Chapter 1Stars turning ever so slowly above a cool summer dark, Katrinka Ferret lifted her two kits, sister and little brother, and set them softly down in their hammock for the night. Walls of stone released the heat of the day into the ferrets' home, and the kits, freshly bathed, waited for their bedtime story.
Katrinka slid her paw slowly along the row of books on their bedroom shelf, her eyes on the little ones waiting for the right instant.
"That one!" cried Bethany and Vincent together, and in that moment their mother stayed her paw and pulled forth the volume that it touched. She knew the book by feel, by the worn, bent corners of the cover.
Still watching her kits, before even glancing at the title she opened her eyes wide in mock surprise.
"My goodness, what have we here?" said she. "Is this by any chance called Rescue Ferrets at Sea?"
So often had she held the book and read the story that it was long memorized, but the two cried, "Yes! Yes!" as though she had magically plucked the volume from empty space.
"Then settle down, my kits," she said, "and I shall tell you the story of the little ferrets who went to sea..."
Bethany Nikka, the eldest, snuggled into her favorite spot in the hammock, chin on the edge of the warm fluff, nose and whiskers pointed in rapt attention to her mother. Eyes already closed, she fell deep into imagination, waiting.
Vincent lay alongside, one paw holding his stuffed hedgehog, rustling himself into the most comfortable position that the remaining hammock would allow. Someday, he knew, it would be his hammock alone. Tonight he was happy to be with his sister, he wanted her to have the best spot for herself.
"'Once upon a time,'" their mother began, "'by the edge of a great ocean, there was a party of kits, out for a romp. Adventurous they were, but not very wise, for they determined to sail from the land to the Forbidden Island offshore...'"
Here she opened the book to show the picture of the adventurous-but-not-very-wise youngsters, clustering about a driftwood raft and bedsheet sail. Bethany nodded, eyes closed, for she saw the picture in her mind.
Oh, those foolish kits! she thought, for she knew that even as they left the shore a monstrous bubble-storm was frothing toward Forbidden Island, unseen and unknown to the voyagers.
She saw it while her mother read: the all-day sail to the island, the carefree ferrets swept there more by current than skill, she saw them tumbling ashore, exploring with no thought for night approaching, ignorant of a sky signaling the storm ahead. She saw the flash, she heard the crack of thunder. The foolish kits were trapped.
"What shall we do?" she whispered, barely moving her lips.
"'What shall we do?'" Katrinka read, holding up the picture, two pages wide, the six hapless ferrets stranded on a speck of land, surrounded by a wall of bubbles.
"What could be done?" both kits said, with their mother.
Bethany saw it all as it happened: the storm advancing ruthlessly; the great ships racing to port to escape the fury of an ocean gone wild; the poor kits clinging like furry flags to tree trunks before they were blown head over heels to the ground; the discovery by parents that their little ones were missing, with barely a bag of ferret food to sustain them; the storm raging on. At last the wind subsiding but the island and the sea about it smothered deep in bubbles, no way for land creatures to sail.
"'What could be done?'" their mother read.
"CALL THE RESCUE FERRETS!" cried the kits together.
"Exactly right," Katrinka said. "Call the rescue ferrets!" She turned the page.
Bethany watched the story unfold so clearly that she nearly stopped breathing. The clangor of the alarm bell on the dock of the Ferret Rescue Station, Captain Terry Ferret and his Alert Crew dashing to their posts, the low-thunder roar of twin engines lighting off, lines casting away a-splash in the wake of the sleek vessel setting forth on a mission of mercy.
Out from the channel came the rescue animals, the mass of bubbles parting ahead, flying aside as the bubblebreaker Emily T. Ferret sliced on a course to Forbidden Island.
So brave! Bethany thought as she pictured Captain Terry, though she knew he was too busy to acknowledge admiration.
