<h2>IV</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">See,</span> what we really wanted was
an ocean liner.</p>
<p>The rest of us probably would
have been happy enough to stay
in Lehigh County, but Arthur was
getting restless.</p>
<p>He was a terrible responsibility,
in a way. I suppose there were a
hundred thousand people or so
left in the country, and not more
than forty or fifty of them were
like Arthur—I mean if you want
to call a man in a prosthetic tank
a “person.” But we all did. We’d
got pretty used to him. We’d
shipped together in the war—and
survived together, as a few of the
actual fighters did, those who were
lucky enough to be underwater or
high in the air when the ICBMs
landed—and as few civilians did.</p>
<p>I mean there wasn’t much
chance for surviving, for anybody
who happened to be breathing the
open air when it happened. I mean
you can do just so much about
making a “clean” H-bomb, and
if you cut out the long-life fission
products, the short-life ones get
pretty deadly.</p>
<p>Anyway, there wasn’t much
damage, except of course that
everybody was dead. All the surface
vessels lost their crews. All
the population of the cities were
gone. And so then, when Arthur
slipped on the gangplank coming
into Newport News and broke his
fool neck, why, we had the whole
staff of the <i>Sea Sprite</i> to work on
him. I mean what else did the
surgeons have to do?</p>
<p>Of course, that was a long time
ago.</p>
<p>But we’d stayed together. We
headed for the farm country
around Allentown, Pennsylvania,
because Arthur and Vern Engdahl
claimed to know it pretty
well. I think maybe they had some
hope of finding family or friends,
but naturally there wasn’t any of
that. And when you got into the
inland towns, there hadn’t been
much of an attempt to clean them
up. At least the big cities and the
ports had been gone over, in some
spots anyway, by burial squads.
Although when we finally decided
to move out and went to Philadelphia—</p>
<p>Well, let’s be fair; there had
been fighting around there after
the big fight. Anyway, that wasn’t
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page26" title="26"> </SPAN>so very uncommon. That was one
of the reasons that for a long time—four
or five years, at any rate—we
stayed away from big cities.</p>
<p>We holed up in a big farmhouse
in Lehigh County. It had its own
generator from a little stream, and
that took care of Arthur’s power
needs; and the previous occupants
had been just crazy about stashing
away food. There was enough
to last a century, and that took
care of the two of us. We appreciated
that. We even took the old
folks out and gave them a decent
burial. I mean they’d all been in
the family car, so we just had to
tow it to a gravel pit and push it
in.</p>
<p>The place had its own well, with
an electric pump and a hot-water
system—oh, it was nice. I was sorry
to leave but, frankly, Arthur
was driving us nuts.</p>
<p>We never could make the television
work—maybe there weren’t
any stations near enough. But we
pulled in a couple of radio stations
pretty well and Arthur got a big
charge out of listening to them—see,
he could hear four or five at
a time and I suppose that made
him feel better than the rest of us.</p>
<p>He heard that the big cities
were cleaned up and every one of
them seemed to want immigrants—they
were pleading, pleading all
the time, like the TV-set and
vacuum-cleaner people used to in
the old days; they guaranteed
we’d like it if we only came to live
in Philly, or Richmond, or Baltimore,
or wherever. And I guess
Arthur kind of hoped we might
find another pross. And then—well,
Engdahl came up with this idea
of an ocean liner.</p>
<p>It figured. I mean you get out
in the middle of the ocean and
what’s the difference what it’s like
on land? And it especially appealed
to Arthur because he
wanted to do some surface sailing.
He never had when he was real—I
mean when he had arms and
legs like anybody else. He’d gone
right into the undersea service the
minute he got out of school.</p>
<p>And—well, sailing was what
Arthur knew something about and
I suppose even a prosthetic man
wants to feel useful. It was like
Amy said: He could be hooked
up to an automated factory—</p>
<p>Or to a ship.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak">HQ for the Major’s Temporary
Military Government—that’s
what the sign said—was on the
91st floor of the Empire State
Building, and right there that tells
you something about the man. I
mean you know how much power
it takes to run those elevators all
the way up to the top? But the
Major must have liked being able
to look down on everybody else.</p>
<p>Amy Bankhead conducted me
to his office and sat me down to
wait for His Military Excellency
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page27" title="27"> </SPAN>to arrive. She filled me in on him,
to some degree. He’d been an absolute
nothing before the war; but
he had a reserve commission in
the Air Force, and when things
began to look sticky, they’d called
him up and put him in a Missile
Master control point, underground
somewhere up around Ossining.</p>
<p>He was the duty officer when it
happened, and naturally he hadn’t
noticed anything like an enemy
aircraft, and naturally the anti-missile
missiles were still rusting
in their racks all around the city;
but since the place had been operating
on sealed ventilation, the
duty complement could stay there
until the short half-life radioisotopes
wore themselves out.</p>
<p>And then the Major found out
that he was not only in charge
of the fourteen men and women of
his division at the center—he was
ranking United States Military Establishment
officer farther than the
eye could see. So he beat it, fast
as he could, for New York, because
what Army officer doesn’t
dream about being stationed in
New York? And he set up his
Temporary Military Government—and
that was nine years ago.</p>
<p>If there hadn’t been plenty to
go around, I don’t suppose he
would have lasted a week—none
of these city chiefs would have.
