The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (32 page)

Then they were in it. Graham snatched a quick breath and held it. They seemed to run head on into a wall of water, and for a few seconds there was nothing but green-and-white smother all around them. Then, when it seemed as though his bursting lungs could stand it no longer, Graham realized that his head was clear. The raft righted itself and there they were, drenched and coughing, and gripping their loops of rope with the grip of desperation. The raft still tossed, and water sloshed back and forth around their legs, but at least they could breathe. The machine gun and the other loose gear had disappeared, and the engine had stopped.

When he had coughed the water out of his lungs and squeezed the water out of his eyes, Graham looked towards the island. The air was filled with the screams of tens of thousands of terns flooded off their nests. In the dawn light he could now make out the rugged reddish-brown form of Ascension and see many of its forty volcanic cones, culminating in Green Mountain with its cloud cap.

As they watched, the land of the peninsula began to appear above the water—first a rock here and there, then continuous stretches, and finally the cliffs around the edges.

Meanwhile the backwash from the first wave sucked them northward around the tip of the peninsula. As the minutes passed the whole of the peninsula emerged, the water running off its top in sheets and cascades. The water slowly sank to its normal level; then another rise sent them spinning back westward around the tip of the peninsula again. However, this and subsequent waves came nowhere near submerging the peninsula; they merely rose and fell like speeded-up tides.

The four people in the raft, two human and two Krishnan, stared at the rusty, barren land. Graham picked up the bucket that was attached by a line to the raft and methodically began bailing.

“What was that?” said Varnipaz, coughing.

“What?” asked Sklar.

“I sounded like a voice crying for help. In—that direction, I think.” Varnipaz pointed.

“I don’t think nobody could have come through that alive,” said Sklar. “Probably one of these seagulls.”

Graham was fussing with the engine, which stubbornly refused to start. At last he got out the oars.

“If you’ll move a bit,” he said, “I’ll try to row. Mr. Sklar, you take the paddle in the stern.”

“You know about boats and thinks?” said Sklar with raised eyebrows.

“I’ve—uh—had a little experience.”

“Okus dokus, then you be captain.”

The sun was now half-above the horizon. Graham looked at Jeru-Bhetiru, who in her unembarrassed semi-nudity looked like the most desirable thing on earth. He asked: “Betty, why are you wearing that rig?”

She explained: “In Rio, I tried to get away when they were putting me into their airplane to fly out here. They caught me and my dress got so torn they gave me these instead. What is wrong with your arm? Were you wounded?”

“Just a graze,” he said, but submitted gladly to letting her bind up his wound.

The cry came again so that all could hear it. Sklar steered the raft in that direction. Presently as the swells lifted them they began to see a couple of black dots bobbing about between them and the shore. Graham pulled hard, and soon they drew alongside the swimmers. One was the fat bald Warschauer, the other a lemurlike extra-terrestrial: Adzik of Thoth.

“Well,” said Gordon Graham, “fancy meeting you here! Don’t b-be afraid; you’re among fiends.”

He reached for his pistol, but Sklar said: “Hey!
(cough)
Don’t shoot with your gun all wet. You’ll blow it up.”

Graham therefore hunted among the compartments of the raft until he found a fish spear in three sections. As the raft came closer to Warschauer, who struck out strongly and caught one of the ropes, Graham assembled the spear. He said to Warschauer: “All right, now t-tell us what this whole plot was about.”

“I’m not talking until I see my lawyer,” said Warschauer.

“Yeah?” said Graham, thrusting the spear into the man’s face. “Want me to stick this into your guts and turn it around a few times?”

“You wouldn’t do that!”

“Try and see. The s-same for you,” he told Adzik, who had paddled up alongside Warschauer and had hold of another rope.

Warschauer coughed up some sea water and said: “Okay, you win. Especially since it looks as though Adzik’s gang has double-crossed us. Adzik
(cough)
was the head of the syndicate on Earth; The’erhiya was just the hypnotist who kept us in line. he had control of me too, so I couldn’t tell you this except I’ve been half-drowned and that seems to break the hold.”

“What was the objective?” asked Graham.

“To colonize Gamanovia with Thothians, stupid.”

“How?”

