Seas of Ernathe (6 page)

"What's the surface condition, Lon?"

"Increasing to five, Cap'. Wind speed hiking—
Skipper, we're losing right rudder control."

Fenrose turned sharply. "Servo? Hydro?"

The helmsman stabbed several buttons in rapid sequence. "All clear on servo and hydro." He flipped off the test lights and tried again; same result.

Fenrose was already on the phone. He spoke for a moment, listened, then barked to the Second Officer: "Coley, we've got a broken rudder linkage in the engine room. They say a piece is
missing
. I don't know what the hell that means, but get on down there and find out! And I think Mr. Perland would like to go with you. Right, Seth?"

Startled, Seth agreed and hurried after Coley, who had darted from the bridge. The wind assaulted him the instant he was out the door, and he nearly stumbled down the wheelhouse steps with the ship's roll. The sky was angry, dark, and clearly worsening. He passed Racart, heading the other way, but had no time for more than a shout and a head-shaking glance overhead. He followed Coley down a rear companionway, shivering, thankful to have walls around him again. In fact, if there was going to be a storm, he would be happy to stay as far below decks as possible.

The ship heaved suddenly; his foot touched the bottom step and then skipped past it to meet the rising deck with a spine-jarring thump. He did not lose his balance, quite, but he collided with Coley and knocked the other man into a bulkhead. The engineer shot Seth an alarmed glance and said, "That was a power cut! Let's go!" Coley literally dove down the passageway and the remaining stairwells. The General Quarters klaxon hooted deafeningly.

The engine room was in chaos, crewmembers shouting and dashing about in apparently total confusion. Power was gone in the starboard engine, and that, with the loss of one rudder control, had crippled the ship's maneuvering ability. The Engine Chief was raging. "Damn them!" he shouted, with only a glance at Coley.

The deck groaned as the ship slewed sluggishly. The telephone was flashing, and Coley slipped past several confounded crewmen to answer it. He shouted to the Chief over the clamor, "Can you shut power to the port engine?"

"What?"

"Bridge has lost control over both engines!"

"Hell, all right—I don't know if we can shut it off or not, they've scrambled the whole works!" the Chief bellowed, and disappeared across the engine room.

There was a pop and a purple flash, and ozone stung the air. When the Chief returned, his face was white. He clutched a stanchion and caught his breath. "They've shorted that, too—I could have been fried! Carlo, hit the main breaker—kill
everything
in here, and get the emergency lights on!" There was a
chunk
, and the lights shut down; then a pinkish-orange glow filled the darkness. "All right," the Chief growled, "let's stop those bastards before they take the ship apart!"

Seth got it into his head, finally, that the sea-people were at work. It seemed they had caused a link in the starboard rudder control to
disappear
, just like that, just a sea-man hunched over a steel rod and,
zam
, both gone. But after that there was no shortage of Nale'nid popping up, vanishing, fooling with equipment and generally raising an incredible commotion. Coley was trying to relay this information to the bridge now, but he slammed the receiver furiously; the connection had been lost.

"Coley, get down here and help!" the Chief shouted. He was squeezed midway between the massive servopower unit and a gearbox below deck level. Seth followed and squatted, wondering what he could do to be useful. The Chief had his head up under the servo, and was trying to point something out to Coley.

The deck suddenly shifted, catching Seth utterly off balance. He banged headfirst into the servo, and then tumbled backwards across the deck, and slammed up short against a far bulkhead. He lay breathless, reeling, pain splitting his head. The commotion told him nothing; but the ship was listing, and it showed no signs of righting.

He edged painfully across the deck. "Coley! Chief! Are you hurt?" A gasp told him that
someone
was hurt, and then he saw that the Chief was already out from under the machinery and was steadying Coley. The officer was holding his head, grimacing.

"Get the medi—" the Chief started.

"Hey!" someone yelled. Seth whirled, and saw behind him a sea-man reaching high on the bulkhead and twisting the wheel of a pipeline valve. Seth lurched, half jumping and half falling—but he slammed with outstretched arms into the wall. The Nale'nid had vanished. Seth reached for the valve himself and twisted it back in the opposite direction. The pipe was trembling with rushing water, but the trembling slowed, and a crewman quickly joined him to wrench the valve closed.

