agitated. Everyone knew Walker was steaming inexorably east and there was a very good chance she’d ultimately pass into waters no Lemurian had ever been. The fact that all the humans and a fair number of the Lemurian old hands seemed so unconcerned kept the edge off among the more strictly pious or superstitious. In this case, however, Bradford himself had become suddenly and surprisingly sensitive to the imperative that they minimize stressful contemplations among certain elements of the crew.
Apparently assured there were no panicky types present, he proceeded. “I have in fact been giving that a great deal of thought. As you know, I’ve been overwhelmed with stimuli, overwhelmed, sir! This world is a cornucopia of delights for a man of my interests. Forgive me if, on occasion, I’ve been diverted from some fairly obvious conclusions that would’ve ordinarily struck me with the greatest importance! It’s the sheer volume of wonders that’s crippled me and I’m but one man…” He paused. “I do hope we may rescue young Mr. Cook. He’s been such a great help…”
“Courtney?” Matt prodded.
“Of course. Where was I? Oh, yes. A mere trivial example of my preoccupation is my failure to extrapolate beyond a few observations I made when we first came to this world. Surely you remember when Miss Tucker and I dissected the creature we killed on Bali?”
The day Marvaney died. “Yeah, I remember,” Matt said.
“Well, you may recall that Miss Tucker and I disagreed about the physiology of the beast? I said it was more like a bird, with its furry feathers and hollow bones, et cetera, and she said its jaws made it a lizard as far as she was concerned-oh, please don’t take this as criticism of the dear woman-but, well, I was right, you see. I admonished her to judge them more by what they were like and less by what they looked like… and I promptly fell into the same trap myself. We bandied the term ‘lizard’ about for so long, I failed to pursue my original course of study. We were a bit busy at the time, as you’ll recall.
“In any event, it was the boy Abel who brought it back to my mind; he was quite fascinated with dinosaurs before his unpleasant experiences turned him slightly against them. But the point is we, the scientific community of which I consider myself a part, have always assumed dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles! Monstrous beasts, plodding along, lying in the sun like lizards on a rock, but we were wrong! If the fauna of this world is truly descended from the same fauna as our own, there would be a lot of egg on a lot of faces at the Royal Society, if I could ever report!”
“Well… that’s amazing, Courtney,” Matt said dryly, “but what’s your point? I’m afraid ‘lizards’ has pretty much stuck as slang for ‘Grik.’ I doubt you’re going to get folks to start calling ’em ‘birds’ at this point. Be happy with your win over ‘Lemurians.’ ”
“No! That’s not what I’m saying at all!”
“Then for God’s sake, for once in your life, say what you mean!” hissed Gray, exasperated. Matt looked at the chief and raised his hand, but couldn’t help agreeing with him.
“I’m trying to! Aren’t you listening at all?” Bradford asked forcefully, and Gray rolled his eyes. “The thing is, all my various preoccupations pushed some rather more important thoughts from my head. One such was retrieved by your ridiculous comment that the ‘exception proves the rule.’ I know you don’t believe that,” he hastened to add, “and neither do I. That brings us to some rather disturbing thoughts I’ve had regarding our arrival on this world. We already know we must have been given, or been the victims of, some exception to the rules we knew, because, well, here we are.”
“Clearly,” Matt said.
“We also now know that exception wasn’t necessarily an exception at all.”
“Shit, Mr. Bradford-’scuse me, Skipper-but just spit it out. I’m getting an ‘exceptional’ headache trying to figure you out!” Gray whispered, but Matt shushed him. He thought he knew where Bradford was going.
“Very well,” Courtney continued, a little stiffly. “Jenks’s ancestors came through a… phenomenon much like the one we did. They call it the Passage, and it occurred in relatively close geographic proximity to our Squall. We also agree there may have been other similar such episodes over the centuries. Maybe it happens quite often, in fact, but the transportees are otherwise in smaller, more vulnerable ships with smaller crews, who have no means of protecting themselves in this more hostile world. They either don’t survive the event, or are lost before locals like the Lemurians discover them and give them aid. The mysterious fate of the crew of the Tjilatjap transport, Santa Catalina, and even the original crew of our own lamented PBY would seem to support that theory. As noted, a few men in a fishing boat would have poor prospects of survival.
