had such healthy, happy population! Thinking about it, I saw no one who looked over forty nor any under fifteen.
I turned to Ian. "Hey. They don't have any old people."
"Perhaps their medical technology is such that people don't have to look old."
"Maybe. They don't have any kids, either."
"Good God, you're right! Ming Po! Where are the children?"
She stared at the pommel of her saddle and was silent.
"Barb?" She just looked away. All twelve of our companions had been chattering a moment before, but suddenly they were silent.
"Well. Another little mystery."
"But . . . But it's so unnatural, Tom!"
"Yeah, it's that and more."
We wound our way towards the harbor through an industrial section. Here suddenly the parks ended, and what wasn't built of concrete was made of steel. Huge blocks of grey buildings surrounded us, identified only by large, painted numbers. Thinking about it, except in old town, where garish signs were part of the decor, there had been very few signs, and those few were small and discreet.
These were factories with very little noise, and no smoke or dirt at all. There were trucks here, and Hysters scurrying between buildings. Our nautical garb and horses were more out of place than ever.
The harbor was more of the same. A fair-sized tanker was being pumped out, a huge container ship was being unloaded and a second was steaming into the bay. There were a hundred small pleasure craft coming and going, and three sleek racing yachts were tied to a dock. But what caught my eye were two very deadly looking gun boats. They were small, as naval vessels go, maybe a hundred fifty feet long and thirty wide. They had big flat areas that told of phase-array radar antennas, and each sported a dozen gun turrets. There was some sort of covered torpedo tube high on the bow, above the water line.
"Tom, that unloading platform . . . It looks like the hoists are somehow sticking to the ceiling of the bodacious thing. . . . Would you mind if we delayed the race for an hour or so? I mean, they're so damn fast and efficient. . . ."
"Yeah, sure. Only I want to check out the gun boats."
My crowd automatically split off to join me for my naval tour. Both of the cowgirls (alias French maid and bath girl. I recognized them.) stayed on the dock to take the horses back to wherever they came from, while the rest of us took an "impromptu" tour of the gunboat Hotspur.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gunboats and Yatchs
There were about fifty people working on deck, and we eventually found another fifty doing maintenance below.
The boat's skipper, Leftenant Fitzsimmon, spoke with a crisp British accent that he probably got out of a World War II English propaganda film. His mannerisms followed suit, with much flashing of eyes and a tendency to strike heroic poses. He was a decent enough looking fellow, yet somehow he lacked the beefy smoothness of most of the other men I'd seen on the island.
"Right, sir. Shall we start at the bottom and work up?"
I don't know much about boats, but I know when to be impressed by good machinery. That little ship carried at least four inches of armor on all of
her external surfaces, and twice that in some places. Her hull was a single, huge alloy casting, and her streamlined deck and upper works was a second single piece. There were no portholes, no windows except on the bridge, and two massive powered doors provided the only entrances.
"Hey, wouldn't that make it hard if you had to get out in a hurry?"
"Not a very likely circumstance, sir. Oh, I suppose that if more than three of her water tights were badly holed, she'd sink. But even then I think I'd rather go down with her than put to sea in a rubber raft."
Seeing me stare, he continued, "Oh, no heroics, sir. It's just that she's as strong as any submarine and just as watertight. If she sank, likely someone would be along directly to pull the old girl up."
So they did the "get it when you want it" routine with themselves as well as with us. It figured.
Much of the interior space was taken up by four huge Rolls-Royce gas turbine engines.
"She'll cruise at fifty knots, and hit sixty in a pinch. Planing hull, don't you know. She draws eighteen feet in harbor, but at cruise she'll raise up to six."
"Yeah, but those engines look hungry."
"Quite right, sir, and I suppose you'd say that's her weak point. She can only cruise for twelve hours without refueling. Yet in a left-handed way, it increases our security. We could defend San Sebastian fairly adequately, I expect, but we simply don't have the range to attack anyone. It makes us a safe neighbor, don't you think?"
Fire control was just forward of the engines and below the bridge. Judging by the heavily padded chairs and the seat belts, the Hotspur had a pretty rough ride.
"Twelve turret control stations here, sir. One for each of the deck turrets. We have eight machine gun turrets and four missile launchers. This station is for the fire control chief and that forward is for the Exocet operator."
"Exocet?"
"It's a French surface-to-surface missile, sir, with enough of a punch to take out just about any modern warship. Not an old battle wagon like the Missouri, of course. At least not with one shot, but we carry four aboard. Our Monday punch, as it were. Launched from the bow tube you doubtless noticed."
"Oh, I thought that was for torpedoes."
"No, no torpedoes, I'm afraid. We carry a dozen homing depth charges though, which are fairly similar. They pop out the back."
Leftenant Fitzsimmon's accent sort of came and went depending on whether he was thinking about it.
The auxiliary bridge was forward of gun control. Most of the electronic equipment was down here, with repeaters going up to the "main" bridge. One odd fitting turned out to be a periscope.
"It eliminates the need of having lookouts up in a crow's nest, sir. It has a pair of gyro stabilized lends' a hundred feet or so above the deck, and doesn't retract like the periscopes used on subs. Also, it doubles as a range finder, in case our radar goes west."
The story below was taken up with fuel and ammunition storage.
"That's about it down here, sir. Shall we go up to the main bridge?"
"That's it? Don't you have any crew's quarters or a galley?"
"No sir. With only twelve hours of fuel, our usual patrol is eight hours. There's a coffee pot on the bridge, and we brown bag it for lunch."
Barb and the others followed us up a ladder to the bridge. They'd been quiet, probably bored, having seen it all before.