But as things were, he was in on
the ground floor, and as newcomers
trickled into the city, his
boys already had things nicely organized.</p>
<p>It was a soft touch.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, we were about a week
getting settled in New York
and things were looking pretty
good. Vern calmed me down by
pointing out that, after all, we had
to sell Arthur, and hadn’t we come
out of it plenty okay?</p>
<p>And we had. There was no
doubt about it. Not only did we
have a fat price for Arthur, which
was useful because there were a
lot of things we would have to buy,
but we both had jobs working
for the Major.</p>
<p>Vern was his specialist in the
care and feeding of Arthur and
I was his chief of office routine—and,
as such, I delighted his fussy
little soul, because by adding what
I remembered of Navy protocol
to what he was able to teach me
of Army routine, we came up with
as snarled a mass of red tape as
any field-grade officer in the whole
history of all armed forces had
been able to accumulate. Oh, I
tell you, nobody sneezed in New
York without a report being made
out in triplicate, with eight endorsements.</p>
<p>Of course there wasn’t anybody
to send them to, but that didn’t
stop the Major. He said with determination:
“Nobody’s ever going
to chew <em>me</em> out for non-compliance
with regulations—even if I
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page28" title="28"> </SPAN>have to invent the regulations myself!”</p>
<p>We set up in a bachelor apartment
on Central Park South—the
Major had the penthouse; the
whole building had been converted
to barracks—and the first chance
we got, Vern snaffled some transportation
and we set out to find
an ocean liner.</p>
<p>See, the thing was that an ocean
liner isn’t easy to steal. I mean
we’d scouted out the lay of the land
before we ever entered the city
itself, and there were plenty of
liners, but there wasn’t one that
looked like we could just jump in
and sail it away. For that we
needed an organization. Since we
didn’t have one, the best thing to
do was borrow the Major’s.</p>
<p>Vern turned up with Amy Bankhead’s
MG, and he also turned up
with Amy. I can’t say I was displeased,
because I was beginning
to like the girl; but did you ever
try to ride three people in the seats
of an MG? Well, the way to do it
is by having one passenger sit
in the other passenger’s lap, which
would have been all right except
that Amy insisted on driving.</p>
<p>We headed downtown and over
to the West Side. The Major’s
Topographical Section—one former
billboard artist—had prepared road
maps with little red-ink Xs marking
the streets that were blocked,
which was most of the streets; but
we charted a course that would
take us where we wanted to go.
Thirty-fourth Street was open, and
so was Fifth Avenue all of its
length, so we scooted down Fifth,
crossed over, got under the Elevated
Highway and whined along
uptown toward the Fifties.</p>
<p>“There’s one,” cried Amy, pointing.</p>
<p>I was on Vern’s lap, so I was
making the notes. It was a Fruit
Company combination freighter-passenger
vessel. I looked at Vern,
and Vern shrugged as best he
could, so I wrote it down; but it
wasn’t exactly what we wanted.
No, not by a long shot.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Still</span>, the thing to do was to
survey our resources, and then
we could pick the one we liked
best. We went all the way up to
the end of the big-ship docks, and
then turned and came back down,
all the way to the Battery. It
wasn’t pleasure driving, exactly—half
a dozen times we had to get
out the map and detour around
impenetrable jams of stalled and
empty cars—or anyway, if they
weren’t exactly empty, the people
in them were no longer in shape
to get out of our way. But we
made it.</p>
<p>We counted sixteen ships in
dock that looked as though they
might do for our purposes. We had
to rule out the newer ones and
the reconverted jobs. I mean, after
all, U-235 just lasts so long, and
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page29" title="29"> </SPAN>you can steam around the world
on a walnut-shell of it, or whatever
it is, but you can’t store it.
So we had to stick with the ships
that were powered with conventional
fuel—and, on consideration,
only oil at that.</p>
<p>But that left sixteen, as I say.
Some of them, though, had suffered
visibly from being left untended
for nearly a decade, so that
for our purposes they might as
well have been abandoned in the
middle of the Atlantic; we didn’t
have the equipment or ambition
to do any great amount of salvage
work.</p>
<p>The <i>Empress of Britain</i> would
have been a pretty good bet, for
instance, except that it was lying
at pretty nearly a forty-five-degree
angle in its berth. So was the
<i>United States</i>, and so was the
<i>Caronia</i>. The <i>Stockholm</i> was
straight enough, but I took a good
look, and only one tier of portholes
was showing above the water—evidently
it had settled nice and
even, but it was on the bottom
all the same. Well, that mud
sucks with a fine tight grip, and
we weren’t going to try to loosen
it.</p>
<p>All in all, eleven of the sixteen
ships were out of commission just
from what we could see driving
by.</p>
<p>Vern and I looked at each other.
We stood by the MG, while Amy
sprawled her legs over the side
and waited for us to make up our
minds.</p>
<p>“Not good, Sam,” said Vern,
looking worried.</p>
<p>I said: “Well, that still leaves
five. There’s the <i>Vulcania</i>, the
<i>Cristobal</i>—”</p>
<p>“Too small.”</p>
<p>“All right. The <i>Manhattan</i>, the
<i>Liberté</i> and the <i>Queen Elizabeth</i>.”</p>
<p>Amy looked up, her eyes
gleaming. “Where’s the question?”
she demanded. “Naturally, it’s the
<i>Queen</i>.”</p>
<p>I tried to explain. “Please, Amy.
Leave these things to us, will
you?”</p>
<p>“But the Major won’t settle for
anything but the best!”</p>
<p>“The <em>Major</em>?”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I glanced</span> at Vern, who
wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Well,”
I said, “look at the problems, Amy.
First we have to check it over.
Maybe it’s been burned out—how
do we know? Maybe the channel
isn’t even deep enough to float it
any more—how do we know?
Where are we going to get the oil
for it?”</p>
<p>“We’ll get the oil,” Amy said
cheerfully.</p>
<p>“And what if the channel isn’t
deep enough?”</p>
<p>“She’ll float,” Amy promised.