He steered by dead reckoning, daring a straight-line compass course through the shipping lanes for the island, both engines at full throttle, his boat at flank speed, as fast as it could go. He watched his radar for returns from ships in his path, but the bubbles blurred the electric picture. More than radar he trusted the keen ears of his crew listening for echoes ahead to avoid a collision that would send them all to the bottom.
Meanwhile, the kits on the island, engulfed in bubbles, were holding paws so as not to be lost one from the other. They finished their rations, sharing their ferret food to the final crumb. They huddled close, shivering with cold, doubting they would live to see tomorrow's sunset. How foolish they had been to take such a trip for a lark, and how sorry they were now for having done so!
"Ship ahead, Captain!"
Bethany saw what Captain Terry Ferret saw, the sudden-looming radar blur of a human's freighter, come to a dead stop in the sea, blocking the way ahead.
"Right full rudder!" he cried to his helmsferret and the rescue boat careened wildly at top speed, spray and bubbles flying.
For a moment the black cliff of the freighter's hull loomed amid the snowy mass of foam, solid steel unmoving in the water but streaking midnight blurs alongside the high-speed ferret boat. Then it disappeared behind.
"Left rudder to course."
At last the rescue boat snaked its way, dead slow, through the reefs and shoals of Forbidden Island, Abington Ferret at the bow throwing a lead line and calling the depth.
"Mark, twenty paws!" he called. Then a toss and whistle of line in the air, and a splash as the boat moved ahead.
"Mark, fifteen paws!" Bubbles still blanketed the sea and the island, three times higher than the radar mast.
"Mark, twelve paws!"
"Anchor down," said the captain. "Siren, please."
Sharp blasts rent the air, four times over. Echoes from the invisible land nearby, and quiet.
"Again."
After the echoes, faintly, the sound of cheers.
The captain took the loudspeaker microphone. "Party on the island, this is rescue boat Emily T. Ferret. We are standing a hundred paws offshore, our siren every half minute. Approach to the edge of the water and our crew will pick you up. Do not swim for the boat. Our crew will pick you up."
The cheers came louder from shore, and "Hi! Hi!" from the survivors.
A few more siren blasts and Bosun's Mate Jingles Ferret appeared with the first of the wayward kits, bedraggled, covered in bubbles.
"Up you go, young fella," he said, lifting the kit to Joanna Ferret, the forward lookout, on deck. Then he turned back toward shore to retrieve the next of the adventurers.
The trip home to the rescue station took longer than the trip out. Though the bubbles had diminished, it was by no means a fit sea for more than half-cruise speed, even for a Ferret Rescue bubblebreaker.
As her mother turned the final page, the one with the picture of little Angela Ferret kissing Captain Terry, Bethany brushed back a tear, filled once more with admiration for the brave ferrets of the Rescue Service.
Her mother closed the book, and the room was silent. Then she rose and tucked their blankets close. "Good night, little ones."
Bethany took a breath, paused, spoke at last. "Someday, Mother, can I be a rescue ferret?"
Katrinka turned and beheld her daughter. Oh, my firstborn, she thought. So like your father.
"You can be anything you want to be, my Betha-Nikka," she said, "if only you love enough." She kissed her two kits, turned out the light.
*Far from the small stone house, in the highlands near the roof of the world, philosopher ferrets had learned the same and called it wisdom: we find our happiness only when we follow what we most love in all the world.
It was not the last time Bethany Ferret would hear her favorite story, but it was the first, listening to her mother, that she knew she would one day stand upon the deck of her own rescue boat.
Copyright © 2002 by Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company, Inc.
Chapter 2
Not many humans know. On the edges of every sea, the Ferret Rescue Service stands with the Coast Guard and Coastal Patrol of every country that claims an ocean shore. It is the job of humans to rescue humans at risk in storm and shipboard disaster; it is the job of the ferrets to rescue seagoing animals in distress.