“Adzik’s a member of a private syndicate, most of them government people as well. That’s how they do things on Thoth. They wanted Gamanovia raised ahead of time to break the contract so March would own the whole continent. Or rather Joe Aurelio, who bought the Rock from March.”

“What then?”

“Joe signed an agreement to sell the continent to the syndicate, who would in turn sell it (at a colossal profit) to the Thothian planetary government. Before Earth knew what was happening, the continent would be full of surplus Thothians dumped there from spaceships.”

“They couldn’t get away with that!”

“Think so? Remember the case of Thor versus Earth? When the Terrestrials grabbed a continent on a similar deal, and then argued that since ancient wrongs could never be righted they should be left in possession?”

“It’s not the same—”

“Legally it is. At that time the court set up the precedent that legal immigrants to a planet might not be expelled except for individual crimes.”

“But the W.F. wouldn’t allow this immigration in the first place!”

“How could they stop it? Under their constitution the right to limit immigration is reserved to the nations—and the World Court says that means immigration from other planets too.”

“But this immigration would be based on fraud! Kidnapping people, hypnotizing the project scientists . . .”

“Sure, but you’d have had a hell of a time proving that if the plans had gone through as scheduled.”

“So the W.F. spends billions to make a home for monkey-rats! Is that so, Adzik?” said Graham, pointing the spear at the Thothian.

“Yes,” squeaked Adzik, “though I must protest your use of the insulting term ‘monkey-rat.’ May we come aboard now? I am tired of swimming.”

“Okay, but one false move and back you go. Where are the rest?”

Warschauer snorted. “What d’you think? Drowned. Lundquist stopped a bullet before the tidal wave came. The’erhiya couldn’t swim, and the only reason we’re alive is I’m too fat to sink and Adzik swims like a seal. What the hell happened? Earthquake?”

“You’ll find out in the clink,” said Sklar. “Say, ain’t we driftink?”

The trade wind had indeed blown them several kilometers to the northwest. Graham made one more fruitless effort to start the motor, then got out the sail and the waterproof instruction book for setting it.

Half an hour later they had the sail rigged: a simple triangular lateen sail swung from the top of the stubby mast. Graham, who knew at least the theory of sailing if not the practice, thought he could tack back to Ascension. However, he soon found that despite its stiff rubber keel the shallow craft drifted to leeward faster than he could beat to windward. Ascension continued to recede.

“We’ll have to row,” he said. “Mr. Sklar, keep the spear on these two. Warschauer, take one oar and I’ll take the other. Betty, you take the paddle. Mr. Sklar, poke him every time he catches a crab.”

“How should I catch a crab out here?” asked Warschauer innocently.

Sklar, who had given up trying to light a soaked cigarette, asked: “How lunk are we going to last in this boat?”

“We’ve g-got food and water for some days in the compartments. And if we run out, there’s always our friends.” Graham nodded towards Warschauer and Adzik.

“I have been looking into the Earthly law on cannibalism,” said Varnipaz. “To kill a man for the main purpose of eating him is illegal, but if he dies for any other reason it is all right. So if Mr. Warschauer forces us to kill him by acting obstreperous . . .”

Warschauer’s expression showed that he considered this a joke in very poor taste.

With the oars they made time back towards the island. They were still a kilometer from shore when a noise overhead caused them to look up: a
swoosh
like that of a gasoline blow torch amplified. Graham recognized the blast of a spaceship’s rocket motor.

“There she is!” said Sklar, pointing.

Down came the ship, growing from a speck to a spot to a rocket standing on its tail. It dropped towards the northern peninsula of Ascension. To Graham it somehow looked neither like a standard Viagens Interplanetarias ship nor an Osirian ship . . .

“They have come!” squeaked Adzik. “We are saved! Warschauer, we can still put it over! The contract is in March’s safe, winch is still in his house even if wet!”

“Hey!” said Sklar, gripping his spear.

The spaceship hovered over the peninsula, drifting this way and that as the pilot sought a patch of level ground. Then down it came on its tail in a burst of steam and dust from the earth beneath. The jet sputtered and died.

The Thothian shrieked: “If we can get my people to destroy these, there will be no more evidence! They are the only ones who know the whole story! Follow me!”

As Adzik dived overboard, Sklar sent a futile jab after it. The raft rocked as Warschauer, too, went over the side.

