sours and turns to salt, it gets heavier and slowly slides off to the side of the world until it falls off.” He grinned wider and quoted an old cliche. “No one can stand on the bottom of the world.” The others laughed.
“Do their silly notions concern you, Brother?” Keje asked.
Adar’s grin quickly faded. “No, lord. Two things brought the question to mind, and before you ask me what question, let me proceed. First, as far as we know, the Amer-i-caans do not hunt gri-kakka, or any fish at all. Nor do they grow crops. As amazing as their ship is, it’s very small-which I must say became quite evident after a very short time-and dependent upon gish for fuel. That’s the smoke from their pipes. Surely you recognize the stink? It’s burning gish. I don’t know how it works, but they must have gish, and quite a lot of it.”
Keje blinked. “So? That’s no problem. We know where there is much gish and they are welcome to it for helping us.”
“Of course, but my point is, the Amer-i-caans are tied to the land by necessity. They eat only things of the land, as does their ship. They cannot be a true, self-sufficient, seafaring race such as we. I also know they don’t spring from any land I’ve seen, and together we’ve seen it all.” He held up his hand. “Second, and perhaps most striking, they have only two females. Not only is that obviously far too few, but they are not even mated.”
“Most unusual,” agreed Keje, “and perhaps unnatural. But I had the impression that the first healer-their ‘high’ healer, I suppose-was mated to their leader. The times we have seen them together, she seems to argue with him enough! Perhaps among them, only leaders may mate?”
“Not so, lord. She and the other female healer are not mated.”
They were all silent a moment, pondering.
“Well. I can certainly understand your perplexity, but what about this is sinister?”
“I never suggested it was sinister, lord. Merely strange-and in keeping with my question. When their healer came to help our wounded, she was obviously shocked to learn that many of our warriors are female, that we make no distinction regarding them when it comes to fighting. I asked Bradford about this, and he confirmed that among them, females do not fight.”
“Go on,” Keje prompted.
“Their ship bristles with weapons and has no obvious means of support. There are no females aboard, except two healers who do not fight because they’re not supposed to.” Adar looked at the others and paused to convey significance. The sun had almost vanished, but they still saw the destroyer cruising lazily, effortlessly, ahead. The reflected glare from the last rays of light hid her rust streaks and other imperfections. A single wisp of smoke floated from the aftermost pipe, and heat shimmered at the top. The curious piece of cloth they called a “flag” flapped tautly from the small mast that could have little other purpose than to fly it. “With this evidence, the only conclusion I can draw is that the Amer-i-caan ship has only one purpose: it’s a ship meant entirely for war.” He sighed. “What manner of people, besides the Grik, would build such a ship, and why so formidable? Did you see that many of the holes they patched were larger than the holes in their weapons? It strikes me that they have been shot at by something with bigger ‘guns’ than theirs. The Grik have nothing that would do that, or they would have used it on us. Besides, they claim to know even less about the Grik than we.” Adar frowned and his eyes rested speculatively on the dark shape as the sun sank from view.
“So what is this question of yours, after all?” Keje asked.
“Only this: have we befriended a flasher-fish, only to find a gri-kakka on its tail?”
Reveille blared in the forward berthing space at 0400 to signal the morning watch. Sleepy men groused and cursed, rolling from their three-tiered racks. Chack, however, practically vaulted from his-one of the uppermost-and quickly donned the white T-shirt that Alan Letts had given him to make him look more Navy-like than the red kilt alone-his only other garment. “Good morning, good morning!” he chanted cheerfully, weaving through the dressing men and scampering up the companionway.
“Ain’t natural,” grumped Rodriguez, who’d finally been restored to full duty. “Even monkey-cats can’t be that happy to wake up every day. He’s settin’ a bad example. It’ll ruin morale, I tell you.”
Elden grinned. “Sleep on deck and you won’t have to watch him in the morning.”
“Hell, I would! But every time, I get woke up drenched by a squall.”
“You’d rather get woke up drenched by sweat?”
Rodriguez shrugged. “This close to the equator, don’t much matter where you sleep, you’re gonna do that. Sometimes I actually pity those damn snipes. I bet it hits a hundred and forty in the fireroom today.”