Adjoining each Coastal Patrol station lies a small base, home to those devoted and courageous ferrets who risk their lives to save others at sea. Ferret Rescue Service bases mirror the humans' -- miniature living and dining quarters, maintenance bays and dry docks, and a small command center.
The FRS motto, In Silentio Servamus, tells its story. Quietly We Save: the goal and code of every animal who volunteers for the Service. They share a pride, these ferrets, that regardless of storm or oil or fire, rarely has a survivor of a stricken ship been lost once an FRS vessel has pulled alongside.
Their J-class rescue boats are small and light but strong, with powerful twin engines and fast on the water. Operated by a captain and crew of four sea ferrets, FRS rescue vessels have proven to be nearly unsinkable. In the course of their service, a few have been dragged down with shipwrecks or dashed to pieces in mountainous surf, but handled with skill and courage they are perfect for their mission.
Not so long after her mother had read her to sleep, having graduated from the arduous course of sea-ferret officer training, Ensign Bethany N. Ferret, FRS, reported for duty at the Maytime Rescue Base.
Maytime had been her choice by virtue of her standing at the top of her class. The base stood on a protected inlet along an otherwise rockbound coast, lashed in winter by ocean storms, surrounded in summer by a labyrinth of deadly currents. She had asked for action in service; at Maytime she was bound to get it.
She saluted. "Ensign Bethany Ferret reporting for duty, sir."
Commander Curtis Ferret looked up from the engine compartment of a J-boat, saw the trim figure dockside, returned her salute. First in her class, he thought, she's planning to be in command of her own boat before long. She's learned a lot, but there's so much more ahead. Poor kit. Lucky kit.
"What's the redline oil temperature for the engine of this boat, Ensign?"
Bethany was startled. She was expecting a welcome to the base, not a quiz.
"One hundred eighteen degrees Celsius, sir."
"What if the captain chooses to run the engine over-temperature?"
"Why, she can plan on the main bearings to seize, sir, she can plan on complete engine failure!"
The commander frowned, to cover his unseen smile. His new officer would command or die trying. "What if there are lives at stake, Ensign? What if she has to run her engines overtemp?"
"If she has to burn one, she'd best save the other, sir."
The senior officer surveyed the scorched metal. "That's what this captain did. Now we've got to rebuild the engine. And engines do not grow on bushes, Ensign."
"The captain saved how many lives, sir?"
He looked up sharply. "Twenty-five mice, three ship's cats, a pygmy marmoset. Twenty-nine lives."
"Yes, sir." His new officer stood at attention.
"Welcome to the base, Ensign," the commander said. "You picked some fine weather to report aboard. Enjoy it while you can." He turned back to the engine compartment. Withthe barometer falling, this boat would soon be called to service.
So began the adventure Bethany Ferret had sought. She was assigned as third officer aboard J-166, the rescue boat Dauntless, under the command of Captain Angio E. Ferret. From her first hour on board, she found the sea a more demanding classroom than any school she had known.
Always in some pre-dawn hour came rescue practice, over and again, in the sudden screeching whoop of the dockside alert siren. Amid the blasts, ferrets tumbled from hammocks into storm hats and life vests, scrambled for their stations. Sleep vaporized in the thunder of heavy engines bursting to life, darkness shattered in the arc of instant floodlights.
"Away the bowlines!" came the cry from the bridge. "Away the stern lines! Away the spring lines, away all lines! All ahead, flank!"
Twin searchlights stabbing ahead, twin hurricanes from the engines, white water flying from midships, sweeping into rooster tails astern.
From her station as Starboard High lookout, her face hidden in helmet and visor, Bethany raced through her station check, reporting herself ready for sea.
This is it! she thought. Here's the life I wanted! On the interphone, she listened to her captain call the Rescue Center.
"Maytime Control, J-166 is launched mid-channel seaward, standing by for vector and distance."
As often as not, that would be the end of the alert. "Roger, 166, your mid-channel time was fifty-eight seconds. This terminates the exercise. Return to base and stand by."
