Mordechai frowned. He ate another forkful of strange vegetables and bits of fried meat. "If you think they'll recognize the union, that's wanting the moon, and the stars to boot."
With a shrug, Chester answered, "I figured you'd say that. So what the hell have we got to talk about? We'll go on with the class struggle and see how this round comes out."
"Oh, don't give me that Socialist crap," Mordechai said impatiently.
"It isn't crap." Chester set his jaw. "It works. If it worked in the steel mills in Toledo, it'll work here, too. How do you like being a scab?"
Mordechai's weathered features darkened with anger. "Don't you call me that."
"Well, what else are you?"
"I'm a foreman. And I'm a damn good one, too, by God." Pride rang in Mordechai's voice.
"I never said you weren't," Chester answered. "You're a damn fine foreman-most of the time. But that doesn't mean you-or some prick who's a foreman, too-can act like Jesus Christ on roller skates whenever you want. That's why we need a union."
Despite his mutilated hand, Mordechai ate faster than Chester did. He finished lunch and pushed his chair back from the table. "Afraid you were right," he said. "This was just a waste of time. You're not going to win this strike, though, you know. You can't."
"They said that in Toledo, too. They were wrong there. And you're wrong now. Sooner or later, a construction outfit will decide they'd rather not have all this trouble, and they'll give us a contract we can live with."
"Don't hold your breath," Mordechai advised. He tossed down a quarter. The silver coin rang sweetly. He walked out. Chester set his own quarter beside it and also headed back to the half-built tract. The strike would go on.
January in the North Atlantic tested a ship's construction. The endless storms and enormous seas tested a man's construction, too. The USS Remembrance handsomely passed the test. Sam Carsten wasn't so sure about his own innards. He had a good stomach, but the endless rolling and pitching started to make him feel as if he were riding a horse that hadn't been broken. And he had to strap himself to his bed every night to keep from winding up on the deck. He always hated that.
It needed doing, though. One sailor who slept in a top bunk forgot the strap and broke his arm when he fell out. To add insult to injury-in the most literal sense of the words-the captain busted him to ordinary seaman, too. Sam didn't suppose he'd lose officer's rank if he pulled a rock like that, but he didn't care to find out, either.
He was up and about when general quarters came. Getting to his station in the bowels of the Remembrance without breaking his neck was an adventure in this kind of weather, but he did it. He cussed most of the way there, though. The skipper had to be in an especially nasty mood to order general quarters in seas like this. It was bound to be just a drill, too. The United States weren't at war with anybody.
Besides, at the moment the carrier wasn't anything more than an oversized light cruiser, anyhow. No way in hell she could launch her airplanes in seas like this. That left her with guns to defend herself, and she didn't pack a whole lot of firepower-not that kind of firepower.
Lieutenant Commander Pottinger arrived at their station at the same time as Sam did. Panting, he asked, "Do you think it's true, Lieutenant?"
"Do I think what's true, sir?" Sam asked in turn. He was panting, too. He'd been in the Navy thirty years now. These mad dashes weren't so easy as they had been once upon a time.
"Why the captain called the general quarters," Pottinger answered.
"I can't begin to tell you, sir," Sam said. "I just heard the hooter and ran like hell. What do you know?"
"I ran like hell, too," the head of the damage-control party said. "Some men heading the other way said we'd spotted a Royal Navy ship, or maybe a Royal Navy squadron."
"I heard the same thing, sir," a sailor named Szczerbiakowicz said. "Damned if I know whether it's true, but I heard it."
"Did you, Eyechart?" Carsten used Szczerbiakowicz's universal nickname; nobody but another Pole could have hoped to pronounce his real one. Sam turned to Lieutenant Commander Pottinger. "If that's so, sir, you think the limeys mean trouble?"
"I couldn't begin to tell you," Pottinger replied. "But I think maybe the skipper thinks they might."
"Yes, sir. Does seem that way, doesn't it?" Sam looked at all the faces in the damage-control party. He realized he was the only one there old enough to have been at sea during the Great War. Even more than the way his heart pounded after the run to general quarters, that told him how many years he was carrying. He said, "The Royal Navy's a damn good outfit. They were still on their feet in 1917. We never did knock 'em flat; we starved England into quitting when we finally shut down the grain and beef imports from Argentina."
The Remembrance rolled steeply. Everybody grabbed for a handhold to steady himself. The ship straightened, then rolled back the other way. Eyechart Szczerbiakowicz said, "I don't care how good they are, sir. What can they do to us in seas like this?"
"Damned if I know," Sam said, talking like the petty officer he had been rather than the officer he was. "I'll tell you this, though: I sure as hell don't want to find out the hard way."
Nobody disagreed with him. Nobody wanted to see anything happen to the Remembrance. The men might not remember the Great War, but most of them had been through the inconclusive scrap against the Japanese. They knew too well how vulnerable to disaster even the mightiest warship could be. Huddling down here far below the main deck, away from fresh air and natural light, only served as a reminder. No one would do this if he didn't have to.
When the all-clear sounded, Sam let out a sigh of relief. Maybe the seas were too high to let the limeys launch torpedoes or to allow for accurate gunnery, but he didn't want to have to see by experiment.
As he left his station, he laughed at himself. For one thing, as he'd thought before, the United States were at peace with Britain, even if the two countries were a long way from friendly with each other. For another, he didn't know for a fact that there were any Royal Navy ships within a hundred miles of the Remembrance. Along with everybody else in the damage-control party, he'd been building castles in the air.
Sailors coming from other stations were also buzzing about the limeys. If they were wrong, they were all wrong the same way. Carsten shrugged. If he'd had a dollar for every time he'd seen unanimous rumor prove mistaken, he could have quit the Navy and lived ashore in style.
He headed for the officers' mess, both to grab a sandwich and some coffee and to find out what was going on from some people who might actually know. When he got there, he discovered that most of the other officers were as much in the dark as he was.
Before too long, though, Commander Cressy came into the mess. Every head swung toward the executive officer. Sam was far too junior to ask the question about which he was so curious, but that didn't matter, because a lieutenant commander from engineering did it for him: "Did we really bump into the limeys, sir?"
The exec paused to time the ship's roll and put cream in his coffee with the least likelihood of spilling it all over the deck. That done, he nodded. "We sure as hell did. Oh, not literally, but in dirty weather like this we have to worry about that, too: can't spot anything till it's right on top of you."
"They're patrolling farther west than they have for a while," another officer said.