That was the scuttlebutt, solemnly confirmed and embellished by Those Who Had Been There, once upon a time Before The Earth Cooled. The kids listening were on their first cruise, their first extended stay away from home and Mom and the girl next door. They fervently prayed that the scuttlebutt prove true.
The Marines in the A-6 outfit were as excited as the swab jockeys. They knew that, given a choice, every sane female on the planet would of course prefer a Marine to a Dixie cup. Australia would be liberty heaven. As someone said in the dirty-shirt wardroom last night, Columbia had a rendezvous with destiny.
All this flitted through Jake Grafton’s mind as he flew eastward at forty thousand feet. He too wanted to be off the ship, to escape from the eat-sleep-fly cycle, to get a respite from the same old faces and the same old jokes. And Australia, big, exotic, peopled by a hardy race of warriors — Australia would be fun. He hummed a few bars of “Waltzing Matilda,” then glanced guiltily at Flap. He hadn’t heard.
Jake’s mind returned to the business at hand. Hitting the tanker on the way back to the ship was the dicey part…Why did fate keep dealing him these crummy cards?
The fiercely bright sun shown down from a deep, rich, dark blue sky. At this altitude the horizon made a perfect line, oh so far away. It seemed as if you could see forever. The sea far below was visible in little irregular patches through the low layer of scattered cumulus, which seemed to float upon the water like white cotton balls…hundreds of miles of cotton balls. To the northeast were the mountains of Sumatra, quite plain now. Clouds hung around the rocky spine of the huge island, but here and there a deep green jungle-covered ridge could be glimpsed, far away and fuzzy. The late afternoon sun was causing those clouds to cast dark shadows. Soon it would shoot their tops with fire.
“There’s something screwy about this,” Flap said.
“What do you mean?”
“Ships don’t sink in fifteen seconds. Not unless they explode. How likely is that?”
“Probably a mistake. Radio operator hit the wrong switch or something. I’ll bet he thought no one heard the SOS.”
“Wonder if the ship tried to call him back.”
“Probably.”
“Well, I say it’s screwy.”
“You’d better hope we find that tanker on the way home. Worry about that if you want to worry about something. Extended immersion in saltwater is bad for your complexion.”
“Think it might lighten me up?”
“Never can tell.”
“Life as a white man…I never even considered the possibility. Don’t think it would work, though. You white guys have to go without ass for horribly long periods. I need it a lot more regular.”
“Might cure your jungle rot too.”
“You’re always looking for the silver lining, Grafton. That’s a personality defect. You oughta work on that.”
The minutes ticked by. The mountains seemed closer, but maybe he was just kidding himself. Perspective varies with altitude and speed. He had noticed this phenomenon years ago and never ceased to marvel at it. At just a few thousand feet you see every ravine, every hillock, every twist in the creeks. At the middle altitudes on a clear day you see half of a state. And from up here, well, from up here, at these speeds, you leap mountain ranges and vast deserts in minutes, see whole weather systems…In orbit the Earth would be a huge ball that occupied most of the sky. You would circle it in ninety minutes. Continents and oceans would cease to be extraordinarily large things and appear merely as features on the Earth. The concept of geographical location would cease to apply.
At this altitude he and Flap were halfway to heaven. On his kneeboard Jake jotted the phrase.
He was checking the fuel, again, when Flap said, “We’re a hundred twenty miles out. I can see the area.” The area where the ship in distress should be, he meant, if it were really there.
Odd day for an emergency at sea. Most ships got into trouble in bad weather, when heavy seas or low temperatures stressed their systems. On a day like this…
“I got something on the radar. A target.”
“The ship?”
“The INS says it’s about four or five miles from the position Black Eagle gave us. Of course, the inertial could have drifted that much.”
“Big ship?”
“Well, it ain’t a rowboat. Not at this distance. Can’t tell much more than that about the size. A blip is a blip.”
“Course and speed?”
“She’s DIW.” Dead in the water, drifting.
He would pull the power at eighty miles, descend with the engines at eighty percent RPM initially to ensure the generators stayed on the line.
“It’s about fifteen miles from the coast of Sumatra, which runs northwest to southeast. Islands to seaward, west and southeast. Big islands.”
“Any other ships around?”
“No. Nothing.”
“On a coast like that…”
“Maybe we’ll see some fishing boats or something when we get closer.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll tell Black Eagle.” Flap keyed the radio.
They arrived over the ship at seven thousand feet, the engines at idle. Peering down between cumulus clouds, Jake saw her clearly. She was a small freighter, with her superstructure amidships and cranes fore and aft. Rather like an old Liberty ship. No visible smoke, so she wasn’t obviously on fire. No smoke from the funnel either, which was amidships, and no wake. There was a smaller ship, or rather a large boat, alongside, right against the starboard side.
Jake put the plane into a right circle so Flap could get pictures with the hand-held camera and picked a gap in the clouds to descend through. The engines were still at idle.
They dropped under the clouds at 5,500 feet. “Shoot the whole roll of film,” Jake told Flap. “From every angle. We’ll circle and make one low pass down the rail so you can get a closeup shot of the ship and that boat alongside, then we’re out of here.”
“Okay.” He focused and snapped.
“Looks like the crew has been rescued.”
“Swing wide at the stern so I can get a shot of her name.”
Jake was passing three thousand feet now, swinging a wide lazy circle around the ship, which seemed to be floating on an even keel. Wonder what her problem was?
“Can you read the name?”
“You’re still too high. It’ll be in the photos though.”
Fuel? Sixty-two hundred pounds, over six hundred miles to Columbia. He shivered as he surveyed the drifting freighter and the small ship alongside. That small one looked to be maybe eighty or ninety feet long, a small superstructure just forward of amidships, one stack, splotchy paint, a few people visible on deck.
“There’s people on the freighter’s bridge.”
“About finished?”
“Yeah.”
“Here we go, down past them both.” Jake dumped the nose. He dropped quickly to about two hundred feet above the water and leveled, pointing his plane so that they would pass the two stationary vessels from bow to stern. Jake adjusted the throttles. If he went by too fast Flap’s photos would end up blurred. He steadied at 250 knots.
“They aren’t waving or anything.”
Jake Grafton saw the flashes on the bow of the small ship and knew instinctively what they were. He jammed the throttles forward to the stops, rolled forty degrees or so and pulled hard. He felt the thumps, glimpsed the fiery tracers streaming past the canopy, felt more thumps, then they were out of it.
“Flak!” Now Flap Le Beau found his voice.
“Fucker’s got a twenty-millimeter!”
They were tail on to the ships, twisting and rolling and climbing. The primary hydraulic pressure needles flickered. So did the secondary needles. The BACK-UP HYD light illuminated on the annunciator panel.