The Grapple by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

medics weren’t armored at all. Neither was Lieutenant Griffiths, and he’d gone and proved it.
    Sometimes you needed a root canal. It was no fun, but you had to go through with it. This wouldn’t be any fun, either. If they hustled, though, they ought to get away with it. “Will do,” Pound called to the medics. He ducked down into the turret and told the driver to make a hard right and stop.
    “Jesus! You sure?” The protest came back through the speaking tube.
    “Damn straight. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t,” Pound answered. “Come on. Step on it. The lieutenant’s bleeding all over everything back here.”
    “It’s not so bad now.” Griffiths sounded as if he hadn’t a care in the world. The morphine must have hit him hard. Well, good.
    Snorting, the barrel turned. The movement wasn’t so sharp as it might have been. Try too tight a turn and you might throw a track, in which case you wouldn’t go anywhere for a while. When Pound was satisfied, he yelled, “Stop!” and the barrel did. He undogged the side hatch and sketched a salute to Don Griffiths. “Out you go, sir. You did good. Hope I see you again one day.” He meant it. He wasn’t the sort to waste compliments on people who didn’t deserve them.
    “Thank you, Sergeant.” Awkwardly, Griffiths scrambled out of the barrel. Pound helped him leave. The corpsmen took charge of him once he got through the hatch. They eased him down to the ground and got him moving away from the front. They were probably relieved to help somebody able to move on his own: they didn’t have to lug him in a stretcher.
    After waiting till they’d gone some distance from the barrel, Pound clanged the hatch shut and dogged it. He yelled into the speaking tube: “All right, Miranda—square us up again.”
    “You bet, Sarge!” The barrel jumped as the driver put the thicker steel of the glacis plate and the turret between the crew and the enemy.
    Peering through the periscopes in the commander’s cupola, Pound saw the heaviest action off to his left. He ordered the barrel over that way. For now, it was his.

II
    C louds and rain and sleet shrouded the North Atlantic. A few hundred miles to the west of the
Josephus Daniels
lay Newfoundland. To the east of the destroyer escort, probably, lay trouble. The British never stopped sending arms and men to Newfoundland and to Canada to give the rebellion against the USA a helping hand. Lieutenant Sam Carsten and the skippers of his fellow picket ships did everything they could to keep the limeys from getting through.
    He halfheartedly swore at the weather. It made enemy ships all that much harder to find. The rain and sleet even interfered with the Y-ranging gear. The wireless waves bounced back from raindrops, too. A good operator could peer through the interference, but it sure didn’t make life any easier. And the old-fashioned Mark One eyeball had a very short range here.
    He swore only halfheartedly because the weather suited his own needs very well. He was a short step away from being an albino. His skin was pink, his eyes pale blue, and his hair white gold. It was even whiter these days than it had been when he was younger—he’d spent almost thirty-five years in the Navy now. Summer in the tropics was a never-ending misery for him. Summer in Seattle was a misery for him, and that took doing.
    His executive officer was a young, auburn-haired lieutenant named Pat Cooley. If not for Sam, the exec might have been the the fairest man on the ship. Cooley had gone through Annapolis, while Sam was a mustang who hadn’t made ensign till some years after the Great War.
    Cooley was a comer, a hotshot. He’d have a ship of his own before long. Sam didn’t want the exec promoted out from under him, but he knew things worked that way. As for himself, when he walked into the recruiting office all those years ago he never dreamt he would wear two stripes on his sleeve. He’d just been looking for a way to escape walking