"That's a ballast inflow pipe," the man muttered. He stopped short, apparently with the same thought Seth had. The ship's list—could the Nale'nid have fouled the ship's ballasting system? If so, they could be in danger of foundering. For an instant, the engine room seemed silent, the air acrid with ozone and fear; no one moved, while the reality of what was happening flashed like a wave through the crew. A moan from an injured man broke the spell.

"There's one!" another crewman cried, and someone lunged at a sea-man darting across the compartment. Moments later a Nale'nid was sighted at a circuit board, and two men had to rush to reset the circuitry to prevent massive overloads throughout the ship. The bridge was on the phone again, suddenly, and the news was shouted that the ship was flooding in several ballast compartments. "Skipper says give him power in at least one engine and in pumps, Chief!" the man on the phone yelled urgently.

"Sure! Olson, check out that board and stay on it—I'll tell you when I want power on. Jeli, see to Coley. Seling, check the pumps and get Freda to ballast control—
find out if we have to dump cargo and be ready to do it.
You—" and his finger stabbed at Seth—"patrol this area and keep those bastards out of the works!"

Seth unsteadily took up a watchdog position. The deck was shifting more perilously than ever; apparently the ship was rolling in the swells, and with each cycle it rolled more ponderously to starboard. Seth clung to a stanchion and crouched to look and be ready to act. The deck lurched again, and suddenly a sea-man raced by him, then was gone, then was visible farther down darting sideways out of sight. Seth pursued, his feet skidding treacherously. Amid the racket of pumps and hammers and wrenches, in the cavelike gloom of the emergency lights, he bounded like a man flying through a small hurricane. He halted where the Nale'nid had disappeared. There was no sign of him. A whisper at his ear—he whirled, and the same man or another was scampering back in the way he had just come, yanking an unidentified lever as he ran. Seth dashed after him and righted the lever, thinking,
the bloody creature was smiling
—and then looked in vain for another sight of him.

"Get him away from that—"

Seth heard the cry from astern and ran to assist, only to see another sea-man dance away and vanish in the gloom.
How do they do that!
he hissed in frustration. He was not the only one voicing that question.

"Seling, get a dump on that cargo!" the Chief called. There was a whine of pumps, starting deep and climbing to an awesome wail, and after long, long minutes the slope of the deck began gradually to ease toward the level. Seth was holding his breath . . . and then he was gulping lungfuls of air, stale salty oily air, and he shivered in awe of his own fear, a fear he had kept bottled in his excitement, and which was now rising to overwhelm him. The air was thick, hot, and hammering noises rang through his skull. He stood mutely, watching the others working around him, and he marveled at the efficiency of their activity.

"Come on, man! Did you hear me?" The Chief had his arm in a vise-grip and was shaking him. "I said I want you to get to the bridge—the phone is out!" Seth looked at him in amazement; his surroundings crystallized suddenly—and he blinked and nodded. "All right, tell the Captain we can give him power and port rudder now, and we'll have starboard rudder soon—we've found the missing part. Go!"

Seth ducked from the room. They had found the missing part? The way he had found Racart—and where
was
Racart? He took the companionway at a run.

The topdeck was ominous and gray, but salt spray stinging his face cleared his senses. The sea was ragged, covered with flying spume and rushing, gusting shreds of mist. The wind lashed coldly, and the deck was treacherous with spilling water. The ship wallowed in a sickening rolling motion, but a shudder from below indicated that power was being fed to at least one engine, and as he staggered along the rail he noted the bow beginning to turn back into the heaviest seas. Except for one or two men dashing forward of the bridge there was no one else on the deck, and Seth hurried, feeling uncomfortably alone.

He was breathing heavily when the wheelhouse door slammed shut behind him, and he leaned against a bulkhead in relief. Captain Fenrose ignored him for a minute, then turned suddenly. "Your message arrived ahead of you," the Captain said. "The phones are back, and engine room says they're getting things calmed down. Those sea-griffs had us running, but it looks as though they've tired, now."