Other times, though, Dauntless would streak ahead, past the channel jetties into a sea of moonless black. She followed vectors from shore and her own lookouts to find some tiny motorboat or sailing vessel floating lights-out in the dark. Aboard, a crew of off-duty sea ferrets hiding belowdecks, curling themselves as small as possible, hoping to be overlooked by their rescuers.
"Seven survivors aboard, sir," Bethany had once reported, lookout turned rescuer, exhausted from dragging the dead weight of the distress-vessel animals to the deck of the Dauntless.
Angio Ferret had narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong. "We have all the survivors? Are you sure? Are all the survivors on board?"
The rescue would not be complete nor clock stopped until every creature in the practice was accounted for. She felt the captain's suspicion.
"Stand by, sir," she said. She dashed to the deck, past the survivors, relaxed and chatting now, forward of the bridge.
"Searchlight!" she called as she ran, and flew paw over paw down the stark-lit towline to the vessel just rescued. Scrambling aboard, she looked again from bow to stern. Just when she was certain there was no life on board, a shape in the sail locker caught her eye.
"All right," she said. "Come on, out you go!" Sure enough, a very young ferret had smuggled itself tightly under the canvas, scarcely daring to breathe. Bethany threw the sails aside, but even then the kit did not move, its eyes tightly shut.
"Gotcha." She lifted the youngster by the scruff of its neck, held it firmly in her teeth.
"I'm going to be a rescue ferret," it said in a tiny voice.
Bethany smiled in spite of herself. "Someday...," she muttered.
The kit hung immobilized while she reappeared on deck, dashing up the towline over the waves into the glare of light. At last, aboard Dauntless, she set the kit with the other survivors, raced up the ladder to the bridge.
"Eight rescued aboard, sir," she panted.
"Are you sure, Ensign?"
"Yes, sir!"
The captain lifted his microphone. "J-166 has eight survivors aboard. The distress vessel is in tow."
"Roger, 166," came the reply. "Understand eight survivors. Exercise is terminated. Thirty-one minutes, twenty-five seconds. Return to base."
"Roger the time," said the captain, noting it in his log. "Returning to base."
He nodded to Bethany, releasing her to her lookout station.
"Oh, 166," came the voice from the Center, "can you tell us who found survivor number eight?"
The captain turned to his junior officer, puzzled by the question. "That was Ensign Bethany Ferret, located the last survivor."
"The very small survivor?" asked the voice on the radio.
Bethany nodded.
"That is affirmative," said the captain.
"Well done, Dauntless," said the Center. "Well done."
Angio Ferret nodded, a hint of a smile. There may have been a wager, he thought. He would not have been surprised to learn that survivor number eight had a close relative at the command center.
*Bethany had run more than a dozen night missions before her first daytime alert.
Beyond her surprise at the alert siren going off in sunlight, the test was easier, she thought. She sighted the target vessel eleven minutes from the jetties, and though the seas were not smooth, Dauntless streaked top speed to its rescue station, lowered its skiff of rescuers, Bethany among them. The J-boat didn't require lookouts after the target was found.
Hard work, she thought. But her inner kit didn't care how hard it was. She had built this life from dreams in her hammock, and now the dreams were true.
Aloft once more in her lookout station, the distress boat in tow, Bethany saw the jetties from seaward for the first time in daylight, and what she saw stiffened her.
She pressed her interphone button, direct to the bridge. "Vessel on the rocks!" she called. "On the starboard jetty, sir!"
Waiting for the reply, her blood ran cold. That was no ordinary vessel, it was a rescue boat, a J-boat, stranded on the boulders!
She braced for the tilt of Dauntless to starboard, and the rush of her engines to aid. Neither happened.
Had the captain not heard? "Starboard High lookout to bridge, we have a vessel on the rocks, sir!"
