Voyage to Somewhere Read online

  Voyage to Somewhere

  A Novel

  Sloan Wilson

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

  BY MY WIFE AND ME

  TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER,

  Albert Frederick Wilson

  CHAPTER ONE

  DO YOU want command of a ship?” the personnel officer asked.

  “Well,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of it.”

  The personnel officer leaned forward and flicked through the pages of a small card index in a green metal box.

  “Let me see, Lieutenant,” he said. “Barton is your name. I think I have you down for command of a ship.”

  “If you don’t mind,” I interjected, “there are other things I’d rather do. I just came back from two years’ sea duty, you know. I’d been hoping for a job somewhere in the States.”

  “If I could only find your name here. I had it somewhere.”

  I stood uneasily before the personnel officer’s desk and watched him look through one card index after the other. He was red-faced and fat. I envied him his job. It must be fun to rifle through card indexes to see whom you were going to send out.

  “I’d been hoping,” I said again, “that for a while I could be stationed in the States. Some kind of a teaching job, perhaps, or captain of the port.”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know where your name is. What were you saying?”

  “I was saying that I wanted a job here in the States. I’ve just come back from two years overseas.”

  He sat back in his chair and placed one of his fat little hands over the other in a gesture of childish dismay.

  “Oh,” he said, “that is impossible. We have to man over a hundred ships going out to New Guinea, and we need men of experience. You have had two years’ sea duty, but that’s just what makes you so valuable.”

  “How about letting someone else get valuable?” I asked.

  He grinned at me as though I had made a wonderful joke and suddenly leaned forward and produced a notebook from a drawer. “I know where your name is,” he said. “That reminds me!”

  I watched while he carefully turned the pages.

  “Barton,” he said. “Let me see. I know it’s here somewhere.”

  The pages made a dry sound.

  “Barton,” he said again. “Begins with a B. That would be toward the beginning of the alphabet. Here it is! I knew I had you down somewhere!”

  “What,” I asked, “have you got me down for?”

  “A wonderful assignment!”

  “What assignment?”

  “You’re to be commanding officer of a ship.”

  “I know,” I said, “and the ship is going to New Guinea. Not just there and back, but there and on. Don’t tell me about it.”

  He flipped his notebook shut. “It’s a wonderful assignment,” he said. “I thought I was doing you a favor. It’s a brand-new ship.”

  “How long?”

  “What?”

  “How long is the ship? How big is she?”

  “A hundred and eighty feet.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want that assignment. Do I have to take it? Tell me now and it will save talk.”

  The personnel officer took his glasses off and polished them with his handkerchief. “I’m afraid the Commander is already having your orders written up. If you don’t want the job you might see him, but I’m afraid it won’t do much good. We don’t have many men with enough experience to be commanding officers. You know, to tell you the truth, I can’t understand your attitude.”

  I felt tired and pulled up a chair from another desk. Before speaking I lit my pipe. “My attitude,” I said finally, “is easily understood. For the past two years I have been bobbing around in small ships. I’d like a rest. I’ve never been able to understand why it’s necessary to be shoved out the moment I get in. You and I are both lieutenants; why don’t you go to sea for a while and let me have your desk? Let’s divide these honors equally.”

  The personnel officer put his glasses on carefully. “There’s nothing I’d like better,” he said, “but I haven’t had the experience. To tell you the truth I’ve never been to sea since my cadet cruise. I couldn’t command a ship now any more than you could really do my job. As a matter of fact, I have twice asked the Commander for a ship, but you know how it is.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know how it is.”

  He looked up at me and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him. He looked so small, and so fat, and so sedentary. Perhaps he really did want to go to sea.

  “Let me tell you about this assignment,” he said. “The ship is a supply vessel. You’ll run out of convoy to all the small bases. In the Pacific you will call at every small island—the Hawaiians, the Ellice Islands, the Solomons, and maybe more. Once you get to New Guinea you’ll stay away from the big bases almost entirely. It’ll be more an exploring expedition than a war. As captain of the ship you’ll be your own boss; there’ll be no detachment commanders anywhere within miles. It’s a damn rare assignment.”

  “What kind of a crew will you give me?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. You know how few experienced hands there are around these days, and the destroyer escorts are getting most of them. I’ll do the best I can for you, though; don’t worry about that.”

  “Tell me more about the ship,” I said. “How fast is she? What does she look like?”

  “Well, I don’t really know. These are new ships, and I haven’t seen any of them. I understand they’re pretty good, though.”

  He opened his notebook again and ran his finger down the line. “Your ship is the SV-126.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That helps a lot. Now I know all about her.”

  I got up and started buttoning my coat. “How long have I got in the States?” I asked. “How long before I’ll get my orders?”

  “It’s hard to tell. It might be tomorrow, it might be next month.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’d like to know. I have to decide whether or not to wire my wife to come out. There’s no use her coming across the continent if I’m only going to be here a few days.”

  “You better not have her come out. Your ship will probably be ready sometime this week.”

  “Well,” I said, “thanks.”