The machine gun turrets were hemispherical, reminiscent of a belly gun on an old bomber. Four of them hung over the side of the deck so as to be able to defend against boarders. They could actually shoot straight downward. The other four were mounted more conventionally. Repairmen had the covering of one of them removed, exposing a Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun with a smaller thirty-caliber "mini" beside it. Above the two sat a telescope with a TV camera attached. There was a third, empty mounting on the servo platform between the two guns.
"Hey, what normally goes here?"
"Well, nothing, sir. Presently that is, but you never can tell what the designers will come up with." I noticed that he was trying not to stare enviously at the "sword" clipped to my belt.
"Right. I don't see how you operate these guns. Where does the man sit?"
"Below, sir, in gun control. I showed you."
"What, nobody up here at all?"
"At full speed, this deck is a dangerous place in peacetime and in daylight. Fighting from it would be absurd. Between the radar and a TV camera on each turret, the operator can see everything he needs to. Loading is automatic, of course."
"Well then, what do you need with all these people? There must be a hundred aboard."
"This isn't my crew, sir. Maintenance comes under the Harbor Master. The Hotspur's compliment is twenty-four. They'll be along directly. We're due to go out in a half hour to relieve the Nonesuch."
"So, there are more ships than just these two?"
"Six, sir. The other four are on patrol."
"Oh. Is that usual? Two in and four out?"
"It's typical, sir, although we try not to be too regular in our movements."
I did some quick calculations. "I see. I gather then that you have multiple crews, like some of the U. S. Navy submarines."
"Oh no, sir. I wouldn't want to share the Hotspur with another skipper."
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Barb turning red, shading to purple.
"Hey, but you've told me that this ship averages two eight-hour patrols a day, every day, with no facilities for sleeping or eating. If you're the only captain, that's an absolutely killing schedule."
"Hardly that, sir. In fact, we're just coming off a two-week holiday."
Barb looked like she was ready to explode.
"So, who was driving the boat when you were away?"
"Why, we were! One doubles back and that sort of thing. Surely you understand that the Hotspur represents a considerable capital investment, and it would be foolish to let her sit idle."
Oh yeah. These people were pulling the same stunt that Hasenpfeffer pulled in his office. Only they did it on an everyday basis!
"Yeah. Yeah. I see. Leftenant, you have a fine ship. A lot of the equipment has familiar manufacturers' name tags, but I've never seen anything like her. Where was she built?"
"Right here, sir, in that dry dock."
"All six of them?"
"Well, not exactly, sir. I mean we only had to build her once, of course, and then refit her each time she came back."
Oh. Whoopee. Shit.
"Yeah, thanks for the tour, Leftenant. I'd probably think of some more questions only my head's hurting. Barb! Gather up the girls! Let's go sailboating!"
We met Ian's party by the yachts, and he was babbling on about a building big enough to drive a container ship into, and these hoists that ran on variable tracks on the ceiling that unloaded and reloaded the thing in a half hour. I wasn't interested.
"Hey, you girls! Get busy casting off the scuppers and shivering the bowlines and doing all that other nautical stuff to make this thing go!" I went down into a spartan cabin to rub my temples and let this latest set of data get digested.
Soon, one of the women came in and started rubbing my neck and shoulders, which felt delicious. Before long, she was rubbing me all over. I found out that her name was Kathy. She was my librarian with her hair fixed differently and without her phony horn-rimmed glasses. We enjoyed each other.
I was back on deck in time to wave at the Hotspur as she went by.
There was a complicated looking radio aboard. "I want to talk to Leftennnt Fitzsimmon. Any of you girls know how to work this thing?"
Tammy did, and Fitzsimmon was on the air within seconds. At the same time the Hotspur made a fast "U" turn.
"Yes, sir. Can we be of assistance?"
"No problems, Leftenant. I just thought of another question."
The gunboat made another about-face. "Of course, sir."
"The five times your ship "came back," was it damaged? Shot up, I mean."
"I really couldn't tell you, sir. I w
asn't there at the time, and it's not the sort of thing that they'd tell a bloke about. Rather like telling him when he's going to die, what? Simply not done. Anything else I can help you with?"
"Yes. Just what is it that you do out there for sixteen hours a day?"
"It's mostly a matter of dashing about and staring at empty ocean, sir. About every fifth day we come on a fisherman inside the ten-mile limit. At least they say they're just fishermen. Just a matter of escorting them back out, usually. Once we assisted the Brazilian Navy in a rescue job. It's been pretty boring since the submarines stopped coming."
"Submarines, you say?"
"Yes, sir. Used to be scads of them. American, Russian, French, British—even a Chinaman, once. Lots of chaps were curious about what we were doing out here."
"Right. Just what are we doing out here?"
"I'm out here patrolling the ten-mile limit, sir. Couldn't rightly say about the rest."
"Huh. Okay. What did you do about the subs?"
"At first, we couldn't do much at all but stay on top of them and drop the odd hand grenade now and then to let them know we still cared, sir. Then one of the technical boffins came up with a variation on our homing depth charges. It has a magnetic grapple that clamps onto the beggar's hull. Then it has an underwater speaker and a tape recorder that says—I think I can recite it—'I am a five-hundred-pound bomb. You are violating the territorial sovereignty of the State of San Sebastian. If you depart immediately, I will detach at the ten-mile limit. If you continue in your violation, I will detonate in sixty seconds. I repeat . . . ' It worked wonders, sir, even if the equipment took up all the available room, and there was none left for a bomb. None of the blighters saw fit to call our bluff, so it was jolly well effective!"
Years later, I found out that the real reason that the various world powers stopped sending subs around was that satellites and U-2 style aircraft could do a better job of keeping an eye on us, and do it cheaper. Ian and I were pretty much unaware of the fact that a lot of very powerful people were very interested in what we were doing.
"Lovely," I said. "But is it a good idea to go around transmitting stuff like that unencrypted on the radio?"
Conrad's Time Machine Page 12
