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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Knights of Arthur, by Frederik Pohl
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Knights of Arthur
Author: Frederik Pohl
Illustrator: Martin
Release Date: April 16, 2010 [EBook #32004]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KNIGHTS OF ARTHUR ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Barbara Tozier and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
</pre>
<div id="transcriber_note">
This etext was produced from <cite>Galaxy Science Fiction</cite> January 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
</div>
<div id="the_beginning"> </div>
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<div id="story"><a class="pagenum" id="page8" title="8"> </a>
<h1>The Knights of Arthur</h1>
<p id="author">By FREDERIK POHL</p>
<p id="illustrator">Illustrated by MARTIN</p>
<p id="synopsis">With one suitcase as his domain, Arthur was
desperately in need of armed henchmen … for
his keys to a kingdom were typewriter keys!</p>
<div id="illo1" class="illo">
<img src="images/illo1-sm.jpg" width="658" height="388" alt="An eyestalk coming from a case looks at a guy doing something with a screwdriver and a typewriter" />
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<a href="images/illo1-right.png" class="img_link">Right side image</a>
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<h2>I</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">There</span> was three of us—I
mean if you count Arthur.
We split up to avoid attracting
attention. Engdahl just
came in over the big bridge, but I
had Arthur with me so I had to
come the long way around.</p>
<p>When I registered at the desk,
I said I was from Chicago. You
know how it is. If you say you’re
from Philadelphia, it’s like saying
you’re from St. Louis or
Detroit—I mean <em>nobody</em> lives in
Philadelphia any more. Shows
how things change. A couple years
ago, Philadelphia was all the
fashion. But not now, and I
wanted to make a good impression.</p>
<p>I even tipped the bellboy a
hundred and fifty dollars. I said:
“Do me a favor. I’ve got my baggage
booby-trapped—”</p>
<p>“Natch,” he said, only mildly
impressed by the bill and a half,
even less impressed by me.</p>
<p>“I mean <em>really</em> booby-trapped.
Not just a burglar alarm. Besides
the alarm, there’s a little surprise
<!-- <a class="pagenum" id="page9" title="9"> </a> Original location of right side of Illo 1-->
<a class="pagenum" id="page10" title="10"> </a>on a short fuse. So what I want
you to do, if you hear the alarm go
off, is come running. Right?”</p>
<p>“And get my head blown off?”
He slammed my bags onto the
floor. “Mister, you can take your
damn money and—”</p>
<p>“Wait a minute, friend.” I passed
over another hundred. “Please?
It’s only a shaped charge. It won’t
hurt anything except anybody who
messes around, see? But I don’t
want it to go off. So you come
running when you hear the alarm
and scare him away and—”</p>
<p>“No!” But he was less positive.
I gave him two hundred more and
he said grudgingly: “All right. If
I hear it. Say, what’s in there that’s
worth all that trouble?”</p>
<p>“Papers,” I lied.</p>
<p>He leered. “Sure.”</p>
<p>“No fooling, it’s just personal
stuff. Not worth a penny to anybody
but me, understand? So
don’t get any ideas—”</p>
<p>He said in an injured tone:
“Mister, naturally the <em>staff</em> won’t
bother your stuff. What kind of a
hotel do you think this is?”</p>
<p>“Of course, of course,” I said.
But I knew he was lying, because
I knew what kind of hotel it was.
The staff was there only because
being there gave them a chance
to knock down more money than
they could make any other way.
What other kind of hotel was
there?</p>
<p>Anyway, the way to keep the
staff on my side was by bribery,
and when he left I figured I had
him at least temporarily bought.
He promised to keep an eye on
the room and he would be on duty
for four more hours—which gave
me plenty of time for my errands.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I made</span> sure Arthur was
plugged in and cleaned myself
up. They had water running—New
York’s very good that way;
they always have water running.
It was even hot, or nearly hot. I
let the shower splash over me for
a while, because there was a lot
of dust and dirt from the Bronx
that I had to get off me. The way
it looked, hardly anybody had
been up that way since it happened.</p>
<p>I dried myself, got dressed and
looked out the window. We were
fairly high up—fifteenth floor. I
could see the Hudson and the big
bridge up north of us. There was
a huge cloud of smoke coming
from somewhere near the bridge
on the other side of the river, but
outside of that everything looked
normal. You would have thought
there were people in all those
houses. Even the streets looked
pretty good, until you noticed that
hardly any of the cars were moving.</p>
<p>I opened the little bag and
loaded my pockets with enough
money to run my errands. At the
door, I stopped and called over
<a class="pagenum" id="page11" title="11"> </a>my shoulder to Arthur: “Don’t
worry if I’m gone an hour or so.
I’ll be back.”</p>
<p>I didn’t wait for an answer.
That would have been pointless
under the circumstances.</p>
<p>After Philadelphia, this place
seemed to be bustling with activity.
There were four or five
people in the lobby and a couple
of dozen more out in the street.</p>
<p>I tarried at the desk for several
reasons. In the first place, I was
expecting Vern Engdahl to try to
contact me and I didn’t want him
messing with the luggage—not
while Arthur might get nervous.
So I told the desk clerk that in
case anybody came inquiring for
Mr. Schlaepfer, which was the
name I was using—my real name
being Sam Dunlap—he was to be
told that on no account was he to
go to my room but to wait in the
lobby; and in any case I would
be back in an hour.</p>
<p>“Sure,” said the desk clerk,
holding out his hand.</p>
<p>I crossed it with paper. “One
other thing,” I said. “I need to buy
an electric typewriter and some
other stuff. Where can I get
them?”</p>
<p>“PX,” he said promptly.</p>
<p>“PX?”</p>
<p>“What used to be Macy’s,” he
explained. “You go out that door
and turn right. It’s only about a
block. You’ll see the sign.”</p>
<p>“Thanks.” That cost me a hundred
more, but it was worth it.
After all, money wasn’t a problem—not
when we had just come from
Philadelphia.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> big sign read “PX,” but it
wasn’t big enough to hide an
older sign underneath that said
“Macy’s.” I looked it over from
across the street.</p>
<p>Somebody had organized it
pretty well. I had to admire them.
I mean I don’t like New York—wouldn’t
live there if you gave me
the place—but it showed a sort of
go-getting spirit. It was no easy
job getting a full staff together to
run a department store operation,
when any city the size of New
York must have a couple thousand
stores. You know what I mean?
It’s like running a hotel or anything
else—how are you going to
get people to work for you when
they can just as easily walk down
the street, find a vacant store and
set up their own operation?</p>
<p>But Macy’s was fully manned.
There was a guard at every door
and a walking patrol along the
block-front between the entrances
to make sure nobody broke in
through the windows. They all
wore green armbands and uniforms—well,
lots of people wore
uniforms.</p>
<p>I walked over.</p>
<p>“Afternoon,” I said affably to the
guard. “I want to pick up some
stuff. Typewriter, maybe a gun,
<a class="pagenum" id="page12" title="12"> </a>you know. How do you work it
here? Flat rate for all you can
carry, prices marked on everything,
or what is it?”</p>
<p>He stared at me suspiciously.
He was a monster; six inches taller
than I, he must have weighed two
hundred and fifty pounds. He
didn’t look very smart, which
might explain why he was working
for somebody else these days. But
he was smart enough for what he
had to do.</p>
<p>He demanded: “You new in
town?”</p>
<p>I nodded.</p>
<p>He thought for a minute. “All
right, buddy. Go on in. You pick
out what you want, see? We’ll
straighten out the price when you
come out.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough.” I started past
him.</p>
<p>He grabbed me by the arm. “No
tricks,” he ordered. “You come
out the same door you went in,
understand?”</p>
<p>“Sure,” I said, “if that’s the way
you want it.”</p>
<p>That figured—one way or another:
either they got a commission,
or, like everybody else, they
lived on what they could knock
down. I filed that for further consideration.</p>
<p>Inside, the store smelled pretty
bad. It wasn’t just rot, though there
was plenty of that; it was musty
and stale and old. It was dark, or
nearly. About one light in twenty
was turned on, in order to conserve
power. Naturally the escalators
and so on weren’t running
at all.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I passed</span> a counter with pencils
and ball-point pens in a
case. Most of them were gone—somebody
hadn’t bothered to go
around in back and had simply
knocked the glass out—but I found
one that worked and an old order
pad to write on. Over by the
elevators there was a store directory,
so I went over and checked
it, making a list of the departments
worth visiting.</p>
<p>Office Supplies would be the
typewriter. Garden & Home was a
good bet—maybe I could find a
little wheelbarrow to save carrying
the typewriter in my arms.
What I wanted was one of the
big ones where all the keys are
solenoid-operated instead of the
cam-and-roller arrangement—that
was all Arthur could operate. And
those things were heavy, as I
knew. That was why we had
ditched the old one in the Bronx.</p>
<p>Sporting Goods—that would be
for a gun, if there were any left.
Naturally, they were about the
first to go after it happened, when
<em>everybody</em> wanted a gun. I mean
everybody who lived through it.
I thought about clothes—it was
pretty hot in New York—and
decided I might as well take a
look.</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page13" title="13"> </a>Typewriter, clothes, gun, wheelbarrow.
I made one more note on
the pad—try the tobacco counter,
but I didn’t have much hope for
that. They had used cigarettes for
currency around this area for a
while, until they got enough bank
vaults open to supply big bills. It
made cigarettes scarce.</p>
<p>I turned away and noticed for
the first time that one of the elevators
was stopped on the main floor.
The doors were closed, but they
were glass doors, and although
there wasn’t any light inside, I
could see the elevator was full.
There must have been thirty or
forty people in the car when it
happened.</p>
<p>I’d been thinking that, if nothing
else, these New Yorkers were
pretty neat—I mean if you don’t
count the Bronx. But here were
thirty or forty skeletons that nobody
had even bothered to clear
away.</p>
<p>You call that neat? Right in
plain view on the ground floor,
where everybody who came into
the place would be sure to go—I
mean if it had been on one of
the upper floors, what difference
would it have made?</p>
<p>I began to wish we were out
of the city. But naturally that
would have to wait until we
finished what we came here to do—otherwise,
what was the point
of coming all the way here in the
first place?</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> tobacco counter was bare.
I got the wheelbarrow easily
enough—there were plenty of those,
all sizes; I picked out a nice light
red-and-yellow one with rubber-tired
wheel. I rolled it over to
Sporting Goods on the same floor,
but that didn’t work out too well.
I found a 30-30 with telescopic
sights, only there weren’t any cartridges
to fit it—or anything else. I
took the gun anyway; Engdahl
would probably have some extra
ammunition.</p>
<p>Men’s Clothing was a waste of
time, too—I guess these New
Yorkers were too lazy to do
laundry. But I found the typewriter
I wanted.</p>
<p>I put the whole load into the
wheelbarrow, along with a couple
of odds and ends that caught my
eye as I passed through Housewares,
and I bumped as gently as
I could down the shallow steps
of the motionless escalator to the
ground floor.</p>
<p>I came down the back way,
and that was a mistake. It led me
right past the food department.