Seth sighed agreement and took several minutes to regain his equilibrium, simply watching the bridge crew at work restabilizing the ship's vital systems. The heaving of the deck subsided as ballast was brought back under control; and it seemed the worst of the crisis had passed, though main power and steering capacity were still at a bare minimum. He started to relax, for the first time since the madness had begun.

Fenrose turned to him again. "Your friend Bonhof still helping out down in the engine room?"

Seth tensed.
"Engine room?
Last I saw, he was headed
this
way, when I was on my way down!"

Fenrose scowled. "He didn't join you down there?"

"Not that I saw. Things were awfully confused."

The skipper nodded. He stood behind the bridge officers, studying the instruments, the sky, and the sea. He picked up the phone and issued a general broadcast for all stations to report systems and crew status. Then, while one of the officers handled those incoming calls, Fenrose rang the engine room. He hung up a moment later, with a worried expression on his face.

The officer made his report: one serious injury, half a dozen moderately serious (of which Second Officer Coley was one), and countless minor ones; most ship systems were returning to normal. "And," he added soberly, "two deck crewmen unaccounted for. Both were last seen above decks. Possibly overboard." He glanced at Seth.

The starpilot was stunned. "Is Racart—?"

Fenrose cut him off. "Make an all-ship call for those two men, and also for Racart Bonhof." The officer turned back to the phone. "Helm! As soon as you have steerage, prepare to come about for search. Danjy, get on the radio and try to raise port." He stood grimly steady as the orders were carried out. Seth waited in silence, keeping a tight lid on his worry.

There was a response to the general call—one of the men was safe on A-deck, Racart and the other were still unaccounted for. Fenrose ordered a station by station search. Danjy reported no success on the radio, which surprised no one; Ernathe radio transmission was usually limited to line of sight. The station-by-station search reported no success. Fenrose himself took the all-ship phone, and his voice blared like a klaxon:
"All hands to search stations. All hands to search stations. Drone control make ready to launch."

Seth was holding his breath. The Captain said bluntly, "For the moment, we'll have to assume the worst. If they aren't found on board soon, they
have
to be overboard."

Seth met the Captain's eyes, then looked away. Racart overboard? Perhaps. But hopefully not. Where the Nale'nid were involved, he suspected that the simplest answer was not necessarily the correct one.

He waited and watched. Beyond the glassed-in bridge the sea fumed white and gray, practically indistinguishable from the sky. Voices murmured about him, but he paid little heed, his attention on the sea and down on the deck. Crewmen were already at the railings to act as spotters, though the ship was only now regaining headway. Four flying drones lofted noisily from the fantail and dispersed over the water—four bits of metal vanishing, then glinting, then vanishing again in the confusion of sky and sea.

Ardello
came about under full power, finally, and began her own slow search.

Drone-control was a very small and very gloomy compartment in the after section of A-deck, lighted now only by the glow of video and scanner monitors. Several people were crowded inside the station, among them Mona Tremont. Seth made a small gesture of greeting and received only a biting glance. She flashed her eyes back to the screen without a word. Seth squeezed in beside her, into the only available space. Mona recoiled at his presence, making him acutely aware of her hostility, her body tense and hard beside him. She was the least of his worries, though; and, with an effort, he ignored her and kept his eyes fixed on the infrared video images from the drones.

Chopped, frothy water, dark and empty. The search was in its third hour—well beyond the time that an unprotected man would be expected to survive in the sea—and there was an unspoken knowledge in the room, fairly permeating the air, that if no sign of the men was discovered soon the search would be curtailed.

Another hour passed, with no talk in the compartment other than low-toned communications with the bridge.

Seth became aware that his fingers and palms were painfully cramped, outstretched at his sides. They were involuntarily rigid, waiting to stab control plates that were not his to stab; he was no longer in
Warmstorm
's control pit. He pressed his hands to his stomach and kneaded them slowly, one against the other, the pain only a shadow across his dark thoughts of frustration and helplessness.

The screens showed tossing sea, and nothing more.