  I turned and walked off. When I had almost reached the door he called after me. “I wouldn’t get too downhearted,” he said. “I hear a rumor that we’re going into the Marianas pretty soon. They say the war’s almost over.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  NOT HAVING anything else to do, I decided to go down to the shipyard to inspect the SV-126. A yeoman in the office told me that she was building at the Pacific Ship Works. I took a taxi there, and soon stood before the watchman’s gate. Over the fence I could see the towering decks of a battleship on the ways, and moored in a slip was an aircraft carrier. The watchman came out of his box and looked at me as though he wanted to place his hand over my eyes.

  “I want to go aboard a ship that’s building here,” I said. “The SV-126.”

  The watchman went to a notebook which, by coincidence, had a similar binding to the one in which the personnel officer had found my name.

  “SV-126,” he said. “I don’t have no such number here.”

  “Look again,” I said. “It must be here. I’m sure the ship is being built in this yard.”

  “What kind of a ship is it?” he asked.

  “A supply ship. A very small one.”

  He looked again. “Nope,” he said, “it’s not here. Must be at some other yard.”

  “Will you let me go in and look?” I asked.

  The watchman looked at me suspiciously a moment, then bade me go in.

  Th
e shipyard was a big place. On the ways along the water more than a dozen big ships were being built or repaired. Men on scaffolds by the sides of a battleship were welding, and the bright sparks of their torches sprayed out like a Fourth of July celebration. Beside the battleship was a destroyer with her bow removed. As I passed her I could look into her hull and see that the bunks in her forecastle had been twisted by fire. Past this row of ships I saw an office building. I stopped there and asked for the SV-126.

  “Never heard of it,” a bespectacled civilian told me.

  “Are you building any small ships here at all?” I asked.

  He thought a moment and consulted a framed map of the yard on the wall.

  “Over here,” he said, pointing with his finger, “they’re building some small hulls. I thought they were tugboats, but you can look and see.”

  He showed me how I could get to the point designated, and I set out. I walked past the half-completed hull of a Liberty ship and the knifelike bow of a cruiser. Over the top of a building I could see the upper deck of the carrier I had seen from without the wall. When I had passed the building I could see a group of tin workshops by the water, but no more ships. Discouraged, I turned to go back, and saw a workman carrying a welder’s mask behind me.

  I said, “You don’t know where they’re building a small ship around here, do you? The SV-126?”

  He said, “They’ve got something down by the blacksmith shop. Just threw it in the water yesterday.”

  He pointed to the blacksmith shop, the farthest of the tin sheds I had seen before, and I walked toward it.

  When I rounded the corner of the blacksmith shop I saw the SV-126. I had not seen her before because the top of her mast did not come above the roof of the building. She was indeed a small ship—so small that she might best have been called a boat. The white numbers on her plumb bow seemed disproportionately large. The bow, almost before it got started, broke away into a well deck that was not more than a foot and a half above the water. Abaft the well deck the stern was built up like the stern of a Spanish galleon. The ship’s lines, taken together with the fact that she was painted a bright green, made her appear ridiculous. Fascinated, I walked down to the dock and stood beside her. Even in the imperceptible swell of the slip she was bobbing lightly against the dock. Frantically, as a man tries to find good points in a person he feels he should love, I tried to find something consoling about the ship. The high bow was good—she would not take much water forward, or aft, for that matter, with that high stem. But amidships she would be awash half the time! And the looks of the thing! A man would be ashamed to be seen aboard her. I stepped backward to see the full sweep of her lines better. As I did so I noticed an officer seated on a pile of lumber a few feet away. He was a very fat man about forty years of age, a lieutenant. He was looking at me with an air of amusement.

  “Well,” he said, “what do you think of her?”

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  He got up and walked over toward me. “Going to be stationed aboard her?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “So am I.”

  I looked at him with new interest. He was fat, but he neither talked nor walked like a fat man. Something in his manner suggested that his corpulence was merely a disguise that could be dropped at a moment’s notice. I realized that I had been staring at him, and quickly shoved out my hand.

  “My name’s Barton,” I said. “I understand I’m supposed to command the thing.”

  “Rudd’s my name,” he said. “I’m the engineering officer.”

  We stood together and silently surveyed the ship. She was such a remarkable-looking vessel, so like a huge green wooden shoe, that she was hard to get used to.

  “What an awful thing,” Mr. Rudd said. “Who do you supposed designed her?”

  “Walt Disney,” I replied.”

  He laughed, and I saw he was looking at me.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” he asked.

  “New Guinea,” I said. “I believe it’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “I know,” he said. “What an awful thing.”

  He took a cigar from his pocket and lit it. Without a word we began pacing up and down on the dock beside the ship.

  “Do you know how to navigate?” he asked. He said it so quietly that for a moment I mistrusted my ear.

  “Yes,” I said in a normal voice, and then, a little nettled, “Why do you ask?”

  “I just wondered,” he said. “Nowadays you never can tell. You’re a Reserve, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you know anything about engines?”

