The Dark Design

  “All the ballast!” Frisco shouted.

  Suddenly they were out of the clouds, but the blackness was now a dark gray. They could see well enough to discern the treetops spinning just below them.

  Frisco left his post to help the others throw the bags and the water containers out. Before anything could be cast overboard, before Nur could punch a button to release the ironshot ballast, the car crashed into the upper branches of an irontree. Again, they were knocked down. Helpless, they heard crashing noises. But the branches bent, then straightened out, hurling the car upward and into the envelope.

  The car fell back, was caught once more by the almost unbreakable branches. Its occupants were rattled around as if they were dice shaken in a cup.

  Frigate was battered, bruised, and stunned. Even so, he had wits enough left to envision the punishment the plastic pipes were taking. They were being violently bent between car and bag.

  If… oh, God, make it not so!… if the pipes were torn loose from the bag… if the points of the branches gutted the bag… the car would fall to the ground… unless it was held among the branches or the net was tangled among them.

  No. Now the car was rising.

  But would the balloon go straight up? Outward toward The River? Or would it be hurled against the side of the mountain and the envelope ruptured against outcroppings?

  While the rainstorm was at its height, the airship came over the mountain from the north. Lightning, the only illumination, tore the skies. The radar swept over the Valley, over the treetops, across the spires of rock, across The River, and zeroed in on the great boat. The passive radar detector indicated that the boat’s own radars were not operating. After all, the boat was at anchor, and why use the radar when no enemy was expected?

  The huge hatches in the belly of the ship opened. The helicopter, sitting on a platform, began rotating its vanes. Inside were thirty-one men, Boynton at the controls, de Bergerac by his side. Arms and boxes of plastic explosive were stacked in the rear.

  As soon as the motors were warmed up, Boynton gave the high sign. Szentes, the C.P.O. in charge, listened to the phone on the bulkhead, getting the last-minute report on the wind. Then he whipped a little flag up and down. Go!

  The copter lifted within the huge bay, moved sidewise off the platform, hovered over the opening, the bay lights glancing off its windshield and the tips of the whirling vanes. Then it dropped as a stone, and de Bergerac, looking up through the windshield, saw the colossal ship merge into the black clouds and disappear.

  Cyrano knew that the two-man glider would be launched from it within a minute. Bob Winkelmeyer would be piloting it; James McParlan would be his passenger. Winkelmeyer was a West Point graduate, a flier who had been shot down by a Zero during a scouting flight over an island north of Austrailia. McParlan had been rather famous in the 1870s. A Pinkerton detective, he had infiltrated into the Mollie Maguires, a secret terrorist organization of Irish coal miners in Pennsylvania. Under the name of James McKenna, he had penetrated deep into the gang, narrowly escaping detection and death a number of times. As a result, the Maguires were arrested, nineteen of them were hanged, and the mine owners continued to exploit their employees.

  Winkelmeyer and McParlan would land in The River and there sink their glider. Later, if they got a chance, they would enlist aboard the Rex. There would be vacancies, since it was doubtful that the raiding party could pull off a coup without killing some of the crew of the Rex.

  As Sam Clemens had said to the two, “Rotten John doesn’t have a monopoly on double agents. Suck up to him, boys, get him in your confidence. That is, if the raid fails, do it. Maybe you won’t have to. But I know that slippery character. He’s the greased pole the monkey couldn’t climb.

  “So, if he gets out of it, you’ll join his crew. And then, when Armageddon comes, you’ll blow up his boat. It’ll be as if Gabriel had planted two angels in the guise of devils in Hell.”

  The helicopter plunged into the clouds. Lightning cracked open the world, slicing like a flaming sword between earth and heaven. Thunder roared. Rain pelted the windscreens, dimming vision. The craft’s radar, however, saw the boat, and, within two minutes, the lights of their target shone weakly.

  Boynton took the chopper at a forty-five degree slant toward the boat, then dropped it until it was close to The River. At full speed, while lightning tore the fabric of the night, it sped a meter above the surface. Now the lights from the wheelhouse and along the decks grew bigger and brighter.

