Men slapped him jubilantly on the back, dignity, discipline and all else forgotten. Smoke from the Mermaid's funnel had announced to them the conquest of the creatures from the sea.
Ten minutes later the thin blue thread was a belching cloud. Below decks turbo-generators whined at speed, and aloft the anti-potential grids gleamed with the soft green halos of the protective repulsion fields.
Her sodium fog lights boring yellow tunnels through the night mist, the Mermaid scudded over the Molo Ivrum at her maximum of twenty knots. In the wheelhouse Hodge noisily sucked his pipe, staring the while at Kort, who had the wheel.
"Wouldn't figure on staying on this tub with me, would you?" Hodge asked suddenly. "I'm in line for the captain's berth, but damned if I can think of anybody to recommend for my first mate. Exceptin' you."
"I—I hadn't said I was leaving," Kort replied.
"You hadn't said—but you were thinkin' plain out," murmured Hodge. "Noticed in the last few hours how the men are acting?"
A grin touched his grizzled face as Kort made no answer. "Haven't noticed how they jump when you give an order now, son? You're a blinkin' hero, by Jerusalem. Weren't for you they'd be scrapin' ribs with the sharks by now, and they know it."
Kort flushed in silence but said nothing.
"Only thing I couldn't tell 'em," complained Hodge, "was how you knew the things would have left the ship after you killed just that one."