The Magic Labyrinth (19 page)

Burton started out the door. Since he hadn’t been ordered to any area, he considered himself a free agent. He’d go to the boiler or A deck and inspect the engine room and the ammunition rooms.

Just as he started down the steps to B deck, he heard pistol shots and shouting. They seemed to come from below, so he hurried down, wincing with pain every time his foot hit a step. When he got to A deck he saw a crowd halfway down the boat by the railing. He walked to it, made his way through the people, and looked down at the object of attention.

It was an oiler named James McKenna. He was lying on his side, a pistol near his open hand. A tomahawk was firmly wedged in the side of his skull.

A huge Iroquoian, Dojiji, stepped forward, stooped, and wrenched the tomahawk loose.

“He shot at me and missed,” he said.

King John should have issued orders by word of mouth, not by the loudspeaker system. Then McKenna might have been caught while in the act of pressing the ten pounds of plastic explosive against the hull in a dark corner of the engine room. It really made no difference, however. McKenna had walked away from the alcove the moment he’d heard the search order. He had been cool, and his bearing was nonchalant. But an electrician’s mate had seen him and challenged him, and McKenna had shot him. He had run then and shot and killed a man and a woman on his way to the railing deck outside. A search party, running toward him, had shot at him and failed to hit him. He’d wounded one of them but had missed Dojiji. Now McKenna lay dead, unable to tell them why he had tried to blow up the boat.

King John came down to look at the bomb. The clock was attached by wires to the fuse and the shapeless mass of plastic. Its hands indicated 10.20 minutes to go.

“There’s enough to blow a hole in the hull bigger than the starboard side itself,” a bomb expert said cheerfully. “Shall I remove it, Sire?”

“Yes. At once,” King John said coolly. “One thing, though. This doesn’t have a receiver radio, too, does it?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

John had frowned. He said, “Very strange. I just don’t understand this. Why should the deserters leave one of their number behind to set the time clock when they could far easier have blown it with a wireless frequency? McKenna could have been with them. They’d not have to put one of their own in danger. It doesn’t make sense.”

Burton was with the group of officers accompanying John. He said nothing. Why bother to enlighten him, if indeed what he had to offer was enlightening?

McKenna had shown up immediately after the raid from the
Parseval,
and he’d volunteered to replace one of the men killed in it. It seemed evident to Burton, or at least a strong possibility, that McKenna had been dropped off from a plane or via parachute or glider from the airship
Parseval.
What did the twentieth century call such people? The…“fifth column”…that was it. Clemens had planted this man for the day when the
Not For Hire
caught up with the
Rex.
He’d been ordered to blow up the boat when that day came.

What Burton didn’t understand was why Clemens had told McKenna to wait until then. Why hadn’t McKenna blown the boat at the first opportunity? Why wait for forty years? Especially since it was very likely that McKenna, after living with the
Rex
ites for so many years, might have found himself sympathetic with them? He’d be isolated from his fellows on the
Not For Hire
and almost inevitably, and subtly, his loyalties would transfer from those who’d become a distant memory to those he lived intimately with for a long time.

Or had Clemens not considered that?

That wasn’t probable. As anyone who’d read his works knew, Clemens was a master psychologist.

It was possible that Clemens had given McKenna orders not to destroy the
Rex
unless it was absolutely necessary.

King John gestured at the corpse and said, “Throw that filth into The River.”

It was done. Burton would have liked to find an excuse to have the body taken to the morgue. There he could open up the skull and inspect the cerebrum for a tiny black ball. Too late. McKenna would be opened up only by the fish.

Whatever had happened, it was over for McKenna. And though the one bomb had been found, the search continued for more. At last, it was called off. There was no secretly planted explosive device in the vessel or outside it. Divers had gone over every inch of the exterior of the hull.

Burton thought that the deserters, if they’d had their wits about them, would have made provisions to sink the craft before leaving. Then neither it nor the airplanes could have pursued them. But they were agents, loathing violence though able to deal with it if the situation required.