“At high tide, anyway. Even if
the channel hasn’t been dredged in
ten years.”</p>
<p>I shrugged and gave up. What
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page30" title="30"> </SPAN>was the use of arguing?</p>
<p>We drove back to the <i>Queen
Elizabeth</i> and I had to admit that
there was a certain attraction
about that big old dowager. We
all got out and strolled down the
pier, looking over as much as we
could see.</p>
<p>The pier had never been
cleaned out. It bothered me a little—I
mean I don’t like skeletons
much—but Amy didn’t seem to
mind. The <i>Queen</i> must have just
docked when it happened, because
you could still see bony queues,
as though they were waiting for
customs inspection.</p>
<p>Some of the bags had been
opened and the contents scattered
around—naturally, somebody was
bound to think of looting the
<i>Queen</i>. But there were as many
that hadn’t been touched as that
had been opened, and the whole
thing had the look of an amateur
attempt. And that was all to the
good, because the fewer persons
who had boarded the <i>Queen</i> in the
decade since it happened, the more
chance of our finding it in usable
shape.</p>
<p>Amy saw a gangplank still up,
and with cries of girlish glee ran
aboard.</p>
<p>I plucked at Vern’s sleeve.
“You,” I said. “What’s this about
what the <em>Major</em> won’t settle for
less than?”</p>
<p>He said: “Aw, Sam, I had to
tell her something, didn’t I?”</p>
<p>“But what about the Major—”</p>
<p>He said patiently: “You don’t
understand. It’s all part of my
plan, see? The Major is the big
thing here and he’s got a birthday
coming up next month. Well, the
way I put it to Amy, we’ll fix
him up with a yacht as a birthday
present, see? And, of course, when
it’s all fixed up and ready to lift
anchor—”</p>
<p>I said doubtfully: “That’s the
hard way, Vern. Why couldn’t we
just sort of get steam up and take
off?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “<em>That</em> is the
hard way. This way we get all the
help and supplies we need, understand?”</p>
<p>I shrugged. That was the way
it was, so what was the use of arguing?</p>
<p>But there was one thing more
on my mind. I said: “How come
Amy’s so interested in making
the Major happy?”</p>
<p>Vern chortled. “Jealous, eh?”</p>
<p>“I asked a question!”</p>
<p>“Calm down, boy. It’s just that
he’s in charge of things here so
naturally she wants to keep in
good with him.”</p>
<p>I scowled. “I keep hearing
stories about how the Major’s
chief interest in life is women.
You sure she isn’t ambitious to be
one of them?”</p>
<p>He said: “The reason she wants
to keep him happy is so she <em>won’t</em>
be one of them.”</p>
<h2><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page31" title="31"> </SPAN>V</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> name of the place was
Bayonne.</p>
<p>Vern said: “One of them’s <em>got</em>
to have oil, Sam. It <em>has</em> to.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” I said.</p>
<p>“There’s no question about it.
Look, this is where the tankers
came to discharge oil. They’d come
in here, pump the oil into the refinery
tanks and—”</p>
<p>“Vern,” I said. “Let’s look, shall
we?”</p>
<p>He shrugged, and we hopped off
the little outboard motorboat onto
a landing stage. The tankers
towered over us, rusty and screeching
as the waves rubbed them
against each other.</p>
<p>There were fifty of them there
at least, and we poked around
them for hours. The hatches were
rusted shut and unmanageable,
but you could tell a lot by sniffing.
Gasoline odor was out; smell
of seaweed and dead fish was out;
but the heavy, rank smell of fuel
oil, that was what we were sniffing
for. Crews had been aboard
these ships when the missiles
came, and crews were still aboard.</p>
<p>Beyond the two-part superstructures
of the tankers, the skyline
of New York was visible. I
looked up, sweating, and saw the
Empire State Building and
imagined Amy up there, looking
out toward us.</p>
<p>She knew we were here. It was
her idea. She had scrounged up a
naval engineer, or what she called
a naval engineer—he had once been
a stoker on a ferryboat. But he
claimed he knew what he was
talking about when he said the
only thing the <i>Queen</i> needed to
make ’er go was oil. And so we
left him aboard to tinker and
polish, with a couple of helpers
Amy detached from the police
force, and we tackled the oil
problem.</p>
<p>Which meant Bayonne. Which
was where we were.</p>
<p>It had to be a tanker with at
least a fair portion of its cargo
intact, because the <i>Queen</i> was a
thirsty creature, drinking fuel not
by the shot or gallon but by the
ton.</p>
<p>“Saaam! Sam <em>Dunlap</em>!”</p>
<p>I looked up, startled. Five ships
away, across the U of the mooring,
Vern Engdahl was bellowing
at me through cupped hands.</p>
<p>“I found it!” he shouted. “Oil,
lots of oil! Come look!”</p>
<p>I clasped my hands over my
head and looked around. It was a
long way around to the tanker
Vern was on, hopping from deck
to deck, detouring around open
stretches.</p>
<p>I shouted: “I’ll get the boat!”</p>
<p>He waved and climbed up on
the rail of the ship, his feet dangling
over, looking supremely happy
and pleased with himself. He
lit a cigarette, leaned back against
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page32" title="32"> </SPAN>the upward sweep of the rail and
waited.</p>
<p>It took me a little time to get
back to the boat and a little more
time than that to get the damn
motor started. Vern! “Let’s not
take that lousy little twelve horse-power,
Sam,” he’d said reasonably.
