"I'm stopping you. Listen—you won't last five minutes out there in the launches, without anti-grids. Give Sparks an hour to rig a stroboscope and we can get back into the stokehole. With pressure on the boilers we can charge the anti-grids and the storm won't touch us."
The men looked black rage at him, but made no move. Hodge's right hand hovered over his own gun.
"Don't draw!" snapped Kort. "I don't want to hurt you, Hodge, but this means the life of all of us, not just one or two."
"Forgettin' something, ain't you?" asked Hodge dryly. "I'd be all for you, if we had an hour to spare. Take a look at the grids."
Kort risked a glance aloft, through the wheelhouse windows. Against a dark, sultry sky the spiral network of the anti-grids already glowed with faint pricklings of St. Elmo's light—harmless prologue to the storm to come. Any weather-wise sailor could read the menace in those flaming curtains to port, swirling in fiery splendor, very tapestries of hell.
"Won't take them but forty minutes, maybe, to get here," continued Hodge inexorably. "And after you've got your stroboscope, and killed the critters, it'll take thirty minutes to get pressure on the boilers. Not a chance your way. Better stow the gun and go along in the launches."
It was like a pit opening before Kort's feet. Bitterly he realized his mistake—he had forgotten those all-important thirty minutes needed to get enough pressure for the anti-grid generators. Actually there remained perhaps ten minutes to defeat the sea monsters and regain the stokehole. He'd been making a fool of himself, delaying the men's last forlorn dash for life.
Sheepishly he holstered his gun while the seamen stalked out. Seconds later came the groan of pulleys as the first launch swung out from the davits.
Hodge slouched over the chart table, stared out at the activity on deck. The third launch splashed noisily into the sea. Men scrambled down the davit lines. Far in the bow swayed, unheeded, one of the blind, deadly creatures from the depths.
"Few hours ago," Hodge rumbled, "all we worried about was getting a catch aboard. But the sea changes things before you know it. Take this ship—ought to be fit to ride out any kilwanni. Now she ain't, all on account of the sea. Kilwanni's part of the sea too—never get 'em over the land. Bolts fat as the mainmast and red hot, lastin' ten seconds, some of 'em. Melt the chocks right off the deck—"