"Roger, Starboard High," the captain answered. "The vessel's in sight."
Still J-166 proceeded at tow speed, her course unchanged.
Presently Bethany felt a movement behind her. She turned and saluted. "Welcome to Starboard High, sir!"
The skipper of Dauntless could be as tough and unyielding as the rocks themselves, a powerful animal who had worked his way from sea ferret third class to captain by native brilliance and devotion to the Service. As ever with the strongest of creatures, he rarely displayed his power, choosing courtesy instead, and understanding.
"At ease, Ensign." Angio Ferret touched her shoulder. "It's been there for a year now, Bethany," he said. "I thought I might tell you without your shipmates listening."
The lookout took her eyes from the gray wreckage, turned to him. "What happened, sir?" she asked. "Why?"
The officer sighed, lifted his cap and ran a paw through his fur. "She was returning from a night rescue, the seas were rough. More than rough...the channel radar buoy was dragged off station."
"But sir, she must have had the jetty on radar..."
"By the time the captain realized what had happened, it was too late."
The younger ferret swallowed. "The crew, sir?"
"No one was lost. Survivors and crew jumped to thejetty and we picked them up straightaway. We left the wreck to remind us: Assume nothing. No mission's finished until our lines are fast to the dock."
Bethany watched the wreck, barely a hundred paws distant as Dauntless slid by. The bow showed above water at high tide, the name fading but legible: Resolute.
"But sir, the boat..."
"J-101 was the first of her class, the oldest vessel on station. We salvaged what we could. She's a good warning as we come and go. We won't lose another that way."
"But sir, the boat...," she whispered.
The captain was down the ladder and returned to the bridge, yet Bethany's eyes stayed on the shattered metal stranded on the rocks. There was a yawning gash at the starboard waterline, a slice nearly half the length of the boat. The seas had jammed the hulk fast into the jetty. Most of Resolute went underwater on the high tides; she was pressed hard to the rocks on the lows. A lovely shape, sleek and trim despite the beatings, her twin lookout towers unscratched, defiant of the sea.
What a waste, the ferret thought. The oldest boat on the station, but so what? She's a J-boat! She can save lives!
*Through her first tour, Bethany Ferret applied herself diligently to her duties as a sea-ferret officer. Night practice and day, emergency rescues, vessels in distress adrift at sea. The real events, though, were most of them less trying than the practice: vessels helpless, out of fuel at sea, vessels lost in fog, broken rudders and fouled propellers, animals to be rushed ashore.
Now and then a major gale blew in, but most shipping stood warned in advance, steering to the safety of deep water, far from lee shores and jagged rocks of the storm-coast.
In time, Ensign Bethany Ferret was promoted to lieutenant junior grade, thence to full lieutenant. Her superior officers rated her skills and her attitude outstanding, her courage unwavering. Every one checked the square: "An exemplary ferret, one in a hundred, an officer I would wish to serve aboard my ship." Soon she was first officer aboard Dauntless.
Never did Bethany Ferret forget the sight of J-101 on the rocks. Every time she put to sea and every time she returned to base, the young lieutenant shook her head over the loss, stranded there.
It was not time, then, that moved J-101 from the teeth of the land, it was Bethany's patient, relentless pursuit of an ideal. The earnest young ferret never raised her voice over the issue, she never argued against other viewpoints.
No one taught her, but she knew: more important than talent or gifts or education is the determination to make one's wish come true. The young officer, quite simply, had resolved to rescue J-101, and she was willing to endure any hardship to see that happen.
"The value of Resolute to the Ferret Rescue Service is inestimable," she wrote, from her tiny quarters aboard Dauntless. "Should this vessel be restored and save a single life, she would have paid for her own restoration. Should she save a hundred lives, there is no counting the return on the modest investment I propose."
In his office overlooking the docks, Commander Curtis Ferret turned the pages of her proposal, gray whiskers unmoving, his face impassive.
