10
MAYDAY, MAYDAY
Getting a ship's boat berthed inside the ship in the air is tricky
work under the best of conditions; the way the wind was blowing by
now, it would have been like trying to thread a needle inside a
concrete mixer. We submerged after the ship and went in underwater.
Then we had to wait in the boat until the ship rose above the surface
and emptied the water out of the boat berth. When that was done and
the boat berth was sealed again, the ship went down seventy fathoms
and came to rest on the bottom, and we unsealed the boat and got out.
There was still the job of packing the wax into skins, but that could
wait. Everybody was tired and dirty and hungry. We took turns washing
up, three at a time, in the little ship's latrine which, for some
reason going back to sailing-ship days on Terra, was called the
"head." Finally the whole sixteen of us gathered in the relatively
comfortable wardroom under the after gun turret.
Comfortable, that is, to the extent that everybody could find a place
to sit down, or could move about without tripping over somebody else.
There was a big pot of coffee, and everybody had a plate or bowl of
hot food. There's always plenty of hot food to hand on a hunter-ship;
no regular meal-times, and everybody eats, as he sleeps, when he has
time. This is the only time when a whole hunter crew gets together,
after a monster has been killed and cut up and the ship is resting on
the bottom and nobody has to stand watch.
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