The Dark Design

  Velkas nodded and ran out the door.

  Cyrano looked again through the porthole. The parties sent to blow up the paddle-wheel motors and the ammunition supply were not in sight. Either they were still working or they were cornered and trying to shoot their way out.

  He ran up the ladder and into the wheelhouse. Bodies lay on the deck. One of his men, two of John’s. The lights shone on their blue-gray faces, staring eyes, and open mouths.

  He turned off the alarm sirens and looked out the front screens. There was no one on the foredecks except a body at the foot of the ladder leading down from the forepart of the pilothouse and several bodies near the prow.

  The boat was alongside a well-lit dock far longer and more massive than those usually found along The River. Perhaps the crew of the Rex had built it, their captain having decided to give everybody a long liberty. Or perhaps extensive repairs were needed.

  It did not matter. What did was that the raiders had had the luck to find the boat manned only by guards and a few officers. John had decided to spend the night aboard, another item of luck, though not for him.

  However, the uproar had awakened those on shore. They were streaming out from the huts on the plain and the stockaded fortresses. The lights from the boat showed the forefront of the mob racing toward the dock. Many of these were crew members, since they carried metal weapons.

  It had not been in the plan to move the boat from the dock, but it should have been. Cyrano, knowing that the boat would be invaded in overwhelming numbers within a minute or so, took action. He sat down in the pilot’s seat, pressed the motor power switches, and grinned as he saw the ON lights illuminated. Until now, he had not been sure that the motor power was available. After all, to make sure that the vessel was not stolen, John could have had the switches disconnected.

  He prayed that just now would not be the moment for the motors to be blown up. If they were, the boat would be immobilized, and he and his fellows might not get to the chopper in time.

  There was no time to untie the mooring lines. Too bad, but the power of the great electrical motors was immense.

  He pulled back on the long, knobbed metal rods, one on each side of him, and the paddle wheels began turning backward. They moved slowly at first, too slowly to tear the lines. He pulled the sticks as far back as they would go, thus causing the wheels to rotate at full speed.

  The giant mooring ropes were stretched. But, instead of snapping, they pulled the ends of the vertical beams alongside the dock after the boat.

  For a moment, the fastenings of the piles held. The people on the dock either threw themselves down or leaped across the space between dock and boat. With a rending noise that could be heard even above their shouts and the firing aft, the piles came loose.

  Its supports removed, the near side of the dock tilted, precipitating most of those on it into the water. Only one man managed to jump onto the boat without falling in.

  The Rex backed swiftly away, dragging the beams alongside it at the ends of the massive ropes. Cyrano, laughing, stabbed a panel button, and the steam whistles hooted derisively at those left ashore or in the water.

  “How do you like that, John!” he yelled. “Not only you but your boat is stolen! It’s only just!”

  Now he pushed the starboard stick forward, and the great boat turned downRiver. He steered it to the middle of the stream and set the automatic pilot on. Its sonars estimating the depth and the distance from both banks, it would now hold a course exactly in the middle unless it was on a collision course with a large object. Then it would turn to avoid it.

  The man who had jumped onto the boat ran across the deck and disappeared from view. A half-minute later, he came up the ladder to the next deck. Evidently he was headed for the pilothouse.

  At that moment, the rain ceased.

  Cyrano leaned out of the door and emptied his pistol at the man as he ran across the deck. The man dived beneath an overhang, then stuck his head out and shot back at Cyrano. The only bullet that came near smashed itself halfway up the ladder.

  Cyrano looked out the aft screen. The helicopter was still sitting on the flight deck. John and his three captors were now inside it. Four men were running across the deck toward the texas. He lowered the screen and leaned out, gesturing to them that it was he who had moved the boat. They stopped and waved at him, grinning, and then turned and ran to the copter.

  At the far end of the deck some men were still shooting at the copter from a hatch. But their large-caliber plastic bullets were going against the wind, and most of them were falling on the deck or being blown over the deck. Cyrano could not determine how many were firing, but it seemed to him that there could not be more than three or four.