"I request that at little cost to the Ferret Rescue Service, on my own off-duty time and on the off-duty time of such sea ferrets who may wish to join me, that I receive permission to restore J-101, FRB Resolute, to alert-ready condition."
The base commander frowned. Her captain has told her the wreck has a purpose, he thought; is this becoming an obsession? How can she save lives while she's rebuilding boats? She's a promising officer and her job is at sea. Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head.
"At worst," Bethany wrote in her next letter, "the project will sharpen the knowledge and skills of its volunteers and make them better officers and sea ferrets. At best, the Maytime station will have an additional seaworthy, active-duty vessel to fulfill its mission requirements. This endeavor is in the best interests of the FRS, to save and protect seagoing vessels and animal lives aboard them."
The commander shook his head again, turned to gaze down from his office window at the boats that were his responsibility. He put her request aside.
Letter followed letter, as though Resolute were no derelict reminder but some enchanted sword-in-the-stone for an officer determined to pull her free for quests to come. Bethany Ferret made it clear that her wish was attainable, was valuable for the Rescue Service, that every aspect of her plan would be positive. Patiently she explained how she would overcome each test the project would offer.
On August 14, as her captain watched, Bethany took command of Dauntless on the rescue of two paddlers, hamsters drifted to sea by offshore currents, squeaking with joy at the sight of the ferret vessel pulling alongside. The seas were moderate; skill was required to take the paddlers and their craft aboard without harm or damage. The lieutenant accomplished the rescue without incident, Angio wrote in the ship's log, no other comment being necessary.
Upon her return to dock, a messenger found her aboard, saluted, presented her with a sealed envelope. Lieutenant Bethany Ferret was requested and required to appear at 1500 hours in the office of the base commander.
At 1459 hours she arrived, combed and brushed, trembling a little, a thick envelope of project plans under her arm.
She entered the commander's office precisely on time, saluted. "Lieutenant Bethany Ferret reporting as ordered, sir."
The commander nodded. "Sit down, Lieutenant." He turned in his chair, watched the docks, the row of sleek, snow-colored J-boats nosed into their berths, Strongpaw and Courageous on alert, closest to the sea, crews aboard, ready for immediate launch.
The office of the base commander, like the animal himself, was lean and polished. There were books in shelves on three walls, a fading photo of an old E-boat, Lieutenant Curtis Ferret standing proudly with his crew at the ladder to the bridge. On a cabinet, encased in glass, stood a scale model of a J-boat, finished to the smallest detail. Next to it a color picture of three kits tumbling on the grass at lakeside.
For a long while, the senior ferret did not speak. He turned back to his desk, glanced again at Bethany's service file, reviewed a line from her personal history: Officer's father, Artemis Ferret, plunged from bridge into white-water rapids attempting solo rescue of two kittens adrift on river ice. Both animals in distress were pushed to paws of shore personnel, surviving without injury. Rescuer lost in freezing water.
The commander stood, lifted a book that was open on his desk. "I have something to read to you, Lieutenant, from the FRS operations manual. Are you ready to hear this?"
Bethany sat erect on the edge of the wooden chair, her eyes watching his. "Yes, sir, I am."
"Then listen carefully, please." He turned a page. "'Service policy forbids the personal involvement of officers in the construction, maintenance or operation of FRS vessels except in performance of duties to which they have been assigned by the Service.'"
The senior ferret sighed and closed the book. "Do you have any comment?"
"Yes, sir." Except in performance of duties assigned could only mean one thing.
The commander nodded. "Go ahead."
"Thank you, sir!"
"So this is no surprise."
"No, sir. You had no choice, sir. Sooner or later you had to let me do it."
The commander shook his head, a smile of surrender. He lifted a sealed envelope from his desk, handed it forth.
"Your orders, Lieutenant, are to salvage, overhaul and return to service our vessel J-101, the Ferret Rescue boat Resolute. When the work is complete, you are to command that vessel for her sea trials and active-duty service. May I quote, to the best of my recollection?"