“The twenty-five’s more what
we need!” And maybe it was, but
none of the motors had been
started in most of a decade, and
the twenty-five was just that much
harder to start now.</p>
<p>I struggled over it, swearing,
for twenty minutes or more.</p>
<p>The tanker by whose side we
had tied up began to swing toward
me as the tide changed to outgoing.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">For</span> a moment there, I was
counting seconds, expecting to
have to make a jump for it before
the big red steel flank squeezed
the little outboard flat against the
piles.</p>
<p>But I got it started—just about
in time. I squeezed out of the trap
with not much more than a yard
to spare and threaded my way
into open water.</p>
<p>There was a large, threatening
sound, like an enormous slow
cough.</p>
<p>I rounded the stern of the last
tanker between me and open
water, and looked into the eye of
a fire-breathing dragon.</p>
<p>Vern and his cigarettes! The
tanker was loose and ablaze, bearing
down on me with the slow
drift of the ebbing tide. From the
hatches on the forward deck, two
fountains of fire spurted up and
out, like enormous nostrils spouting
flame. The hawsers had been
burned through, the ship was
adrift, I was in its path—</p>
<p>And so was the frantically
splashing figure of Vern Engdahl,
trying desperately to swim out of
the way in the water before it.</p>
<p>What kept it from blowing up
in our faces I will never know,
unless it was the pressure in the
tanks forcing the flame out; but
it didn’t. Not just then. Not until
I had Engdahl aboard and we
were out in the middle of the Hudson,
staring back; and then it
went up all right, all at once, like
a missile or a volcano; and there
had been fifty tankers in that one
mooring, but there weren’t any
any more, or not in shape for us
to use.</p>
<p>I looked at Engdahl.</p>
<p>He said defensively: “Honest,
Sam, I thought it was oil. It
<em>smelled</em> like oil. How was I to
know—”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” I said.</p>
<p>He shrugged, injured. “But it’s
all right, Sam. No fooling. There
are plenty of other tankers
around. Plenty. Down toward the
Amboys, maybe moored out in the
channel. There must be. We’ll find
them.”</p>
<div id="illo2" class="illo"><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page33" title="33"> </SPAN>
<SPAN href="images/illo2.jpg"><ANTIMG src="images/illo2-sm.jpg" width-obs="393" height-obs="556" alt="Two men in a small boat with billowing smoke in the distance." /></SPAN></div>
<p><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page34" title="34"> </SPAN>“No,” I said. “<em>You</em> will.”</p>
<p>And that was all I said, because
I am forgiving by nature;
but I thought a great deal more.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, though, he did find
a tanker with a full load, the
very next day.</p>
<p>It became a question of getting
the tanker to the <i>Queen</i>. I left
that part up to Vern, since he
claimed to be able to handle it.</p>
<p>It took him two weeks. First
it was finding the tanker, then it
was locating a tug in shape to
move, then it was finding someone
to pilot the tug. Then it was
waiting for a clear and windless
day—because the pilot he found
had got all his experience sailing
Star boats on Long Island Sound—and
then it was easing the tanker
out of Newark Bay, into the channel,
down to the pier in the North
River—</p>
<p>Oh, it was work and no fooling.
I enjoyed it very much, because
I didn’t have to do it.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">But</span> I had enough to keep
me busy at that. I found a
man who claimed he used to be
a radio engineer. And if he was an
engineer, I was Albert Einstein’s
mother, but at least he knew which
end of a soldering iron was hot.
There was no need for any great
skill, since there weren’t going to
be very many vessels to communicate
with.</p>
<p>Things began to move.</p>
<p>The advantage of a ship like
the <i>Queen</i>, for our purposes, was
that the thing was pretty well automated
to start out with. I mean
never mind what the seafaring
unions required in the way of
flesh-and-blood personnel. What it
came down to was that one man in
the bridge or wheelhouse could
pretty well make any part of the
ship go or not go.</p>
<p>The engine-room telegraph
wasn’t hooked up to control the
engines, no. But the wiring diagram
needed only a few little
changes to get the same effect,
because where in the original concept
a human being would take a
look at the repeater down in the
engine room, nod wisely, and push
a button that would make the
engines stop, start, or whatever—why,
all we had to do was cut
out the middleman, so to speak.</p>
<p>Our genius of the soldering iron
replaced flesh and blood with some
wiring and, presto, we had centralized
engine control.</p>
<p>The steering was even easier.
Steering was a matter of electronic
control and servomotors to begin
with. Windjammers in the old
movies might have a man lashed
to the wheel whose muscle power
turned the rudder, but, believe me,
a big superliner doesn’t. The rudders
weigh as much as any old
windjammer ever did from stem
to stern; you have to have motors
to turn them; and it was only a
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page35" title="35"> </SPAN>matter of getting out the old soldering
iron again.</p>
<p>By the time we were through,
we had every operational facility
of the <i>Queen</i> hooked up to a single
panel on the bridge.</p>
<p>Engdahl showed up with the oil
tanker just about the time we got
the wiring complete. We rigged up
a pump and filled the bunkers till
they were topped off full. We
guessed, out of hope and ignorance,
that there was enough in there to
take us half a dozen times around
the world at normal cruising speed,
and maybe there was. Anyway,
it didn’t matter, for surely we had
enough to take us anywhere we
wanted to go, and then there
would be more.</p>
<p>We crossed our fingers, turned
our ex-ferry-stoker loose, pushed a
button—</p>
<p>Smoke came out of the stacks.</p>
<p>The antique screws began to
turn over. Astern, a sort of hump
of muddy water appeared. The
<i>Queen</i> quivered underfoot. The
mooring hawsers creaked and sang.</p>
<p>“Turn her off!” screamed Engdahl.
“She’s headed for Times
Square!”</p>
<p>Well, that was an exaggeration,
but not much of one; and there
wasn’t any sense in stirring up
the bottom mud. I pushed buttons
and the screws stopped. I pushed
another button, and the big engines
quietly shut themselves off,
and in a few moments the stacks
stopped puffing their black smoke.</p>
<p>The ship was alive.</p>
<p>Solemnly Engdahl and I shook
hands. We had the thing licked.
All, that is, except for the one
small problem of Arthur.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> thing about Arthur was
they had put him to work.</p>
<p>It was in the power station, just
as Amy had said, and Arthur
didn’t like it. The fact that he
didn’t like it was a splendid reason
for staying away from there, but
I let my kind heart overrule my
good sense and paid him a visit.</p>
<p>It was way over on the East
Side, miles and miles from any
civilized area. I borrowed Amy’s
MG, and borrowed Amy to go
with it, and the two of us packed
a picnic lunch and set out. There
were reports of deer on Avenue
A, so I brought a rifle, but we
never saw one; and if you want
my opinion, those reports were
nothing but wishful thinking. I
mean if people couldn’t survive,
how could deer?</p>
<p>We finally threaded our way
through the clogged streets and
parked in front of the power station.</p>
<p>“There’s supposed to be a
guard,” Amy said doubtfully.</p>
<p>I looked. I looked pretty carefully,
because if there was a guard,
I wanted to see him. The Major’s
orders were that vital defense installations—such
as the power station,
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page36" title="36"> </SPAN>the PX and his own barracks
building—were to be guarded
against trespassers on a shoot-on-sight
basis and I wanted to make
sure that the guard knew we were
privileged persons, with passes
signed by the Major’s own hand.
