crete docks, but the _Javelin_ was afloat in the pool, her
contragravity on at specific-gravity weight reduction. She was a
typical hunter-ship, a hundred feet long by thirty abeam, with a squat
conning tower amidships, and turrets for 50-mm guns and launchers for
harpoon rockets fore and aft. The only thing open about her was the
air-and-water lock under the conning tower. Julio, who was piloting
the car, set it down on the top of the aft gun turret. A couple of the
crewmen who were on deck grabbed our bags and hurried them inside. We
followed, and as soon as Julio lifted away, the lock was sealed.

Immediately, as the contragravity field dropped below the specific
gravity of the ship, she began submerging. I got up into the conning
tower in time to see the water of the boat pool come up over the
armor-glass windows and the outside lights come on. For a few minutes,
the _Javelin_ swung slowly and moved forward, feeling her way with
fingers of radar out of the pool and down the channel behind the
breakwater and under the overhang of the city roof. Then the water
line went slowly down across the windows as she surfaced. A moment
later she was on full contragravity, and the ship which had been a
submarine was now an aircraft.

Murell, who was accustomed to the relatively drab sunsets of Terra,
simply couldn't take his eyes from the spectacle that covered the
whole western half of the sky--high clouds streaming away from the
daylight zone to the west and lighted from below by the sun. There
were more clouds coming in at a lower level from the east. By the time
the _Javelin_ returned to Port Sandor, it would be full dark and rain,
which would soon turn to snow, would be falling. Then we'd be in for
it again for another thousand hours.

Ramon Llewellyn was saying to Joe Kivelson: "We're one man short;
Devis, Abdullah's helper. Hospital."

"Get hurt in the fight, last night? He was right with us till we got
out to the elevators, and then I missed him."

"No. He made it back to the ship about the same time we did, and he
was all right then. Didn't even have a scratch. Strained his back at
work, this morning, trying to lift a power-unit cartridge by hand."

I could believe that. Those things weighed a couple of hundred pounds.
Joe Kivelson swore.

"What's he think this is, the First Century Pre-Atomic? Aren't there
any lifters on the ship?"

Llewellyn shrugged. "Probably didn't want to bother taking a couple of
steps