"Shut up," Charles said. He led her down deserted alleys and around
empty corners, strictly according to plan.
The speedboat was a twenty-foot craft at Wharf Eighteen, bobbing on the
water safely removed from other moored boats and ships. Lee Falcaro let
out a small, smothered shriek when she saw a uniformed sailor sitting in
the cockpit, apparently staring directly at them.
"It's all right," Charles said. "He's a drunk. He's always out cold by
this time of night." Smoothly Charles found the rope locker, cut lengths
with the sailor's own knife and bound and gagged him. The man's eyes
opened, weary, glazed and red while this was going on and closed again.
"Help me lug him ashore," Charles said. Lee Falcaro took the sailor's
legs and they eased him onto the wharf.
They went back into the cockpit. "This is deep water," Charles said, "so
you'll have no trouble with pilotage. You can read a compass and charts.
There's an automatic dead reckoner. My advice is just to pull the
moderator rods out quarter-speed, point the thing west, pull the rods
out as far as they'll go--and relax. Either they'll overtake you or they
won't."
She was beginning to get the drift. She said nervously: "You're talking
as though you're not coming along."
"I'm not," he said, playing the lock of the arms rack. The bar fell
aside and he pulled a .45 pistol from its clamp. He thought back and
remembered where the boat's diminutive magazine was located, broke the
feeble lock and found a box of short, fat, heavy little cartridges. He
began to snap them into the pistol's magazine.
"What do you think you're up to?" Lee Falcaro demanded.
"Appointment with Commander Grinnel," he said. He slid the heavy
magazine into the pistol's grip and worked the slide to jack a cartridge
into the chamber.
"Shall I cast off for you?" he asked.
"Don't be a fool," she said. "You sound like a revival of a Mickey
Spillane comedy. You can't bring her back to life and you've got a job
to do for the Syndic."
"You do it," he said, and snapped another of the blunt, fat, little
cartridges into the magazine.
She cast off, reached for the moderator-rod control and pulled it hard.
"Gee," he gasped, "you'll sink us!" and dashed for the controls. You had
seconds before the worm-gears turned, the cadmium rods withdrew from
their slots, the reactor seethed and sent boiling metal cycling through
the turbine--
He slammed down manual levers that threw off the fore and aft mooring
lines, spun the wheel, bracing himself, and saw Lee Falcaro go down to
the deck in a tangle, the .45 flying from her hand and skidding across
the knurled plastic planking. But by then the turbine was screaming an
alarm to the whole base and they were cutting white water through the
buoy-marked gap in the harbor net.
Lee Falcaro got to her feet. "I'm not proud of myself," she said to him.
"But she told me to take care of you."
He said grimly: "We could have gone straight to the wharf without that
little layover to pick you up. Take the wheel."
"Charles, I--"
He snarled at her.
"_Take the wheel._"
She did, and he went aft to stare through the darkness. The harbor
lights were twinkling pin-points; then his eyes misted so he could not
see them at all. He didn't give a damn if a dozen corvettes were already
slicing the bay in pursuit. He had failed.