Higgins was already on the phone.
"Flight of Jap bombers approaching," he said, flinging the phone back on its hook. "Come on."
This was probably the first time in naval history that a bare-footed, bare-headed man, whose sole articles of clothing consisted of a pair of dirty duck trousers, joined the commanding officer of a battleship on the captain's bridge. Captain Higgins didn't care what Craig was wearing, and his officers, if they cared, were too polite to show it. They didn't really care anyhow. They had other things on their minds.
Far off in the sky Craig could see what the officers had on their minds. A series of tiny black dots. They were so far away they looked like gnats. Jap bombers. Big fellows. Four-engined jobs.
The notes of the call to action stations were still screaming through the ship. The Idaho, at the touch of the magic sound, was coming to life. Thirty-five thousand tons of steel was going into action. Craig could feel the pulsation as the engines kicked the screws over faster. The ship surged ahead. Fifteen hundred men were leaping to their stations. The guns in the big turrets were poking around, hoping that somewhere off toward the horizon there was a target for them. The Idaho was a new ship. She was lousy with anti-aircraft. The black muzzles of multiple pom-poms were swinging around, poking toward the sky.
An officer was peering through a pair of glasses. "Seventeen of them, sir," he said. "I can't be certain yet, but I think there is another flight following the first."
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 ships.
"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.