The young ferret grasped the envelope, tears in her eyes. "Of course, sir."
The commander turned again tothe window, watched a returning J-boat drift slowly into its berth, ferrets on deck heaving its bow and stern lines ashore. "As this endeavor is in the best interests of the FRS and its mission to save and protect seagoing vessels and animal lives aboard them, you are requested and required to complete your mission as soon as ingenuity and perseverance can provide."
"Aye, aye, sir! Thank you, sir!"
She rose and stood wordless before him, wreathed in happiness. The commander gave her a salute of dismissal, to which she responded. Then she embraced the elder ferret in delight.
"Excuse me, sir," she said, recovering her dignity. "Thank you, sir. You'll be proud, sir..."
"I'm already proud, Lieutenant. I'm expecting Resolute to stand alert this winter."
The young ferret caught her breath. It was an impossible schedule, to rebuild the boat and train a crew for rescue duty in two months' time.
"Aye, aye, sir!" She saluted and stepped toward the door.
"Oh, and one other thing."
Bethany turned. "Yes, sir?"
"If you need me to growl at somebody to make this happen, I trust you'll let me know."
She flashed a radiant smile. "I will, sir!"
*Not the next week, as the commander had expected, but that very afternoon, magic began. Maytime's floating crane was somehow borrowed, and the hulk of Resolute was raised on slings from the rocks, by a crew of Bethany-charmed ferrets. By sunset the boat was in dry dock, red-tagged for express overhaul.
Not the next day but that evening the wreck swarmed with workers recruited by the lieutenant, unable to resist the intensity in those dark eyes when she came to them for help.
Welder ferrets' torches cut and patched, sparks and puddles of molten steel spilling firefalls through the night. A crew of burly sea ferrets heaving a hydraulic ram straightened and set crushed bulkheads; electricians tore looms of wiring from the sea-shattered bridge and replaced them with new. Armor-glass windows, overhauled instruments and electronics appeared at dockside as if by special delivery and were soon taken aboard. It was a steel orchestra swept over the edge of chaos: rivet guns, pneumatic hammers, high-speed grinding wheels, carpenter's saws, the boat crowded with every manner of specialist.
By dawn Resolute's engines and generators had been winched free of the boat and trundled off to Powerplant Overhaul, her transmissions and driveshafts and propellers lifted out for inspection and balancing.
Shifts came and went as Bethany Ferret worked through, not noticing that she had tired at all. It was as though she had stored her sleep for this event; resolute as the boat she would command, she was everywhere at once, suggesting, ordering, flattering, pleading.
"You're saving lives," she told the engine ferrets below-decks. She hugged their chief, nearly twice her size. "Don't you want to be ready when the engines come back this afternoon, Boa? It's easier to check the radiators now than later..."
"This afternoon, Lieutenant?" Thebig ferret smiled at her. "We only pulled 'em last week! They'll not be ready for ninety days!"
Bethany stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. "I traded our engines for two just out of overhaul."
The chief's eyes widened. His paw still on her shoulder, he called to his foreferret, "A move on, there, Billy! You want to get a good look at those cooling and exhaust systems right now, the fuel supply system, engine mounts and shaft bearings! Our lieutenant here tells me we got lives waiting on us!"
Noise engulfed the once-abandoned vessel, tools and fires and heavy-equipment engines, orders and commands flying, radios blaring the songs of WhitePaw, Dook and Zsa-Zsa and the Show Ferrets while all paws worked.
Gradually the haze around the dry dock changed from welding smoke to the flying dust of dry barnacles and old paint, then at last to a mist of new enamel, white as sea- spray, Resolute in black at her bows, J-101 at her transom, RESCUE in flame-colored letters amidships.
