“Care to try her?” Falconer asked casually.

Isaac Bell grabbed the helm.

“Steer around the bigger seas,” Falconer recommended. “If you bury the bow, those nine propellers will drive us straight to the bottom.”

The helm was remarkably responsive, Bell thought, capable of whisking the hundred-foot yacht left and right with a twitch of the spokes. He dodged big seas repeatedly, getting a feel for how she handled. In half an hour they were more than twenty-five miles from land.

Bell saw a flicker of light in the distance. A deep rumbling noise began rolling in the night.

“Are those guns?”

“Twelves,” said Falconer. “See the flash?”

Orange-and-red flames lanced the dark ahead.

“Those higher-pitched sounds are 6s and 8s. We’re inside the Sandy Hook Atlantic Test Range.”

“Inside? While they’re shooting?”

“While the cat’s away the mice will play. The senior captains are circumnavigating the world with the Fleet. My boys are right there, learning their trade.”

Powerful beams of light bristled into the sky.

“Searchlight exercise,” said Falconer. “Battleships hunting destroyers, destroyers hunting battleships.”

Sweeping sky and water, the searchlights suddenly converged on a battleship, previously invisible in the dark, and lit bright as noon a low-slung white hull hurling spray.

“Look! That’s just what I’ve been telling you about. That’s New Hampshire. She wasn’t yet commissioned when the Fleet sailed. Just finished her shakedown. Watch what happens to her foredeck.”

The searchlights showed seas breaking over the battleship’s bow and deluging her forward guns.

“Decks awash in light seas! Guns underwater! Told you paint will be the easy part. We need higher freeboard and flared bows. Our newest capital ship has a ram bow, for God’s sake, like we’re going to war with Phoenicians!”

Bell saw a wave strike her anchor billboard and scatter in blinding clouds.

“Now, watch her on the roll. See that armor belt rising? . . . Now, watch it disappear as she rolls back and submerges it. If we don’t extend our armor to protect the ships’ undersides when they roll, the enemy will draft small boys to sink them with peashooters.”

A searchlight swung their way, probing the dark like an angry white finger.

“Goggles!”

Bell covered his eyes with the black goggles just in time. An instant later the light that caught Dyname would have blinded him. Through the blackened glass he could see clear as day.

“Searchlights are as powerful as big guns,” Falconer shouted.

“They’ll completely disorient every man on the bridge and blind the spotters.”

“Why are they aiming at us?”

“It’s a game we play. They try to catch me. Good practice. Though once they get your range it’s impossible to shake them loose.”

“Oh, really? Hang on, Captain!”

Bell yanked back on the throttle. Dyname stopped as if she had hit a wall. The searchlight beam soared ahead in the direction they had been steaming. Bell spun the helm with both hands. The light was coming back for him. He nudged the throttle lever as he steered the yacht at a right angle, waited for the propellers to bite, then rammed it forward.