Free Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

good two minutes before I could move.
    “Damn that quartermaster,” I gasped when we were on our feet again.
    “Wasn’t his fault,” wheezed Harry. “He really tried to spin the wheel.”
    Knowing Johnny, I had to agree. He’d never pull anything like that. I scratched my head and turned to the mate. He was steering now, apparently without any trouble at all. “Don’t tell me you can turn the ship?”
    He grinned. “All it needed was a real helmsman,” he ribbed me. And then the engines stopped, and the telegraph rang and spun over to “Stop,” and the engine room tube squealed.
    “Now what?”
    “I dunno,” came the third’s plaintive voice. “She just quit on us.”
    “O.K.; let us know when you’ve shot the trouble.” The engineer rang off.
    “Now what the hell?” said the mate.
    I shrugged. “This is a jinxed trip,” I said. I verified the “Stop” signal on the telegraph.
    Harry said: “I don’t know what’s got into you guys. The skipper said somethin’ about a new charter. He don’t have to tell us who gave it to us.”
    “He don’t have to keep us in the dark, either,” said Toole. Then,glancing at the compass, he said, “Looka that! She’s swingin’ back to west!”
    I looked over his shoulder. Slowly the ship was turning in the gentle swell, back to due west. And just as she came to 270° on the card—the engines began to pound.
    “Ah!” said the mate, and verified the “Full ahead” gong that had just rung.
    The third whistled up again and reported that he was picking fluff off his oilskins. “I’m going on the wagon,” he said. “She quits by herself and starts by herself, an’ I’m gonna bust out cryin’ if it keeps up!”
    And that’s how we found out that the ship, with this strange cargo, insisted on having her head. For every time we tried to change course, the engines would stop, or a rudder cable would break, or the steering engine would quit. What could we do? We stood our watches and ran our ship as if nothing were the matter. If we hadn’t we’d have gone as mad as we thought we already were.
    Harry noticed a strange thing one afternoon. He told me about it when we came off watch.
    “Y’know that box o’ books in the chart room?” he asked me.
    I did. It was an American Merchant Marine Library Association book chest, left aboard from the time the ship was honest. I’d been pretty well all through it. There were a few textbooks on French and Spanish, half a dozen detective novels, a pile of ten-year-old magazines, and a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets and unclassifiable.
    “Well, about three o’clock I hear a noise in the chart room,” said Harry, “an’ I have a look. Well, sir, them books is heaving ’emselves up out of the chest and spilling on th’ deck. Most of ’em was just tossed around, but a few was stackin’ in a neat heap near the bulkhead. I on’y saw it for a second, and then it stopped, like I’d caught someone at the job, but I couldn’t see no one there.” He stopped and licked his lips and wheezed. “I looks at that pile o’ books, an’ they was all to do with North America an’ the United States. A coupla history books, an atlas, a guidebook to New York City, a book on th’ national parks—all sech. Well, I goes back into the wheelhouse, an’ a few minutes later I peeks in again. All them books on Americawas open in different places in the chart room, an’ the pages was turnin’ like someone was readin’ them, only—there just wasn’t nobody there!”
    What the
hell
was it that we had aboard, that wanted to know about the United States, that had replaced our captain with a string of coincidence, that had “chartered” the ship? I’d had enough. I firmly swore that if I ever got back to the States, police or no, I’d get off this scow and stay off her. A man can just stand so much.
    About three days out the torpedo boat picked us up. She was a raider, small and gray and fast and wicked, and she