But we couldn’t find him. So we
walked in through the big door,
peered around, listened for the
sounds of machinery and walked
in that direction.</p>
<p>And then we found him; he was
sound asleep. Amy, looking indignant,
shook him awake.</p>
<p>“Is that how you guard military
property?” she scolded. “Don’t
you know the penalty for sleeping
at your post?”</p>
<p>The guard said something irritable
and unhappy. I got her off
his back with some difficulty, and
we located Arthur.</p>
<p>Picture a shiny four-gallon tomato
can, with the label stripped
off, hanging by wire from the
flashing-light panels of an electric
computer. That was Arthur. The
shiny metal cylinder was his prosthetic
tank; the wires were the
leads that served him for fingers,
ears and mouth; the glittering
panel was the control center for
the Consolidated Edison Eastside
Power Plant No. 1.</p>
<p>“Hi, Arthur,” I said, and a sudden
ear-splitting thunderous hiss was
his way of telling me that he knew
I was there.</p>
<p>I didn’t know exactly what it
was he was trying to say and I
didn’t want to; fortune spares me
few painful moments, and I accept
with gratitude the ones it does.
The Major’s boys hadn’t bothered
to bring Arthur’s typewriter along—I
mean who cares what a generator-governor
had to offer in the
way of conversation?—so all he
could do was blow off steam from
the distant boilers.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, not quite all. Light
flashed; a bucket conveyor
began crashingly to dump loads of
coal; and an alarm gong began to
pound.</p>
<p>“Please, Arthur,” I begged.
“Shut up a minute and listen, will
you?”</p>
<p>More lights. The gong rapped
half a dozen times sharply, and
stopped.</p>
<p>I said: “Arthur, you’ve got to
trust Vern and me. We have this
thing figured out now. We’ve got
the <i>Queen Elizabeth</i>—”</p>
<p>A shattering hiss of steam—meaning
delight this time, I
thought. Or anyway hoped.</p>
<p>“—and its only a question of
time until we can carry out the
plan. Vern says to apologize for
not looking in on you—” <em>hiss</em>—“but
he’s been busy. And after all, you
know it’s more important to get
everything ready so you can get
out of this place, right?”</p>
<p>“Psst,” said Amy.</p>
<p>She nodded briefly past my
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page37" title="37"> </SPAN>shoulder. I looked, and there was
the guard, looking sleepy and surly
and definitely suspicious.</p>
<p>I said heartily: “So as soon as
I fix it up with the Major, we’ll
arrange for something better for
you. Meanwhile, Arthur, you’re
doing a capital job and I want you
to know that all of us loyal New
York citizens and public servants
deeply appreciate—”</p>
<p>Thundering crashes, bangs,
gongs, hisses, and the scream of a
steam whistle he’d found somewhere.</p>
<p>Arthur was mad.</p>
<p>“So long, Arthur,” I said, and
we got out of there—just barely
in time. At the door, we found that
Arthur had reversed the coal
scoops and a growing mound of
it was pouring into the street where
we’d left the MG parked. We got
the car started just as the heap
was beginning to reach the bumpers,
and at that the paint would
never again be the same.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, he was mad. I could
only hope that in the long run he
would forgive us, since we were
acting for his best interests, after
all.</p>
<p>Anyway, I <em>thought</em> we were.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Still</span>, things worked out pretty
well—especially between Amy
and me. Engdahl had the theory
that she had been dodging the
Major so long that <em>anybody</em> looked
good to her, which was hardly
flattering. But she and I were
getting along right well.</p>
<p>She said worriedly: “The only
thing, Sam, is that, frankly, the
Major has just about made up his
mind that he wants to marry me—”</p>
<p>“He <em>is</em> married!” I yelped.</p>
<p>“Naturally he’s married. He’s
married to—so far—one hundred
and nine women. He’s been hitting
off a marriage a month for a good
many years now and, to tell you
the truth, I think he’s got the habit
Anyway, he’s got his eye on me.”</p>
<p>I demanded jealously: “Has he
said anything?”</p>
<p>She picked a sheet of onionskin
paper out of her bag and handed
it to me. It was marked <i>Top
Secret</i>, and it really was, because
it hadn’t gone through his regular
office—I knew that because I was
his regular office. It was only two
lines of text and sloppily typed
at that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lt. Amy Bankhead will report
to HQ at 1700 hours 1 July to
carry out orders of the Commanding
Officer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first of July was only a
week away. I handed the orders
back to her.</p>
<p>“And the orders of the Commanding
Officer will be—” I
wanted to know.</p>
<p>She nodded. “You guessed it.”</p>
<p>I said: “We’ll have to work
fast.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page38" title="38"> </SPAN><span class="first_word">On</span> the thirtieth of June, we
invited the Major to come
aboard his palatial new yacht.</p>
<p>“Ah, thank you,” he said gratefully.
“A surprise? For my birthday?
Ah, you loyal members of
my command make up for all that
I’ve lost—all of it!” He nearly
wept.</p>
<p>I said: “Sir, the pleasure is all
ours,” and backed out of his presence.
What’s more, I meant every
word.</p>
<p>It was a select party of slightly
over a hundred. All of the wives
were there, barring twenty or thirty
who were in disfavor—still, that
left over eighty. The Major
brought half a dozen of his favorite
officers. His bodyguard and our
crew added up to a total of thirty
men.</p>
<p>We were set up to feed a hundred
and fifty, and to provide
liquor for twice that many, so it
looked like a nice friendly brawl.
