some with
mechanical timing devices, and some have both. They will be sent
singly, or in pairs, or in salvos, at a target some little distance
away. Your job will be the obvious one. Do you think you can do it?"

"Suppose I don't?"

He stood up. "Then that's what we want to know. Ready?"

I stretched. "As ready as I'll ever be. Let's go and take the air."

"Forget something?" He pointed at the helmet, hanging back of the
door.

I didn't like it, but I put it on, and he took me up, up to the rocket
racks on the prow. Even through the dark lenses the sun was oddly
bright. Smith pointed off to port, where a battered old hull without
even a deckhouse or a mast hobbled painfully in the trough of the sea.

"Target."

He jerked a thumb at the racks.

"Rockets."

I knew what they were. I'd seen enough of them sail over my head.

"Ready?"

* * * * *

Yes, I was ready. He made a careless flick of his hand and an order
was barked behind me. A clatter and a swoosh, and a cylinder arced
gracefully, catching me almost by surprise. I felt that familiar
tightening behind my eyes, that familiar tensing and hunching of my
shoulders. The propellant was taking the rocket almost out of sight
when the fuse fired it. "Wham!"

Caught that one in midair. Try another. Another "whoosh," and another
"wham."

* * * * *

Then they tried it in pairs. Both of the flying darning-needles blew
together, in an eccentric sweep of flame. Four, maybe five or six
pairs I knocked down short of the target, some so close to us that I
imagined I could feel the concussion. They switched to salvos of a
dozen at a time and they blew almost in unison. They emptied the racks
that way, and I was grimly amused at the queer expression of the
officer in charge as the enlisted men refilled the maws of the gaping
racks. Smith, the old man, nudged me a little harder than necessary.

"All racks, salvo."

All at once. I tried for a cool breath in that sweaty helmet. "Ready!"

I couldn't pick out any individual sounds. The racks vomited lightning
and thunder far too fast for that. The rumble and roar bored itself
into a remote corner of my brain while I watched that barnacled hulk
and concentrated. I couldn't attempt to think of each rocket, or each
shot, individually, so I was forced to try to erect a mental wall and
say to myself, "Nothing gets past that line _there_."

[Illustration]

A