The Dark Design (50 page)

Greystock seated himself before the control panel. Within a few minutes he had brought the ship down to about 91 meters or 300 feet from The River. He turned it then and headed toward the boat.

The vast white vessel was stopped in The River, its four paddle wheels spinning just enough to hold it steady. A big launch had put out from its port in the stern and was going around the boat to pick up the parachutists, now struggling in the water.

Both banks were crowded with sightseers, and at least a hundred watercraft were sailing or being paddled toward the three ’chutists.

Steam spurted from the catapult, and the monoplane shot out from the deck. Its silvery fuselage and wings shone grayly as it began to climb toward the airship.

Clemens’ voice yammered from the receiver. “What the damnation-to-hell-and-gone are you doing, John?”

“Just coming back to make sure that my men are safe,” Greystock said.

“Of all the numbskulls!” Clemens screeched. “If your brains were expanded tenfold, they would still rattle around in a gnat’s ass! This is what comes from trying to make a mink cap from a pig’s anus! I told Firebrass that he shouldn’t let a medieval baron near a dirigible!

“‘Greystock’s from the dumbest, most arrogant, most untrustworthy class you could find!’ I told him. ‘A medieval nobleman!’

“Jumping Jesus H. Christ! But no, he argued that you had the potentiality, and it would be a nice experiment to see if you could adjust to the Industrial Age!”

Joe Miller’s voice rumbled. “Take it eathy, Tham. If you pithth him off, he’ll refuthe to attack Chohn’th boat.”

“Thyove it up your athth!” Clemens said mockingly. “When I need advice from a paleoanthropus, I’ll ask for it.”

“You don’t need to get inthulting chutht becauthe you’re mad, Tham,” Miller said. “Thay! Did it occur to Your Machethty that maybe Greythock ith up to thomething rotten? Maybe he thold out to that aththhole, King Chohn?”

Greystock cursed. That hairy, comical-looking colossus of an apeman was much shrewder than he looked. However, Clemens, in his towering fury, might ignore him.

By then the airship, her nose down at ten degrees to the horizontal, was heading straight for the boat. Her altitude was now 31 meters and dropping.

Von Richthofen’s plane zoomed by within 15 meters. He waved at Greystock, but he looked puzzled. He would have been listening in on the radio conversation, of course.

Greystock punched a button. A rocket sprang from its launch under the port fore-engine gondola. The dirigible gained altitude as it was relieved of the weight of the missile. Spurting tailfire, the long, slim tube swerved toward the silver plane, the heat locater in its nose sniffing the craft’s exhausts. Richthofen’s face wasn’t visible, but Greystock could imagine his expression of horror. He had about six seconds to get out of the cockpit and take to his parachute. Even if he escaped, he’d be lucky at this altitude if it opened in time.

No, he was not going to jump. Instead, he had wing-overed the plane and sent it diving at the water. Now it was straightening out just above the surface. There flashed the rocket. And now the missile and the aircraft disappeared in a ball of flame.

By then, the flight crew was frantically running another plane to the catapult. The balloon crew, distracted by the sirens and horns and the sudden frenzied activity, had stopped hauling their charge down. Greystock hoped they would not have the presence of mind to cut it loose. The huge aerostat would be a drag when the boat tried to maneuver swiftly.

Through the transceiver, the wail of sirens and Clemens’ voice, almost as high pitched as the alarms, came faintly.

The boat began to pick up speed and to turn at the same time. Greystock smiled. He had hoped that the
Mark Twain
would present her broadside. He punched a button, and the airship, relieved of the weight of two heavy torpedoes, soared. Greystock raised the elevators to depress the ship’s nose even farther, and he pushed the throttles in to full-speed position.

The torpedoes struck the water with a splash. Two wakes foamed from behind them. The transceiver yelped with Clemens’ voice. The giant boat quit turning and sped at an angle toward the bank to the left. Rockets spurted up from its decks. Some of them arced down toward the torpedoes and exploded immediately after plunging below the surface. Others headed toward the dirigible.

Greystock swore in Norman French. He hadn’t been quick enough. But the torpedoes would surely hit the boat, and if they did, King John’s orders would have been carried out.

But he did not want to die. He had his own mission.

Perhaps he should have dropped the bombs while he was passing over the boat. She had veered off when he had tried to get directly over her, and he had not wanted to change course too abruptly. He should have neutralized the crew earlier and then told Clemens he was bringing the airship in close so everybody could have a good look at her.

During these thoughts, he had automatically punched the button which released all his rockets. They headed toward the boat’s missiles, their heat detectors locked into the tail flames of the boat’s, just as the boat’s rockets were locked into the tail flames of his missiles.

The explosions from rockets meeting rockets shook the airship. Smoke spread before him, veiling the boat. Then he was through the dark clouds and almost on the
Mark Twain.

By God’s wounds! One torpedo had just missed the starboard corner of the stern, and the second was going to hit it! No, it wasn’t! Its side had touched the corner, and it had veered off! The boat had somehow escaped both!

Now Clemens’ voice, yammering, told him that no more rockets would be released. Clemens was afraid that the airship would explode and, carried by the wind, would fall flaming onto the boat.

The balloon, trailing its plastic cable, was floating downRiver, rising at the same time.

Clemens had forgotten that the airship’s bombs had not yet been released.

The second airplane, a two-seater amphibian, shot below him. Its pilot looked upward in frustration at him. They were too close to each other and he was going too fast to swing up to the right and shoot the nose machine guns. But the gunner in the cockpit behind the pilot was swinging his twin machine guns around. Every tenth bullet would be a tracer, phosphorous coated. Only one in a gas cell was needed to ignite the hydrogen. The
Minerva
was only 152 meters from the
Mark Twain
and was closing fast. Its motors were going at top speed. This, plus a 16-km/h tailwind, meant that the boat could not possibly get away in time.