  Abruptly, the copter lifted, shot over the edge of the flight deck, stopped, poised, and sank. Its wheels struck the surface, and it bounced a little. But it settled down, the vanes chirruped as they slowed, and its hatches burst open.

  By the time de Bergerac was on the deck, the motors had been turned off. Boynton was helping men out on his side; Cyrano was ordering a man in the craft to hand out the boxes of bombs.

  Cyrano glanced at the top deck of the pilothouse. So far, no one was looking out of its stern window, no alarms had been raised. Their luck was even better than they had expected. Incredibly, there were no sentinels. Or, if there were, they had noticed nothing untoward. Perhaps they felt very safe in this area. A large part of the crew might even be on shore leave. And the sentinels might be goofing off, sleeping, drinking, or making love.

  De Bergerac took out the Mark IV pistol and patted the hilt of his épée. “Follow me!” Five men raced after him. Two other groups took off on their appointed duty. Boynton stayed in the copter, ready to start the motor at the necessary time.

  The flight deck was an extension of the overhead of the texas. The Frenchman ran down it toward the pilothouse, the feet of his men thudding on its oaken surface. Arriving at the entrance to the second deck of the pilothouse, he paused. Now someone was shouting from the open port of the wheelhouse above him. Cyrano ignored him and plunged through the doorway. The others followed him up the steel ladder. Before the last man had gotten through, a shot sounded. Cyrano looked back down. “Anybody hit?” he shouted.

  The man behind him, Cogswell, said, “He missed me!”

  Alarms were ringing above, and from a distance came the whooping of a siren. Within seconds, other sirens joined it.

  The second deck was a brightly illuminated corridor lined by cabins in which the chief officers and their women would be quartered. Hopefully, John Lackland would be in the cabin on the left, just below the ladder leading up to the bridge or wheelhouse. Clemens had planned to use that cabin, since it was the largest, and it was not probable that John would take a smaller one.

  There were four doors on each side of the passageway. One of these opened as de Bergerac plunged in. A man stuck his head out. De Bergerac aimed the pistol at him, and the man slammed the door shut.

  Quickly, working as planned, each of the six pulled a device from his belt. These had been delivered from the machinist’s shop only an hour before, and two men carried an extra. They were short bars of duraluminum with long, heavy steel nails in each end. Fitted over the side of the door and the bulkhead, they were driven by heavy hammers into the oak. A determined person in the cabin could batter them out in time, but by then, if all went as planned, John and his abductors would be gone.

  There were shouts and screams coming from inside the cabin. One man tried to push a door open while Cogswell was hammering. He dropped the hammer and fired through the narrow opening, not attempting to shoot the man. The door closed, and he quickly finished his work.

  By now, John would have been informed via intercom that the boat was under attack. But the noise in the corridor would have been enough to inform him that the invaders were there. He did not need the explosion of the pistol to tell him that.

  Three men should also have rounded the pilothouse and be going up its fore ladder. However… ah, yes, here came one of the wheelhouse watch. He stuck a pale face around the corner of the entrance at the top of the ladder leading to the corridor. Now he was stepping out from it, a heavy .69-caliber pist
ol in two hands. He wore no armor.

  “Peste!”

  Though Cyrano hated to harm the man, whom he had never seen before, he aimed and fired.

  “Quelle merde!”

  Cyrano had missed, the plastic bullet shattering against the bulkhead beside the man. Some fragments must have struck him, for he screamed and staggered back, dropping his pistol and clutching his face.

  Cyrano was not an excellent shot. This was just as well, he told himself. If the bullet removed the man without greatly harming him, instead of killing him, its effect was even more desirable.

  Shots and yells came from the wheelhouse. That would mean that the three had gone up the aft ladder and were now keeping the watch busy.

  He strode to the door of the cabin in which John must be. There was no use asking its occupant to come out with hands up. Whatever the ex-monarch of England and half of France was, he was not a coward.