I mean we had our radio operator
handing out highballs as the guests
stepped on board. The Major was
touched and delighted; it was
exactly the kind of party he liked.</p>
<p>He came up the gangplank with
his face one great beaming smile.
“Eat! Drink!” he cried. “Ah, and
be merry!” He stretched out his
hands to Amy, standing by behind
the radio op. “For tomorrow we
wed,” he added, and sentimentally
kissed his proposed bride.</p>
<p>I cleared my throat. “How about
inspecting the ship, Major?” I interrupted.</p>
<p>“Plenty of time for that, my
boy,” he said. “Plenty of time for
that.” But he let go of Amy and
looked around him. Well, it was
worth looking at. Those Englishmen
really knew how to build a
luxury liner. God rest them.</p>
<p>The girls began roaming around.</p>
<p>It was a hot day and late afternoon,
and the girls began discarding
jackets and boleros, and that
began to annoy the Major.</p>
<p>“Ah, cover up there!” he ordered
one of his wives. “You too
there, what’s-your-name. Put that
blouse back on!”</p>
<p>It gave him something to think
about. He was a very jealous man,
Amy had said, and when you stop
to think about it, a jealous man
with a hundred and nine wives to
be jealous of really has a job. Anyway,
he was busy watching his
wives and keeping his military
cabinet and his bodyguard busy
too, and that made him too busy
to notice when I tipped the high
sign to Vern and took off.</p>
<h2>VI</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">In</span> Consolidated Edison’s big
power plant, the guard was
friendly. “I hear the Major’s over
on your boat, pal. Big doings. Got
a lot of the girls there, hey?”</p>
<p>He bent, sniggering, to look at
my pass.</p>
<p><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page39" title="39"> </SPAN>“That’s right, pal,” I said, and
slugged him.</p>
<p>Arthur screamed at me with a
shrill blast of steam as I came in.
But only once. I wasn’t there for
conversation. I began ripping apart
his comfy little home of steel
braces and copper wires, and it
didn’t take much more than a
minute before I had him free. And
that was very fortunate because,
although I had tied up the guard,
I hadn’t done it very well, and it
was just about the time I had
Arthur’s steel case tucked under
my arm that I heard a yelling and
bellowing from down the stairs.</p>
<p>The guard had got free.</p>
<p>“Keep calm, Arthur!” I ordered
sharply. “We’ll get out of this,
don’t you worry!”</p>
<p>But he wasn’t worried, or anyway
didn’t show it, since he
couldn’t. I was the one who was
worried. I was up on the second
floor of the plant, in the control
center, with only one stairway going
down that I knew about, and
that one thoroughly guarded by
a man with a grudge against me.
Me, I had Arthur, and no weapon,
and I hadn’t a doubt in the world
that there were other guards
around and that my friend would
have them after me before long.</p>
<p>Problem. I took a deep breath
and swallowed and considered
jumping out the window. But it
wasn’t far enough to the ground.</p>
<p>Feet pounded up the stairs,
more than two of them. With
Arthur dragging me down on one
side, I hurried, fast as I could,
along the steel galleries that surrounded
the biggest boiler. It was
a nice choice of alternatives—if I
stayed quiet, they would find me;
if I ran, they would hear me, and
then find me.</p>
<p>But ahead there was—what?
Something. A flight of stairs, it
looked like, going out and, yes, <em>up</em>.
Up? But I was already on the
second floor.</p>
<p>“Hey, you!” somebody bellowed
from behind me.</p>
<p>I didn’t stop to consider. I ran.
It wasn’t steps, not exactly; it was
a chain of coal scoops on a long
derrick arm, a moving bucket arrangement
for unloading fuel from
barges. It did go up, though, and
more important it went <em>out</em>. The
bucket arm was stretched across
the clogged roadway below to a
loading tower that hung over the
water.</p>
<p>If I could get there, I might
be able to get down. If I could get
down—yes, I could see it; there
were three or four mahogany
motor launches tied to the foot of
the tower.</p>
<p>And nobody around.</p>
<p>I looked over my shoulder, and
didn’t like what I saw, and scuttled
up that chain of enormous
buckets like a roach on a washboard,
one hand for me and one
hand for Arthur.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page40" title="40"> </SPAN><span class="first_word">Thank</span> heaven, I had a good
lead on my pursuers—I needed
it. I was on the bucket chain while
they were still almost a city block
behind me, along the galleries. I
was halfway across the roadway,
afraid to look down, before they
reached the butt end of the chain.</p>
<p>Clash-clatter. <em>Clank!</em> The bucket
under me jerked and clattered and
nearly threw me into the street.
One of those jokers had turned on
the conveyor! It was a good trick,
all right, but not quite in time. I
made a flying jump and I was on
the tower.</p>
<p>I didn’t stop to thumb my nose
at them, but I thought of it.</p>
<p>I was down those steel steps,
breathing like a spouting whale,
in a minute flat, and jumping out
across the concrete, coal-smeared
yard toward the moored launches.
Quickly enough, I guess, but with
nothing at all to spare, because although
I hadn’t seen anyone
there, there was a guard.</p>
<p>He popped out of a doorway,
blinking foolishly; and overhead
the guards at the conveyor belt
were screaming at him. It took him
a second to figure out what was
going on, and by that time I was
in a launch, cast off the rope,
kicked it free, and fumbled for
the starting button.</p>
<p>It took me several seconds to
realize that a rope was required,
that in fact there was no button;
and by then I was floating yards
away, but the pudgy pop-eyed
guard was also in a launch, and he
didn’t have to fumble. He knew.