Well, I don’t have to tell you what
<em>that</em> was like, with all the exploded
cans and the rats as big as poodles.
But I found some cologne and
soaked a handkerchief in it, and
with that over my nose, and some
fast footwork for the rats, I managed
to get to one of the doors.</p>
<p>It wasn’t the one I had come
in, but that was all right. I sized
<a class="pagenum" id="page14" title="14"> </a>up the guard. He looked smart
enough for a little bargaining, but
not too smart; and if I didn’t like
his price, I could always remember
that I was supposed to go out
the other door.</p>
<p>I said: “Psst!”</p>
<p>When he turned around, I said
rapidly: “Listen, this isn’t the way
I came in, but if you want to do
business, it’ll be the way I come
out.”</p>
<p>He thought for a second, and
then he smiled craftily and said:
“All right, come on.”</p>
<p>Well, we haggled. The gun was
the big thing—he wanted five
thousand for that and he wouldn’t
come down. The wheelbarrow he
was willing to let go for five hundred.
And the typewriter—he
scowled at the typewriter as
though it were contagious.</p>
<p>“What you want that for?” he
asked suspiciously. I shrugged.</p>
<p>“Well—” he scratched his head—“a
thousand?”</p>
<p>I shook my head.</p>
<p>“Five hundred?”</p>
<p>I kept on shaking.</p>
<p>“All right, all right,” he grumbled.
“Look, you take the other
things for six thousand—including
what you got in your pockets that
you don’t think I know about,
see? And I’ll throw this in. How
about it?”</p>
<p>That was fine as far as I was
concerned, but just on principle
I pushed him a little further. “Forget
it,” I said. “I’ll give you fifty
bills for the lot, take it or leave
it. Otherwise I’ll walk right down
the street to Gimbel’s and—”</p>
<p>He guffawed.</p>
<p>“Whats the matter?” I demanded.</p>
<p>“Pal,” he said, “you kill me.
Stranger in town, hey? You can’t
go anyplace but here.”</p>
<p>“Why not?”</p>
<p>“Account of there <em>ain’t</em> anyplace
else. See, the chief here don’t like
competition. So we don’t have to
worry about anybody taking their
trade elsewhere, like—we burned
all the other places down.”</p>
<p>That explained a couple of
things. I counted out the money,
loaded the stuff back in the wheelbarrow
and headed for the Statler;
but all the time I was counting
and loading, I was talking to
Big Brainless; and by the time I
was actually on the way, I knew
a little more about this “chief.”</p>
<p>And that was kind of important,
because he was the man we were
going to have to know very well.</p>
<h2>II</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">I locked</span> the door of the hotel
room. Arthur was peeping out
of the suitcase at me.</p>
<p>I said: “I’m back. I got your
typewriter.” He waved his eye at
me.</p>
<p>I took out the little kit of electricians’
tools I carried, tipped the
<a class="pagenum" id="page15" title="15"> </a>typewriter on its back and began
sorting out leads. I cut them free
from the keyboard, soldered on a
ground wire, and began taping the
leads to the strands of a yard of
forty-ply multiplex cable.</p>
<p>It was a slow and dull job. I
didn’t have to worry about which
solenoid lead went to which
strand—Arthur could sort them
out. But all the same it took an
hour, pretty near, and I was getting
hungry by the time I got the
last connection taped. I shifted the
typewriter so that both Arthur and
I could see it, rolled in a sheet of
paper and hooked the cable to
Arthur’s receptors.</p>
<p>Nothing happened.</p>
<p>“Oh,” I said. “Excuse me,
Arthur. I forgot to plug it in.”</p>
<p>I found a wall socket. The typewriter
began to hum and then it
started to rattle and type:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">DURA AUK UKOO RQK
MWS AQB</p>
<p>It stopped.</p>
<p>“Come on, Arthur,” I ordered
impatiently. “Sort them out, will
you?”</p>
<p>Laboriously it typed:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">!!!</p>
<p>Then, for a time, there was a
clacking and thumping as he typed
random letters, peeping out of the
suitcase to see what he had typed,
until the sheet I had put in was
used up.</p>
<p>I replaced it and waited, as patiently
as I could, smoking one of
the last of my cigarettes. After fifteen
minutes or so, he had the hang
of it pretty well. He typed:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">YOU DAMQXXX DAMN
FOOL WHUXXX WHY DID
YOU LEAQNXXX LEAVE ME
ALONE Q Q</p>
<p>“Aw, Arthur,” I said. “Use your
head, will you? I couldn’t carry
that old typewriter of yours all
the way down through the Bronx.
It was getting pretty beat-up. Anyway,
I’ve only got two hands—”</p>
<p><span class="arthur_speak">YOU LOUSE,</span> it rattled, <span class="arthur_speak">ARE
YOU TRYONXXX TRYING
TO INSULT ME BECAUSE I
DONT HAVE ANY Q Q</span></p>
<p>“Arthur!” I said, shocked. “You
know better than that!”</p>
<p>The typewriter slammed its
carriage back and forth ferociously
a couple of times. Then he said:
<span class="arthur_speak">ALL RIGHT SAM YOU KNOW
YOUVE GOT ME BY THE
THROAT SO YOU CAN DO
ANYTHING YOU WANT TO
WITH ME WHO CARES
ABOUT MY FEELINGS ANYHOW</span></p>
<p>“Please don’t take that attitude,”
I coaxed.</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">WELL</p>
<p>“Please?”</p>
<p>He capitulated. <span class="arthur_speak">ALL RIGHT
SAY HEARD ANYTHING
FROM ENGDAHL Q Q</span></p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">ISNT THAT JUST LIKE
HIM Q Q CANT DEPEND ON
THAT MAN HE WAS THE
<a class="pagenum" id="page16" title="16"> </a>LOUSIEST ELECTRICIANS
MATE ON THE SEA SPRITE
AND HE ISNT MUCH BETTER
NOW SAY SAM REMEMBER
WHEN WE HAD TO GET
HIM OUT OF THE JUG IN
NEWPORT NEWS BECAUSE</p>
<p>I settled back and relaxed. I
might as well. That was the trouble
with getting Arthur a new typewriter
after a couple of days without
one—he had so much garrulity
stored up in his little brain, and
the only person to spill it on was
me.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Apparently</span> I fell asleep.
Well, I mean I must have, because
I woke up. I had been
dreaming I was on guard post outside
the Yard at Portsmouth, and
it was night, and I looked up and
there was something up there, all
silvery and bad. It was a missile—and
that was silly, because you
never see a missile. But this was
a dream.</p>
<p>And the thing burst, like a
Roman candle flaring out, all sorts
of comet-trails of light, and then
the whole sky was full of bright
and colored snow. Little tiny flakes
of light coming down, a mist of
light, radiation dropping like dew;
and it was so pretty, and I took
a deep breath. And my lungs
burned out like slow fire, and I
coughed myself to death with the
explosions of the missile banging
against my flaming ears….</p>
<p>Well, it was a dream. It probably
wasn’t like that at all—and if
it had been, I wasn’t there to see
it, because I was tucked away safe
under a hundred and twenty
fathoms of Atlantic water. All of
us were on the <i>Sea Sprite</i>.</p>
<p>But it was a bad dream and it
bothered me, even when I woke up
and found that the banging explosions
of the missile were the
noise of Arthur’s typewriter carriage
crashing furiously back and
forth.</p>
<p>He peeped out of the suitcase
and saw that I was awake. He demanded:
<span class="arthur_speak">HOW CAN YOU FALL
ASLEEP WHEN WERE IN A
PLACE LIKE THIS Q Q ANYTHING
COULD HAPPEN
SAM I KNOW YOU DONT
CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO
ME BUT FOR YOUR OWN
SAKE YOU SHOULDNT</span></p>
<p>“Oh, dry up,” I said.</p>
<p>Being awake, I remembered
that I was hungry. There was still
no sign of Engdahl or the others,
but that wasn’t too surprising—they
hadn’t known exactly when
we would arrive. I wished I had
thought to bring some food back
to the room. It looked like long
waiting and I wouldn’t want to
leave Arthur alone again—after all,
he was partly right.</p>
<p>I thought of the telephone.</p>
<p>On the off-chance that it might
work, I picked it up. Amazing, a
voice from the desk answered.</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page17" title="17"> </a>I crossed my fingers and said:
“Room service?”</p>
<p>And the voice answered amiably
enough: “Hold on, buddy. I’ll see
if they answer.”</p>
<p>Clicking and a good long wait.
Then a new voice said: “Whaddya
want?”</p>
<p>There was no sense pressing my
luck by asking for anything like
a complete meal. I would be lucky
if I got a sandwich.</p>
<p>I said: “Please, may I have a
Spam sandwich on Rye Krisp and
some coffee for Room Fifteen Forty-one?”</p>
<p>“Please, you go to hell!” the
voice snarled. “What do you think
this is, some damn delicatessen?
You want liquor, we’ll get you
liquor. That’s what room service
is for!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I hung</span> up. What was the use
of arguing? Arthur was clacking
peevishly:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">WHATS THE MATTER
SAM YOU THINKING OF
YOUR BELLY AGAIN Q Q</p>
<p>“You would be if you—” I
started, and then I stopped.
Arthur’s feelings were delicate
enough already. I mean suppose
that all you had left of what you
were born with was a brain in a
kind of sardine can, wouldn’t you
be sensitive? Well, Arthur was
more sensitive than you would be,
believe me. Of course, it was his
own foolish fault—I mean you
don’t get a prosthetic tank unless
you die by accident, or something
like that, because if it’s disease
they usually can’t save even the
brain.</p>
<p>The phone rang again.</p>
<p>It was the desk clerk. “Say, did
you get what you wanted?” he
asked chummily.</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Oh. Too bad,” he said, but
cheerfully. “Listen, buddy, I forgot
to tell you before. That Miss
Engdahl you were expecting, she’s
on her way up.”</p>
<p>I dropped the phone onto the
cradle.</p>
<p>“Arthur!” I yelled. “Keep quiet
for a while—trouble!”</p>
<p>He clacked once, and the typewriter
shut itself off. I jumped
for the door of the bathroom, cursing
the fact that I didn’t have
cartridges for the gun. Still, empty
or not, it would have to do.</p>
<p>I ducked behind the bathroom
door, in the shadows, covering the
hall door. Because there were two
things wrong with what the desk
clerk had told me. Vern Engdahl
wasn’t a “miss,” to begin with;
and whatever name he used when
he came to call on me, it wouldn’t
be Vern Engdahl.</p>
<p>There was a knock on the door.
I called: “Come in!”</p>
<p>The door opened and the girl
who called herself Vern Engdahl
came in slowly, looking around. I
stayed quiet and out of sight until
<a class="pagenum" id="page18" title="18"> </a>she was all the way in. She didn’t
seem to be armed; there wasn’t
anyone with her.</p>
<p>I stepped out, holding the gun
on her. Her eyes opened wide and
she seemed about to turn.</p>
<p>“Hold it! Come on in, you. Close
the door!”</p>
<p>She did. She looked as though
she were expecting me. I looked
her over—medium pretty, not very
tall, not very plump, not very old.
