The Grapple by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page B

behind the north end of a southbound mule for the rest of his life.
    The
Josephus Daniels
pitched down into the trough between two waves. Seas on the North Atlantic weren’t quite so fierce and mountainous as they had been earlier in the winter, but they weren’t any fun, either. “You all right, Mr. Cooley?” Sam asked when the exec grabbed for something to steady himself.
    “Yes, sir. Just clumsy.” Cooley’s eyes were green as a cat’s. Just now, he looked like a cat that had rolled off a bed and was trying to pretend it hadn’t.
    “Insides not turning inside out?” Sam had rounded the Horn more than once. Those were the only seas he knew that put the North Atlantic to shame. He hadn’t been seasick. He might sunburn in anything this side of a cloudburst, but he had no trouble keeping his grub down.
    Pat Cooley was a good sailor. The North Atlantic seemed intent on showing good sailors they weren’t as good as they thought. Here, though, the exec shook his head. “Not giving me any trouble right this minute,” he said: a precise man’s cautious answer.
    “Skipper?” That was a very young, very junior lieutenant, junior grade, named Thad Walters: the officer responsible for the care and feeding of the Y-ranging gear. He looked up from the green blips on his oscilloscope screens. “I’ve got something showing.”
    “A ship?” Sam asked. Even troubled by the weather, the Y-ranging set was more likely to pick up limeys trying to run the U.S. gauntlet than lookouts were.
    But the j.g. shook his head. “No, sir. It’s an airplane. Have we got a carrier in the neighborhood?”
    “If we do, nobody told me, that’s for damn sure,” Sam answered. Nobody’d warned him a British carrier was operating in the neighborhood, either. That could be very bad news. A beat slower than he might have, he heard exactly what Walters said. “Wait a second.
An
airplane?”
    “Yes, sir. Y-ranging gear sees one. Speed two hundred. Bearing 085. Range…Range is twenty-five miles and closing—he’s heading our way.”
    “Just one, though?” Sam persisted. “Not a bunch of them?”
    Walters shook his head. “Sure doesn’t look like it. The set could pick them out at that range.”
    “All right.” Carsten turned to the exec. “Call the men to general quarters, Mr. Cooley. If he finds us in this slop, we’ll have to try to shoot him down.” He’d been attacked from the air before, even back in the Great War. He didn’t enjoy it, not even a little bit.
    “General quarters. Aye aye, sir,” Cooley said. Klaxons hooted. Sailors started running like men possessed. They dashed into the turrets that held the
Josephus Daniels’
two 4.5-inch guns. And they manned all her twin 40mm antiaircraft guns and the .50-caliber machine guns that supplemented them. The unknown airplane would get a warm reception, anyhow.
    As soon as Sam heard the snarl of an airplane engine off in the distance, he said, “Evasive action, Mr. Cooley.”
    “Evasive action—aye aye, sir.” Cooley was a better shiphandler than Sam was. Sam had never had his hands on a wheel till he took over the
Josephus Daniels.
He was a lot better now than he had been then, but the exec was better still. “All ahead full!” Cooley called down to the engine room, and the throb of the destroyer escort’s own engines picked up.
    Cooley started zigzagging the ship across the ocean, lurching now to port, now to starboard, at random times and angles. But the
Josephus Daniels
was only a destroyer escort, not a full-fledged destroyer. She had a smaller crew, a smaller hull, and a smaller powerplant than a destroyer proper. She couldn’t come within several knots of a real destroyer’s speed. One of these days, that would hurt her. Sam felt it in his bones. He hoped today wasn’t the day.
    The airplane with the blue-white-red British roundel broke through the clouds. “All guns open fire!” Sam shouted. They did. The racket was impressive. Even the popguns that