"Well, the BBC says the French are kicking Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm's ass. They say the Ukraine's falling apart and Poland's rebelling against Germany. But they tell a hell of a lot of lies, too, you know what I mean? If I could understand what's coming out of Berlin, you bet your butt the krauts would be singing a different tune. So who knows what's really going on?"

At that moment, the Sweet Sue gave a sudden, violent lurch to starboard, and then another one, just as sharp, to port. "What the hell?" George exclaimed as coffee slopped out of the mug and burned his fingers.

Then he heard a new noise through the chatter on the wireless and the diesel's deep, steady throb: a savage roar rising rapidly to a mechanical scream. It seemed to come from outside, but filled the galley, filled everything. George got a glimpse of an airplane zooming toward them-and of flames shooting from its wings as it opened up with machine guns.

Bullets stitched their way across the fishing boat. One caught the Cookie in the chest. He let out a grunt-more a sound of surprise than one of pain-and crumpled, crimson spreading over the gray wool of his sweater. His feet kicked a few times, but he was plainly a dead man. A sudden sharp stench among the good smells of the galley said his bowels had let go.

Screams on the deck told that the Cookie wasn't the only one who'd been hit. George saw right away that he couldn't do anything for Hatton. He hurried out of the galley. Chow'll be rotten the rest of the run went through his mind. Then he realized that was the least of his worries. Getting home alive and in one piece counted for a hell of a lot more.

Chris Agganis was down on the deck clutching his leg. Blood spilled from it. George was used to gore, as anybody who made his living gutting tuna that could outweigh him had to be. But this blood spilled out of a person. He was amazed how much difference that made.

"Hurts," Agganis moaned in accented English. "Hurts like hell." He said something else in syrupy Greek. This was his first time on the Sweet Sue. The skipper'd hired him at the last minute, when Johnny O'Shea didn't come aboard-was probably too drunk to remember to come aboard. Agganis knew what he was doing, he played a mean harmonica, and now he'd been rewarded for his hard work with a bullet in the calf.

George knelt beside him. "Lemme see it, Chris." Agganis kept moaning. George had to pull the Greek's hands away so he could yank up his dungarees. The bullet had gone through the meat of his calf. As far as George could see, it hadn't hit the bone. He said, "It's not good, but it could be a hell of a lot worse." He stuffed his handkerchief into one hole and pulled another one out of Chris Agganis' pocket for the second, larger, wound.

He was so desperately busy doing that-and fighting not to puke, for hot blood on his hands was ever so much worse than the cold stuff that came out of a fish-that he didn't notice how the shriek of the airplane engine overhead was swelling again till it was almost on top of the fishing boat.

Machine-gun bullets dug into the planking of the deck. They chewed up the galley once more, and clanged through the metal of the smokestack. Then the fighter zoomed away eastward. The roundels on its wings and flanks were red inside white inside blue: it came from a British ship.

"Fucking bastard," Chris Agganis choked out.

"Yeah," George agreed, hoping and praying the limey wouldn't come back. Once more and the fishing boat was liable to sink. For that matter, how many bullet holes did she have at the waterline? And how many rounds had gone through the engine? Was she going to catch fire and burn right here in the middle of the ocean?

The engine was still running. The Sweet Sue wasn't dead in the water. That would do for a miracle till a bigger one came along.

And she still steered. That meant the skipper hadn't taken a bullet. George got to his feet and went back into the galley. He knew where the first-aid kit was. Shattered crockery crunched under the soles of his shoes. The air was thick with the iron stink of blood, the smell of shit, and the nasty smoke from the cheap pipe tobacco the Cookie had lit a couple of minutes before he died.

George took a bandage and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and, after a moment's hesitation, a morphine syringe out to Chris Agganis. The fisherman let out a bloodcurdling shriek when George splashed alcohol over his wound. "You don't want it to rot, do you?" George asked.

Agganis' answer was spirited but incoherent. He hardly noticed when George stuck him with the syringe and injected the morphine. After a few minutes, though, he said, "Ahhh."

"Is that better?" George asked. Agganis didn't answer, but he stopped thrashing. By the look on his face, Jesus had just come down from heaven and was patting him on the back. George stared at him, and at the syringe. He'd heard what morphine could do, but he'd never seen it in action till now. He hadn't imagined anybody with a bullet wound could look that happy.

With Chris Agganis settled, George could look over the Sweet Sue. Chewed to hell but still going seemed to sum things up, as it had before. Captain Albert had swung her back toward the west. With one dead and at least one hurt man on board, with the boat probably taking on water, with the engine possibly damaged, what else could the skipper do? Nothing George could see.

But heading west produced a painful pang, too. They'd get into Boston harbor with nothing on ice except the Cookie, and they couldn't sell him. What the hell would they do without a paycheck to show for the trip? What the hell would Connie say when George walked into the apartment with nothing to show for his time at sea?

She'll say, "Thank God you're alive," that's what, George thought. She'd hug him and squeeze him and take him to bed, and all that would be wonderful. But none of it would pay the rent or buy groceries. What the hell good was a man who didn't bring any money with him when he walked through the front door? No good. No good at all.

He went up to the wheelhouse. The fighter hadn't shot that up. The skipper was talking into the wireless set, giving the Sweet Sue's position and telling a little about what had happened to her. He raised a questioning eyebrow at George.

"Chris got one in the leg," George said. "And the Cookie's dead." He touched his own chest to show the hit Hatton had taken.

"At least one dead and one wounded," the skipper said. "We are returning to port if we can. Out." He set the microphone back in its cradle, then looked at-looked through-George. "Jesus Christ!"

"Yeah," George said.

"See who else is still with us, and what kind of shape the boat's in," Albert told him. "I don't know what the hell the owners are going to say when we get back like this. I just don't know. But I'll be goddamn glad to get back at all, you know what I mean?"

"I sure do, Skipper," George answered. "You better believe I do."

Somewhere out in the western North Atlantic prowled a British airplane carrier with more nerve than sense. The USS Remembrance and another carrier, the Sandwich Islands, steamed north from Bermuda to do their damnedest to send her to the bottom.

Sam Carsten peered across the water at the Sandwich Islands. She was a newer ship, built as a carrier from the keel up. The Remembrance had started out as a battle cruiser and been converted while abuilding. The Sandwich Islands' displacement wasn't much greater, but she could carry almost twice as many airplanes. Carsten was glad to have her along.

Repairs still went on aboard the Remembrance. The yard at Bermuda had done most of the work. In peacetime, the carrier would have stayed there a lot longer. But this was war. You did what you had to do and sent her back into the scrap. It had been the same way aboard the Dakota during the Great War. Sam wondered whether the battleship's steering mechanism was everything it should be even now.