target barrel, and amid more thunderous acclaim, the odd little pursuit ship pulled up and raced back toward Kaufman Field. When Silva looked back to where Pam and Risa had been, they were gone.
“Dames are nuts,” he muttered, “all of ’em.” He moved toward the torpedo mount. “Hey, Mr. Sandison! What’s with the Fleashooter?’ I thought we needed rubber before we got anything with wheels.”
Bernie was adjusting the depth controls on the torpedoes with a ratchet, setting them to run at five feet. “We’re starting to get a little rubber from Ceylon. We’ll get more in India. Colonel Mallory began testing the ’Skeeters with leather tires, but when we were coming up with the recoil cylinders for the guns, he came by and had us make Oleo struts to take the shock on his gear.”
“What did he use for guns?”
“Basically, Blitzer Bugs mounted in the wheel pants, with long magazines following the struts up and through the wings. All they need is light springs for the followers, since they’re pushing the cartridges down. They work pretty good.”
“Forty-five-ACP airplane guns?” Silva asked doubtfully.
Bernie sighed in exasperation. “Sure. What are they gonna shoot at? Creeping zeps and packs of Grik.” He waved at the sky. “There aren’t any Zeros up there, and the Flea-I mean, the Mosquito Hawk-can even outrun that damn Jap spotting plane if it ever shows up again. Besides, the principle of the Blitzer Bugs should work with bigger stuff, like thirty-ought six, when we get around to it.” He rolled his eyes. “You’d’ve known all this if you’d been here, instead of running loose in the east! Now leave me alone. I’ve got ‘fishy’ stuff to do!” he added angrily. Silva stepped back and watched while the strikers started slathering lard all over the first torpedo, already poised at the rear of the left tube.
“I’ve been watching them,” Abel offered at his side. “The first one is the ‘cold’ torpedo, and it utilizes only compressed air that operates a three-cylinder engine to turn the counter-rotating propellers. That is all very straightforward, but the complexity of the guidance system is most fascinating and impressive!”
“They ain’t got a warhead on the end of that thing, do they?” Silva asked.
“No. It is a practice head, they called it.”
“Good. Let’s ease back a little, just the same. C’mon, Larry. It’s been my experience that torpedoes are more dangerous to them around ’em than they are to who you’re shootin’ at!”
“I want to watch what they do,” Lawrence objected.
“You can watch with us from back a ways. Like Mr. Sandison said, let’s leave him be.”
Small motor launches loaded with several observers each eased into the watery range at predetermined distances, while the crowd talker described the first weapon as a Mk-I cold-air torpedo and proudly described the complexity of the device. Bernie finally stepped back and ordered that it be pushed the rest of the way into the barrel of the tube. The gyro had been set for a simple, straight run. When the weapon was fully inserted to the spring-loaded stop, a striker removed the propeller lock and closed the circle door just like he’d done it a hundred times. Finally, he inserted a big brass cartridge into the firing chamber at the top rear of the tube, gently closed the little door, and stepped back to Bernie, presenting him with a lanyard attached to the hammer.
The torpedo had no warhead, but the air flasks were the first of their kind made on this world and were stoked beyond a thousand PSI. They’d tested them, of course, but Bernie didn’t want anyone on the mount when the charge went off and all that air tried to dump into the complicated little engine under somewhat stressful acceleration. He didn’t think anything bad would happen, but there were an awful lot of pieces to fly in all directions if it did.
“Ready!” he cried, stretching the lanyard and looking nervously at the suddenly silent grandstand. By prior arrangement, Adar stood and made a grand, throwing-away gesture.
The impulse charge detonated with a hollow, muffled boomp! and the slimy torpedo squirted from the tube with a high-pitched skirl of air, followed by a billowing cloud of white smoke. It splapp ed noisily into the water and vanished from sight, but a surge of bubbles rose to the surface in a gratifyingly straight line.