I’d have guessed twenty or so, but
that’s not my line of work; she
could have been almost any age
from seventeen on.</p>
<p>The typewriter switched itself
on and began to pound agitatedly.
I crossed over toward her and
paused to peer at what Arthur was
yacking about: <span class="arthur_speak">SEARCH HER
YOU DAMN FOOL MAYBE
SHES GOT A GUN</span></p>
<p>I ordered: “Shut up, Arthur.
I’m <em>going</em> to search her. You! Turn
around!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">She</span> shrugged and turned
around, her hands in the air.
Over her shoulder, she said:
“You’re taking this all wrong, Sam.
I came here to make a deal with
you.”</p>
<p>“Sure you did.”</p>
<p>But her knowing my name was
a blow, too. I mean what was the
use of all that sneaking around if
people in New York were going to
know we were here?</p>
<p>I walked up close behind her
and patted what there was to pat.
There didn’t seem to be a gun.</p>
<p>“You tickle,” she complained.</p>
<p>I took her pocketbook away
from her and went through it. No
gun. A lot of money—an <em>awful</em>
lot of money. I mean there must
have been two or three hundred
thousand dollars. There was
nothing with a name on it in the
pocketbook.</p>
<p>She said: “Can I put my hands
down, Sam?”</p>
<p>“In a minute.” I thought for a
second and then decided to do it—you
know, I just couldn’t afford to
take chances. I cleared my throat
and ordered: “Take off your
clothes.”</p>
<p>Her head jerked around and she
stared at me. “<em>What?</em>”</p>
<p>“Take them off. You heard me.”</p>
<p>“Now wait a minute—” she began
dangerously.</p>
<p>I said: “Do what I tell you,
hear? How do I know you haven’t
got a knife tucked away?”</p>
<p>She clenched her teeth. “Why,
you dirty little man! What do you
think—” Then she shrugged. She
looked at me with contempt and
said: “All right. What’s the difference?”</p>
<p>Well, there was a considerable
difference. She began to unzip and
unbutton and wriggle, and pretty
soon she was standing there in her
underwear, looking at me as
though I were a two-headed worm.
It was interesting, but kind of embarrassing.
<a class="pagenum" id="page19" title="19"> </a>I could see Arthur’s
eye-stalk waving excitedly out of
the opened suitcase.</p>
<p>I picked up her skirt and blouse
and shook them. I could feel myself
blushing, and there didn’t seem
to be anything in them.</p>
<p>I growled: “Okay, I guess that’s
enough. You can put your clothes
back on now.”</p>
<p>“Gee, thanks,” she said.</p>
<p>She looked at me thoughtfully
and then shook her head as if
she’d never seen anything like me
before and never hoped to again.
Without another word, she began
to get back into her clothes. I had
to admire her poise. I mean she
was perfectly calm about the whole
thing. You’d have thought she was
used to taking her clothes off in
front of strange men.</p>
<p>Well, for that matter, maybe she
was; but it wasn’t any of my business.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Arthur</span> was clacking distractedly,
but I didn’t pay any
attention to him. I demanded: “All
right, now who are you and what
do you want?”</p>
<p>She pulled up a stocking and
said: “You couldn’t have asked
me that in the first place, could
you? I’m Vern Eng—”</p>
<p>“<em>Cut it out!</em>”</p>
<p>She stared at me. “I was only
going to say I’m Vern Engdahl’s
partner. We’ve got a little business
deal cooking and I wanted to talk
to you about this proposition.”</p>
<p>Arthur squawked: <span class="arthur_speak">WHATS
ENGDAHL UP TO NOW Q Q
SAM IM WARNING YOU I
DONT LIKE THE LOOK OF
THIS THIS WOMAN AND
ENGDAHL ARE PROBABLY
DOUBLECROSSING US</span></p>
<p>I said: “All right, Arthur, relax.
I’m taking care of things. Now
start over, you. What’s your
name?”</p>
<p>She finished putting on her shoe
and stood up. “Amy.”</p>
<p>“Last name?”</p>
<p>She shrugged and fished in her
purse for a cigarette. “What does
it matter? Mind if I sit down?”</p>
<p>“Go ahead,” I rumbled. “But
don’t stop talking!”</p>
<p>“Oh,” she said, “we’ve got plenty
of time to straighten things out.”
She lit the cigarette and walked
over to the chair by the window.
On the way, she gave the luggage
a good long look.</p>
<p>Arthur’s eyestalk cowered back
into the suitcase as she came close.
She winked at me, grinned, bent
down and peered inside.</p>
<p>“My,” she said, “he’s a nice
shiny one, isn’t he?”</p>
<p>The typewriter began to clatter
frantically. I didn’t even bother to
look; I told him: “Arthur, if you
can’t keep quiet, you have to expect
people to know you’re there.”</p>
<p>She sat down and crossed her
legs. “Now then,” she said. “Frankly,
he’s what I came to see you
<a class="pagenum" id="page20" title="20"> </a>about. Vern told me you had a
pross. I want to buy it.”</p>
<p>The typewriter thrashed its carriage
back and forth furiously.</p>
<p>“Arthur isn’t for sale.”</p>
<p>“No?” She leaned back. “Vern’s
already sold me his interest, you
know. And you don’t really have
any choice. You see, I’m in charge
of materiel procurement for the
Major. If you want to sell your
share, fine. If you don’t, why, we
requisition it anyhow. Do you follow?”</p>
<p>I was getting irritated—at
Vern Engdahl, for whatever the
hell he thought he was doing; but
at her because she was handy. I
shook my head.</p>
<p>“Fifty thousand dollars? I mean
for your interest?”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>“Seventy-five?”</p>
<p>“No!”</p>
<p>“Oh, come on now. A hundred
thousand?”</p>
<p>It wasn’t going to make any impression
on her, but I tried to explain:
“Arthur’s a friend of mine.
He isn’t for sale.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">She </span>shook her head. “What’s
the matter with you? Engdahl
wasn’t like this. He sold his interest
for forty thousand and was
glad to get it.”</p>
<p>Clatter-clatter-clatter from Arthur.
I didn’t blame him for having
hurt feelings that time.</p>
<p>Amy said in a discouraged tone:
“Why can’t people be reasonable?
The Major doesn’t like it when
people aren’t reasonable.”</p>
<p>I lowered the gun and cleared
my throat. “He doesn’t?” I asked,
cuing her. I wanted to hear more
about this Major, who seemed to
have the city pretty well under his
thumb.</p>
<p>“No, he doesn’t.” She shook her
head sorrowfully. She said in an
accusing voice: “You out-of-towners
don’t know what it’s like to
try to run a city the size of New
York. There are fifteen thousand
people here, do you know that? It
isn’t one of your hick towns. And
it’s worry, worry, worry all the
time, trying to keep things going.”</p>
<p>“I bet,” I said sympathetically.
“You’re, uh, pretty close to the
Major?”</p>
<p>She said stiffly: “I’m not married
to him, if that’s what you
mean. Though I’ve had my
chances…. But you see how
it is. Fifteen thousand people to
run a place the size of New York!
It’s forty men to operate the power
station, and twenty-five on the
PX, and thirty on the hotel here.
And then there are the local groceries,
and the Army, and the
Coast Guard, and the Air Force—though,
really, that’s only two men—and—Well,
you get the picture.”</p>
<p>“I certainly do. Look, what kind
of a guy <em>is</em> the Major?”</p>
<p>She shrugged. “A guy.”</p>
<p>“I mean what does he like?”</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page21" title="21"> </a>“Women, mostly,” she said, her
expression clouded. “Come on now.
What about it?”</p>
<p>I stalled. “What do you want
Arthur for?”</p>
<p>She gave me a disgusted look.
“What do you think? To relieve
the manpower shortage, naturally.
There’s more work than there are
men. Now if the Major could just
get hold of a couple of prosthetics,
like this thing here, why, he could
put them in the big installations.
This one used to be an engineer
or something, Vern said.”</p>
<p>“Well … <em>like</em> an engineer.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Amy</span> shrugged. “So why couldn’t
we connect him up with
the power station? It’s been done.
The Major knows that—he was in
the Pentagon when they switched
all the aircraft warning net over
from computer to prosthetic control.
So why couldn’t we do the
same thing with our power station
and release forty men for other assignments?
This thing could work
day, night, Sundays—what’s the
difference when you’re just a brain
in a sardine can?”</p>
<p>Clatter-rattle-<em>bang</em>.</p>
<p>She looked startled. “Oh. I forgot
he was listening.”</p>
<p>“No deal,” I said.</p>
<p>She said: “A hundred and fifty
thousand?”</p>
<p>A hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. I considered that for a
while. Arthur clattered warningly.</p>
<p>“Well,” I temporized, “I’d have
to be sure he was getting into good
hands—”</p>
<p>The typewriter thrashed wildly.
The sheet of paper fluttered out
of the carriage. He’d used it up.
Automatically I picked it up—it
was covered with imprecations,
self-pity and threats—and started
to put a new one in.</p>
<p>“No,” I said, bending over the
typewriter, “I guess I couldn’t sell
him. It just wouldn’t be right—”</p>
<p>That was my mistake; it was
the wrong time for me to say that,
because I had taken my eyes off
her.</p>
<p>The room bent over and clouted
me.</p>
<p>I half turned, not more than a
fraction conscious, and I saw this
Amy girl, behind me, with the
shoe still in her hand, raised to
give me another blackjacking on
the skull.</p>
<p>The shoe came down, and it
must have weighed more than it
looked, and even the fractional bit
of consciousness went crashing
away.</p>
<h2>III</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">I have</span> to tell you about Vern
Engdahl. We were all from the
<i>Sea Sprite</i>, of course—me and
Vern and even Arthur. The thing
about Vern is that he was the lowest-ranking
one of us all—only an
electricians’ mate third, I mean
<a class="pagenum" id="page22" title="22"> </a>when anybody paid any attention
to things like that—and yet he was
pretty much doing the thinking
for the rest of us. Coming to New
York was his idea—he told us that
was the only place we could get
what we wanted.</p>
<p>Well, as long as we were carrying
Arthur along with us, we pretty
much needed Vern, because he
was the one who knew how to
keep the lash-up going. You’ve got
no idea what kind of pumps and
plumbing go into a prosthetic tank
until you’ve seen one opened up.
And, naturally, Arthur didn’t want
any breakdowns without somebody
around to fix things up.</p>
<p>The <i>Sea Sprite</i>, maybe you
know, was one of the old liquid-sodium-reactor
subs—too slow for
combat duty, but as big as a barn,
so they made it a hospital ship. We
were cruising deep when the missiles
hit, and, of course, when we
came up, there wasn’t much for a
hospital ship to do. I mean there
isn’t any sense fooling around with
anybody who’s taken a good deep
breath of fallout.</p>
<p>So we went back to Newport
News to see what had happened.
