Fire belched from the stack. Dyname took off like an Independence Day rocket, and the searchlight beam skittered away in the wrong direction.

“O.K., Captain. You’ve told me why and you’ve shown me why. But you still haven’t shown me what.”

“I’ll lay a course for the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

A NEW DAY WAS LIGHTING the tops of the Brooklyn Bridge towers as Dyname sliced into the East River. Bell was still at the helm, and he steered under the bridge and bore right, toward the navy yard. From the water he could see numerous ships under construction on the ways and in the dry docks. Falconer pointed to the northernmost way, which was isolated from the others. He called down the voice pipe to the engine room to disengage the propellers. The tide was slack. Dyname drifted on her momentum to the foot of the way, where its rails angled into the water. Above her soared a gigantic skeletal frame partially sheathed in steel plate.

“Hull 44, Mr. Bell.”

Isaac Bell drank in the noble sight. Even with her frames awaiting more armor, there was a majesty to her flaring bow, an eagerness to join the water, and a promise of power as yet unleashed.

“Keep in mind she doesn’t even officially exist yet.”

“How can you hide a six-hundred-foot ship?”

“It resembles a hull that Congress authorized,” Captain Falconer answered with an almost imperceptible wink. “But, in fact, from her keel to the top of her cage mast she will be chockful of brand-new ideas. She will have all the latest in turbines, guns, torpedo protection, fire control. But most important, she is uniquely designed to continue improving by swapping new innovations for old. Hull 44 is far more than one ship. She’s the model for entire classes to be built, and the inspiration for ever-more-innovative, ever-more-powerful super-dreadnoughts.”

Falconer paused dramatically. Then he intoned in a hard, grim voice, “And that is why Hull 44 is targeted by foreign spies.”

Isaac Bell raked Captain Falconer with a cold eye.

“Are you surprised?” he asked curtly.

Isaac Bell had had it with Falconer’s attempts to lead him in circles. As inspiring a sight as the great ship was, and as much as he had relished driving a fifty-knot race yacht he would have better spent the night combing Hell’s Kitchen for the man who murdered Alasdair MacDonald.

Falconer backed off when he heard Bell’s cold retort.

“Of course everyone spies,” the captain admitted. “Every nation with a naval shipyard or a treasury to buy a warship spies. How far ahead are their friends and enemies in guns, armor, and propulsion? What new next invention will make our dreadnought vulnerable? Whose gun is longer range? Whose torpedo goes farther? Whose engines are faster, whose armor stronger?”

“Vital questions,” Bell concurred. “And it is normal—even for nations at peace—to seek the answers.”

“But it is not normal,” Falconer shot back. “And certainly not right for nations at peace to commit sabotage.”