There had been only one way to make sure that McKenna was an agent of the Ethicals or an agent of Clemens.

One thing was certain. Podebrad and Strubewell were not saboteurs.

But why had they stayed aboard?

He thought about the problem, puzzling over it a while, then said, “Hah!”

They were volunteers. They’d elected to remain with the boat because there was someone or someones on the
Not For Hire
whom they wanted to make contact with. He or she or they might be enemies or friends, but the two had their reasons for wanting to get hold of the person or persons. So, they’d made the very risky decision to stay with the
Rex
through the battle. If the
Rex
won, which it might, though the odds now seemed against it, then the two, if they survived, would be able to get to whoever it was that was on Clemens’ boat.

But…how would the two know that the whoever was on the
Not For Hire
?

They might have some secret method of communication. Just what, Burton couldn’t imagine.

He got to thinking about the agents who’d deserted. Did they know about the boats in the cave on the shore of the polar sea and the door at the base of the tower?

He hoped that they hadn’t heard Paheri’s tale. As far as he knew, only he and Alice, Frigate, Loghu, Nur, London, Mix, Kazz, and Umslopogaas knew about the ancient Egyptian’s discovery. That is, they were the only ones on the boat who had. There would be others, perhaps many many people, who had heard Paheri’s tale firsthand and then second-, third-, and fourthhand.

However, for all he knew, X was among the deserters. Which meant that the agents would know about the hidden entrance, too.

Not necessarily. X might be posing as a friendly agent. He’d fled with them but planned to use them to get him to the tower. And then he’d see that they, like Akhenaton and the other Egyptians of his party, were rendered unconscious or dead.

Or perhaps…Podebrad and Strubewell somehow knew that X was on the
Not For Hire.

But…either one of the two could be X.

Burton shrugged. He’d just have to let events take their course until he saw a chance to influence them. Then he’d pounce like an owl on a mouse.

That wasn’t a good simile. The agents and the Ethicals were potentially more like tigers.

It didn’t make any difference to him. He was going to attack when he had to.

Again, he considered telling King John everything. Thus, he’d insure that the captured agents would not be executed on the spot. Of course, the agent would have to be knocked out before he could commit suicide. But with twelve to seize, fourteen if Strubewell and Podebrad were included, surely at least one would be unconscious…well, he’d wait a little more. He might not have to divulge anything to John.

The boat had stopped to anchor again while the scuba divers had inspected the hull. It had then resumed its upRiver course at top speed. But it put into shore again to hook up the metal cap to a grailstone. Dawn came; the stones thundered and lightninged. The cap was swung back into the boat, and it sped after the deserters once more. Shortly after breakfast, the motors of three planes were warmed up. Then Voss and Okabe took off in their biplane fighters and the torpedo-bomber roared out of the swung-open stern section from the launch dock.

The pilots would be able to spot the launch within an hour or two. What would happen after that was up to them, within the limits of John’s orders. He did not want the launch sunk or badly damaged because he needed it in the expected battle. The planes could fire on the launch and keep it from continuing upRiver, if possible. They must delay it until the
Rex
could catch up with it.

An hour and twenty-two minutes after fly off, Okabe reported in. The launch was sighted, and he’d tried to talk to the deserters by radio. He’d gotten no reply. The three planes would swing down over the boat in single file and fire machine guns at it. Not for long, however, since the lead bullets were too valuable, too needed for the fight against the
Not For Hire.
If a few bursts didn’t make the deserters surrender or turn downRiver or abandon the launch, then bombs would be dropped near the vessel.

Okabe also reported that the launch was several miles past the point where The Valley suddenly widened out. This was the area to which the launch had gone two months ago during the rewinding. Its crew had talked to many of the titanthrops, in Esperanto, of course, in an effort to recruit about forty as marines. King John had envisaged closing in with the
Not For Hire
and sending the forty ogres over in the van of the boarders. Two score like Joe Miller would wipe the decks of Clemens’ boat clean in short order. Nor would the mighty Miller be able to withstand the onslaught of so many of his fellows.