And we found out what had happened.
And there wasn’t anything
much to do except pay off the
crew and let them go. But us
three stuck together. Why not?
It wasn’t as if we had any families
to go back to any more.</p>
<p>Vern just loved all this stuff—he’d
been an Eagle Scout; maybe
that had something to do with it—and
he showed us how to boil
drinking water and forage in the
woods and all like that, because
nobody in his right mind wanted
to go near any kind of a town,
until the cold weather set in, anyway.
And it was always Vern,
Vern, telling us what to do, ironing
out our troubles.</p>
<p>It worked out, except that there
was this one thing. Vern had bright
ideas. But he didn’t always tell us
what they were.</p>
<p>So I wasn’t so very surprised
when I came to. I mean there I
was, tied up, with this girl Amy
standing over me, holding the gun
like a club. Evidently she’d found
out that there weren’t any cartridges.
And in a couple of minutes
there was a knock on the door,
and she yelled, “Come in,” and in
came Vern. And the man who was
with him had to be somebody important,
because there were eight
or ten other men crowding in close
behind.</p>
<p>I didn’t need to look at the oak
leaves on his shoulders to realize
that here was the chief, the fellow
who ran this town, the Major.</p>
<p>It was just the kind of thing
Vern <em>would</em> do.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Vern</span> said, with the look on his
face that made strange officers
wonder why this poor persecuted
man had been forced to spend so
<a class="pagenum" id="page23" title="23"> </a>much time in the brig: “Now,
Major, I’m sure we can straighten
all this out. Would you mind leaving
me alone with my friend here
for a moment?”</p>
<p>The Major teetered on his heels,
thinking. He was a tall, youngish-bald
type, with a long, worried,
horselike face. He said: “Ah, do
you think we should?”</p>
<p>“I guarantee there’ll be no
trouble, Major,” Vern promised.</p>
<p>The Major pulled at his little
mustache. “Very well,” he said.
“Amy, you come along.”</p>
<p>“We’ll be right here, Major,”
Vern said reassuringly, escorting
him to the door.</p>
<p>“You bet you will,” said the
Major, and tittered. “Ah, bring
that gun along with you, Amy.
And be sure this man knows that
we have bullets.”</p>
<p>They closed the door. Arthur
had been cowering in his suitcase,
but now his eyestalk peeped out
and the rattling and clattering
from that typewriter sounded like
the Battle of the Bulge.</p>
<p>I demanded: “Come on, Vern.
What’s this all about?”</p>
<p>Vern said: “How much did they
offer you?”</p>
<p>Clatter-bang-BANG. I peeked,
and Arthur was saying: <span class="arthur_speak">WARNED
YOU SAM THAT ENGDAHL
WAS UP TO TRICKS PLEASE
SAM PLEASE PLEASE
PLEASE HIT HIM ON THE
HEAD KNOCK HIM OUT HE
MUST HAVE A GUN SO GET
IT AND SHOOT OUR WAY
OUT OF HERE</span></p>
<p>“A hundred and fifty thousand
dollars,” I said.</p>
<p>Vern looked outraged. “I only
got forty!”</p>
<p>Arthur clattered: <span class="arthur_speak">VERN I APPEAL
TO YOUR COMMON
DECENCY WERE OLD SHIPMATES
VERN REMEMBER
ALL THE TIMES I</span></p>
<p>“Still,” Vern mused, “it’s all
common funds anyway, right?
Arthur belongs to both of us.”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">I DONT DONT DONT REPEAT
DONT BELONG TO
ANYBODY BUT ME</p>
<p>“That’s true,” I said grudgingly.
“But I carried him, remember.”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">SAM WHATS THE MATTER
WITH YOU Q Q I DONT
LIKE THE EXPRESSION ON
YOUR FACE LISTEN SAM
YOU ARENT</p>
<p>Vern said, “A hundred and fifty
thousand, remember.”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">THINKING OF SELLING</p>
<p>“And of course we couldn’t get
out of here,” Vern pointed out.
“They’ve got us surrounded.”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">ME TO THESE RATS Q Q
SAM VERN PLEASE DONT
SCARE ME</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I said,</span> pointing to the fluttering
paper in the rattling machine:
“You’re worrying our friend.”</p>
<p>Vern shrugged impatiently.</p>
<p><span class="arthur_speak">I KNEW I SHOULDNT
<a class="pagenum" id="page24" title="24"> </a>HAVE TRUSTED YOU</span>, Arthur
wept. <span class="arthur_speak">THATS ALL I MEAN TO
YOU EH</span></p>
<p>Vern said: “Well, Sam? Let’s
take the cash and get this thing
over with. After all, he <em>will</em> have
the best of treatment.”</p>
<p>It was a little like selling your
sister into white slavery, but what
else was there to do? Besides, I
kind of trusted Vern.</p>
<p>“All right,” I said.</p>
<p>What Arthur said nearly
scorched the paper.</p>
<p>Vern helped pack Arthur up
for moving. I mean it was just
a matter of pulling the plugs out
and making sure he had a fresh
battery, but Vern wanted to supervise
it himself. Because one of
the little things Vern had up his
sleeve was that he had found a
spot for himself on the Major’s
payroll. He was now the official
Prosthetic (Human) Maintenance
Department Chief.</p>
<p>The Major said to me: “Ah,
Dunlap. What sort of experience
have you had?”</p>
<p>“Experience?”</p>
<p>“In the Navy. Your friend Engdahl
suggested you might want to
join us here.”</p>
<p>“Oh. I see what you mean.” I
shook my head. “Nothing that
would do you any good, I’m afraid.
I was a yeoman.”</p>
<p>“Yeoman?”</p>
<p>“Like a company clerk,” I explained.
“I mean I kept records
and cut orders and made out reports
and all like that.”</p>
<p>“Company clerk!” The eyes in
the long horsy face gleamed. “Ah,
you’re mistaken, Dunlap! Why,
that’s <em>just</em> what we need. Our
morning reports are in foul shape.
Foul! Come over to HQ. Lieutenant
Bankhead will give you a
lift.”</p>
<p>“Lieutenant Bankhead?”</p>
<p>I got an elbow in my ribs for
that. It was that girl Amy, standing
alongside me. “I,” she said,
“am Lieutenant Bankhead.”</p>
<p>Well, I went along with her,
leaving Engdahl and Arthur behind.
But I must admit I wasn’t
sure of my reception.</p>
<p>Out in front of the hotel was a
whole fleet of cars—three or four
of them, at least. There was a big
old Cadillac that looked like a
gangsters’ car—thick glass in the
windows, tires that looked like
they belonged on a truck. I was
willing to bet it was bulletproof
and also that it belonged to the
Major. I was right both times.
There was a little MG with the
top down, and a couple of light
trucks. Every one of them was
painted bright orange, and every
one of them had the star-and-bar
of the good old United States
Army on its side.</p>
<p>It took me back to old times—all
but the unmilitary color. Amy
led me to the MG and pointed.</p>
<p>“Sit,” she said.</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page25" title="25"> </a>I sat. She got in the other side
and we were off.</p>
<p>It was a little uncomfortable on
account of I wasn’t just sure
whether I ought to apologize for
making her take her clothes off.
And then she tramped on the gas
of that little car and I didn’t think
much about being embarrassed or
about her black lace lingerie. I was
only thinking about one thing—how
to stay alive long enough to
get out of that car.</p>
<h2>IV</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">See,</span> what we really wanted was
an ocean liner.</p>
<p>The rest of us probably would
have been happy enough to stay
in Lehigh County, but Arthur was
getting restless.</p>
<p>He was a terrible responsibility,
in a way. I suppose there were a
hundred thousand people or so
left in the country, and not more
than forty or fifty of them were
like Arthur—I mean if you want
to call a man in a prosthetic tank
a “person.” But we all did. We’d
got pretty used to him. We’d
shipped together in the war—and
survived together, as a few of the
actual fighters did, those who were
lucky enough to be underwater or
high in the air when the ICBMs
landed—and as few civilians did.</p>
<p>I mean there wasn’t much
chance for surviving, for anybody
who happened to be breathing the
open air when it happened. I mean
you can do just so much about
making a “clean” H-bomb, and
if you cut out the long-life fission
products, the short-life ones get
pretty deadly.</p>
<p>Anyway, there wasn’t much
damage, except of course that
everybody was dead. All the surface
vessels lost their crews. All
the population of the cities were
gone. And so then, when Arthur
slipped on the gangplank coming
into Newport News and broke his
fool neck, why, we had the whole
staff of the <i>Sea Sprite</i> to work on
him. I mean what else did the
surgeons have to do?</p>
<p>Of course, that was a long time
ago.</p>
<p>But we’d stayed together. We
headed for the farm country
around Allentown, Pennsylvania,
because Arthur and Vern Engdahl
claimed to know it pretty
well. I think maybe they had some
hope of finding family or friends,
but naturally there wasn’t any of
that. And when you got into the
inland towns, there hadn’t been
much of an attempt to clean them
up. At least the big cities and the
ports had been gone over, in some
spots anyway, by burial squads.
Although when we finally decided
to move out and went to Philadelphia—</p>
<p>Well, let’s be fair; there had
been fighting around there after
the big fight. Anyway, that wasn’t
<a class="pagenum" id="page26" title="26"> </a>so very uncommon. That was one
of the reasons that for a long time—four
or five years, at any rate—we
stayed away from big cities.</p>
<p>We holed up in a big farmhouse
in Lehigh County. It had its own
generator from a little stream, and
that took care of Arthur’s power
needs; and the previous occupants
had been just crazy about stashing
away food. There was enough
to last a century, and that took
care of the two of us. We appreciated
that. We even took the old
folks out and gave them a decent
burial. I mean they’d all been in
the family car, so we just had to
tow it to a gravel pit and push it
in.</p>
<p>The place had its own well, with
an electric pump and a hot-water
system—oh, it was nice. I was sorry
to leave but, frankly, Arthur
was driving us nuts.</p>
<p>We never could make the television
work—maybe there weren’t
any stations near enough. But we
pulled in a couple of radio stations
pretty well and Arthur got a big
charge out of listening to them—see,
he could hear four or five at
a time and I suppose that made
him feel better than the rest of us.</p>
<p>He heard that the big cities
were cleaned up and every one of
them seemed to want immigrants—they
were pleading, pleading all
the time, like the TV-set and
vacuum-cleaner people used to in
the old days; they guaranteed
we’d like it if we only came to live
in Philly, or Richmond, or Baltimore,
or wherever. And I guess
Arthur kind of hoped we might
find another pross. And then—well,
Engdahl came up with this idea
of an ocean liner.</p>
<p>It figured. I mean you get out
in the middle of the ocean and
what’s the difference what it’s like
on land? And it especially appealed
to Arthur because he
wanted to do some surface sailing.