  Of course, there might be others in the boiler deck fighting with the demolition men.

  And then the boat shook and a great cloud of smoke rose from the deck near the port wheelhousing.

  The blast was followed by another almost immediately. This one was from the starboard side, a much more powerful explosion than the other. Pieces of flight deck soared up through the smoke, falling on the deck, some being propelled near the helicopter. The clouds were quickly dissipated, however, revealing a great hole just beside the starboard wheel.

  The lights went off, then burned again as the emergency system took over. The motors having stopped, the boat began to turn slowly, its nose moving toward the right bank. It would be drifting now, though it might be many kilometers before it rammed the bank.

  Sturtevant was back out of the chopper and waving at Cyrano to hurry.

  Four men appeared on the starboard side of the flight deck. Two came up from the ladder on the port.

  Cyrano cursed. Were these the only survivors of the explosives crews?

  Now little clouds of smoke rose from the hatch where the defenders had been firing at the chopper. One of his men dropped. The others gave protective fire while two of them picked up the fallen man and began to carry him between them toward the copter. One of them fell and could not get back up. He was picked up by two men. The other wounded man was hoisted up onto the shoulders of a comrade, and that one carried him though he staggered under the burden.

  Cyrano ran back to the other side of the wheelhouse. That damnable fellow who had gotten aboard appeared for a moment, running across the deck just below. He was not carrying his pistol, which meant that he must have discarded it after emptying it. He carried an épée in his right hand.

  His eye caught the movement near the foot of the ladder leading from the wheelhouse to the deck below. One of the men whom he had thought dead was living. And he was motioning for help. He must have seen the face of his chief at the screen.

  Cyrano did not hesitate. The orders were to leave the dead behind, but nothing had been said about abandoning the wounded. In any case, he would have disregarded such a command. There seemed to be no immediate grave danger to the chopper. The few defenders could not cross the flight deck without exposing themselves to the fire of those in the chopper. Of course, they could take another route, come up a ladder near the machine. But he, Cyrano, could get this poor wounded fellow to the copter before John’s men got there.

  He went down the ladder as swiftly as he could, skipping steps, sliding his hands along the railings. By then Tsoukas had gotten on his hands and knees. His head hung low, and he was shaking it.

  Cyrano knelt by him. “Do not worry, my friend. I am here.”

  Tsoukas groaned and pitched forward into a puddle of blood.

  “Mordioux!”

  He felt Tsoukas’ pulse.

  “Merde!”

  The fellow was dead.

  But perhaps the other two were still alive.

  A swift examination dispelled his hope.

  He rose, and whirled, his hand going to the butt of his holstered pistol. Here came that lone man, a brave person but a nuisance. Why had he not fallen into the water and so saved Cyrano the trouble of killing him and himself the irreparable harm of being kille
d?

  “Ayyy!”

  The pistol was empty; he had forgotten to load it. And there was no time to pick up one from the deck, to use the gun dropped by a dead man. Indeed, there was scarcely time to unsheath his sword and so prevent this audacious fellow from running him through.

  Boynton would have to wait for him a few seconds longer. That surely would be sufficient to dispose of this obstacle.

  “En garde!”

  The man was a trifle shorter than himself. But, whereas Cyrano was as thin as a rapier, this foolish person was as sturdy as the shaft of a war axe. His shoulders were broad, his chest was deep, and his arms were thick. He had a dark, Arabic-looking face of imposing structure, though his lips were too thick, and his blazing black eyes and white grin made him look like a pirate. He wore only a cloth fastened around the waist.

  With those wrists, Cyrano thought, his antagonist would make an excellent saberman—if he had the skill to match his muscle.

  But with a rapier, where speed, not strength, was most important, ah, that was a different matter.

  After the first few seconds, Cyrano knew that, whatever the man’s aptitude with the saber was, he had never crossed blades with the likes of such before.

