wood. Tear off the sign, and it turned into a formidable bludgeon.
Shouldering the sign, Martin went back outside. Another picket was walking across the lot toward the tent. 'Morning, John,' Chester called.
'Morning,' John answered. 'Chilly today.'
'You say so.' Chester smiled. No, he didn't think he'd ever get used to Los Angeles notions about weather.
He had a good picket line in place around the houses under construction before many workers started showing up. Some turned away, as if glad for an excuse not to go to work. Others squared their shoulders and crossed the line. The pickets showered them with abuse. They had to watch what they said; some of the scabs could have been plainclothes cops. General curses and insults were all right. Threats like, We know where you live, or, Wait till you get off work, could land a man in jail on an assault charge. Lawyers were expensive. Using them drained a strike fund in a hurry.
Around and around and around. In a field across the street, crows and Brewer's blackbirds with golden eyes pecked for worms and bugs and seeds. Hammers started banging at the construction site. The pickets cursed. 'Scabs!' they shouted. Around and around and around.
Halfway through the morning, a white-haired, sun-browned man in a windbreaker fell into step with Chester. The man was missing most of two fingers from his right hand. 'What the hell you want, Mordechai?' Martin asked.
'To talk with you, if you care to talk,' the foreman answered. 'Some of this mess is my fault. Maybe I can help fix it. Decent chop-suey joint around the corner and a block and a half down. I'll buy you lunch, if you'll let me.'
Chester considered. The ex-Navy man was a pretty good guy, even if he had sold out to the exploiters. 'I'll eat with you,' Chester said. 'I won't let you buy for me.'
'Deal,' Mordechai said at once.
'And no sneaking in more scabs at lunchtime, the way you guys have done before,' Martin said. Mordechai nodded. Chester studied him. If he was a liar, he was a fine one. Chester nodded, too. 'All right. We'll do that.'
At noon, they walked to the chop-suey place together. It wasn't bad. Martin had certainly had worse. He ate without saying much. If Mordechai wanted to talk, he could talk. After a while, he did: 'How can we settle this? I flew off the handle, and people have paid for it all over town. You can have your job back. No trouble there. Same with most of the people on your side.'
'If you would've said that then, I'd've slobbered all over you, I'd've been so happy. Now?' Chester shook his head. 'If I give in now, I sell out my pals. I can't do that. The people you work for have got to recognize that the union's come to Los Angeles. We don't want the moon, but they've got to bargain with us, and they've got to do it in good faith.'
Mordechai frowned. He ate another forkful of strange vegetables and bits of fried meat. 'If you think they'll recognize the union, that's wanting the moon, and the stars to boot.'
With a shrug, Chester answered, 'I figured you'd say that. So what the hell have we got to talk about? We'll go on with the class struggle and see how this round comes out.'
'Oh, don't give me that Socialist crap,' Mordechai said impatiently.
'It isn't crap.' Chester set his jaw. 'It works. If it worked in the steel mills in Toledo, it'll work here, too. How do you like being a scab?'
Mordechai's weathered features darkened with anger. 'Don't you call me that.'
'Well, what else are you?'
'I'm a foreman. And I'm a damn good one, too, by God.' Pride rang in Mordechai's voice.
'I never said you weren't,' Chester answered. 'You're a damn fine foreman-most of the time. But that doesn't mean you-or some prick who's a foreman, too-can act like Jesus Christ on roller skates whenever you want. That's why we need a union.'
Despite his mutilated hand, Mordechai ate faster than Chester did. He finished lunch and pushed his chair back from the table. 'Afraid you were right,' he said. 'This was just a waste of time. You're not going to win this strike, though, you know. You can't.'
'They said that in Toledo, too. They were wrong there. And you're wrong now. Sooner or later, a construction outfit will decide they'd rather not have all this trouble, and they'll give us a contract we can live with.'
'Don't hold your breath,' Mordechai advised. He tossed down a quarter. The silver coin rang sweetly. He walked out. Chester set his own quarter beside it and also headed back to the half-built tract. The strike would go on.
January in the North Atlantic tested a ship's construction. The endless storms and enormous seas tested a man's construction, too. The USS Remembrance handsomely passed the test. Sam Carsten wasn't so sure about his own innards. He had a good stomach, but the endless rolling and pitching started to make him feel as if he were riding a horse that hadn't been broken. And he had to strap himself to his bed every night to keep from winding up on the deck. He always hated that.
It needed doing, though. One sailor who slept in a top bunk forgot the strap and broke his arm when he fell out. To add insult to injury-in the most literal sense of the words-the captain busted him to ordinary seaman, too. Sam didn't suppose he'd lose officer's rank if he pulled a rock like that, but he didn't care to find out, either.
He was up and about when general quarters came. Getting to his station in the bowels of the Remembrance without breaking his neck was an adventure in this kind of weather, but he did it. He cussed most of the way there, though. The skipper had to be in an especially nasty mood to order general quarters in seas like this. It was bound to be just a drill, too. The United States weren't at war with anybody.
Besides, at the moment the carrier wasn't anything more than an oversized light cruiser, anyhow. No way in hell she could launch her airplanes in seas like this. That left her with guns to defend herself, and she didn't pack a whole lot of firepower-not that kind of firepower.
Lieutenant Commander Pottinger arrived at their station at the same time as Sam did. Panting, he asked, 'Do you think it's true, Lieutenant?'
'Do I think what's true, sir?' Sam asked in turn. He was panting, too. He'd been in the Navy thirty years now. These mad dashes weren't so easy as they had been once upon a time.
'Why the captain called the general quarters,' Pottinger answered.
'I can't begin to tell you, sir,' Sam said. 'I just heard the hooter and ran like hell. What do you know?'
'I ran like hell, too,' the head of the damage-control party said. 'Some men heading the other way said we'd spotted a Royal Navy ship, or maybe a Royal Navy squadron.'
'I heard the same thing, sir,' a sailor named Szczerbiakowicz said. 'Damned if I know whether it's true, but I heard it.'
'Did you, Eyechart?' Carsten used Szczerbiakowicz's universal nickname; nobody but another Pole could have hoped to pronounce his real one. Sam turned to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger. 'If that's so, sir, you think the limeys mean trouble?'
'I couldn't begin to tell you,' Pottinger replied. 'But I think maybe the skipper thinks they might.'
'Yes, sir. Does seem that way, doesn't it?' Sam looked at all the faces in the damage-control party. He realized he was the only one there old enough to have been at sea during the Great War. Even more than the way his heart pounded after the run to general quarters, that told him how many years he was carrying. He said, 'The Royal Navy's a damn good outfit. They were still on their feet in 1917. We never did knock 'em flat; we starved England into quitting when we finally shut down the grain and beef imports from Argentina.'
The Remembrance rolled steeply. Everybody grabbed for a handhold to steady himself. The ship straightened, then rolled back the other way. Eyechart Szczerbiakowicz said, 'I don't care how good they are, sir. What can they do to us in seas like this?'
'Damned if I know,' Sam said, talking like the petty officer he had been rather than the officer he was. 'I'll tell you this, though: I sure as hell don't want to find out the hard way.'
Nobody disagreed with him. Nobody wanted to see anything happen to the Remembrance. The men might not remember the Great War, but most of them had been through the inconclusive scrap against the Japanese. They knew too well how vulnerable to disaster even the mightiest warship could be. Huddling down here far below the main deck, away from fresh air and natural light, only served as a reminder. No one would do this if he didn't have to.