  Of course, it was possible that he was not aboard tonight. He might be on shore, roistering and wenching.

  Cyrano smiled as, reaching out from the side of the bulkhead, he tried the knob. The door was locked. So, the captain of the Rex was at home, though not receiving.

  A man’s voice cried out in Esperanto. “What is happening?”

  Cyrano grinned. It was King John’s baritone.

  “Captain, we’re being attacked!” Cyrano shouted.

  He waited. Perhaps John would fall for this trick, thinking it was the voice of one of his men, and open the door.

  An explosion sounded, followed by a bullet which would have hit him if he had been standing in front of the door. It was not one of your plastic missiles which would shatter against the oak. It was of the precious lead and made a respectably sized hole.

  He gestured at one of his men, and the fellow removed a package of plastic explosive from a small box. Cyrano stood to one side while his colleague, Sheehan, crouching low, pressed the explosive around the lock and over the hinges.

  Crafty John sent another bullet crashing though the wood. This was low, catching Sheehan in the skull just above his eyes. He fell back and lay staring, mouth open.

  “Quel dommage!”

  Sheehan had been a fine fellow. It was a pity that his funeral sermon was confined to, “What a pity!”

  On the other hand, he should not have been so careless as to put himself in the line of fire.

  Cogswell ran up to the corpse, retrieved the electrical line and battery, and walked swiftly backward, unreeling the line. Fortunately, Sheehan had inserted the fuse in the plastic, thus saving a few seconds. Everything was a matter of utmost speed, and seconds might mean the difference between success or failure.

  Cyrano retreated to the corner, flattened himself against the bulkhead, turned his head away, and stuck his fingers in his ears, opening his mouth at the same time.

  Though he could not see him, he could imagine Cogswell securing one end of the wire to a terminal of the battery, then touching the other with the other end of the wire.

  The explosion rocked and half-deafened him. Clouds of acrid smoke filled the corridor. Coughing, he felt his way along the bulkhead, touched the now open doorframe, dimly saw the blasted door lying over Sheehan’s body, and then he was inside the stateroom.

  He had dived in and then rolled sidewise, a maneuver made clumsy by the sheathed sword attached to his belt.

  Now he was up against something that felt like the legs of a bed. Almost directly above him, a woman was screaming. But where was John Lackland?

  A pistol boomed. Cyrano saw its flash through the smoke and was up and flying across the corner of the bed. His arms enfolded a thick and naked waist, and the tackled man went over sideways. There was a grunt, a flailing arm that struck Cyrano’s head without hurting him, and then the man went limp.

  Cyrano had his dagger out and against the man’s throat. “Make one move, and I’ll cut your throat!”

  There was no response. Was the fellow frozen with terror or was he faking?

  Cyrano’s other hand felt along the shoulder, up the neck, and along the head. The man did not move. Ah! A stickiness! John, if it was John, had struck his head and was indeed unconscious.

  Cyrano got up, groped along the bulkhead, and found the switch. The light showed a large room, luxuriously decorated and furnished by Riverworld standards. The smoke was clearing away now, revealing a very pretty and quite naked woman on her knees in the center of the bed. She had stopped screaming and was staring at him with huge blue eyes.

  “Get under the covers and stay there, and you won’t be hurt, mademoiselle. De Bergerac does not make war upon women. Unless they try to kill him.”

  The man sprawled on the deck was short and muscularly built and tawny haired. His blue eyes were open, and he was mumbling something. In a few seconds, he would be recovering his wits.

  Cyrano turned and saw why John had fired his pistol. Hoijes lay on his back on the floor, his chest torn open.

  “Mordioux!”

  He must have run in immediately after he had seen his colleague dive through the doorway. And John, seeing him outlined against the light from the corridor, had shot him. Doubtless, he, Cyrano, had not been fired at because the smoke was still too thick for him to be seen.

  Two of his men were dead so far. Perhaps there were others elsewhere. They would be left there, since it had been agreed that carrying off bodies would slow the getaway.

