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how the hell're we
    supposed to sail a ship without charts or tables?"

    Kurt smiled. If nothing else, Gregor would share their
    professional problems. But with that thought he grew
    reminded of his alienation and the loneliness came crash-
    ing in. Things had been better with the Danes, profession-
    ally and personally. He had had tools and friends in
    plenty. Tools. Here his complaints were always answered
    with tales of famous navigators who had sailed on less

32
r

    than what Jager had available. Fine, he thought. So
    Columbus steered by astrolabe and the wind behind his
    ear. He had known no better.

    Such thoughts depressed him. He left the watch feeling
    low, and tossed for an hour before sleeping.

    Two pasts haunted Kurt's dreams. Awake, he often
    daydreamed; sometimes dwelling in medieval glories, not
    at all aware the age had been as bitter as his own;

    sometimes in the middle decades of the twentieth century,
    just before the War, when all the machines and people
    had been alive, not just mysterious, rusted, fallen djinn,
    and bones found in ancient ruins. By night, his own past
    plagued him, his sorrows, errors, and triumphs. While
    Jager's bridge watch trolled the Norwegian night for land-
    marks, Kurt's soul wandered to a day that had been a little of each. . . .

    At the Ranke home, a month after the wedding, he,
    Karen, and Frieda lingered over a late breakfast of salty
    pork. Kurt grew aware of Karen hopefully staring—he
    felt he should say something kind, yet he had arisen in a
    restless, impatient mood, and the meat had been over-
    done. . . .

    "Well?"

    "It's okay, I guess."

    Hurt appeared on her face, quickly departed. Kurt
    opened his mouth to soothe her, but there was a call from
    another room.

    "Kurt? Frieda? Karen?" A moment later, Heinrich Haber walked in. "Let myself in," he said. "Hope it's all right." Such liberties were common in Kiel.

    Kurt's eyebrows rose. Haber wore strange clothing, yet
    familiar. Then he recognized it. It was a uniform such as
    his father had worn on going to sea in U-793.

    "No!" Karen gasped. Kurt tamed, found her pale, on the verge of tears. He was dumbfounded.

    "Can we talk privately, Kurt?" Haber asked. His lean body seemed somehow fuller, more manly in the uniform.
    And his shakes, which were always with him, were much
    less pronounced.

    "Of course." Kurt always had time for Haber, a man he and Frieda wished had successfully gotten their mother to
    remarry.

    As they took seats in an upstairs room, by a window
    looking out on the harbor, Kurt discovered the reason for
    his morning's mood. He had a restless, urgent need to get
    aboard a ship and reclaim the feel of the sea.

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    "Briefly," said Haber, getting straight to the point, "I came to ask you to join Jager's crew."

    "lager?"

    "I keep forgetting you've been away, and too busy
    lately to notice what's happening. Jager's the old destroy-
    er. High Command has ordered us to outfit and man her,
    and bring her to a Gathering next summer."

    "Oh." He had heard something of it from Otto, had seen the High Command representative about the city, but
    had not been much concerned. "I don't think so. Karen
    wouldn't like it."

    "None of our wives like it. But there's a job that has to be done. And I'm not asking you just to be a deckhand.
    Your Danish experience counts for more than that. Lead-
    ing Quartermaster, top enlisted billet in Operations, is still open. You're the only qualified man in Kiel. Your cousin
    Gregor has agreed to be navigator. He's on his way home
    from Norway now."

    "Why not a fisherman?"

    "Can't find one interested."

    "And why a Gathering?"

    "The War again. High Command's discovered that the
    Australians are putting together a fleet to come against
    Europe, summer after next. This time we'll end it for
    good. We'll destroy all their ships, then go on and smash
    their ports and harbors so they can't ever try again."

    Kurt frowned. He had been quite young and disinter-
    ested at the