“… thunder of atomic broadsides and lightning trails of hurtling torpedoes … “
“I think we are now. It does feel warmer, doesn’t it, Bill? We had better undress; if it really is a battle we may get too busy.”
“Let’s go, let’s go, down to the buff,” First Class Spleen barked, leaping gazellelike down the rows of fuses, clad only in a pair of dirty gym socks and his tattooed-on stripes and fouled-fuse insignia of rank. There was a sudden crackling in the air, and Bill felt the clipped-short stubs of his hair stirring in his scalp.
“What’s that?” he yiped.
“Secondary discharge from that bank of fuses,” Tembo pointed. “It’s classified as to what is happening, but I heard tell that it means one of the defense screens is under radiation attack, and as it overloads it climbs up the spectrum to green, to blue to ultraviolet until finally it goes black and the screen breaks down.”
“That sounds pretty way out.”
“I told you it was just a rumor. The material is classified..”
“THERE SHE GOES!!”
A crackling bang split the humid air of the fuse room, and a bank of fuses arced, smoked, burned black. One of them cracked in half, showering small fragments like shrapnel in every direction. The fusemen leaped, ,grabbed the fuses, slipped in replacements with sweating hands, barely visible to each other through the reeking layers of smoke. The fuses were driven home, and there was a moment’s silence, broken only by a plaintive bleating from the communications screen.
“Son of a bowb!” First Class Spleen muttered, kicking a fuse out of the way and diving for the screen. His uniform jacket was hanging on a hook next to it, and he struggled into this before banging the RECEIVE switch. He finished closing the last button just as the screen cleared. Spleen saluted, so it must have been an officer he was facing; the screen was edge-on to Bill, so he couldn’t tell, but the voice had the quacking no-chin-and-plenty-of-teeth whine that he was beginning to associate with the officer class.
“You’re slow in answering, First Class Spleen-maybe Second Class Spleen would be able to answer faster?”
“Have pity, sir-I’m an old man.” He dropped to his knees in a prayerful attitude which took him off the screen.
“Get up, you idiot! Have you repaired the fuses after that last overload?”
“We replace, sir, not repair …”
“None of your technical gibberish, you swine! A straight answer!”
“All in order, sir. Operating in the green. No complaints from anyone, your worship.”
“Why are you out of uniform?”
“I am in uniform, sir,” Spleen whined, moving closer to the screen so that his bare behind and shaking lower limbs could not be seen.
“Don’t lie to me! There’s sweat on your forehead. You aren’t allowed to sweat in uniform. Do you. see me sweating? And I have a cap on too-at the correct angle. I’ll forget it this time because I have a heart of gold. Dismissed.”
“Filthy bowb!” Spleen cursed at the top of his lungs, tearing the jacket from his stifling body. The temperature was over 120 and still rising. “Sweat! They have air conditioning on the bridge-and where do you think they discharge the heat? In here! YEEOOW!!”
Two entire banks of fuses blew out at the same time, three of the fuses exploding like bombs. At the same moment the floor under their feet bucked hard enough to actually be felt.
“Big trouble!” Tembo shouted. “Anything that is strong enough to feel through the stasis field must be powerful enough to flatten this ship like a pancake. There go some morel” He dived for the bank and kicked a fuse clear of the clips and jammed in. a replacement
It was an inferno. Fuses were exploding like aerial bombs, sending whistling particles of ceramic death through the air. There was a lightning crackle as a board shorted to the metal floor and a hideous scream, thankfully cut short, as the sheet of lightning passed through a fuse tender’s body. Greasy smoke boiled and hung in sheets, making it almost impossible to see. Bill raked the remains of a broken fuse from the darkened clips and jumped for the replacement rack. He clutched the ninety-pound fuse in his aching arms and had just turned back toward the boards, when the universe exploded.