“We still don’t know what all else might have come through our Squall with us. Four ships now, counting the transport, plus a submarine and an airplane-that we know of. Now we learn of this Dominion that controls a portion of the Americas. Princess Rebecca is a dear child, but her history is not up to that of Jenks or Mr. O’Casey. They told me that this Dominion was founded by some bizarre combination of survivors from an ‘Acapulco’ or ‘Manila’ galleon and remnants of an even older, possibly pre-Columbian American tribe. I won’t go into the details of that twisted union at present, but it was the Acapulco galleon that rang the first warning bell.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Gray asked. “What’s a ‘Aca-poolco galleon’?”
“What I’m talking about is that whatever phenomenon transported us to this world may not be nearly as unique as we first believed. Whatever conditions arise to trigger it might- might, I say-also ensure that it is a one- way transfer. I don’t begin to understand the mechanics of it yet, but that at least seems certain, since we’ve never encountered any lumbering Lemurian Homes or mountain fish on our world.” He paused. “Or maybe that is the key!”
Captain Reddy and Chief Gray looked at each other. Evidently, Courtney was on one of his stream-of- consciousness rolls, and they might as well let it run its course.
“What key?” Matt prodded.
“Metal! As far as we know, only recently-relatively speaking-has any quantity of metal been abroad on the oceans of this world! Perhaps large quantities of iron contribute some form of electromagnetic aspect to the phenomenon-or the superior conductivity of the bronze guns, copper fittings… precious nonferrous metals of our predecessors… Oh, dear me, Captain, an entirely new avenue of contemplation has opened before me!”
“Well, let’s finish our little trip down the avenue you were already on, for now,” Gray almost pleaded. “What’s Aca-poolco got to do with anything?”
“Oh, dear, I do apologize! Let’s see, yes. Only that our little Squall was not unique. Probably not even regionally unique! There might well be other human civilizations beyond those we know of scattered about this hostile world. Perhaps many more. Now you understand, of course!”
Finally Matt understood. Bradford was right. The question had been sitting there in front of all of them, but they’d just been too busy to notice it and ask. The possible answer chilled him in spite of the warm day. “Acapulco galleons were Spanish treasure ships, Boats,” he explained. “They sailed once a year or so to Acapulco from the Spanish Philippines loaded with loot. We studied Commodore Anson’s circumnavigation at the Academy. He captured one of the things with a fifty-gun ship- Centurion, I think it was-and the loot set most of his crew up for life. At least, that’s the story.”
“So? I mean, it’s a neat story and all, but what good is a bunch of Spanish treasure to us?” Gray still didn’t get it.
“None,” Matt said. “None I can think of now, anyway.” He grinned, but then his expression turned serious again. “The problem is, no Acapulco galleon would have ever sailed into the Java Sea. If that’s indeed what it was, that means whatever happened to us could’ve happened in other places and not just other times, all over the world. Might happen again. To think otherwise would be expecting an exception to these screwy new rules.”
“Indeed,” Bradford said again. “I would think it’s inevitable. Something, some force, connects this world with ours. In the past, our world’s oceans were vast, mostly empty places, yet there have been many unexplained disappearances there. Perhaps some of those unfortunates wound up here as well. But right now, on our earth, a global war is under way and the seas are packed with many thousands of modern, quite seaworthy vessels. If my theory is correct, I fear it’s just a matter of time before we meet another lost traveler like ourselves, and it could happen anytime, anywhere.”
For a long moment there was silence on the bridge. Chief Quartermaster’s Mate Norman Kutas at the wheel, who’d clearly heard at least the gist of the conversation, finally broke it. “Well, if we do run into somebody else,” he said, “I hope to God they’re on our side. We got enough folks mad at us as it is.”
Glaring at Kutas, Bradford lowered his voice still further. “There is yet another quite bizarre possibility,” he said.
