the last of the missiles there was a breathless hush over the scene for a moment. They looked out the forward view panes and could see all that was left of Sakamoto’s strike wave of fifty-five planes. Subota had six torpedo planes gliding swiftly over the deck, and from above came the last eight dive bombers, both Sakamoto and Ema still alive.
“I should have saved the last of the Kashtan missiles,” Karpov breathed. “Now it’s down to the Gatling guns.”
He stepped quickly over to the view panes, reached for his field glasses where they always hung there on a hook, and snapped them quickly up to his eyes. Then he saw something unexpected—more missiles streaking in from high above and vectoring in on the hurtling D3As. He had forgotten the KA-40!
The helicopter had climbed to high elevation over 16,000 feet, and was hovering well above the strike wave now. The Japanese Zeros had been so intent of sacrificing themselves to the missiles that not one of them had seen the helo, and now it fired off its load-out of four air-to-air missiles. Two Zeros and two more of Sakamoto’s dive bombers were hit and flamed by the helo, but it could do little more.
Sakamoto screamed in on the ship, streaking through a thin cloud. His vision seemed to blur, and he reached for his goggles to remove them as the ship seemed to resolve into shadow. Then he saw it again, pulling on the stick to re-orient the angle of his attack, but the target was wreathed in an undulating veil of cloudy mist, a glimmer of light was winking at him then flashing out from the ship below. He was so disoriented that he lost his concentration, and saw two other planes swoop past him. He shook his head, trying to clear his senses. Then he heard his men shouting in his head set:
He saw a stream of hot tracer rounds zipping up from below, and knew he would be hit but, to his amazement, the rounds seemed to pass right through his plane—one right through his canopy—yet there was no visible damage! Then he saw the lead planes swoop and climb, their bombs arcing down at a shadow on the sea. It must be making smoke, he thought, seeing a third brave pilot, his bomb gone, still resolutely aiming his plane for the enemy ship. This Shadow Dancer is trying to throw a cloak of black and gray over itself to hide from us!
He looked again, and then again… The ship was not there. Stupefied, he banked his plane this way and that, thinking he had lost consciousness and drifted off course, but he could see nothing. Then Sakamoto pulled hard on the stick, his engine straining, dive brakes shuddering as he struggled to pull up and avoid crashing into the empty sea. He was astounded to see three thin white streaks on the ocean below, wakes of torpedoes that had been aimed right into the heart of the ship, but now they crossed each other, heading off away from the scene. There was a great water splash there where one of his dive bomber pilots, his bomb expended, had flown his plane right into the empty sea! The torpedo bombers were still low on the deck, and now he saw them fly past one another, banking away to avoid colliding, and heard the pilots calling to one another:
A submarine! Thought Sakamoto. It was the only thing that entered his mind at the moment to explain what had happened. The ship must have been a submarine! It has dived beneath the sea! Amazed, and yet exhilarated by the thrill and the fear of the attack, he steadied his plane and started to climb again.
“This is strike leader Sakamoto,” he shouted through his microphone. “All planes form on me. This Shadow Dancer has slipped beneath the sea. We’re going home…”
Aboard
Then the ship seemed to quaver, the lights winking on the bridge, a strange ozone smell was in the air and a crackle of static. Rodenko pushed back away from his radar screen, thinking that a power surge was shorting out his board. They heard an awful, distended roar that seemed to stretch thin to a terrible wail. Something was coming in at them from above, like a shadow of death, and it suddenly seemed to pass right through the ship wailing like a banshee. Two men on the bridge actually cowered, reflexively shielding their heads and crouching low, but it was all sound and shadow, then an eerie calm, and complete silence.
The guns had ceased firing, their fire control radars spinning fitfully as they searched in vain for targets that were no longer there. Rodenko’s system winked on again as the bridge lights quavered to life. He saw nothing on his screen and thought that his radar was down, the delicate phased array system shorted out by the static charge they had experienced.
Karpov was standing by the foreword viewport, shifting his field glasses this way and that, up and down, yet he saw nothing, heard nothing.
The enemy was gone.
“We must have shifted again!” Fedorov said excitedly. “Right in the middle of that attack! I wasn’t aware that Dobrynin had completed his maintenance procedure.”
Admiral Volsky was on the bridge with them now, smiling broadly. “From the sound of things we were in the thick of it,” he said. “I could hear the missiles firing, but the sound of the planes just kept getting closer and closer. Believe me, it was very worrisome.”
They explained what they had discussed with Dobrynin to Karpov, who listened with great interest “Amazing,” he said at last. “Nikolin told me something about Dobrynin, but I had the ship’s defense on my mind and could think of nothing else. It’s a pity! We fired every last missile we had at those planes. Had I known we were going to pull this vanishing act, I would have saved us the missiles.”
“No, Karpov,” said Volsky, “it has been a hard lesson these many weeks, but I think we have learned to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“It was astounding,” said Rodenko. “At the very end I thought I saw something pass right through the ship —just like those shells came through the citadel when we first appeared in the Med, yet caused no damage.”
“We were pulsating for a while again,” said Fedorov,”
“Yes!” the Admiral put in. “I was down with Dobrynin, and he reported those strange flux events in the reactor core again. This time I could hear it myself, when he pointed it out, and sure enough, the data stream monitors recorded the event as well.”
“It’s shuddering to think that one of those planes must have plunged right through the ship,” said Fedorov “but we were just enough out of phase with that time frame that there was no substance to us then. We were here, but
“This is all more than I can fathom for the moment,” said Volsky. “The only question is this: where are we now? Are we back in the future again? If that turns out to be the case I think we will stay for a while. The world there was empty and bleak at times, but at least no one was shooting at us.”
Nikolin spoke up, saying he had nothing at all on his radio set now. “The bands were virtually jammed with radio traffic earlier,” he said, “not only with the local traffic from those planes, but also with more distant signals. I think there was a big battle underway somewhere.”
“And thank God we are no longer a target,” said Volsky. But he spoke too soon, his elation quashed by another call from engineering. It was Dobrynin.
The Admiral set down the receiver, listening, his senses keenly alert, looking around him as if to see signs and effects of what Dobrynin was talking about there on the bridge, but all seemed calm and quiet. He walked