He never had when he was real—I
mean when he had arms and
legs like anybody else. He’d gone
right into the undersea service the
minute he got out of school.</p>
<p>And—well, sailing was what
Arthur knew something about and
I suppose even a prosthetic man
wants to feel useful. It was like
Amy said: He could be hooked
up to an automated factory—</p>
<p>Or to a ship.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak">HQ for the Major’s Temporary
Military Government—that’s
what the sign said—was on the
91st floor of the Empire State
Building, and right there that tells
you something about the man. I
mean you know how much power
it takes to run those elevators all
the way up to the top? But the
Major must have liked being able
to look down on everybody else.</p>
<p>Amy Bankhead conducted me
to his office and sat me down to
wait for His Military Excellency
<a class="pagenum" id="page27" title="27"> </a>to arrive. She filled me in on him,
to some degree. He’d been an absolute
nothing before the war; but
he had a reserve commission in
the Air Force, and when things
began to look sticky, they’d called
him up and put him in a Missile
Master control point, underground
somewhere up around Ossining.</p>
<p>He was the duty officer when it
happened, and naturally he hadn’t
noticed anything like an enemy
aircraft, and naturally the anti-missile
missiles were still rusting
in their racks all around the city;
but since the place had been operating
on sealed ventilation, the
duty complement could stay there
until the short half-life radioisotopes
wore themselves out.</p>
<p>And then the Major found out
that he was not only in charge
of the fourteen men and women of
his division at the center—he was
ranking United States Military Establishment
officer farther than the
eye could see. So he beat it, fast
as he could, for New York, because
what Army officer doesn’t
dream about being stationed in
New York? And he set up his
Temporary Military Government—and
that was nine years ago.</p>
<p>If there hadn’t been plenty to
go around, I don’t suppose he
would have lasted a week—none
of these city chiefs would have.
But as things were, he was in on
the ground floor, and as newcomers
trickled into the city, his
boys already had things nicely organized.</p>
<p>It was a soft touch.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, we were about a week
getting settled in New York
and things were looking pretty
good. Vern calmed me down by
pointing out that, after all, we had
to sell Arthur, and hadn’t we come
out of it plenty okay?</p>
<p>And we had. There was no
doubt about it. Not only did we
have a fat price for Arthur, which
was useful because there were a
lot of things we would have to buy,
but we both had jobs working
for the Major.</p>
<p>Vern was his specialist in the
care and feeding of Arthur and
I was his chief of office routine—and,
as such, I delighted his fussy
little soul, because by adding what
I remembered of Navy protocol
to what he was able to teach me
of Army routine, we came up with
as snarled a mass of red tape as
any field-grade officer in the whole
history of all armed forces had
been able to accumulate. Oh, I
tell you, nobody sneezed in New
York without a report being made
out in triplicate, with eight endorsements.</p>
<p>Of course there wasn’t anybody
to send them to, but that didn’t
stop the Major. He said with determination:
“Nobody’s ever going
to chew <em>me</em> out for non-compliance
with regulations—even if I
<a class="pagenum" id="page28" title="28"> </a>have to invent the regulations myself!”</p>
<p>We set up in a bachelor apartment
on Central Park South—the
Major had the penthouse; the
whole building had been converted
to barracks—and the first chance
we got, Vern snaffled some transportation
and we set out to find
an ocean liner.</p>
<p>See, the thing was that an ocean
liner isn’t easy to steal. I mean
we’d scouted out the lay of the land
before we ever entered the city
itself, and there were plenty of
liners, but there wasn’t one that
looked like we could just jump in
and sail it away. For that we
needed an organization. Since we
didn’t have one, the best thing to
do was borrow the Major’s.</p>
<p>Vern turned up with Amy Bankhead’s
MG, and he also turned up
with Amy. I can’t say I was displeased,
because I was beginning
to like the girl; but did you ever
try to ride three people in the seats
of an MG? Well, the way to do it
is by having one passenger sit
in the other passenger’s lap, which
would have been all right except
that Amy insisted on driving.</p>
<p>We headed downtown and over
to the West Side. The Major’s
Topographical Section—one former
billboard artist—had prepared road
maps with little red-ink Xs marking
the streets that were blocked,
which was most of the streets; but
we charted a course that would
take us where we wanted to go.
Thirty-fourth Street was open, and
so was Fifth Avenue all of its
length, so we scooted down Fifth,
crossed over, got under the Elevated
Highway and whined along
uptown toward the Fifties.</p>
<p>“There’s one,” cried Amy, pointing.</p>
<p>I was on Vern’s lap, so I was
making the notes. It was a Fruit
Company combination freighter-passenger
vessel. I looked at Vern,
and Vern shrugged as best he
could, so I wrote it down; but it
wasn’t exactly what we wanted.
No, not by a long shot.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Still</span>, the thing to do was to
survey our resources, and then
we could pick the one we liked
best. We went all the way up to
the end of the big-ship docks, and
then turned and came back down,
all the way to the Battery. It
wasn’t pleasure driving, exactly—half
a dozen times we had to get
out the map and detour around
impenetrable jams of stalled and
empty cars—or anyway, if they
weren’t exactly empty, the people
in them were no longer in shape
to get out of our way. But we
made it.</p>
<p>We counted sixteen ships in
dock that looked as though they
might do for our purposes. We had
to rule out the newer ones and
the reconverted jobs. I mean, after
all, U-235 just lasts so long, and
<a class="pagenum" id="page29" title="29"> </a>you can steam around the world
on a walnut-shell of it, or whatever
it is, but you can’t store it.
So we had to stick with the ships
that were powered with conventional
fuel—and, on consideration,
only oil at that.</p>
<p>But that left sixteen, as I say.
Some of them, though, had suffered
visibly from being left untended
for nearly a decade, so that
for our purposes they might as
well have been abandoned in the
middle of the Atlantic; we didn’t
have the equipment or ambition
to do any great amount of salvage
work.</p>
<p>The <i>Empress of Britain</i> would
have been a pretty good bet, for
instance, except that it was lying
at pretty nearly a forty-five-degree
angle in its berth. So was the
<i>United States</i>, and so was the
<i>Caronia</i>. The <i>Stockholm</i> was
straight enough, but I took a good
look, and only one tier of portholes
was showing above the water—evidently
it had settled nice and
even, but it was on the bottom
all the same. Well, that mud
sucks with a fine tight grip, and
we weren’t going to try to loosen
it.</p>
<p>All in all, eleven of the sixteen
ships were out of commission just
from what we could see driving
by.</p>
<p>Vern and I looked at each other.
We stood by the MG, while Amy
sprawled her legs over the side
and waited for us to make up our
minds.</p>
<p>“Not good, Sam,” said Vern,
looking worried.</p>
<p>I said: “Well, that still leaves
five. There’s the <i>Vulcania</i>, the
<i>Cristobal</i>—”</p>
<p>“Too small.”</p>
<p>“All right. The <i>Manhattan</i>, the
<i>Liberté</i> and the <i>Queen Elizabeth</i>.”</p>
<p>Amy looked up, her eyes
gleaming. “Where’s the question?”
she demanded. “Naturally, it’s the
<i>Queen</i>.”</p>
<p>I tried to explain. “Please, Amy.
Leave these things to us, will
you?”</p>
<p>“But the Major won’t settle for
anything but the best!”</p>
<p>“The <em>Major</em>?”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">I glanced</span> at Vern, who
wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Well,”
I said, “look at the problems, Amy.
First we have to check it over.
Maybe it’s been burned out—how
do we know? Maybe the channel
isn’t even deep enough to float it
any more—how do we know?
Where are we going to get the oil
for it?”</p>
<p>“We’ll get the oil,” Amy said
cheerfully.</p>
<p>“And what if the channel isn’t
deep enough?”</p>
<p>“She’ll float,” Amy promised.
“At high tide, anyway. Even if
the channel hasn’t been dredged in
ten years.”</p>
<p>I shrugged and gave up. What
<a class="pagenum" id="page30" title="30"> </a>was the use of arguing?</p>
<p>We drove back to the <i>Queen
Elizabeth</i> and I had to admit that
there was a certain attraction
about that big old dowager. We
all got out and strolled down the
pier, looking over as much as we
could see.</p>
<p>The pier had never been
cleaned out. It bothered me a little—I
mean I don’t like skeletons
much—but Amy didn’t seem to
mind. The <i>Queen</i> must have just
docked when it happened, because
you could still see bony queues,
as though they were waiting for
customs inspection.</p>
<p>Some of the bags had been
opened and the contents scattered
around—naturally, somebody was
bound to think of looting the
<i>Queen</i>. But there were as many
that hadn’t been touched as that
had been opened, and the whole
thing had the look of an amateur
attempt. And that was all to the
good, because the fewer persons
who had boarded the <i>Queen</i> in the
decade since it happened, the more
chance of our finding it in usable
shape.</p>
<p>Amy saw a gangplank still up,
and with cries of girlish glee ran
aboard.</p>
<p>I plucked at Vern’s sleeve.
“You,” I said. “What’s this about
what the <em>Major</em> won’t settle for
less than?”</p>
<p>He said: “Aw, Sam, I had to
tell her something, didn’t I?”</p>
<p>“But what about the Major—”</p>
<p>He said patiently: “You don’t
understand. It’s all part of my
plan, see? The Major is the big
thing here and he’s got a birthday
coming up next month. Well, the
way I put it to Amy, we’ll fix
him up with a yacht as a birthday
present, see? And, of course, when
it’s all fixed up and ready to lift
anchor—”</p>
<p>I said doubtfully: “That’s the
hard way, Vern. Why couldn’t we
just sort of get steam up and take
off?”</p>
<p>He shook his head. “<em>That</em> is the
hard way. This way we get all the
help and supplies we need, understand?”</p>
<p>I shrugged. That was the way
it was, so what was the use of arguing?</p>
<p>But there was one thing more
on my mind. I said: “How come
Amy’s so interested in making
the Major happy?”</p>
<p>Vern chortled. “Jealous, eh?”</p>
<p>“I asked a question!”</p>
<p>“Calm down, boy. It’s just that
he’s in charge of things here so
naturally she wants to keep in
good with him.”</p>
<p>I scowled. “I keep hearing
stories about how the Major’s
chief interest in life is women.
You sure she isn’t ambitious to be
one of them?”</p>
<p>He said: “The reason she wants
to keep him happy is so she <em>won’t</em>
be one of them.”</p>
<h2><a class="pagenum" id="page31" title="31"> </a>V</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">The</span> name of the place was
Bayonne.</p>
<p>Vern said: “One of them’s <em>got</em>
to have oil, Sam. It <em>has</em> to.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” I said.</p>
<p>“There’s no question about it.
Look, this is where the tankers
came to discharge oil. They’d come
in here, pump the oil into the refinery
tanks and—”</p>
<p>“Vern,” I said. “Let’s look, shall
we?”</p>
<p>He shrugged, and we hopped off
the little outboard motorboat onto
a landing stage. The tankers
towered over us, rusty and screeching
as the waves rubbed them
against each other.</p>
<p>There were fifty of them there
at least, and we poked around
them for hours. The hatches were
rusted shut and unmanageable,
but you could tell a lot by sniffing.