“Hey, man, God didn’t make ’em snipes. If we were in the North Atlantic they’d be toasty warm and wouldn’t feel sorry for us, out on the icy deck.”
“Icy deck!” moaned Leo Davis dreamily from his rack. Ever since Lieutenant Tucker had applied the Lemurian salve to his leg, he’d rapidly improved. So much, in fact, that some began to suspect him of malingering. He stretched and smiled. “Is it morning already? Which one of you fellas’ll bring me breakfast in bed?”
Elden pitched a rancid sock on his chest, and Davis yelped and squirmed, trying to get out from under it without touching it. “Damn you! I’m an invalid!”
Chief Gray poked his head down the companionway. “Move it, you apes! Skipper’s lookin’ at his watch! If you ain’t at your GQ stations in one minute he’s gonna throw a fit!”
“I wonder why we’re still doin’ that?” Elden pondered aloud after Gray disappeared. Every morning watch, Walker’s crew manned their general quarters posts until two hours after dawn so they’d be prepared while the ship was most vulnerable-when an enemy might see her silhouette before her lookouts saw the enemy. After that, she steamed under condition III alert, with half her weapons manned all day. “Ain’t no Jap subs out there,” Elden continued. “Ain’t no Jap ships or planes. Ain’t no Jap Navy. Hell, there ain’t no Japs, ’cept ours!”
“I don’t know why, but the Skipper does, and he’s the only one that has to,” Rodriguez said, tying his shoe and hurrying for the ladder. “C’mon, or the snipes’ll clean out the galley!”
Chack happily munched the strange yellowish-white substance rolled in a slice of bread. He’d heard them call it “eggs,” but Mertz made it from powder, so they must have been joking. He liked the way Amer-i-caans joked, and they did it all the time. Sometimes he wasn’t sure if they were joking or not, however. After it was cooked, the stuff did taste a little like eggs, and he particularly liked it with salt and “caatch-up.”
Finished eating, he climbed to the fire-control platform, then up the little ladder to his new battle station on the searchlight platform above it. It was still dark, but just a trace of red tinged the eastern sky. A stiff breeze cooled him, and he felt a sense of exhilaration and speed, even at only six knots. That was still about as fast as he’d ever gone before, and Walker’s relatively small size magnified the sensation wonderfully. He knew it was only a fraction of what she was capable of, and he yearned to be aboard when she “stretched her legs,” as his Amer-i- caan friends described it.
Lieutenant Garrett appeared on the platform below and smiled up at Chack.
“Good morning, Loo-ten-aant Gaar-ret! Morning-day good!”
“Indeed it is. Good morning to you as well. Why don’t you light along to the crow’s nest and take the first watch? Sing out if those keen eyes of yours spot anything. Understand?” Chack blinked with pleasure and looked at the tiny bucket far above. He’d spent most of his life much higher, but it was the highest point on the ship and he was thrilled by the novelty and-in his mind-the prestige of the post.
“Crow’s nest? Me?”
“That’s right, Chack. Crow’s nest. You. Up you go.”
“You want I go higher? I go top of pole?”
Garrett chuckled. “No, the crow’s nest is high enough.” He pantomimed putting on the headset. “You have to be able to talk and hear. But don’t talk unless you see something!”
“Ay, ay!” Chack said, and shot up the ladder. Garrett shook his head, still smiling, as he watched the Lemurian climb. The long, swishing tail did make him look like a cat, or for that matter, a monkey. Whatever he looked like, he was becoming a pretty good hand, and nobody came close to matching his enthusiasm or agility. He was wondering with amusement if they could recruit more like him, when all weapons reported “manned and ready” and he reported for his division.
The sky went from red to yellow-gray and visibility began to improve. The other lookouts scanned for any menace with their binoculars, and a quarter mile off their port quarter, Big Sal began to take shape. The gray became suffused with gold that flared against the bottoms of fleecy clouds and cast a new coastline into stark relief off the port bow. Ahead lay the Makassar Strait and, beyond that, Celebes. But right now all eyes were glued to the landfall. Matt paced onto the port bridgewing and joined the lookout there.
“Borneo, Skipper,” said the man in a tone of mixed excitement and apprehension. They had almost exactly
