"Sure," I said.
"There's no question about it. Look, this is where the tankers came to
discharge oil. They'd come in here, pump the oil into the refinery
tanks and--"
"Vern," I said. "Let's look, shall we?"
He shrugged, and we hopped off the little outboard motorboat onto a
landing stage. The tankers towered over us, rusty and screeching as
the waves rubbed them against each other.
There were fifty of them there at least, and we poked around them for
hours. The hatches were rusted shut and unmanageable, but you could
tell a lot by sniffing. Gasoline odor was out; smell of seaweed and
dead fish was out; but the heavy, rank smell of fuel oil, that was
what we were sniffing for. Crews had been aboard these ships when the
missiles came, and crews were still aboard.
Beyond the two-part superstructures of the tankers, the skyline of New
York was visible. I looked up, sweating, and saw the Empire State
Building and imagined Amy up there, looking out toward us.
She knew we were here. It was her idea. She had scrounged up a naval
engineer, or what she called a naval engineer--he had once been a
stoker on a ferryboat. But he claimed he knew what he was talking
about when he said the only thing the _Queen_ needed to make 'er go
was oil. And so we left him aboard to tinker and polish, with a couple
of helpers Amy detached from the police force, and we tackled the oil
problem.
Which meant Bayonne. Which was where we were.
It had to be a tanker with at least a fair portion of its cargo
intact, because the _Queen_ was a thirsty creature, drinking fuel not
by the shot or gallon but by the ton.
"Saaam! Sam _Dunlap_!"
I looked up, startled. Five ships away, across the U of the mooring,
Vern Engdahl was bellowing at me through cupped hands.
"I found it!" he shouted. "Oil, lots of oil! Come look!"
I clasped my hands over my head and looked around. It was a long way
around to the tanker Vern was on, hopping from deck to deck, detouring
around open stretches.