Gasoline odor was out; smell
of seaweed and dead fish was out;
but the heavy, rank smell of fuel
oil, that was what we were sniffing
for. Crews had been aboard
these ships when the missiles
came, and crews were still aboard.</p>
<p>Beyond the two-part superstructures
of the tankers, the skyline
of New York was visible. I
looked up, sweating, and saw the
Empire State Building and
imagined Amy up there, looking
out toward us.</p>
<p>She knew we were here. It was
her idea. She had scrounged up a
naval engineer, or what she called
a naval engineer—he had once been
a stoker on a ferryboat. But he
claimed he knew what he was
talking about when he said the
only thing the <i>Queen</i> needed to
make ’er go was oil. And so we
left him aboard to tinker and
polish, with a couple of helpers
Amy detached from the police
force, and we tackled the oil
problem.</p>
<p>Which meant Bayonne. Which
was where we were.</p>
<p>It had to be a tanker with at
least a fair portion of its cargo
intact, because the <i>Queen</i> was a
thirsty creature, drinking fuel not
by the shot or gallon but by the
ton.</p>
<p>“Saaam! Sam <em>Dunlap</em>!”</p>
<p>I looked up, startled. Five ships
away, across the U of the mooring,
Vern Engdahl was bellowing
at me through cupped hands.</p>
<p>“I found it!” he shouted. “Oil,
lots of oil! Come look!”</p>
<p>I clasped my hands over my
head and looked around. It was a
long way around to the tanker
Vern was on, hopping from deck
to deck, detouring around open
stretches.</p>
<p>I shouted: “I’ll get the boat!”</p>
<p>He waved and climbed up on
the rail of the ship, his feet dangling
over, looking supremely happy
and pleased with himself. He
lit a cigarette, leaned back against
<a class="pagenum" id="page32" title="32"> </a>the upward sweep of the rail and
waited.</p>
<p>It took me a little time to get
back to the boat and a little more
time than that to get the damn
motor started. Vern! “Let’s not
take that lousy little twelve horse-power,
Sam,” he’d said reasonably.
“The twenty-five’s more what
we need!” And maybe it was, but
none of the motors had been
started in most of a decade, and
the twenty-five was just that much
harder to start now.</p>
<p>I struggled over it, swearing,
for twenty minutes or more.</p>
<p>The tanker by whose side we
had tied up began to swing toward
me as the tide changed to outgoing.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">For</span> a moment there, I was
counting seconds, expecting to
have to make a jump for it before
the big red steel flank squeezed
the little outboard flat against the
piles.</p>
<p>But I got it started—just about
in time. I squeezed out of the trap
with not much more than a yard
to spare and threaded my way
into open water.</p>
<p>There was a large, threatening
sound, like an enormous slow
cough.</p>
<p>I rounded the stern of the last
tanker between me and open
water, and looked into the eye of
a fire-breathing dragon.</p>
<p>Vern and his cigarettes! The
tanker was loose and ablaze, bearing
down on me with the slow
drift of the ebbing tide. From the
hatches on the forward deck, two
fountains of fire spurted up and
out, like enormous nostrils spouting
flame. The hawsers had been
burned through, the ship was
adrift, I was in its path—</p>
<p>And so was the frantically
splashing figure of Vern Engdahl,
trying desperately to swim out of
the way in the water before it.</p>
<p>What kept it from blowing up
in our faces I will never know,
unless it was the pressure in the
tanks forcing the flame out; but
it didn’t. Not just then. Not until
I had Engdahl aboard and we
were out in the middle of the Hudson,
staring back; and then it
went up all right, all at once, like
a missile or a volcano; and there
had been fifty tankers in that one
mooring, but there weren’t any
any more, or not in shape for us
to use.</p>
<p>I looked at Engdahl.</p>
<p>He said defensively: “Honest,
Sam, I thought it was oil. It
<em>smelled</em> like oil. How was I to
know—”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” I said.</p>
<p>He shrugged, injured. “But it’s
all right, Sam. No fooling. There
are plenty of other tankers
around. Plenty. Down toward the
Amboys, maybe moored out in the
channel. There must be. We’ll find
them.”</p>
<div id="illo2" class="illo"><a class="pagenum" id="page33" title="33"> </a>
<a href="images/illo2.jpg"><img src="images/illo2-sm.jpg" width="393" height="556" alt="Two men in a small boat with billowing smoke in the distance." /></a>
</div>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page34" title="34"> </a>“No,” I said. “<em>You</em> will.”</p>
<p>And that was all I said, because
I am forgiving by nature;
but I thought a great deal more.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, though, he did find
a tanker with a full load, the
very next day.</p>
<p>It became a question of getting
the tanker to the <i>Queen</i>. I left
that part up to Vern, since he
claimed to be able to handle it.</p>
<p>It took him two weeks. First
it was finding the tanker, then it
was locating a tug in shape to
move, then it was finding someone
to pilot the tug. Then it was
waiting for a clear and windless
day—because the pilot he found
had got all his experience sailing
Star boats on Long Island Sound—and
then it was easing the tanker
out of Newark Bay, into the channel,
down to the pier in the North
River—</p>
<p>Oh, it was work and no fooling.
I enjoyed it very much, because
I didn’t have to do it.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">But</span> I had enough to keep
me busy at that. I found a
man who claimed he used to be
a radio engineer. And if he was an
engineer, I was Albert Einstein’s
mother, but at least he knew which
end of a soldering iron was hot.
There was no need for any great
skill, since there weren’t going to
be very many vessels to communicate
with.</p>
<p>Things began to move.</p>
<p>The advantage of a ship like
the <i>Queen</i>, for our purposes, was
that the thing was pretty well automated
to start out with. I mean
never mind what the seafaring
unions required in the way of
flesh-and-blood personnel. What it
came down to was that one man in
the bridge or wheelhouse could
pretty well make any part of the
ship go or not go.</p>
<p>The engine-room telegraph
wasn’t hooked up to control the
engines, no. But the wiring diagram
needed only a few little
changes to get the same effect,
because where in the original concept
a human being would take a
look at the repeater down in the
engine room, nod wisely, and push
a button that would make the
engines stop, start, or whatever—why,
all we had to do was cut
out the middleman, so to speak.</p>
<p>Our genius of the soldering iron
replaced flesh and blood with some
wiring and, presto, we had centralized
engine control.</p>
<p>The steering was even easier.
Steering was a matter of electronic
control and servomotors to begin
with. Windjammers in the old
movies might have a man lashed
to the wheel whose muscle power
turned the rudder, but, believe me,
a big superliner doesn’t. The rudders
weigh as much as any old
windjammer ever did from stem
to stern; you have to have motors
to turn them; and it was only a
<a class="pagenum" id="page35" title="35"> </a>matter of getting out the old soldering
iron again.</p>
<p>By the time we were through,
we had every operational facility
of the <i>Queen</i> hooked up to a single
panel on the bridge.</p>
<p>Engdahl showed up with the oil
tanker just about the time we got
the wiring complete. We rigged up
a pump and filled the bunkers till
they were topped off full. We
guessed, out of hope and ignorance,
that there was enough in there to
take us half a dozen times around
the world at normal cruising speed,
and maybe there was. Anyway,
it didn’t matter, for surely we had
enough to take us anywhere we
wanted to go, and then there
would be more.</p>
<p>We crossed our fingers, turned
our ex-ferry-stoker loose, pushed a
button—</p>
<p>Smoke came out of the stacks.</p>
<p>The antique screws began to
turn over. Astern, a sort of hump
of muddy water appeared. The
<i>Queen</i> quivered underfoot. The
mooring hawsers creaked and sang.</p>
<p>“Turn her off!” screamed Engdahl.
“She’s headed for Times
Square!”</p>
<p>Well, that was an exaggeration,
but not much of one; and there
wasn’t any sense in stirring up
the bottom mud. I pushed buttons
and the screws stopped. I pushed
another button, and the big engines
quietly shut themselves off,
and in a few moments the stacks
stopped puffing their black smoke.</p>
<p>The ship was alive.</p>
<p>Solemnly Engdahl and I shook
hands. We had the thing licked.
All, that is, except for the one
small problem of Arthur.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> thing about Arthur was
they had put him to work.</p>
<p>It was in the power station, just
as Amy had said, and Arthur
didn’t like it. The fact that he
didn’t like it was a splendid reason
for staying away from there, but
I let my kind heart overrule my
good sense and paid him a visit.</p>
<p>It was way over on the East
Side, miles and miles from any
civilized area. I borrowed Amy’s
MG, and borrowed Amy to go
with it, and the two of us packed
a picnic lunch and set out. There
were reports of deer on Avenue
A, so I brought a rifle, but we
never saw one; and if you want
my opinion, those reports were
nothing but wishful thinking. I
mean if people couldn’t survive,
how could deer?</p>
<p>We finally threaded our way
through the clogged streets and
parked in front of the power station.</p>
<p>“There’s supposed to be a
guard,” Amy said doubtfully.</p>
<p>I looked. I looked pretty carefully,
because if there was a guard,
I wanted to see him. The Major’s
orders were that vital defense installations—such
as the power station,
<a class="pagenum" id="page36" title="36"> </a>the PX and his own barracks
building—were to be guarded
against trespassers on a shoot-on-sight
basis and I wanted to make
sure that the guard knew we were
privileged persons, with passes
signed by the Major’s own hand.
But we couldn’t find him. So we
walked in through the big door,
peered around, listened for the
sounds of machinery and walked
in that direction.</p>
<p>And then we found him; he was
sound asleep. Amy, looking indignant,
shook him awake.</p>
<p>“Is that how you guard military
property?” she scolded. “Don’t
you know the penalty for sleeping
at your post?”</p>
<p>The guard said something irritable
and unhappy. I got her off
his back with some difficulty, and
we located Arthur.</p>
<p>Picture a shiny four-gallon tomato
can, with the label stripped
off, hanging by wire from the
flashing-light panels of an electric
computer. That was Arthur. The
shiny metal cylinder was his prosthetic
tank; the wires were the
leads that served him for fingers,
ears and mouth; the glittering
panel was the control center for
the Consolidated Edison Eastside
Power Plant No. 1.</p>
<p>“Hi, Arthur,” I said, and a sudden
ear-splitting thunderous hiss was
his way of telling me that he knew
I was there.</p>
<p>I didn’t know exactly what it
was he was trying to say and I
didn’t want to; fortune spares me
few painful moments, and I accept
with gratitude the ones it does.
The Major’s boys hadn’t bothered
to bring Arthur’s typewriter along—I
mean who cares what a generator-governor
had to offer in the
way of conversation?—so all he
could do was blow off steam from
the distant boilers.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, not quite all. Light
flashed; a bucket conveyor
began crashingly to dump loads of
coal; and an alarm gong began to
pound.</p>
<p>“Please, Arthur,” I begged.
