The Lost Warship Part 4

The Idaho was part of a task force that included a carrier, cruisers, and several destroyers. Craig could see the carrier off in the distance.

She had already swung around. Black gnats were racing along her deck and leaping into the sky. Fighter planes going up. Cruisers and destroyers were moving into pre-determined positions around the carrier and the Idaho, to add the weight of their anti-aircraft barrage to the guns carried by the big s.h.i.+ps.

"Three minutes," somebody said in a calm voice. "They've started on their run."

The anti-aircraft let go. Craig gasped and clamped his hands over his ears. He had left the Navy before the advent of air warfare. He knew the roar of the big guns in their turrets but this was his first experience with the guns that fought the planes. The sound was utterly deafening.

If the fury of a hundred thunder-storms were concentrated into a single area, the blasting tornado of sound would not be as great as the thunder of the guns. The explosions beat against his skull, set his teeth pounding together. He could feel the vibrations with his feet.

High in the sky overhead black dots blossomed like death flowers blooming in the sky.

The bombers kept coming.

The anti-aircraft bursts moved into their path. Death reached up into the sky, plucking with taloned fingers for the black vultures racing with the wind. Reached and found their goal. One plane mushroomed outward in a burst of smoke.

Craig knew it was a direct hit, apparently in the bomb bay, exploding the bombs carried there. Fragments of the plane hung in the sky, falling slowly downward.

Up above the anti-aircraft, midges were dancing in the sun--fighter planes. They dived downward.

Abruptly a bomber fell out of formation, tried to right itself, failed.

A wing came off. Crazily the bomber began spinning.

Black smoke gouted from a third s.h.i.+p. It began losing alt.i.tude rapidly.

The others continued on their course.

Michaelson suddenly appeared on the bridge.

How he got there, Craig did not know, but he was there, jumping around and waving his notebook in the air. Michaelson was shouting at the top of his voice.

"--Danger!--Must get away from here--"

Craig caught the shouted words. The thundering roar of the anti-aircraft barrage drowned out the rest.

No one paid any attention to Michaelson. They were watching the sky.

The planes had released their bombs.

For some reason they were not attacking their normal target, the carrier. Perhaps a second flight was making a run over the carrier. The first flight was bombing the battles.h.i.+p.

The Idaho was their target.

Craig could feel the great s.h.i.+p tremble as she tried to swerve to avoid the bombs. A destroyer would have been able to spin in a circle but 35,000 tons of steel do not turn so easily.

The bombs were coming down. Craig could see them in the air, little black dots growing constantly larger. Fighter planes were tearing great holes in the formation of the bombers. Few of the j.a.p s.h.i.+ps would ever return to their base. But their job was already done.

The bombs. .h.i.t.

They struck in an irregular pattern all around the s.h.i.+p. Four or five were very near misses but there was not one direct hit. Great waterspouts leaped from the surface of the sea. A sheet of flame seemed to run around the horizon. It was a queer, dancing, intensely brilliant, blue flame. It looked like the discharge from some huge electric arc.

Even above the roar of the barrage, Craig heard the tearing sound.

Somehow it reminded him of somebody tearing a piece of cloth. Only, to make a sound as loud as this, it would have to be a huge piece of cloth and the person tearing it would have to be a giant.

The blue light became more intense. It flared to a brilliance that was intolerable.

At the same time, the sun jumped!

"I'm going nuts!" the fleeting thought was in Craig's mind. He wondered if a bomb had struck the s.h.i.+p. Was this the nightmare that comes with death? Had he died in the split fraction of a second and was his disintegrating mind reporting the startling fact of death by telling him that the sun was jumping?

The sun couldn't jump.

It _had_ jumped. It had been almost directly overhead. Now it was two hours down the western sky.

Tons of water were cascading over the bow of the s.h.i.+p. Waves were leaping over the deck. The Idaho seemed to have sunk several feet. Now her buoyancy was a.s.serting itself and she was trying to rise out of the sea. She was fighting her way upward, rising against the weight of the water.

A wind was blowing. There had been almost no wind but now a gale of hurricane proportions was howling through the superstructure of the s.h.i.+p.

A heavy sea was running. The sea had been gla.s.sy smooth. Now it was covered with white caps.

The bombs had exploded, a blue light had flamed, a giant had ripped the sky apart, a gale had leaped into existence, the sea had covered itself with white capped waves, and the sun had jumped.

Craig looked at the sky, seeking the second flight of bombers. The air was filled with scudding clouds. There were no bombers in sight.

The anti-aircraft batteries, with no target, suddenly stopped firing.

Except for the howl of the wind through the superstructure, the s.h.i.+p was silent. The silence was so heavy it hurt the ears. The officers on the bridge stood without moving, frozen statues. They seemed paralyzed.

The s.h.i.+p was running herself.

"W--what--what the h.e.l.l became of those j.a.ppos?" Craig heard a dazed officer say.

"Yeah, what happened to those bombers?"

"Where did this wind come from?"

"There wasn't any wind a minute ago."

"Look at the sea. It's covered with white caps!"

"Something happened to the sun. I--I'm almost positive I saw it move."

Dazed, bewildered voices.

"What the devil became of the carrier?" That was the voice of Captain Higgins.

"And the rest of the force, the cruisers and destroyers--what became of them?"

Craig looked toward the spot where he had last seen the carrier. She had been launching planes.