Bernie, Dennis, and nearly everyone near the mount raced to the water’s edge to watch the bubbling wake. Deadly flasher fish and other finned… things… leaped into the air or churned away from the weapon’s path. Swirling lizard birds took notice of the disturbance in the water and angled down, swooping and pacing the trail of rising air. The torpedo was going straight-but it was clearly also going disappointingly slow. It seemed to take forever to reach the first boat stationed two hundred tails offshore, and when they raised a little flag signifying its passage, Bernie looked at his watch.
“Eight, maybe ten lousy knots!” he ground out, barely heard over the happy cheering and shouts from the spectators.
“Least it’s runnin’ true,” Dennis consoled, “and those ’Cats on the boats’ll be able to tell us if its runnin’ at about the right depth.”
Bernie brightened. “Yeah. And I knew it would be slow compared to the hot air torp.” He grinned tentatively. “I think it works!”
The second boat raised a flag at four hundred tails, and Bernie confirmed his initial speed estimate, but he was in a better mood by then. Finally, the eight-hundred-tail boat waved its flag but heaved out a net with a marker that indicated the torpedo had come to a floating, exhausted stop. The net would snare the wallowing weapon and mark its position. They wouldn’t have used it if the propellers were still turning.
“Kind of pitiful,” Bernie muttered aloud, “but it proves all the really complicated stuff works.”
The second torpedo was prepared, with Ronson shadowing the strikers like an expectant mother. Externally, the “Mk-2” looked exactly the same, but the starting lever would complete a circuit instead of opening a valve. It was loaded and made ready just like its predecessor, but this time Ronson took the lanyard. At the same signal from Adar, the electric torpedo leaped into the bay, but there were no bubbles this time. The crowd cheered, then waited expectantly. Ronson snatched his binoculars to his eyes, staring at the first boat. But there was no flag.
“Maybe they just didn’t see it,” he said. “That’s part of the point. It’s supposed to be hard to see… and it should be faster than the first one. Maybe it went by before they were looking for it.”
“Hey, Ronson,” Silva said.
“What?”
“I see it.”
“Where?!”
Dennis pushed the binoculars down, about the same time chittering laughter erupted in the stands.
“Oh, goddamn!” Ronson spat when he saw his torpedo floating on the surface about forty yards away, its slowly turning propellers pushing it directly back at them like a chastened dog.
“Better luck next time, Mr. Rodriguez!” Silva said with theatrical solemnity.
“I… I don’t get it. It must’ve shorted out.”
The launch of the third torpedo, the “Mk-3” was the last event of the day, and everyone knew it was supposed to be a somehow more advanced version of the first, so a lot was expected. All preparations were apparently the same as those previous, but as a “hot” torpedo, it was equipped with a fuel source-kerosene-that would send a jet of flame into the air flask as the resultant hot, expanding air and kerosene exhaust gushed into the motor. Theoretically, this would generate exponentially greater pressure, speed-and heat, of course. That was how it worked on the Mk-14 torpedo they’d copied in most ways except the engine. They were experimenting with turbines for the short-lived torpedoes, but like the batteries, they weren’t there yet. After the directional and depth performance of the Mk-1, however, Bernie was emboldened to think the Mk-3 was “it,” and with yet another signal from Adar, he confidently pulled the lanyard.
The tube boomp ed again and the fish lashed out into the water, leaving a far more energetic trail of steamy froth behind.
“’Ook at her go!” Lawrence cried excitedly. Compared to the first two, the Mk-3 was indeed going like a bat out of hell. Bernie was the first to notice that the wake looked a little… wobbly, though, and his fingers clenched his binoculars more tightly. Nearly to the first boat, the torpedo suddenly porpoised, almost leaping out of the water for an instant before diving under the boat and the erratically waving flag.
“Now!” a striker shouted.
“Maybe thirty knots!” Abel cried in response. He’d been looking at his watch and hadn’t seen the surprising caper. At perhaps three hundred tails, the torpedo jumped again, significantly off track to the left, and this time it looked like a leaping fish, the sun glinting sharply off its polished body. It fell back in the water with an enormous