“Throw the spear!” said Varnipaz.

As Sklar hesitated with the unfamiliar weapon the fugitives drew out of range, Warschauer holding the tail of the powerfully swimming Thothian.

“Grab that oar!” said Graham to Varnipaz.

They started rowing vigorously, but it soon transpired that with the wind against them they were outclassed.

Jeru-Bhetiru said: “Little people like Adzik are getting out of the spaceship.”

“They’re Thothians, all right,” said Sklar. “Look up!”

Overhead appeared six more dots, circling slowly and balancing on their jets.

“The rest of the Thothian colonists,” said Sklar.

Graham said between strokes: “They won’t—land until the—first ones mark—out level spaces—for them. And—that’ll take some time on Ascension.”

Jeru-Bhetiru said: “Adzik and Warschauer have reached the shore. They are standing up. A big wave knocks Warschauer down, but he is getting up . . . The Thothians from the ship are running down to shore . . . They are talking . . .”

Sklar said: “You guys better head out to sea again. They’re settink up some kind of gun.”

The raft spun and headed back northwest, faster because the sail now helped. Again Ascension shrank until the Thothians became mere moving specks. Now that he was facing shoreward, Graham could see that they were indeed setting up some kind of weapon, though it was too far for details. He hoped that, being crowded with colonists, the ship could not have carried anything heavy.

Something went
wheep,
and there was a loud crack. A column of water rose in the air near the raft.

Wheep-crash
! Another, nearer.

“They’ve got us—ranged now,” panted Graham. “The next one’ll get us . . .”

Wheep-crash
! But this was farther instead of nearer.

“My God!” said Sklar. “Look!”

A long gray shape had emerged from the waters of the South Atlantic, water running off its decks in sheets, and was now accelerating to full surface speed. As its atomic engines forced it up to sixty knots or more towards Ascension, spray leaped in huge splashes as its pointed nose butted through the waves. The column of water from the last explosion towered in this ship’s wake.

A cupola on the forward deck opened out and a girder structure appeared. With a
whoosht
a rocket leaped towards Ascension. The missile accelerated to a streak, its path curving as its guiding mechanism led it towards the spaceship.

“Cover your eyes!” cried Graham.

A blinding flash visible even through closed lids came from the island, followed by a tremendous roar and a puff of air blast that carried away the sail and almost upset the raft. When they opened their eyes, a huge cloud of smoke and dust was boiling up from the peninsula. The spaceship had vanished.

They sat half-stunned while the six spaceships overhead filed off to westward out of sight. The warship circled towards them.

Jeru-Bhetiru said: “Will that mean war between your planets?”

Sklar shook his head. “You can’t have real interplanetary war for logistic risens, yonk lady. Besides, the Thothian government will say these were private pipple and they are not responsible. Maybe there will soon be a new government on Thoth.”

The warship drew alongside to windward, the checkered flag of the World Federation flying from its staff. The name
Nigeria
became visible on the conning tower, and a crew with shiny black faces appeared on deck. A squirt of oil flattened the waves, and the sailors hoisted them aboard.

An African officer with a major’s stripes said: “I’m skipper and my name’s Nwafor. Are you Reinhold Sklar?”

Sklar introduced himself and his companions. Major Nwafor said: “We were out on a routine cruise from Freetown when we got a wireless from General Vasconcellos of the Brazilian Federal Police. He seemed to think there might be trouble at Ascension and asked us to stop by. We ordered that fellow to stop shooting, and when he fired at us we had to defend ourselves.”

Sklar looked up. “Where are the other Thothian ships goink?”

“I ordered them to Bahia, for arrest and internment. Now go below, please. When you get yourselves dried off I should like to hear your stories.”

The whine of turbojets made them look around. Against the western sky a seaplane with the markings of the United States of Brazil was bearing down on them.

“Late as usual,” grumbled Sklar, and led the others below.

IX.

On the airliner for New York, Jeru-Bhetiru sat facing Graham and Varnipaz in an Earthly dress bought in Rio; an enchanting sight even if the costume made less of her mammalian attractions than her native garb. The others’ hair was beginning to grow out again after they had discarded their helmets and wigs for good. She said: “I am so sorry about that poor Mr. Gil. It was not worthwhile rescuing me if he had to get killed in the doing.”