“Shut up a minute and listen, will
you?”</p>
<p>More lights. The gong rapped
half a dozen times sharply, and
stopped.</p>
<p>I said: “Arthur, you’ve got to
trust Vern and me. We have this
thing figured out now. We’ve got
the <i>Queen Elizabeth</i>—”</p>
<p>A shattering hiss of steam—meaning
delight this time, I
thought. Or anyway hoped.</p>
<p>“—and its only a question of
time until we can carry out the
plan. Vern says to apologize for
not looking in on you—” <em>hiss</em>—“but
he’s been busy. And after all, you
know it’s more important to get
everything ready so you can get
out of this place, right?”</p>
<p>“Psst,” said Amy.</p>
<p>She nodded briefly past my
<a class="pagenum" id="page37" title="37"> </a>shoulder. I looked, and there was
the guard, looking sleepy and surly
and definitely suspicious.</p>
<p>I said heartily: “So as soon as
I fix it up with the Major, we’ll
arrange for something better for
you. Meanwhile, Arthur, you’re
doing a capital job and I want you
to know that all of us loyal New
York citizens and public servants
deeply appreciate—”</p>
<p>Thundering crashes, bangs,
gongs, hisses, and the scream of a
steam whistle he’d found somewhere.</p>
<p>Arthur was mad.</p>
<p>“So long, Arthur,” I said, and
we got out of there—just barely
in time. At the door, we found that
Arthur had reversed the coal
scoops and a growing mound of
it was pouring into the street where
we’d left the MG parked. We got
the car started just as the heap
was beginning to reach the bumpers,
and at that the paint would
never again be the same.</p>
<p>Oh, yes, he was mad. I could
only hope that in the long run he
would forgive us, since we were
acting for his best interests, after
all.</p>
<p>Anyway, I <em>thought</em> we were.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Still</span>, things worked out pretty
well—especially between Amy
and me. Engdahl had the theory
that she had been dodging the
Major so long that <em>anybody</em> looked
good to her, which was hardly
flattering. But she and I were
getting along right well.</p>
<p>She said worriedly: “The only
thing, Sam, is that, frankly, the
Major has just about made up his
mind that he wants to marry me—”</p>
<p>“He <em>is</em> married!” I yelped.</p>
<p>“Naturally he’s married. He’s
married to—so far—one hundred
and nine women. He’s been hitting
off a marriage a month for a good
many years now and, to tell you
the truth, I think he’s got the habit
Anyway, he’s got his eye on me.”</p>
<p>I demanded jealously: “Has he
said anything?”</p>
<p>She picked a sheet of onionskin
paper out of her bag and handed
it to me. It was marked <i>Top
Secret</i>, and it really was, because
it hadn’t gone through his regular
office—I knew that because I was
his regular office. It was only two
lines of text and sloppily typed
at that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lt. Amy Bankhead will report
to HQ at 1700 hours 1 July to
carry out orders of the Commanding
Officer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first of July was only a
week away. I handed the orders
back to her.</p>
<p>“And the orders of the Commanding
Officer will be—” I
wanted to know.</p>
<p>She nodded. “You guessed it.”</p>
<p>I said: “We’ll have to work
fast.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page38" title="38"> </a><span class="first_word">On</span> the thirtieth of June, we
invited the Major to come
aboard his palatial new yacht.</p>
<p>“Ah, thank you,” he said gratefully.
“A surprise? For my birthday?
Ah, you loyal members of
my command make up for all that
I’ve lost—all of it!” He nearly
wept.</p>
<p>I said: “Sir, the pleasure is all
ours,” and backed out of his presence.
What’s more, I meant every
word.</p>
<p>It was a select party of slightly
over a hundred. All of the wives
were there, barring twenty or thirty
who were in disfavor—still, that
left over eighty. The Major
brought half a dozen of his favorite
officers. His bodyguard and our
crew added up to a total of thirty
men.</p>
<p>We were set up to feed a hundred
and fifty, and to provide
liquor for twice that many, so it
looked like a nice friendly brawl.
I mean we had our radio operator
handing out highballs as the guests
stepped on board. The Major was
touched and delighted; it was
exactly the kind of party he liked.</p>
<p>He came up the gangplank with
his face one great beaming smile.
“Eat! Drink!” he cried. “Ah, and
be merry!” He stretched out his
hands to Amy, standing by behind
the radio op. “For tomorrow we
wed,” he added, and sentimentally
kissed his proposed bride.</p>
<p>I cleared my throat. “How about
inspecting the ship, Major?” I interrupted.</p>
<p>“Plenty of time for that, my
boy,” he said. “Plenty of time for
that.” But he let go of Amy and
looked around him. Well, it was
worth looking at. Those Englishmen
really knew how to build a
luxury liner. God rest them.</p>
<p>The girls began roaming around.</p>
<p>It was a hot day and late afternoon,
and the girls began discarding
jackets and boleros, and that
began to annoy the Major.</p>
<p>“Ah, cover up there!” he ordered
one of his wives. “You too
there, what’s-your-name. Put that
blouse back on!”</p>
<p>It gave him something to think
about. He was a very jealous man,
Amy had said, and when you stop
to think about it, a jealous man
with a hundred and nine wives to
be jealous of really has a job. Anyway,
he was busy watching his
wives and keeping his military
cabinet and his bodyguard busy
too, and that made him too busy
to notice when I tipped the high
sign to Vern and took off.</p>
<h2>VI</h2>
<p class="first_paragraph"><span class="first_word">In</span> Consolidated Edison’s big
power plant, the guard was
friendly. “I hear the Major’s over
on your boat, pal. Big doings. Got
a lot of the girls there, hey?”</p>
<p>He bent, sniggering, to look at
my pass.</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page39" title="39"> </a>“That’s right, pal,” I said, and
slugged him.</p>
<p>Arthur screamed at me with a
shrill blast of steam as I came in.
But only once. I wasn’t there for
conversation. I began ripping apart
his comfy little home of steel
braces and copper wires, and it
didn’t take much more than a
minute before I had him free. And
that was very fortunate because,
although I had tied up the guard,
I hadn’t done it very well, and it
was just about the time I had
Arthur’s steel case tucked under
my arm that I heard a yelling and
bellowing from down the stairs.</p>
<p>The guard had got free.</p>
<p>“Keep calm, Arthur!” I ordered
sharply. “We’ll get out of this,
don’t you worry!”</p>
<p>But he wasn’t worried, or anyway
didn’t show it, since he
couldn’t. I was the one who was
worried. I was up on the second
floor of the plant, in the control
center, with only one stairway going
down that I knew about, and
that one thoroughly guarded by
a man with a grudge against me.
Me, I had Arthur, and no weapon,
and I hadn’t a doubt in the world
that there were other guards
around and that my friend would
have them after me before long.</p>
<p>Problem. I took a deep breath
and swallowed and considered
jumping out the window. But it
wasn’t far enough to the ground.</p>
<p>Feet pounded up the stairs,
more than two of them. With
Arthur dragging me down on one
side, I hurried, fast as I could,
along the steel galleries that surrounded
the biggest boiler. It was
a nice choice of alternatives—if I
stayed quiet, they would find me;
if I ran, they would hear me, and
then find me.</p>
<p>But ahead there was—what?
Something. A flight of stairs, it
looked like, going out and, yes, <em>up</em>.
Up? But I was already on the
second floor.</p>
<p>“Hey, you!” somebody bellowed
from behind me.</p>
<p>I didn’t stop to consider. I ran.
It wasn’t steps, not exactly; it was
a chain of coal scoops on a long
derrick arm, a moving bucket arrangement
for unloading fuel from
barges. It did go up, though, and
more important it went <em>out</em>. The
bucket arm was stretched across
the clogged roadway below to a
loading tower that hung over the
water.</p>
<p>If I could get there, I might
be able to get down. If I could get
down—yes, I could see it; there
were three or four mahogany
motor launches tied to the foot of
the tower.</p>
<p>And nobody around.</p>
<p>I looked over my shoulder, and
didn’t like what I saw, and scuttled
up that chain of enormous
buckets like a roach on a washboard,
one hand for me and one
hand for Arthur.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><a class="pagenum" id="page40" title="40"> </a><span class="first_word">Thank</span> heaven, I had a good
lead on my pursuers—I needed
it. I was on the bucket chain while
they were still almost a city block
behind me, along the galleries. I
was halfway across the roadway,
afraid to look down, before they
reached the butt end of the chain.</p>
<p>Clash-clatter. <em>Clank!</em> The bucket
under me jerked and clattered and
nearly threw me into the street.
One of those jokers had turned on
the conveyor! It was a good trick,
all right, but not quite in time. I
made a flying jump and I was on
the tower.</p>
<p>I didn’t stop to thumb my nose
at them, but I thought of it.</p>
<p>I was down those steel steps,
breathing like a spouting whale,
in a minute flat, and jumping out
across the concrete, coal-smeared
yard toward the moored launches.
Quickly enough, I guess, but with
nothing at all to spare, because although
I hadn’t seen anyone
there, there was a guard.</p>
<p>He popped out of a doorway,
blinking foolishly; and overhead
the guards at the conveyor belt
were screaming at him. It took him
a second to figure out what was
going on, and by that time I was
in a launch, cast off the rope,
kicked it free, and fumbled for
the starting button.</p>
<p>It took me several seconds to
realize that a rope was required,
that in fact there was no button;
and by then I was floating yards
away, but the pudgy pop-eyed
guard was also in a launch, and he
didn’t have to fumble. He knew.
He got his motor started a fraction
of a second before me, and
there he was, coming at me, set
to ram. Or so it looked.</p>
<p>I wrenched at the wheel and
brought the boat hard over; but
he swerved too, at the last moment,
and brought up something
that looked a little like a spear
and a little like a sickle and turned
out to be a boathook. I ducked,
just in time. It sizzled over my
head as he swung and crashed
against the windshield. Hunks of
safety glass splashed out over the
forward deck, but better that than
my head.</p>
<p>Boathooks, hey? I had a boathook
too! If he didn’t have another
weapon, I was perfectly willing
to play; I’d been sitting and taking
it long enough and I was very
much attracted by the idea of
fighting back. The guard recovered
his balance, swore at me, fought
the wheel around and came back.</p>
<p>We both curved out toward the
center of the East River in intersecting
arcs. We closed. He
swung first. I ducked—</p>
<p>And from a crouch, while he
was off balance, I caught him in
the shoulder with the hook.</p>
<p>He made a mighty splash.</p>
<p>I throttled down the motor long
enough to see that he was still conscious.</p>
<p><a class="pagenum" id="page41" title="41"> </a>“<em lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Touché</em>, buster,” I said, and set
course for the return trip down
around the foot of Manhattan,
back toward the <i>Queen</i>.</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">It</span> took a while, but that was
all right; it gave everybody a
nice long time to get plastered. I
sneaked aboard, carrying Arthur,
and turned him over to Vern. Then
I rejoined the Major. He was
making an inspection tour of the
ship—what he called an inspection,
after his fashion.</p>
<p>He peered into the engine
rooms and said: “Ah, fine.”</p>
<p>He stared at the generators that
were turning over and nodded
when I explained we needed them
for power for lights and everything
and said: “Ah, of course.”</p>
<p>He opened a couple of stateroom
doors at random and said:
“Ah, nice.”</p>
<p>And he went up on the flying
bridge with me and such of his
officers as still could walk and
said: “Ah.”</p>
<p>Then he said in a totally different
tone: “What the devil’s the
matter over there?”</p>
<p>He was staring east through the
muggy haze. I saw right away
what it was that was bothering him—easy,
because I knew where to
look. The power plant way over
on the East Side was billowing
smoke.</p>
<p>“Where’s Vern Engdahl? That
gadget of his isn’t working right!”</p>
<p>“You mean Arthur?”</p>
<p>“I mean that brain in a bottle.