If only he could drop the bombs before the tracer bullets struck. Perhaps the gunner would miss. By the time he got his guns around, the airplane would be past the airship.

The side of the boat loomed up. Even if the dirigible wasn’t hit by the tracers, she was so near the boat that the bombs would blow up both vessels.

Estimating the arrival time of the
Minerva
over the paddle wheeler, he set the release mechanism of the bombs with a twist of his wrist. Then he got out of the seat and dived through the open port. No time to put on a parachute. Besides, he was too near the water for it to open in time. As he fell, he was struck by a wave of air like a colossal winnowing fan. He spun, unconscious, unable even to think fleetingly of how he had lost his second-in-command under John Lackland. Or his plans to get rid of John and take over the captainship of the
Rex Grandissimus
for himself.

Peter Frigate had boarded the
Razzle Dazzle
a week after New Year’s Day of year 7
A.R.D.
Twenty-six years later, he was still on the schooner. But he was getting sailweary and discouraged. Would the ship ever arrive at the headwaters?

Since he had first stepped aboard, he had passed, to starboard, 810,000 grailstones. That meant he’d traveled about 1,303,390 kilometers or 810,000 miles.

He had started in the equatorial zone, and it had taken a year and a half to get into the arctic regions, going not as the crow flies but as the snake wriggles. If The River had been as straight as a ruler, it would have taken the ship there in less than six months, maybe five. Instead, it was as twisted as a politician’s campaign promises after election.

The first time the ship was in the arctic, just after The River had definitely turned for its southward journey, Frigate had proposed that they proceed northward on foot. The polar mountains could not be seen, yet they must be relatively near. Tantalizingly so.

Farrington had said, “And just how in blue blazes can we get over those?”

He had gestured at the unbroken stone verticality to the north. Here it rose to an estimated 3650 meters or a little less than 12,000 feet.

“In a balloon.”

“Are you nuts? The wind blows south here. It’d take us
away
from the polar mountains.”

“The surface wind would. But if the meteorological patterns are the same here as on Earth, the upper polar winds should be flowing northeastward. Once the balloon got high enough to get in their stream, it’d reverse direction, get blown toward the pole.

“Then, when we got near mountains that’re supposed to ring the supposed sea, we’d come down. We’d have no chance of getting over those mountains in the balloon, if they’re as high as they are said to be.”

Farrington had actually turned pale when he’d heard Frigate’s proposal.

Rider, grinning, said, “Didn’t you know that the Frisco Kid doesn’t even like the
idea
of air travel?”

“That isn’t it!” Martin said, glaring. “If a balloon
could
get us there, I’d be the first to board it. But it won’t! Anyway, how by the high muckamuck are we going to make a balloon even if we could travel on one?”

Frigate had to admit that it couldn’t be done. At least, not in this area. To make a balloon and fill it with hydrogen was impossible. There were no necessary materials here. Or anywhere else, as far as he knew.

However, there was another method they might consider. How about a hot-air balloon to carry a rope up to the top of the mountain?

Even as he spoke, he had to laugh. How could they make a rope 3650 meters long, one strong enough not to break under its own weight? What size of balloon would be needed to lift the enormous weight of the rope? One as big as the
Hindenburg
?

And how could they anchor the rope at the top of the mountain?

Grinning, Frigate proposed sending a man up in the rope-carrying aerostat. He could get off at the top and secure the balloon.

“Forget it!” Farrington said.

Frigate was happy to do this.

The
Razzle Dazzle
continued to sail southward, the wind behind it, its crew glad to get away from this gloomy, chilly area. There were some Old Stone Age people living here, but they had dwelt in the arctic regions on Earth. They did not know any better.

Since then, the schooner had crossed the equator and entered the south polar region nine times. At the moment, they were in the equatorial zone again.

Peter Frigate was sick of shipboard life. Nor was he the only one. Shore leave had been getting longer and longer for some time.

One day, while eating lunch on the bank, Frigate experienced two thrills in rapid sequence. One was the offering of his grail. For years he had been hoping to get peanut butter and a banana at the same time. Now, as he opened the lid of his grail, he saw the realization of his dream.

A gray metal cup in a rack was filled with smooth, delicious-odored peanut butter. Across another rack was the yellow-brown-spotted form of a banana.

Grinning, slavering, chortling, he unpeeled the fruit and smeared one end with the peanut butter. Close to crooning with delight, he bit off the combination.

It was worth being resurrected if only for the food.

A moment later, he saw a woman walking by. She was very attractive, but it was what she wore that widened his eyes. He got to his feet and, speaking Esperanto, approached her.

“
Pardonu min, sinjorino.
I couldn’t help observing that unusual armlet. It looks like brass!”

She looked down, smiling, and said, “
Estas brazo
.”

She accepted his proffered cigarette with a murmured, “
Dankon,
” and lit it. She seemed to be very amiable. Too much so, one person thought. Scowling, a tall, dark man strode up to them.

Frigate hastily assured him that his interest was not in her but in the armlet. The man looked relieved; the woman, disappointed. But she shrugged and made the best of it.

“It comes from upRiver,” she said. “It cost one hundred cigarettes and two hornfish horns.”

“Not to mention some personal favors on her part,” the man said.

The woman said, “Oh, Emil, that was before I moved in with you.”

“Do you know where it came from?” Frigate said. “I mean, where it was made?”

“The man who sold it to me came from Nova Bohemujo.”

Frigate gave the man a cigarette, and this seemed to ease the tension. Emil said that New Bohemia was a rather large state about nine hundred grailstones up The River. Twentieth-century Czechs made up its majority. The minority was composed of some ancient Gaulish tribe with, of course, the usual one or two percent of peoples from everywhere and every time.