  Where were the others? Why had they not come in after him?

  Ah, here were Cogswell and Propp!

  Something hard struck him, lifted him up and backward, hurling him into a bulkhead. He fell down on his face, and lay there, while his ears rang and his head seemed to expand and collapse, expand and collapse, like an accordion. More heavy clouds of smoke filled the room, stinging his eyes and making him cough violently.

  It was some time before he could get onto his knees and more time before he managed to stand. By then he understood that a bomb had gone off in the corridor. Had it been thrown down from the wheelhouse?

  Whoever had done it, he had killed Cogswell and Propp. And he had come close to killing Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac.

  John was on his knees now, swaying, staring ahead of him while he coughed. A pistol lay within reach of his hand, but he did not seem aware of it.

  Ah, now the vile fellow had extended his hand to grasp its butt!

  Having neither gun nor dagger, Cyrano unsheathed his épée. He stepped forward and brought its triangular blade down like a club against the back of John’s head. John fell forward on his face and lay motionless.

  The woman was on her face on the bed, her hands covering her ears and her shoulders shaking.

  Cyrano staggered through the smoke, almost stumbling over Propp’s body. He stopped when he reached the doorway. His sense of hearing was coming back, but the firing in the corridor sounded faint. He got down on his knees and dared to stick his head out. The smoke was being carried away by the draft from the doorway at the top of the ladder. A body lay at the foot of the ladder. Evidently someone from the wheelhouse, perhaps the bomb-thrower. Down at the end of the corridor two men crouched, firing out through the entrance. They were raiders, Sturtevant and Velkas.

  Now two men, smoke-grimed, were coming down the ladder. Reagan and Singh. They must have cleaned out the wheelhouse and were coming to help the abduction party. Their aid was indeed needed.

  Cyrano got up and gestured at them. They said something, but he could not hear it. That bomb must have been a rather large one. It had certainly made a mess of the corridor.

  Reagan and Singh entered the cabin and picked up the limp body of John. Cyrano followed them after sheathing his sword and reloading his pistols. The woman continued to hide her face in the mattress and to keep her hands over her ears. See no evil, hear no evil.

  On stepping out of the cabin, he saw that Sturtevant and Velkas had left. So—whoever they had been shooting at had been eliminated. Reagan and the giant Sikh, dragging John, his hea
d lolling, his feet trailing, were almost to the door.

  Velkas reappeared, running by the three men, shouting something at them. They kept on while Velkas sped to Cyrano.

  By putting his mouth against Cyrano’s ear and yelling, Velkas made himself understood. Some of John’s crew had gotten to a steam machine gun. But their backs would be exposed to fire from John’s cabin.

  They ran into the cabin and looked out a port. To the right was a platform which extended over the edge of the flight deck. On it was mounted the thick barrel of a steam gun. Two men were behind its shield, swinging the weapon around to bear on the helicopter.

  To his left, below him, were Sturtevant and the two carrying John. They would also be in the line of fire of the gun.

  Cyrano opened the wide, square port, braced his pistol on its ledge, and fired. A second later, Velkas’ gun boomed in his ear, deafening him even more.

  They emptied their pistols. At this distance accuracy was impossible. The Mark IV pistols were using precious lead bullets, but the charges required to propel .69-caliber missiles caused a powerful recoil. Moreover, the wind, though slight, had to be compensated for.

  The first two volleys missed. Then the gunner fell sidewise and the other man, taking over, dropped a few seconds later. Neither may have been struck by a direct hit. The shield could have made the bullets ricochet. It did not matter. The effect was the same.

  By then, Sturtevant and the man dragging John were halfway across the deck. The chopper’s vanes were whirling, but Cyrano could not hear them. Even if his hearing had been regained, the alarm sirens would have drowned out their noise.

  Cyrano grabbed Velkas’ arm and pulled him close. Shouting in his ear, he told him to get to the machine gun and hold off anybody who tried to attack. He gestured at the armed men who had just emerged from a hatch at the far end of the deck.