“I like coffee,” Lelaa said, staring into her cup with a surprised, wide-eyed blink. She and Irvin were on Simms ’s quarterdeck enjoying another pleasant morning. “Everyone says it is vile and they don’t know how you Amer-i-caans can drink it all the time, but I find it heightens my awareness… and I have even come to enjoy the taste. Does that make me strange… or even more Amer-i-caan?”
Irvin laughed, then took a small sip from his own scalding cup of “monkey joe.” “Well, you’ve been in the American Navy for some time now, and everybody back home would swear the Navy couldn’t function without coffee. I don’t think we could’ve ever won a war without it.”
“You have told me of the great battles in your… our Navy’s past. Is that how they won? We drink coffee and our enemies do not?”
Irvin laughed again. “Maybe. If the only difference in a fight is that one side is wide-awake and alert, it might tip the balance. There are other variables, though, that coffee alone can’t make up for. Crummy torpedoes, being outnumbered ten to one.” His smile faded. “In the war we came from, we drank a lot of coffee, but it wasn’t making much difference.”
Lelaa took another sip. “I bet it would have, eventually. Maybe in that lost world, it already has.”
Irvin grunted.
The alarm bell at the masthead sounded insistently and everyone’s gaze turned upward.
“Island fish! Island fish! Three points off starboard bow! Two t’ousand yards! It just came up!”
“Clear for action!” Lelaa shouted, gulping the rest of her coffee and passing the cup to Midshipman Hardee. Hardee had been one of the kids on S-19 and had volunteered to return to her. Now sixteen, he was also the oldest boy who’d been aboard her. “Pass the word for Sparks to wind up his gear!”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Hardee replied, clutching the cup in both hands. He raced away. “Tex” Sheider, also known as “Sparks,” like every communications officer on any Navy ship, scrambled up the companionway from below. He was a small, skinny guy, as many submariners were, and had never seemed to fit his other nickname: Tex. Of course, that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was that he was from Texas. There’d once been another Tex on S-19, but he’d suffocated in the battery compartment.
“Captain,” Hardee addressed Lelaa. “Sir,” he said to Irvin. “I heard the alarm. The guys are winding up the gizmo now.” He looked ahead, trying to see the huge fish. A gray-black hump was just visible from deck now. “I sure hope this works,” he added nervously.
The Anti-Mountain Fish Destruction Countermeasures, or AMF-DIC, after the British version of sonar-with a couple of extra letters thrown in-were a collection of mostly untried procedures it was hoped would scare the humongous, ship-eating beasts away. All had an acoustic pressure element, which they’d learned through experience might be effective. The first line of defense was literally a giant speaker activated by the ship’s communication equipment. A wind-powered generator charged a primitive battery in the “wireless shack” that, when switched through a high-amplitude capacitor, allowed them to boost the output through the simple transmitter Riggs had given them. In this case, instead of routing the jolt of electricity to an antenna, it sent it to a crude speaker mounted firmly to the hull. The result briefly turned the entire ship into a resonance chamber meant to frighten the creatures away.
The second defense, one they knew could work when properly applied, was a device most of the destroyermen had been familiar with even though Walker and Mahan had never been equipped with them. It was a form of “Y” gun that used one of the old muzzle-loading mortars they’d employed in the defense of Baalkpan. A weighted barrel of gunpowder rested upon a rack positioned at the muzzle of the mortar, which allowed them to blast the depth charge into the path of an oncoming mountain fish. They knew the monsters didn’t like depth charges at all, and they believed the “Y” gun would work fine-if it didn’t blow up the ship.
They had a final defense that Jenks had told them the Imperial Navy used at close quarters: an indiscriminate, simultaneous broadside of every gun on the ship. The resulting concussion seemed to disorient the beasts, and although it made them very angry, only rarely did they manage to destroy a ship with their enraged convulsions.
“Stand ready to activate your gizmo, Tex,” Irvin instructed. Lelaa nodded. “But wait for the word. I know we want to test it, but if that thing leaves us alone, we’ll leave it alone. Right now it’s just kind of wallowing there, catching some rays.”
“Yeah, but it’s right in front of us. What if it won’t move? Do we go around it, or blast it?”
Lelaa looked at the sky and the set of the sails. “We blast it,” she decided. “If we go around, we will lose speed, and I want us to be as fast as we can be if we are forced to use the gizmo.” She raised her voice. “Signal our consort to lay aft and follow in our wake. Maybe it won’t sense us both. No point in making it feel threatened by our numbers.”
Irvin glanced at her and she shrugged, her tail swishing uncomfortably. “If there were ten of us, I might try it the other way,” she explained, “but with only two, each less than a third its size…”
“It moving, Skipper,” came the shout from above. “It know we here! It coming this way!”
Lelaa shook her head and looked at Sheider. “Stand by your gizmo, Tex.” She gestured at the cluster of copper speaking tubes beside the wheel. “I will give the order.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” With a nervous grin at Laumer, he disappeared below.
The giant was not on an attack run but seemed merely interested or curious, so their closing speed was not that great. Unfortunately, a mountain fish’s curiosity often included tasting what it was curious about. At six hundred yards, Lelaa strode to the speaking tube and repeated, “Stand by.” No one knew what the maximum range of the gizmo might be, but Riggs had figured it would become unpleasant at about five hundred yards. All they would get was one shot every several minutes. In a wind like this, it would take that long for the capacitor to recharge. If Lelaa had any hope of testing the device any closer, she’d have to try it at maximum range first. She started to say, “Fire,” but that seemed inappropriate.
“Light it up, Tex.”
For an instant, there was nothing. Then, with a jarring suddenness that surprised everyone, the whole skip began to tremble, accompanied by a dull bass rumble beneath their feet. The vibration was so intense, it blurred Irvin’s vision. After only a few seconds, the sensation passed.
“What’s it doing?” Lelaa shouted above.
“It pissed!” came the shout. “It swim in circle, go ape! Wait! It coming this way, fast! It pissed!”
“Ready the forward “Y” gun!” Lelaa commanded. The gun was already loaded and prepared in all respects, but Shipfitter Danny Porter tracked the oncoming target and shifted the weapon accordingly. The “Y” gun had no sights-it was an area weapon, after all-but Danny had a good eye and was a good judge of distance. He’d been striking for gunner’s mate, and his surface action station on the sub had been her four-inch fifty.
“Ready when you are, Skipper,” he announced tersely over the voice tube.
“Commence firing when you see fit,” Lelaa said. Her voice sounded calm, but tinny. “Try to drop the bomb right on its nose.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Danny waited, calculating the ship’s slight pitch and the range to the target. He’d been allowed only a couple of tests with the new weapon and was no expert by any means. Suddenly, he stepped back.
“Fire!”
Simms ’s entire fo’c’sle was shrouded with white smoke and a loud, muffled whump! jarred the ship. The barrel-shaped bomb emerged from the smoke and tumbled upward into the sky. For a moment, it seemed to defy gravity as it hung there, wobbling, but growing smaller too. Then it began to fall. Everyone was tense, waiting for the plunge. It looked like Danny had missed, or worse, that the bomb might actually hit the back of the creature. Most supposed that if that happened, it might even die, but it would almost certainly lunge ahead and strike the ship before it did. A large concave splash erupted a hundred feet short of the monster, a little to its left. A pressure cap inside the bomb should detonate at about twenty feet. The sensitive nature of the detonator was always a concern when firing the damn things.