Much to John’s disgust and disappointment, his men had discovered that every titanthrop interviewed was a member of the Church of the Second Chance. They refused to fight and in fact tried to convert the crew.

It was probable that there were titanthrops who had not succumbed to the preachings of the missionaries. But there wasn’t time to look for them.

Now the airplanes lowered toward the launch while the people on shore, part of them average-sized Homo sapiens, part veritable Brobdingnags, lined the banks to watch these machines.

Suddenly, Okabe said, “The launch is heading for the right bank!”

He dived but not to fire. He couldn’t have hit the launch without also hitting many locals, and he was under orders not to anger them in any way if he could help it. John didn’t want to go through a hostile area after the
Rex
had sunk the
Not For Hire.

“The deserters are jumping out of the launch and wading to the bank!” Okabe said. “The launch is drifting with the current!”

John cursed and then ordered the torpedo-bomber to land on The River. Its gunner must board the launch and bring it back to the
Rex.
And he must do it quickly before some local decided to swim out and appropriate the launch for himself.

“The deserters are mingled with the crowds,” Okabe said. “I imagine they’ll head for the hills after we’ve left.”

“God’s teeth!” John said. “We’ll never be able to find them!”

Burton, in the pilothouse at this time, made no comment. He knew that the agents would later steal a sailboat and continue upRiver. The
Rex
would overtake it, if the
Rex
wasn’t sunk or too damaged to continue.

A few minutes after the launch was reberthed in the
Rex
and the two fighters had landed, a light on the pilothouse radio glowed orange. The operator’s eyes widened, and he was so astonished he couldn’t speak for a moment. For thirty years he and his fellow operators had waited for this to happen, though they’d not really expected it would.

At last the operator got the words out.

“Sire, Sire! The Clemens frequency!”

The frequency which the
Not For Hire
used was, of course, known. It could have been changed by Clemens, though even then the radio of the
Rex
would have scanned the spectrum until it had located it. But apparently Clemens had never seen any reason to shift to another wavelength. The few times that the
Rex
had received transmission from the
Not For Hire
, the message had been scrambled.

Not now. The message was not for the
Parseval
or the airplanes or launches of the
Not For Hire.
It was in non-scrambled Esperanto and meant for the
Rex.

The speaker was not Sam Clemens himself. He was John Byron, Clemens’ chief executive officer. And he wished to talk to, not King John, but his chief officer.

John, who’d gone down to his quarters for sleep or dalliance with his current cabinmate, or both, was summoned. Strubewell did not dare to talk to Byron until his commander authorized it. John was at first determined to talk directly to Clemens. But Clemens, through Byron, refused to do that nor would he say why.

John replied, through his first mate, that there would be no communication at all then. But, after a minute, while the radio hissed and crackled, Byron said that he had a message to deliver, a “proposition.” His commander dared not speak to John face to face, as it were. Clemens was afraid that he’d lose his temper and cuss out King John as no one else in the universe had ever been cussed out before. And that included Jehovah’s denunciation of Satan before He hurled him headlong from Heaven.

Clemens had a sporting offer to make John. However, it was necessary, as John should now understand, that it be transmitted via intermediaries. After waiting half an hour to make Clemens swear and fume and fret, John replied via Strubewell.

Burton was again in the pilothouse and heard everything from the beginning. He was staggered when Clemens’ “proposition” was put forth.

John heard it all out, then replied that he’d have to talk about this to Werner Voss and Kenji Okabe, his top fighter pilots. He couldn’t order them to accept these conditions. And, by the way, who were Clemens’ two pilots?

Byron said that they were William Barker, a Canadian, and Georges Guynemer, a Frenchman. Both were famous aces of World War I.

There was more identification of the pilots. Their histories were expanded upon. John called Voss and Okabe to the pilothouse, and he told them what had happened.