Destroyers and cruisers ringed the two carriers. That reassured Sam less than it had before the raid on Charleston. The screening ships hadn't been able to keep land-based aircraft away from the Remembrance. Would they and the combat air patrol be able to fend off whatever the limeys threw at this force? Carsten hoped so. He also knew that what he hoped and what he got were liable to have nothing to do with each other.

He rubbed more zinc-oxide ointment on a nose already carrying enough of the white goo to resemble one of the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He only wished the stuff did more good. With it or without it, he burned. Without it, he burned a little worse.

Up at the top of the Remembrance's island, the antennas for the wireless rangefinder spun round and round, round and round. The gadget had done good work off the Confederate coast, warning of incoming enemy airplanes well before the screening ships or the combat air patrol spotted them. As the carriers got more familiar with their new toy, they said Y-range more and more often. The whole name was just too clumsy.

Some of the cruisers also sported revolving Y-range antennas. They used them not only to spot incoming enemy aircraft but also to improve their gunnery. Y-ranging gave results more precise than the stereoscopic and parallax visual rangefinders gunners had used in the Great War.

A signalman at the stern wigwagged a fighter onto the deck. Smoke stinking of burnt rubber spurted from the tires. The hook the airplane carried in place of a tailwheel snagged an arrester wire. The pilot jumped out. The flight crew cleared the machine from the deck. Another one roared aloft to take its place.

"You're in unfamiliar territory, Carsten," said someone behind Sam.

He turned and found himself face to face with Commander Dan Cressy. "Uh, yes, sir," he answered, saluting the executive officer. "I'm like the groundhog-every once in a while, they let me poke my nose up above ground and see if I spot my own shadow."

The exec grinned. "I like that."

Sam suspected Cressy would have a ship of his own before long. He was young, brave, and smarter than smart; he'd make flag rank if he lived. Unlike me, Carsten thought without rancor. As a middle-aged mustang, he had much slimmer prospects of promotion. He'd dwelt on them before. He didn't feel like doing it now, especially since all of them but getting the junior grade removed from his lieutenant's rank would take an uncommon run of casualties among officers senior to him.

"Glad you do, sir," Sam said now. He sure as hell didn't want the exec to catch him brooding.

"Damage-control parties have done good work for us," Cressy said. "The skipper is pleased with Lieutenant Commander Pottinger-and with you. You showed nerve, fighting that five-inch gun when the Confederates hit us off Charleston."

"Thank you very much, sir," Sam said, and meant it. The exec usually did Captain Stein's dirty work for him. The skipper got the credit, the exec got the blame: an ancient Navy rule. Winning praise from Cressy-even praise he was relaying from someone else-didn't happen every day.

"You were on this ship when you were a rating, weren't you?" Cressy asked.

"Yes, sir, I sure was, just after she was built," Sam said. "I had to leave her when I made ensign. There wasn't any slot for me here. When I came back, they put me in damage control. If I'd had my druthers, I'd have stayed in gunnery, or better yet up here with the airplanes." He knew he was sticking his neck out. Grumbling about an assignment he'd had for years was liable to land him in dutch.

Commander Cressy eyed him for a moment. "When you're so good at what you do, how much do you suppose your druthers really matter?"

"Sir, I've been in the Navy more than thirty years. I know damn well they don't matter at all," Sam answered. "But that doesn't mean I haven't got 'em."

That got another grin from Cressy. Sam had a way of saying things that might have been annoying from somebody else seem a joke, or at least nothing to get upset about. The exec said, "Well, fair enough. If we ever get the chance to give them to you… we'll see what we can do, that's all."

"Thank you very much, sir!" Sam exclaimed. It wasn't a promise, but it came closer than anything he'd ever heard up till now.

"Nothing to thank me for," Cressy said, emphasizing that it was no promise. "There may not be anything to do, either. You have that straight?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I sure do," Sam said. "I can handle the job I've got just fine. It isn't the one I would have picked for myself, that's all."

Klaxons began to hoot. "Now we both get to do the jobs we've got," Commander Cressy said, and went off toward the Remembrance's island at a dead run. Carsten was running, too, for the closest hatchway that would take him down to his battle station in the carrier's bowels.

Closing watertight doors slowed him, but he got where he was going in good time. Lieutenant Commander Pottinger came down at almost exactly the same moment. "No, I don't know what's going on," Pottinger said when Sam asked him. "I bet I can guess, though."

"Me, too," Sam said. "We must've spotted that British carrier."

"I can't think of anything else," Pottinger said. "Their pilot was probably stupid, shooting up that fishing boat."

"One of ours would've done the same thing to their boat off the coast of England," Sam said. "Flyboys are like that."

In the light of the bare bulb in its wire cage overhead, Pottinger's grin was haggard. "I didn't say you were wrong. I just said the limey was stupid. There's a difference."

The throb of the Remembrance's engines deepened as the great ship picked up speed. One after another, airplanes roared off her flight deck. Some of those would be torpedo carriers and dive bombers to go after the British ship, others fighters to protect them and to fight off whatever the limeys threw at the Remembrance and the Sandwich Islands.

As usual once an action started, the damage-control party had nothing to do but stand around and wait and hope its talents weren't needed. Some of the sailors told dirty jokes. A petty officer methodically cracked his knuckles. He didn't seem to know he was doing it, though each pop sounded loud as a gunshot in that cramped, echoing space.

Time crawled by. Sam had learned not to look at his watch down here. He would always feel an hour had gone by, when in fact it was ten minutes. Better not to know than to be continually disappointed.

When the Remembrance suddenly heeled hard to port, everybody in the damage-control party-maybe everybody on the whole ship-said, "Uh-oh!" at the same time. If the antiaircraft guns had started banging away right then, Sam would have known some of the British carrier's bombers had got through. Since they didn't…

"Submersible!" he said.

Lieutenant Commander Pottinger nodded. "I'd say the son of a bitch missed us-with his first spread of fish, anyhow." He added the last phrase to make sure nobody could accuse him of optimism.

Not much later, explosions in the deep jarred the Remembrance. "They're throwing ashcans at the bastard," one of the sailors said.

"Hope they nail his hide to the wall, too," another one said. Nobody quarreled with that, least of all Sam. He'd seen more battle damage than anybody else down there. If he never saw any more, he wouldn't have been the least bit disappointed.

Another depth charge burst, this one so close to the surface that it rattled everybody's teeth. "Jesus H. Christ!" Pottinger said. "What the hell are they trying to do, blow our stern off?"

Nobody laughed. Such disasters had befallen at least one destroyer. Sam didn't think anybody'd ever screwed up so spectacularly aboard a carrier, but that didn't mean it couldn't happen.

Then the intercom crackled to life. "Scratch one sub!" Commander Cressy said exultantly.