The original permanent dry dock had even more smoking engines around it, and the place was wreathed in a perpetual cloud of steam. A brand-new carrier was taking shape inside the now concrete- reinforced, ’Cat-made canyon, and mighty wooden cranes were poised over mountains of bright timbers like impossible insects. He’d known concrete was in the works. Many of the ingredients were abundant in the highly volcanic region, and they’d been cooking limestone for acetylene. He’d heard that was related somehow. But to see it already in use… His eyes strayed to a pair of the old floating dry docks, side by side, and sure enough there were S-19 and the salvaged remains of Walker ’s sister, Mahan! The wrecked destroyer and practically wrecked sub were both in the process of becoming something maybe a little different from what they’d been, though major alterations on S-19 had only just begun with Irvin Laumer’s arrival a few days before. Not much to see there yet but a nearly stripped pressure hull. But Mahan! He couldn’t believe it. He wondered how they’d managed to fish her up. Almost half the damn thing had been blown off, but she was beginning to look kind of like her old self again! Maybe shorter…
“Silva!” Bernie snapped-maybe the third time.
“Whut?”
“That nasty, creepy thing you use for a brain must be off on the moon! Listen up, and quit woolgathering! You and Risa will be the first ones at bat with all the new small arms, after Adar says his piece. I’d order you not to screw it up-with half the city watching-but then you’d probably start the show by seeing if you can whiz farther than you can shoot!”
Silva shrugged. “Maybe I can…”
“ Please don’t screw it up!” Bernie groaned. “I’m asking you, damn it! I’m nervous enough as it is without worrying about you! And whatever you do, don’t carry on with Risa out in front of everybody! Besides… everything else, she’s a Marine and an officer now!”
Silva grinned and patted the sling that supported his new “Doom Stomper.”
“No sweat, Mr. Sandison! I’m your man! I’m still feelin’ mighty friendly and a-bleeged! Besides, shootin’ stuff is what I do! Me and Cap’n Risa’ll shoot off the good stuff, an’ show ’em why the junk won’t work.” Clearly, Silva had already formed strong opinions about some of the experimental weapons. “Relax,” he continued. “Torpedoes and… other things… are what you do. It ain’t like you got to sell the stuff!”
Bernie stopped, wordless for a moment, and the whole column ground to a halt behind him. “That’s exactly what we’re here to do today!” he finally insisted. “We have to decide what weapons and systems to devote our resources to, then sell them to the guys and gals who’ll make them-as well as those who’ll have to bet their lives on them! We all bitched about the useless crap the Navy gave us to fight the Japs: the crummy torpedoes, the dud shells. Stuff that cost lives! Now we’re the ones responsible! All this time, we’ve been making do, but the time’s come to put some real weapons in the hands of our people, and I’ll be damned if one sailor, soldier, flyer, or Marine gets killed because something doesn’t go off when they’re counting on it!”
Silva arched an eyebrow. “Zat what yer workin’ on, off in the jungle east o’ town? Real weapons?”
Bernie stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bull flops. I seen some o’ the brightest ordnance ’Cats we got headin’ down a trail at first light yesterday, an’ they didn’t never come back. They all get ate, an’ you forget to mention it? What’re you doin’ off in there you can’t tell me about?”
Bernie looked at him. “I wouldn’t tell you I had a hangnail!” he said, then paused. “Look,” he almost whispered, “you try to fool everybody, but you’re not stupid. Of course we’ve got secret stuff going on-you sniffed it out easy enough. Must be the way your mind works. Anyway, some things-big things-have to stay secret now. The war’s changing. We’ve got Impies and all these women running around. Who’s to say not one of ’em is a Dom spy? It would still be tough for the Grik to spy on us, but we have to stay tight-lipped about things here that somebody who gets deployed might blab to a Jap interrogator-or a Grik who understands English!”
Silva nodded. “No sweat, Mr. Sandison,” he murmured back. “I won’t blow. You workin’ on anything that might interest me?”
Bernie hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”
“Then I don’t care what it is.” Something caught his eye and he grinned.
Ensign Abel Cook and Midshipman Stuart Brassey appeared and hurried to join them as several paalka-drawn carts, heavily laden with fresh meat, took the opportunity to cross ahead of the stalled column.
“Good morning, Commander Sandison. Commander Rodriguez,” Cook said in his vestigial, high-class British accent, and saluted. “Hiya, Dennis.”
“Mornin’, Mr. Cook,” Silva replied, stressing Abel’s new status. “Mr. Brassey!” Cook’s freckle-tanned face reddened, and Brassey smiled uncertainly.
“’Ister Cook!” Lawrence tried to repeat, and saluted as well.
“Lawrence,” Abel managed, then turned back to Bernie. “Ah, may we assist in some way, sir? We have no other duties, at least until we report back to Mr. Letts in the morning.”
“Sure, kid… I mean, Mr. Cook,” Bernie said, catching on to Silva’s unexpected reminder that despite a degree of informality among them all that harked back even to their Asiatic Fleet days, distinctions between officers and enlisted men must always be maintained.
“Thank you, sir,” Abel and Stuart chorused, stepping into the column that was now waiting for the meat carts to pass.
Dennis suddenly did a double take and then trotted over to an old Lemurian, swatting a paalka clear of the pathway with a long, dried bamboo shoot. “I’ll catch up, Mr. Sandison!” he called behind him. “I gotta talk to this guy a second.”
“No screwin’ around!”
“No, sir.”
“Hey, Moe. What’s up?” Silva asked the ancient ’Cat. Moe looked good for his age-whatever that was-and was still just as tough and sinewy as Dennis remembered. Now, in addition to the ragged kilt he usually wore to town, he also wore dingy rhino-pig armor with sergeant’s stripes.
Moe looked up at him. “Si-vaa,” he said. “Where you been? Lotsa huntin’ to do.”
“Oh, I been here and there.” Silva answered. He waved at Santa Catalina. “Heard you went on a little jaunt yourself.”
“Damn weird place,” Moe nodded. “Weird critters too. Glad I back here.”
Silva gestured at the heaps of meat on the carts. “I see you ain’t run outta pigs. They gettin’ harder to find?”
“No. We kill all we want. They make more.” He shook his head.
“Look. They’re sendin’ me and Larry and the kids over there-you remember them-up the river, north, into Injun Jungle Lizard territory. We’re s’posed to say howdy to ’em. You wanna go?”
“No,” Moe answered truthfully, but then twitched his ears at his stripes. “But I Army scout now. They make me go, an’ I been helpin’ plan the trip.” He shrugged like he’d learned to do and gazed northward. “We go up there, we gonna die, I betcha.” He grinned. “But I old. Gonna die soon, anyway!” He laughed at Silva and swatted the paalka again. “See you around, Si-vaa!”
A grandstand had been erected near the water overlooking the old seaplane ramp, and it was packed to overflowing. Nearby buildings were covered with ’Cats and women as far away as the Screw in one direction and the main dry dock in the other. Sailors and yard workers lined the rails of the completing ships, and others skylarked in the masts and rigging. Below the grandstand, beside the ramp, with deep water in front of it, was Walker ’s refurbished number-one torpedo mount. Some distance to the rear of the triple-tube mount, resting securely fastened on cradle trucks exactly like the one Silva remembered from Walker, were three long, shiny cylinders with rounded noses in front, and four fins and two propellers at the back. Compressors and large accumulators for charging the air flasks were close at hand. Whatever the things were actually capable of, they sure looked like torpedoes to Dennis.