He got his motor started a fraction
of a second before me, and
there he was, coming at me, set
to ram. Or so it looked.</p>
<p>I wrenched at the wheel and
brought the boat hard over; but
he swerved too, at the last moment,
and brought up something
that looked a little like a spear
and a little like a sickle and turned
out to be a boathook. I ducked,
just in time. It sizzled over my
head as he swung and crashed
against the windshield. Hunks of
safety glass splashed out over the
forward deck, but better that than
my head.</p>
<p>Boathooks, hey? I had a boathook
too! If he didn’t have another
weapon, I was perfectly willing
to play; I’d been sitting and taking
it long enough and I was very
much attracted by the idea of
fighting back. The guard recovered
his balance, swore at me, fought
the wheel around and came back.</p>
<p>We both curved out toward the
center of the East River in intersecting
arcs. We closed. He
swung first. I ducked—</p>
<p>And from a crouch, while he
was off balance, I caught him in
the shoulder with the hook.</p>
<p>He made a mighty splash.</p>
<p>I throttled down the motor long
enough to see that he was still conscious.</p>
<p><SPAN class="pagenum" id="page41" title="41"> </SPAN>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Touché</em>, buster,” I said, and set
course for the return trip down
around the foot of Manhattan,
back toward the <i>Queen</i>.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">It</span> took a while, but that was
all right; it gave everybody a
nice long time to get plastered. I
sneaked aboard, carrying Arthur,
and turned him over to Vern. Then
I rejoined the Major. He was
making an inspection tour of the
ship—what he called an inspection,
after his fashion.</p>
<p>He peered into the engine
rooms and said: “Ah, fine.”</p>
<p>He stared at the generators that
were turning over and nodded
when I explained we needed them
for power for lights and everything
and said: “Ah, of course.”</p>
<p>He opened a couple of stateroom
doors at random and said:
“Ah, nice.”</p>
<p>And he went up on the flying
bridge with me and such of his
officers as still could walk and
said: “Ah.”</p>
<p>Then he said in a totally different
tone: “What the devil’s the
matter over there?”</p>
<p>He was staring east through the
muggy haze. I saw right away
what it was that was bothering him—easy,
because I knew where to
look. The power plant way over
on the East Side was billowing
smoke.</p>
<p>“Where’s Vern Engdahl? That
gadget of his isn’t working right!”</p>
<p>“You mean Arthur?”</p>
<p>“I mean that brain in a bottle.
It’s Engdahl’s responsibility, you
know!”</p>
<p>Vern came up out of the wheelhouse
and cleared his throat.
“Major,” he said earnestly, “I
think there’s some trouble over
there. Maybe you ought to go
look for yourself.”</p>
<p>“Trouble?”</p>
<p>“I, uh, hear there’ve been power
failures,” Vern said lamely. “Don’t
you think you ought to inspect it?
I mean just in case there’s something
serious?”</p>
<p>The Major stared at him
frostily, and then his mood
changed. He took a drink from the
glass in his hand, quickly finishing
it off.</p>
<p>“Ah,” he said, “hell with it.
Why spoil a good party? If there
are going to be power failures,
why, let them be. That’s my
motto!”</p>
<p>Vern and I looked at each other.
He shrugged slightly, meaning,
well, we tried. And I shrugged
slightly, meaning, what did you
expect? And then he glanced upward,
meaning, take a look at
what’s there.</p>
<p>But I didn’t really have to look
because I heard what it was. In
fact, I’d been hearing it for some
time. It was the Major’s entire air
force—two helicopters, swirling
around us at an average altitude of
a hundred feet or so. They showed
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page42" title="42"> </SPAN>up bright against the gathering
clouds overhead, and I looked at
them with considerable interest—partly
because I considered it an
even-money bet that one of them
would be playing crumple-fender
with our stacks, partly because I
had an idea that they were not
there solely for show.</p>
<p>I said to the Major: “Chief,
aren’t they coming a little close?
I mean it’s <em>your</em> ship and all, but
what if one of them takes a spill
into the bridge while you’re here?”</p>
<p>He grinned. “They know better,”
he bragged. “Ah, besides, I want
them close. I mean if anything
went wrong.”</p>
<p>I said, in a tone that showed as
much deep hurt as I could
manage: “Sir, what could go
wrong?”</p>
<p>“Oh, you know.” He patted my
shoulder limply. “Ah, no offense?”
he asked.</p>
<p>I shook my head. “Well,” I said,
“let’s go below.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">All</span> of it was done carefully,
carefully as could be. The
only thing was, we forgot about
the typewriters. We got everybody,
or as near as we could, into
the Grand Salon where the food
was, and right there on a table at
the end of the hall was one of the
typewriters clacking away. Vern
had rigged them up with rolls of
paper instead of sheets, and maybe
that was ingenious, but it was
also a headache just then. Because
the typewriter was banging out:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">LEFT FOUR THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN AND TWENTYONE
BOILERS WITH A FULL
HEAD OF STEAM AND THE
SAFETY VALVES LOCKED
BOY I TELL YOU WHEN
THOSE THINGS LET GO
YOURE GOING TO HEAR A
NOISE THATLL KNOCK
YOUR HAT OFF</p>
<p>The Major inquired politely:
“Something to do with the ship?”</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>that</em>,” said Vern. “Yeah.
Just a little, uh, something to do
with the ship. Say, Major, here’s
the bar. Real scotch, see? Look
at the label!”</p>
<p>The Major glanced at him with
faint contempt—well, he’d had the
pick of the greatest collection of
high-priced liquor stores in the
world for ten years, so no wonder.
But he allowed Vern to press a
drink on him.</p>
<p>And the typewriter kept rattling:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">LOOKS LIKE RAIN ANY
MINUTE NOW HOO BOY IM
GLAD I WONT BE IN THOSE
WHIRLYBIRDS WHEN THE
STORM STARTS SAY VERN
WHY DONT YOU EVER ANSWER
ME Q Q ISNT IT
ABOUT TIME TO TAKE
OFF XXX I MEAN GET UNDER
WEIGH Q Q</p>
<p>Some of the “clerks, typists, domestic
personnel and others”—that
was the way they were listed on
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page43" title="43"> </SPAN>the T/O; it was only coincidence
that the Major had married them
all—were staring at the typewriter.</p>
<p>“Drinks!” Vern called nervously.