  Cyrano’s parries, attacks, advances and retreats, lunges and recoveries were equally matched. Fortunately, the devil did not so far have the slightest superiority in quickness. If he had, he would have run his opponent through.

  He must know, however, that he was fighting another master. Even so, he was still smiling, seemingly undaunted, but behind his savage mask must be a realization that he would die if he became a fraction of a second slower in reflex and judgment.

  Time was on the side of the dark man. He had no place to go, nothing to do but fight, and Cyrano had to get to the machine soon. Boynton must know that Cyrano was still alive, since Sturtevant had seen him in the wheelhouse. He would be wondering what was keeping him.

  Would he wait a few minutes longer, and then, his chief not showing, think that he was dead for some unaccountable reason? Would he then take off? Or would he send someone to investigate?

  There was not time to think about such matters. This devil was countering every maneuver, just as Cyrano was countering his. It was a stalemate, though there was certainly nothing stale about this. The attacking and the defending blades flashed almost in rhythm with each other.

  Ah! Knowing this, the fellow had broken the rhythm. Once the rhythm was well established a fencer had a tendency to continue the sequence of motion. This almost unparalleled swordsman had hesitated slightly, hoping that Cyrano would follow the rhythm himself and so be spitted.

  He had underestimated his man. Cyrano adjusted in the split second needed and so saved himself from a bad wound. But the point did penetrate his upper right arm slightly.

  Cyrano came out of the retreat with a lunge which was parried. Not quite well enough. The man’s arm also bore a slight wound.

  “You have the honor of the first blood,” Cyrano said in Esperanto. “And that is indeed an honor. No other man has ever succeeded in doing that.”

  It was foolish to waste desperately needed breath in conversation. Cyrano, however, was as curious as the alley cat he resembled.

  “What is your name?”

  The man said nothing, though it could be stated that his blade spoke for him. Its point was quicker than the tongue of a fishwife.

  “I am one whom you may have heard of. Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac!”

  The dark man only smiled more ferociously, and he pressed Cyrano even more. This fellow was not one to be shaken by a name, no matter how impressive. Nor did he intend to expend energy in talking. Of course, it was barely possible that he did not know the name of de Bergerac.

  Someone shouted. It could have been this distraction or perhaps it was after all the shock of finding out whom he faced. Whatever the reason, the man’s reaction was not quite what it should have been. Using the thrust invented by Jarnac, Cyrano drove his blade through the man’s thigh.

  Even so, his point went deep into Cyrano’s right arm. His épée clattered on the deck.

  The man fell then, but he tried to get up on one knee to defend himself. Blood flowed swiftly down his leg.

  Cyrano, hearing the slap of feet, looked around. Here came Sturtevant and Cabell, pistols in their hands.

  “Do not shoot him!” Cyrano cried.

  The two halted, their weapons aimed at the dark man.

  Cyrano picked up his sword with his left hand. His right arm hurt abominably; the blood was running like wine from a freshly broached cask.

  Cyrano said, “Perhaps this match might have ended in another fashion if we had not been interrupted.”

  The fellow must be in great pain, but he was not showing it. Those black eyes burned as if they were those of Satan himself.

  “Throw down your sword, sir, and I will bind your wound.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Very well, sir. But I wish you a speedy recovery.”

  “Come on, Cyrano,” Cabell said.

  For the first time, Cyrano heard the shots. They were coming from the port side, which meant that the defenders had worked their way around to a closer position to the helicopter.

  Cabell continued, “The chopper’s been hit several times. And we’ll have to run through their fire to get to it.”

  “Very well, Richard,” Cyrano said. He pointed at the walkie-talkie fastened to Sturtevant’s belt.

  “My dear fellow, why don’t you summon Boynton to this side? Then we can board in comparative safety.”

  “Yeah. I should have thought of that.”

  Cabell bound a cloth ripped from a corpse around the wound in the Frenchman’s arm. The dark man’s skin was grayish, and his eyes had lost their fire. As the helicopter settled down near them, Cyrano stepped forward and, using his épée, knocked the other’s from his grasp. He said nothing; he did not resist as Cyrano tied a cloth around the wound in his thigh.

