American Empire: Blood and Iron - By Harry Turtledove Page 0,49

few feet away from him. “Every time they do that, I think the aeroplane is going to miss the deck—either that or it’ll tear in half when the hook grabs it.”

His bunkmate nodded. “I know what you mean. It looks impossible, even though we’ve been watching ’em for months.”

As the Wright’s prop slowed from a blur to a stop, the pilot climbed out of the aeroplane. Sailors with mops and buckets dashed over and started swabbing down the deck. With oil and gasoline spilling all the time, swabbing was a more serious business than on most ships.

Sam said, “The thing I really fear is one of ’em coming in low and smashing right into the stern. Hasn’t happened yet, thank God.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t do anybody any good,” Moerlein agreed. “Could happen, too, especially if somebody’s coming in with his aeroplane shot to hell and gone—or if he just makes a mistake.”

“What I hope is, we never come into range of a battleship’s big guns,” Carsten said. “Taking a hit is bad enough any which way—I’ve done that—but taking a hit here, with all the gasoline we’re carrying…We’d go straight to the moon, or maybe five miles past it.”

“It’d be over in a hurry, anyhow,” his bunkmate answered. Before Sam could say he didn’t find that reassuring, George Moerlein went on, “But that’s one of the reasons we’re carrying all these aeroplanes: to keep battlewagons from getting into gunnery range in the first place.”

Carsten stamped the flight deck, which was timber lain over steel. “We can’t be the only Navy working on aeroplane carriers.”

“I’ve heard tell the Japs are,” Moerlein said. “Don’t know it for a fact, but I’ve heard it. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, either, not even a little bit,” Sam said. “I was in the Battle of the Three Navies, out west of the Sandwich Islands. Those little yellow bastards are tougher than anybody ever gave ’em credit for.”

Moerlein looked sour. “And they just walked away from the war free and clear, too. The Rebs are paying, England and France are paying, Russia’s gone to hell in a handbasket, but Japan said, ‘Well, all right, if nobody else on our side’s left standing, we’re done, too,’ and we couldn’t do anything but say, ‘All right, Charlie—see you again some day.’”

“We will, too,” Carsten said. “I was just a kid when they took the Philippines away from Spain right after the turn of the century. And now we’ve taken the Sandwich Islands away from England—I was there for that, aboard the Dakota. So they’re looking our way, and we’re looking their way, and nobody’s sitting between us any more.”

“That’d be a fight, all right. All that ocean, aeroplanes whizzing around, us bombing them and trying to keep them from bombing us.” Moerlein got a faraway look in his eye.

So did Sam. “Hell, if both sides have aeroplane carriers, you could fight a battle without ever seeing the other fellow’s ships.”

“That would be pretty strange,” Moerlein said, “but I guess it could happen.”

“Sure it could,” Sam said. “And you’d want to sink the other bastard’s aeroplane carriers just as fast as you could, because if he didn’t have any aeroplanes left, he couldn’t stop your battleships from doing whatever they wanted to do.” He stamped on the flight deck again. “And if the aeroplane carrier is the ship you have to sink first, that makes the Remembrance the most important ship in the whole Navy right now.”

For a moment, he felt almost like a prophet in the middle of a vision of the future. He also felt pleased with himself for having had the sense to figure out that aeroplanes were the coming thing, and grateful to Commander Grady for having brought him to the Remembrance, no matter how ugly she was.

Then something else occurred to him. He hurried away. “Where’s the fire at?” George Moerlein called after him. He didn’t answer, but hurried down a hatch to go below.

He guessed Grady would be checking one sponson or another and, sure enough, found him in the third one into which he poked his head. The officer was testing the elevation screw on the gun there, and talking about it in a low voice with the gunner’s mate who commanded the crew for that sponson. Sam stood at attention and waited to be noticed.

Eventually, Commander Grady said, “You’ll want to make sure of the threads there, Reynolds. Good thing we’re not likely to be sailing into combat any time soon.”