The Earth Gods Are Coming by Kenneth Bulmer Read Free Book Online Page B

the spear wallowed, plopped, flapped strongly. Inglis, propped against the wrecked chart table, brought the fire axe down on the fish, decapitated it with one blow. Hannah, the muscular quartermaster, removed the fish and began to scale and degut it, throwing the remains onto the bait pile.
    Inglis looked over the side at Lieutenant Bergquist. She stared back at him for a moment, her dark hair cropped, her face tanned, the whiteness of her bosom startling against the blue water, then, with a flashing glimpse of pink skin and two slim legs, she dived again.
    "Another one should be enough for dinner, Roy," Hannah said, using her knife with a delicate precision. "Don't want to tire Gerda."
    "Tire Gerda?" said Sammy, the detector screen tech, looking up from the tiny fire blossoming in the hearth fashioned from what had once been the steel cup for the celestial globe. "She's like a fish herself—or a mermaid."
    There were ten of them afloat in what had once been the control section of a Solarian light cruiser, whose name had been Swallow. Four men, five girls—and a woman who was dying under the cover of what clothing and fabric they had been able to make into a tent. Lieutenant Carmelli—or Belita; they were all now, on Inglis' orders on first name terms—had had her chest caved in as the control sections, cut free from the main hull and lowered at above regulation escape speed on emergency anti gravs, had struck the water. The rest of them were just going through the yellow phase on their bruises and contusions, and Anton, a young talker, was strapped up with a broken arm. How the rest of the ship, where the enemy fire had struck full, had fared they did not know.
    All they did know was that Roy Inglis was driving them on under a sail patched from clothing, fabric, dust covers, charts, anything that could be stitched into one main square sail and a tiny jib—on towards the east and the point on the surface of this planet that had once been spotted under hair fine wires and photographed.
    The control cabin floated well. The rear bulkhead had been sheared by the freeing explosive bolts so that it faired into some sort of streamlined stern over which an oar serving as rudder had been hung. The oar had been made from conduit piping and a few loose plates. It steered; for which mercy Inglis was profoundly thankful.
    He was worried about a forward observation port below water level. The packing had worked loose and a small leak had continually to be kept under observation and the water under the control room floor—now the bilges—to be bailed at regular intervals. Thankfully, the weather was mild, with a kindly sun and a fair breeze. Water was being condensed out in a worm gear contrived by the techs with the aid of burning glasses taken from the optical instruments. Fish was a staple diet. The fire was kept alight using fish refuse, dried, human excreta, a few meagre wooden chippings and plastic trimmings. The techs were working on a cooking plate heated by burning lenses; so far they'd scorched the part of the fish on the plate and left the rest raw.
    "Raw fish," Inglis had said, jocularly, "keeps you fit. The phosphorous goes to your brains—so you'll all be grade A geniuses when we hit Earth."
    Linda, who had thought it fun when she had donated her shirt and slip to the sail, and who possessed a figure that ensured she would be among the first to be asked to donate the rest of her clothing if that should be necessary, had quickly tired of the expedition, and had fretfully replied that there was no real use in trying to sail to find Commander Varese and the whaler and that they might as well give up now.
    Inglis had been kind but firm with her. She was a communications tech, under Gerda's orders, and he wanted her in good trim when they met up with Varese. He didn't like to think what might happen if they missed Varese.
    The thought of spending the rest of his life marooned on this planet apalled him. Isabella had told him