At last, weeks from the afternoon she was taken from the rocks, the J-boat slipped back into the sea again, Lieutenant Bethany Ferret on the bridge. Her tail dragged with fatigue; she was thinner than she had been in the commander's office. Yet she trembled with excitement as her boat drifted loose-lined from dock. The ship's pennant fluttered in bright diagonal stripes, cherry-lemon colors flying from the crosstrees above, matching colors to the fresh crew-scarf tied neatly at Bethany's neck.
She pressed her interphone button. "Start Engine One, please, Boa."
"Starting One, ma'am," came the big ferret's voice in her headset.
The whir of the starter-motor, low at first, sliding swiftly up the scale to a sudden choking shudder, the whine blown away in heavy diesel thunder, rough and uneven for a moment, then quieter, smoother, the throttle drawn back.
She smiled. Life for my boat, she thought.
"Start Engine Two."
"Starting Two, ma'am."
The whir barely heard over the idle of the first engine, all at once J-101's second engine was firing, a faint cloud of black smoke from the exhaust. Bethany Ferret moved the telegraph handle forward.
"All engines ahead one-quarter."
"Ahead one-quarter, aye."
The boat trembled faintly, propellers turning.
She switched from interphone to the deck loudspeaker. "Away all lines," the officer said, her voice calm and even.
Mooring lines splashed into the water, hauled smartly aboard by paws from a volunteer crew.
A cheer went up from the pier, pride and relief, those exhausted animals glad with their new overhaul record, hoping not to see Lieutenant Bethany Ferret until they'd had a long rest.
Resolute's first trip was no more than a dozen boat-lengths, from dry dock to her berth alongside the other J-boats. There was much to be done before she'd be ready for sea: finishing crew and survivors' quarters belowdecks, crew selection and training exercises, sea trials for the boat and crew. A list of a hundred actions still needed before J-101 could back away from the berth into which she eased.
"All engines back a quarter," she said, spinning the helm hard to starboard.
"Back a quarter, aye."
Resolute inched sideways toward the rubber-shielded berth. "All engines stop."
"Engines stopped."
Now the boat drifted in silence. "Lines ashore," she said.
Ferrets sprang from deck to the land, fastened bow and stern and spring lines.
From the bridge to her hammock was only a few steps, yet Bethany barely made the distance. Her hat askew over her eyes, the gay new stripes of her crew-scarf still about her neck, she collapsed onto the blanket and fell instantly, profoundly asleep.
*The fever of work continued in the days ahead, but at least, she thought, it's a fever I control. Instead of cajoling, pleading for the needs of her boat, Bethany was flooded in choices. She required four crew members. At once she had formal requests from a dozen sea ferrets and informal offers from a dozen more. An offer even from Boa, the big chief engine ferretfrom dry dock, who once had sworn he wanted a hammock on land and never go back to sea.
Her volunteers had watched her breathe her spirit into J-101, had seen her drag the vessel back to life by her own fierce will. They knew that she would demand as much of them: three paws for the boat and one paw for yourself, still they applied to serve under the young officer, so much did they admire her spirit.
In her cabin, Bethany had studied their résumés over and again, interviewed, watched the eyes and hearts of those who would be her crew.
The last application was from Ensign Vincent Ferret, arrived yesterday from Sea Ferret Officers' School, following his sister to Maytime.
She set it down and sighed. Oh, Vink, she thought. If I take you aboard, someday I'll be ordering you into danger, maybe into death. I'll never do that.
His application rejected, herself nearly asleep, she heard his voice in her mind: "I chose this life same as you did, sis. If I'm not under your command I'll be under somebody else's, same risks. I'll trust you more, work harder for you than for anyone. I'll do whatever you ask. Let me come!"
She shook her head and slept. In her dreams she watched herself slip Resolute's candy-stripe crew-scarf about her brother's neck, and still asleep, she murmured, frightened for what she had done.
Copyright © 2002 by Saunders-Vixen Aircraft Company, Inc.