  “I’m a Regular. Been in fifteen years.”

  He sensed my resentment at his questions, and continued. “You mustn’t mind if I ask you a few things. A man gets curious about his commanding officer—so much depends on him. It’s a little like getting married, you know, only you can pick your own wife. How long have you been going to sea?”

  “Something over two years in the service,” I said. “About five years before that.”

  “Well, that’s good,” he said. “My last skipper kept asking me questions like which was the bow, and which was the stem. He kept getting mixed up.”

  I made no reply. It occured to me that I should be disapproving, but it was impossible.

  “You mind your engines,” I said finally, “and I’ll take care of the rest of it.”

  The remark made me feel absurd. I cleared my throat. As we paced up and down, a troop of women in overalls marched down to the ship and went aboard. Three of them carried welding helmets, and the others carried the hoses and the tanks. Mr. Rudd watched them fascinatedly as they set up their gear on deck and began to weld.

  “What an awful thing,” he said, and continued his pacing. I walked beside him. “A ship built by women,” he said, “and manned by Reserves.”

  “Not entirely,” I said. “You’ll be aboard.”

  “That is not a comfort,” he said.

  We continued our pacing. In spite of Mr Rudd’s manner, there was something about him I found vastly reassuring. I was glad that I had met Mr Rudd before I had had time to become too discouraged about the ship.

  “Do you have any idea of what we’re in for?” he asked.

  Before I had time to say I did know what we were in for, he said very quietly, “We have to go aboard that ship—that ship there. We will have to go over it from bow to stern to see what parts those women have forgotten to finish. Then we will get a crew of seventeen-year-old kids who think that going to sea is a great adventure and going to war an even greater adventure. We have to use those kids for a crew and sail that ship clear across the Pacifiic Ocean to New Guinea. There well haul ammunition and gasoline and every other infernal cargo, and if we’re lucky we’ll get to go on all the invasions that are coming up. Do you see what we have for armament?”

  I looked and saw two fifty-calibre machine guns on the stern of the ship. No other gun emplacements were in evidence.

  “Those,” Mr Rudd said, “are to shoot planes down with. If we meet a submarine maybe we can sink that, if we’re good at this stuff they call psychological warfare.”

  “You don’t paint a very pretty picture,” I said.

  “Well, don’t worry about the Japs,” he replied. “We’ll probably never be able to sail that ship far enough to get anywhere near them.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t get discouraged,” I answered. “I’ve sailed much smaller ships than that.”

  He stopped and looked at me, and I felt that I was being examined in about the same way that I had examined the ship.

  “Look, Captain,” he said, “I’ll tell you something. I asked for this job. I don’t mind it. I think we will probably get through. But don’t forget how ridiculous the whole project is, and don’t try to cheer me up. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I figure the quicker we understand each other the better.”

  “All right,” I said, “I won’t try to cheer you up. But why
in hell did you ask for this job?”

  “Because I got bored and because I don’t give a damn.” He turned and resumed his pacing. “And because I like to keep my convictions,” he added, “and if I got on a nice, big smooth-running ship I might think that some of the brass hats knew what they were doing.”

  The women welders on the deck of the ship finished their job. One of them threw off her welder’s helmet and revealed a thick mass of dirty blond hair. Reaching into her trouser pocket, she pulled out a lipstick and applied it without a mirror. Then, shouldering her mask, she marched off the ship.

  Seeing Mr. Rudd, she waved at him. “Hello, dearie!” she called. “How’s tricks?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THREE DAYS LATER I received word that we were to put the ship into commission. There was to be no ceremony: a truck would bring the ship’s complement down to the shipyard, we would go aboard, and make everything ready to sail. I went down to the ship early, to be there when the crew arrived. The SV-126 lay deserted; not even a security watch had been left aboard her. I walked over the gangway and stood alone on her deck. Slowly I made my way aft and walked through a passageway past the galley to a door which had “Commanding Officer” in white letters over it. Inside this cabin I found a bunk and a desk. I sat down and looked around me. Not a sound was heard anywhere. “I hope it’s always this quiet,” I thought, and caught myself envisaging all the different noises that can take place on a ship: the sustained shriek of a gale, the mechanical hysteria of the general quarters alarm, the jolt of gunfire, and the steady hum of men’s voices that pervades a fully manned ship, voices which continue day and night and which by their tone express the corporate emotions of the crew. My reverie was disturbed by the sound of a truck stopping beside the ship and the first clamor of those very voices of which I had been thinking. I went on deck and saw a six-wheeled truck with about twenty-five men in the back of it. Already the men were jumping out of the truck and throwing their seabags on the dock. Mr. Rudd was lumbering out of the front seat of the truck, and two other officers, a j.g. and an ensign, were supervising the unloading of the truck. There was a constant babble of voices. “Right here now, make it lively,” the j.g. was shouting, and the men were saying, “Aye aye, sir,” “Hey, Bill, get off my bag,” and “Give me a hand here, Mac, will you? Won’t anybody give me a hand with this thing?”