“Come on, girls! Drinks!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> Major poured himself a
stiff shot and asked: “What <em>is</em>
that thing? A teletype or something?”</p>
<p>“That’s right,” Vern said, trailing
after him as the Major wandered
over to inspect it.</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">I GIVE THOSE BOILERS
ABOUT TEN MORE MINUTES
SAM WELL WHAT
ABOUT IT Q Q READY TO
SHOVE OFF Q Q</p>
<p>The Major said, frowning faintly:
“Ah, that reminds me of something.
Now what is it?”</p>
<p>“More scotch?” Vern cried.
“Major, a little more scotch?”</p>
<p>The Major ignored him, scowling.
One of the “clerks, typists”
said: “Honey, you know what it
is? It’s like that pross you had,
remember? It was on our wedding
night, and you’d just got it, and
you kept asking it to tell you
limericks.”</p>
<p>The Major snapped his fingers.
“Knew I’d get it,” he glowed.
Then abruptly he scowled again
and turned to face Vern and me.
“Say—” he began.</p>
<p>I said weakly: “The boilers.”</p>
<p>The Major stared at me, then
glanced out the window. “What
boilers?” he demanded. “It’s just
a thunderstorm. Been building up
all day. Now what about this? Is
that thing—”</p>
<p>But Vern was paying him no
attention. “Thunderstorm?” he
yelled. “Arthur, you listening? Are
the helicopters gone?”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">YESYESYES</p>
<p>“Then shove off, Arthur! Shove
off!”</p>
<p>The typewriter rattled and
slammed madly.</p>
<p>The Major yelled angrily:
“Now listen to me, you! I’m
asking you a question!”</p>
<p>But we didn’t have to answer,
because there was a thrumming
and a throbbing underfoot, and
then one of the “clerks, typists”
screamed: “The dock!” She
pointed at a porthole. “It’s
moving!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, we got out of there—barely
in time. And then it
was up to Arthur. We had the
whole ship to roam around in
and there were plenty of places
to hide. They had the whole ship
to search. And Arthur was the
whole ship.</p>
<p>Because it was Arthur, all right,
brought in and hooked up by
Vern, attained to his greatest
dream and ambition. He was skipper
of a superliner, and more than
any skipper had ever been—the
ship was his body, as the prosthetic
tank had never been; the keel his
belly, the screws his feet, the engines
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page44" title="44"> </SPAN>his heart and lungs, and
every moving part that could be
hooked into central control his
many, many hands.</p>
<div id="illo3" class="illo">
<ANTIMG src="images/illo3.jpg" width-obs="860" height-obs="342" alt="A suitcase with an eyestalk is wired into a big control panel; two men look on." />
<SPAN href="images/illo3-left.jpg" class="img_link">Left side image</SPAN>
<SPAN href="images/illo3-right.jpg" class="img_link">Right side image</SPAN></div>
<!-- Original location of left side of illo 3 -->
<p>Search for us? They were
lucky they could move at all!
Fire Control washed them with
salt water hoses, directed by Arthur’s
brain. Watertight doors,
proof against sinking, locked them
away from us at Arthur’s whim.</p>
<p>The big bull whistle overhead
brayed like a clamoring Gabriel,
and the ship’s bells tinkled and
clanged. Arthur backed that enormous
ship out of its berth like a
racing scull on the Schuylkill. The
four giant screws lashed the water
into white foam, and then the thin
mud they sucked up into tan; and
the ship backed, swerved, lashed
the water, stopped, and staggered
crazily forward.</p>
<p>Arthur brayed at the Statue of
Liberty, tooted good-by to Staten
Island, feinted a charge at Sandy
Hook and really laid back his ears
and raced once he got to deep
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page45" title="45"> </SPAN><!-- Original location of right side of illo 3 -->water past the moored lightship.</p>
<p>We were off!</p>
<p>Well, from there on, it was easy.
We let Arthur have his fun with
the Major and the bodyguards—and
by the sodden, whimpering
shape they were in when they
came out, it must really have been
fun for him. There were just the
three of us and only Vern and I
had guns—but Arthur had the
<i>Queen Elizabeth</i>, and that put the
odds on our side.</p>
<p>We gave the Major a choice:
row back to Coney Island—we
offered him a boat, free of charge—or
come along with us as cabin
boy. He cast one dim-eyed look
at the hundred and nine “clerks,
typists” and at Amy, who would
never be the hundred and tenth.</p>
<p>And then he shrugged and,
game loser, said: “Ah, why not?
I’ll come along.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">And</span> why not, when you come
to think of it? I mean ruling
a city is nice and all that, but a
<SPAN class="pagenum" id="page46" title="46"> </SPAN>sea voyage is a refreshing change.
And while a hundred and nine to
one is a respectable female-male
ratio, still it must be wearing; and
eighty to thirty isn’t so bad, either.
At least, I guess that was what
was in the Major’s mind. I know it
was what was in mine.</p>
<p>And I discovered that it was in
Amy’s, for the first thing she did
was to march me over to the typewriter
and say: “You’ve had it,
Sam. We’ll dispose with the wedding
march—just get your friend
Arthur here to marry us.”</p>
<p>“Arthur?”</p>
<p>“The captain,” she said. “We’re
on the high seas and he’s empowered
to perform marriages.”</p>
<p>Vern looked at me and shrugged,
meaning, you asked for this one,
boy. And I looked at him and
shrugged, meaning, it could be
worse.</p>
<p>And indeed it could. We’d got
our ship; we’d got our ship’s company—because,
naturally, there
wasn’t any use stealing a big ship
for just a couple of us. We’d had
to manage to get a sizable colony
aboard. That was the whole idea.</p>
<p>The world, in fact, was ours. It
could have been very much worse
indeed, even though Arthur was
laughing so hard as he performed
the ceremony that he jammed up
all his keys.</p>
<p class="attribution">—FREDERIK POHL</p>
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