It’s Engdahl’s responsibility, you
know!”</p>
<p>Vern came up out of the wheelhouse
and cleared his throat.
“Major,” he said earnestly, “I
think there’s some trouble over
there. Maybe you ought to go
look for yourself.”</p>
<p>“Trouble?”</p>
<p>“I, uh, hear there’ve been power
failures,” Vern said lamely. “Don’t
you think you ought to inspect it?
I mean just in case there’s something
serious?”</p>
<p>The Major stared at him
frostily, and then his mood
changed. He took a drink from the
glass in his hand, quickly finishing
it off.</p>
<p>“Ah,” he said, “hell with it.
Why spoil a good party? If there
are going to be power failures,
why, let them be. That’s my
motto!”</p>
<p>Vern and I looked at each other.
He shrugged slightly, meaning,
well, we tried. And I shrugged
slightly, meaning, what did you
expect? And then he glanced upward,
meaning, take a look at
what’s there.</p>
<p>But I didn’t really have to look
because I heard what it was. In
fact, I’d been hearing it for some
time. It was the Major’s entire air
force—two helicopters, swirling
around us at an average altitude of
a hundred feet or so. They showed
<a class="pagenum" id="page42" title="42"> </a>up bright against the gathering
clouds overhead, and I looked at
them with considerable interest—partly
because I considered it an
even-money bet that one of them
would be playing crumple-fender
with our stacks, partly because I
had an idea that they were not
there solely for show.</p>
<p>I said to the Major: “Chief,
aren’t they coming a little close?
I mean it’s <em>your</em> ship and all, but
what if one of them takes a spill
into the bridge while you’re here?”</p>
<p>He grinned. “They know better,”
he bragged. “Ah, besides, I want
them close. I mean if anything
went wrong.”</p>
<p>I said, in a tone that showed as
much deep hurt as I could
manage: “Sir, what could go
wrong?”</p>
<p>“Oh, you know.” He patted my
shoulder limply. “Ah, no offense?”
he asked.</p>
<p>I shook my head. “Well,” I said,
“let’s go below.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">All</span> of it was done carefully,
carefully as could be. The
only thing was, we forgot about
the typewriters. We got everybody,
or as near as we could, into
the Grand Salon where the food
was, and right there on a table at
the end of the hall was one of the
typewriters clacking away. Vern
had rigged them up with rolls of
paper instead of sheets, and maybe
that was ingenious, but it was
also a headache just then. Because
the typewriter was banging out:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">LEFT FOUR THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN AND TWENTYONE
BOILERS WITH A FULL
HEAD OF STEAM AND THE
SAFETY VALVES LOCKED
BOY I TELL YOU WHEN
THOSE THINGS LET GO
YOURE GOING TO HEAR A
NOISE THATLL KNOCK
YOUR HAT OFF</p>
<p>The Major inquired politely:
“Something to do with the ship?”</p>
<p>“Oh, <em>that</em>,” said Vern. “Yeah.
Just a little, uh, something to do
with the ship. Say, Major, here’s
the bar. Real scotch, see? Look
at the label!”</p>
<p>The Major glanced at him with
faint contempt—well, he’d had the
pick of the greatest collection of
high-priced liquor stores in the
world for ten years, so no wonder.
But he allowed Vern to press a
drink on him.</p>
<p>And the typewriter kept rattling:</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">LOOKS LIKE RAIN ANY
MINUTE NOW HOO BOY IM
GLAD I WONT BE IN THOSE
WHIRLYBIRDS WHEN THE
STORM STARTS SAY VERN
WHY DONT YOU EVER ANSWER
ME Q Q ISNT IT
ABOUT TIME TO TAKE
OFF XXX I MEAN GET UNDER
WEIGH Q Q</p>
<p>Some of the “clerks, typists, domestic
personnel and others”—that
was the way they were listed on
<a class="pagenum" id="page43" title="43"> </a>the T/O; it was only coincidence
that the Major had married them
all—were staring at the typewriter.</p>
<p>“Drinks!” Vern called nervously.
“Come on, girls! Drinks!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">The</span> Major poured himself a
stiff shot and asked: “What <em>is</em>
that thing? A teletype or something?”</p>
<p>“That’s right,” Vern said, trailing
after him as the Major wandered
over to inspect it.</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">I GIVE THOSE BOILERS
ABOUT TEN MORE MINUTES
SAM WELL WHAT
ABOUT IT Q Q READY TO
SHOVE OFF Q Q</p>
<p>The Major said, frowning faintly:
“Ah, that reminds me of something.
Now what is it?”</p>
<p>“More scotch?” Vern cried.
“Major, a little more scotch?”</p>
<p>The Major ignored him, scowling.
One of the “clerks, typists”
said: “Honey, you know what it
is? It’s like that pross you had,
remember? It was on our wedding
night, and you’d just got it, and
you kept asking it to tell you
limericks.”</p>
<p>The Major snapped his fingers.
“Knew I’d get it,” he glowed.
Then abruptly he scowled again
and turned to face Vern and me.
“Say—” he began.</p>
<p>I said weakly: “The boilers.”</p>
<p>The Major stared at me, then
glanced out the window. “What
boilers?” he demanded. “It’s just
a thunderstorm. Been building up
all day. Now what about this? Is
that thing—”</p>
<p>But Vern was paying him no
attention. “Thunderstorm?” he
yelled. “Arthur, you listening? Are
the helicopters gone?”</p>
<p class="arthur_speak">YESYESYES</p>
<p>“Then shove off, Arthur! Shove
off!”</p>
<p>The typewriter rattled and
slammed madly.</p>
<p>The Major yelled angrily:
“Now listen to me, you! I’m
asking you a question!”</p>
<p>But we didn’t have to answer,
because there was a thrumming
and a throbbing underfoot, and
then one of the “clerks, typists”
screamed: “The dock!” She
pointed at a porthole. “It’s
moving!”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">Well</span>, we got out of there—barely
in time. And then it
was up to Arthur. We had the
whole ship to roam around in
and there were plenty of places
to hide. They had the whole ship
to search. And Arthur was the
whole ship.</p>
<p>Because it was Arthur, all right,
brought in and hooked up by
Vern, attained to his greatest
dream and ambition. He was skipper
of a superliner, and more than
any skipper had ever been—the
ship was his body, as the prosthetic
tank had never been; the keel his
belly, the screws his feet, the engines
<a class="pagenum" id="page44" title="44"> </a>his heart and lungs, and
every moving part that could be
hooked into central control his
many, many hands.</p>
<div id="illo3" class="illo">
<img src="images/illo3.jpg" width="860" height="342" alt="A suitcase with an eyestalk is wired into a big control panel; two men look on." />
<a href="images/illo3-left.jpg" class="img_link">Left side image</a>
<a href="images/illo3-right.jpg" class="img_link">Right side image</a>
</div>
<!-- Original location of left side of illo 3 -->
<p>Search for us? They were
lucky they could move at all!
Fire Control washed them with
salt water hoses, directed by Arthur’s
brain. Watertight doors,
proof against sinking, locked them
away from us at Arthur’s whim.</p>
<p>The big bull whistle overhead
brayed like a clamoring Gabriel,
and the ship’s bells tinkled and
clanged. Arthur backed that enormous
ship out of its berth like a
racing scull on the Schuylkill. The
four giant screws lashed the water
into white foam, and then the thin
mud they sucked up into tan; and
the ship backed, swerved, lashed
the water, stopped, and staggered
crazily forward.</p>
<p>Arthur brayed at the Statue of
Liberty, tooted good-by to Staten
Island, feinted a charge at Sandy
Hook and really laid back his ears
and raced once he got to deep
<a class="pagenum" id="page45" title="45"> </a><!-- Original location of right side of illo 3 -->water past the moored lightship.</p>
<p>We were off!</p>
<p>Well, from there on, it was easy.
We let Arthur have his fun with
the Major and the bodyguards—and
by the sodden, whimpering
shape they were in when they
came out, it must really have been
fun for him. There were just the
three of us and only Vern and I
had guns—but Arthur had the
<i>Queen Elizabeth</i>, and that put the
odds on our side.</p>
<p>We gave the Major a choice:
row back to Coney Island—we
offered him a boat, free of charge—or
come along with us as cabin
boy. He cast one dim-eyed look
at the hundred and nine “clerks,
typists” and at Amy, who would
never be the hundred and tenth.</p>
<p>And then he shrugged and,
game loser, said: “Ah, why not?
I’ll come along.”</p>
<hr class="thoughtbreak" />
<p class="post_thoughtbreak"><span class="first_word">And</span> why not, when you come
to think of it? I mean ruling
a city is nice and all that, but a
<a class="pagenum" id="page46" title="46"> </a>sea voyage is a refreshing change.
And while a hundred and nine to
one is a respectable female-male
ratio, still it must be wearing; and
eighty to thirty isn’t so bad, either.
At least, I guess that was what
was in the Major’s mind. I know it
was what was in mine.</p>
<p>And I discovered that it was in
Amy’s, for the first thing she did
was to march me over to the typewriter
and say: “You’ve had it,
Sam. We’ll dispose with the wedding
march—just get your friend
Arthur here to marry us.”</p>
<p>“Arthur?”</p>
<p>“The captain,” she said. “We’re
on the high seas and he’s empowered
to perform marriages.”</p>
<p>Vern looked at me and shrugged,
meaning, you asked for this one,
boy. And I looked at him and
shrugged, meaning, it could be
worse.</p>
<p>And indeed it could. We’d got
our ship; we’d got our ship’s company—because,
naturally, there
wasn’t any use stealing a big ship
for just a couple of us. We’d had
to manage to get a sizable colony
aboard. That was the whole idea.</p>
<p>The world, in fact, was ours. It
could have been very much worse
indeed, even though Arthur was
laughing so hard as he performed
the ceremony that he jammed up
all his keys.</p>
</div>
<p class="attribution">—FREDERIK POHL</p>
<div id="the_end"> </div>
<pre>
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