Finally, when he and Bodman had the compartment more or less clear the PO got the deck apes on the outflow pump working with mops. It didn’t get long to get everything but the cages clean and by spraying under them they even got most of the crap out of those.
It was a nasty, disgusting, job and not one he wanted to repeat any time soon. In his professional opinion, dragons belonged on the land and not in a damned ship.
He was really gonna have to have a long talk with Sheida when this mission was over.
In no more than twenty minutes Joanna was ensconced on the landing platform. The chief had even rigged heavy ropes so that she could hold on; since the rear of the ship was still bucking up and down it was necessary. After a bit she thrust a couple of talons under the ropes, curled in a ball, closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep.
“Dragons, wyverns for that matter, tend to sleep a lot,” Jerry yelled as they headed back down to the quarterdeck. “They use high energy when they have to and try to sleep most of the rest of the time.”
True to Herzer’s mental prediction the wind seemed to be moderating and with it the seas. And with Joanna’s weight to the rear of the ship, along with whatever stores had been moved, the bows were now sweeping over the waves instead of digging into them.
They headed down into the hold again where a team of sailors, with Vickie and a female PO directing, were cleaning out the wyvern stalls. With the materials available the sketchy cleaning didn’t take long and Jerry directed the feeding afterwards as the hands, most of whom were probably from an off-duty watch, walked out of the compartment grumbling. Some of the wyverns barely poked at their food but most of them ate as if they were starving. Some of their distress must have been hunger because by the time they were done most of them had settled down. And, just as Jerry predicted, those that had fed almost immediately tucked their heads under their wings and, swaying with the ship, went to sleep.
“Good,” Jerry said. “That’s the first decent rest they’ve gotten in two days.” He frowned at Chauncey and Yazov, both of whom had ignored their food. They were still mewling piteously although they’d quit the metal-bending shrieks.
“If we found something tastier for them they might eat,” Herzer suggested.
“Yeah, and then the next time they didn’t like their food they’d wait until we gave them something better,” Jerry said. “No, they’re just going to have to eat it or not.”
Chauncey looked through the bars of his stall and mewed piteously at Herzer.
“I’m sure the cook has some scraps left over,” Herzer said. “What if we just gave them a few? That might make them hungry enough they’d eat their slop.”
“I dunno,” Jerry said. “It goes against the grain.”
“If I’d been puking,” Herzer said, mentally adding which I have, his throat was still raw with it, “I wouldn’t want something that looked like puke.”
“You have a point.”
Herzer, getting lost only one time, made his way to the main kitchen, which the sailors insisted be called a “galley,” of the ship and caught the eye of one of the NCOs.
“A couple of the dragons are badly off their feed,” he said. “We’re hoping some scraps will get them eating again.”
“All the edible garbage goes in those pails,” the petty officer said, pointing to a line of buckets lashed to the wall. “Take whatever you want; we just pitch it over the side.”
Herzer went over and checked them over. Most of the garbage consisted of ship’s bread and vegetables, but one bucket had a fair amount of stew from the evening meal in it. He untied that one and started to carry it back to the dragons.
“Hang on, sir,” the petty officer said. “Johnson, carry that for the lieutenant, then head back here when you’re done. Bring the bucket.”
Herzer wasn’t sure if the petty officer just wanted his bucket back or if he was getting another class in “enlisted men do, officers supervise” but he followed the sailor, who didn’t get lost, back to the dragon deck.
The scraps, when added to their slop, were a big hit with the two dragons. They got enough meat that they started sucking on their slop right afterwards.
“Sir, if you don’t mind,” Johnson said. “We can try to segregate the meat that gets thrown away. And there’s bones and things that don’t get used, too.”
“As long as the PO says it’s okay, that would be great,” Herzer said. “Johnson, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thanks for your help,” Jerry said. “If you ever want a ride, assuming we can get them back in the air…”
“That would be great, sir.” The sailor grinned. “I’d better get back.”
“Thanks again,” Herzer said. When the sailor had left, Herzer grinned at the rider. “I think you’ve got a convert.”
“Oh, we’ve had plenty of people ask us about rides,” Jerry said. “Or even becoming riders. Especially since we’re down two.”
“One of them being me,” Herzer said. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem,” Jerry replied. “Duke Edmund has been fairly clear on that. As soon as the weather calms down, and assuming as I said that we can take off and land in this mess, we’ll see about getting you trained. But I warn you, landing on this thing is not easy.”
“You need at least one more rider than you have dragons,” Herzer said. “Or, at least, dragons in the air.”
“Why?”
“For the LSO. I don’t know that I’d have been able to do it if I hadn’t had that one experience with riding. It gave me a grasp of what I was doing.”
“Point,” Jerry said. “Well, since we’ve got the wyverns settled and there’s not much going on, I might as well start with giving you the ground school portion.”
“Ground school?” Herzer said.
“You have no idea.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For the next two days, as the weather continued foul, Jerry and Vickie between them tried to cram all the theoretical aspects of dragon riding into Herzer’s aching head. At night he went to bed with terms like “yaw” running through his head and every morning it started all over again.
He discovered what had been happening in his brief flight when he’d been trying to move the dragon around in the air. He learned about optimum glide paths, methods of spotting thermals, and the anatomy of the wyverns. The wings were not, as he’d thought, just flesh, blood, skin and bone, but were a complex web of far more advanced materials including biologically excreted carbon nanotubes.
“It’s the only way the wing bones could support their weight and powered flight,” Vickie explained. “There’s no way that bone and skin alone could do it. The largest previous flyer was a fraction of their size. And there’s some indication that overall air pressure was higher in the Jurassic.”
“So Joanna’s got this in her, too?” Herzer asked, looking at the sketch. “They’ve got to be some of the strongest ‘natural’ material on earth.”
“They are,” Vickie said, frowning. “We try not to make too much of a point of it.”
“I can imagine why,” Herzer said, frowning in his own turn. “There’s a lot I can imagine to do with wyvern wings.” The bones would make excellent weapons and the primary skins would make tremendous armor. Assuming you could figure out a way to cut it.”