  “Your comrades can give you more than first aid when they arrive,” Cyrano said.

  He ran to the machine and climbed in. Boynton took it up before the door was closed, sending it at an angle upRiver. John, still completely naked, was slumped in a seat in the second row. Cyrano, looking at him, said, “Get some cloths on him. Then tie his hands and his feet.”

  He looked down. There were about twenty men on the flight deck. Where had the others come from? They were shooting away, their guns flashing like sex-crazed fireflies. But they had no chance of hitting their target. Did they not know that their captain was aboard, that they might hit him? Apparently not.

  Something hit him in the back of his head. He was floating somewhere in a dark grayness while faraway voices said peculiar things. The ugly face of his childhood schoolteacher, the village curé, loomed before him. The brutal fellow had often beaten his student, rapping him savagely with a stick on the body and on the head. At the age of twelve, Cyrano, desperate, mad with rage, had attacked the parish priest, knocked him down, kicked him, and beaten him with his own stick.

  Now the apish features, growing ever larger, swept through him. And he began to regain his senses.

  Boynton was yelling, “I can’t believe it! He got away!”

  Cabell was saying, “He rammed his elbow into my ribs, and he kicked Cyrano in the head!”

  The chopper was tilted so that he could look down through the still unclosed door. A searchlight from the boat briefly caught the king’s naked body. His arms were flailing in an effort to keep himself upright. Then John had disappeared into the darkness.

  “He couldn’t survive!” Boynton said. “It’s at least a thirty-meter fall!”

  They would not be able to go back down and make sure. Not only were some shooting at the chopper, others were running now to a rocket battery. Though there was no chance the pistol shots could hit the chopper, the heat-seeking rockets would be unavoidable unless Boynton got the machine to a safe distance.

  However,
Boynton was not the man to be so easily frightened. And he was undoubtedly infuriated that their prisoner had escaped.

  Now he was flying the copter, not away, but toward the boat. He was bringing it to a point about 90 meters opposite the rockets. There went the four rockets the machine carried, flames spurting from their tails.

  And there went the battery in a huge ball of flame and a cloud of smoke, bodies and pieces of deck and metal flying on all sides.

  “That’ll stop them!” Boynton said.

  Sturtevant said, “How about strafing them?”

  Cyrano was startled. “What? Oh, use the machine gun? No, let us depart with speed. If there’s one survivor, he could get to another rocket battery, and we’d be done for. We have failed our mission and lost too many brave fellows to risk more casualties.”

  “I don’t see how we’ve failed,” Boynton said. “Sure, we didn’t bring John back, but he is dead. And it’ll be a long, long time before the boat is ready to operate.”

  “You think John is dead, eh?” Cyrano said. “I would like to believe that. But I will not say for certain that he is dead until I see his corpse.”

  Groaning with pain, the crew of the Jules Verne quickly checked themselves for injuries. Three had ribs that hurt so badly they were not sure they were not cracked or broken. Frigate thought that his neck muscles were either torn or severely strained. Tex and Frisco had bloody noses, and the latter’s knee was paining him. Pogaas’ forehead was skinned and bleeding. Only Nur was unhurt.

  There was little time to worry about themselves. The balloon was now rising but was drifting away from the mountain. The storm clouds were disappearing as swiftly as burglars who hear a police siren. Fortunately, the light system was still working. Frisco could see the flight instruments. Nur got a flashlight, and he and Frisco applied a thin liquid to the pipe connections. Nur, examining these through a magnifying glass, reported that he could see no bubbles. Apparently, no hydrogen was escaping.

  Nur opened the top hatch, and he and Pogaas climbed out onto the load ring. While the Swazi directed the beam of the flashlight, Nur went up the ropes like a monkey. He could not get close enough to the neck of the bag to apply a paste. But he did report that the envelope seemed to be tight around the entrance of the pipes.