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??ll see what I mean.”
Dyname had continued to increase her speed. There was still no trembling from the engines, despite a powerful drone of rushing sea and wind. The steward and a sailor appeared with seaboots and oil-skins. “You’ll want these on, sir. She’s no yacht, once she gets moving. More like a torpedo boat.”
“Torpedo boat, hell,” muttered the sailor. “She’s a submarine.”
Falconer handed Bell a pair of goggles with smoked glass so dark it seemed opaque and looped another pair over his own head.
“What’s this for?”
“You’ll be glad you have them when you need them,” the captain answered enigmatically. “All set? Let’s get up to the bridge while we can.” The seaman and steward wrestled the door open, and they stepped on deck.
The slipstream hit like a punch in the face.
Bell pushed forward on the narrow side deck less than five feet above the rushing water. “She must be doing thirty knots.”
“Still loafing along,” Falconer yelled over the roar. “We’ll get moving once we pass Sandy Hook.”
Bell glanced back. Fire was flickering from the smoke funnel, and the wake was so frothed that it glowed in the dark. They climbed onto the open bridge, where thick slabs of glass screened the helmsman, who was clinging to a small spoked wheel. Captain Falconer shouldered him aside.
Ahead in the dark, an intermittent white light blinked every fifteen seconds.
“Sandy Hook Lightship,” said Captain Falconer. “Last year we’ll see it. They’re moving the light to mark the new Ambrose Channel.”
Dyname bore down on the fifteen-second blinker. In its back glow, Bell glimpsed the white-lettered “Sandy Hook” and “No. 51” on the side of the black vessel as it fell rapidly behind them.
“Hang on!” said Captain Falconer.
He laid the hand with the missing fingers on a tall lever. “Bowden cable connection direct to the turbines. Same as flexible-cable brakes for bicycles. I can increase steam from the helm without ringing the engine room. Like the throttle on your auto.”
“Alasdair’s idea?” asked Bell.
“No, this is mine. You’re about to feel Alasdair’s.”
14
BELL GRIPPED A HANDHOLD AS DYNAME’S BOW LIFTED from the water. The drone of sea and wind grew explosive. Spray battered the glass screen. Captain Falconer switched on a searchlight mounted in front, and the reason for her knife-shaped narrowness was immediately apparent. The light revealed eight-foot seas sweeping under them at fifty knots. A hull of any other shape would have smashed against the water so hard it would wreck itself.
“Did you ever drive anything this fast?” Falconer shouted.
“Only my Locomobile.”
“Care to try her?” Falconer asked casually.
Isaac Bell grabbed the helm.
“Steer around the bigger seas,” Falconer recommended. “If you bury the bow, those nine propellers will drive us straight to the bottom.”
The helm was remarkably responsive, Bell thought, capable of whisking the hundred-foot yacht left and right with a twitch of the spokes. He dodged big seas repeatedly, getting a feel for how she handled. In half an hour they were more than twenty-five miles from land.
Bell saw a flicker of light in the distance. A deep rumbling noise began rolling in the night.
“Are those guns?”
“Twelves,” said Falconer. “See the flash?”
Orange-and-red flames lanced the dark ahead.
“Those higher-pitched sounds are 6s and 8s. We’re inside the Sandy Hook Atlantic Test Range.”
