The Dark Design

Firebrass had added, "However, Odysseus may have been here for the same reason that Cyrano and I were. We wanted to get on the paddlewheeler so we could get to the polar sea."

She thought it was strange that no one had thought of building a dirigible until shortly before the second riverboat was completed. Why take decades traveling to the arctic region on a surface vessel when an airship could get there in a few days?

Firebrass said, gri

"If mankind had a nose like mine," Cyrano said, "he would never have that trouble."

In this case the person with the mirror had been August von Parseval. On Earth he had been a major in the German Army, and he had also designed airships for a German company. His type of dirigible was used by both the German and the British governments between 1906 and 1914.

Shortly before the Mark Twain was ready to leave Parolando, von Parseval had come along. He was amazed that no one had suggested that a Luftschiff would be a faster means of transportation than a boat.

After Firebrass bad mentally kicked himself for this oversight, he had hastened to Clemens, taking the German with him.

Surprisingly, Clemens said that he had long ago considered building a dirigible. After all, had he not written Tom Sawyer Abroad? Had not Tom, Jim, and Huckleberry traveled from Mis­souri to the Sahara in a balloon?

Amazed, Firebrass asked him why he had not mentioned this.

"Because I knew some all-fired fool would want to drop all the work on the boat faster than a burglar drops his tools when he sees a policeman! He'd want to abandon the Riverboat and put all work and materials into a flying machine!

"No, siree! This boat takes precedence over everything else, as Noah said when his Wife wanted to knock off work to go to a rain dance.

"By the blazing balls of the Bull of Bashan, there'll be no dirigible! It's a chancy thing, a dangerous device. Why, I wouldn't even be allowed to smoke a cigar on it, and if I can't do that, what's the use of living?"

Clemens gave additional objections, most of them more serious. Firebrass, however, perceived that Clemens was not going to voice his main reason. Getting to the tower was not genuinely important to Clemens. It was the voyage itself that mattered to him. To build the greatest Riverboat that had ever been built, to be its captain, its lord, to voyage for millions of kilometers in the splendid vessel, to be admired and adored and wondered at by billions, that was what Sam Clemens desired.

Moreover, he wanted revenge. He wanted to track and then to catch up with and destroy King John for having robbed him of his first boat, his first love, the Not For Hire.

It might take forty years to get from Parolando to the mountains that ringed the polar sea. Sam did not care. Not only would he be the revered owner and operator of the biggest and most beautiful River-boat mankind had ever seen, he would be going on the longest voyage any vessel, bar none, had ever taken. Forty years! Put that in your pipe, Columbus, Magellan, and smoke it!

Also, he would be seeing and talking to hundreds of thousands. This delighted Sam, who was as curious about human beings as a housewife was about new neighbors.

If he went in an airship he would have no strangers to talk to.

Though Firebrass was as gregarious as a flock of ducks, he did not understand this attitude. He himself was too eager to solve the mystery of the tower. The key to all that puzzled humanity might be there.

He did not point out to Clemens what he believed to be his real reason for his objections to the airship. It would do no good. Sam would look him straight in the eye and deny everything. However, Sam did know that he was in the wrong. And so, sixty days before the Mark Twain was to depart, he called Firebrass in.

"After I leave, you can build your highly inflammable folly, if you insist on it. Of course, that means you'll have to resign as chief engineer of the most magnificent creation of man. But you must use the dirigible for observation only, as a scout."

"Why?"

"Now how by the brass balls of burning Baal could it be used for anything else but that? It can't land on the tower or anyplace else, can it? According to Joe Miller, the mountains are sheer and there's no beach. And..."

"How would Joe know there's no beach? The sea was covered by fog. All he saw was the upper part of the tower."

Sam had puffed smoke that looked like angry dragons. "It stands to reason the people that made that sea wouldn't make a beach. Would they make a place from which invaders could launch a boat? Of course not.

"Anyway, what I want you to do is to find out the lay of the land. See if there's a passage through the mountains other than what Joe described. Find out if the tower can be entered otherwise than by the roof."

Firebrass had not argued. He would do what he wished to do when he got to the pole. Clemens would have no control of him then.

"I took off then, happy as a dog that's rid of his fleas. I told von Parseval about Sam's decision, and we had a big celebration. But two months later poor old August was swallowed by a dragonfish. I barely missed going down its gullet with him."

At this point in his story, Firebrass revealed a secret to Jill.

"You must swear by your honor not to tell anyone else. I wouldn't be telling you, except that the boat is long gone, and there's no way you could get the information to King John. Not that you would, of course."

"I promise to keep it to myself-whatever it is."

"Well.,. one of our engineers was a Californian scientist. He knew how to make a laser with a range of 404 meters. Within that distance, it could slice the Rex in two. And we had just enough materials to make one. So Sam had it done.

"It was a highly secret project, so secret that there are only six men on the Mark Twain who know of its existence. The laser is concealed in a compartment known only to these six, of whom Sam is one, of course. Even his buddy, Joe, doesn't know about it.

"When the Mark Twain catches up with the Rex, the laser will be brought out and mounted on a tripod. The battle ought to be short and sweet. Sweet for Sam, bitterly short for John. It'll also cut down the casualties tremendously for both sides.

"I was in on the secret because I was one of the engineers on the project. Before it was completed, I asked Sam if it could be left behind. I wanted to take it on the airship and use it to burn an entrance into the tower if we could not get in otherwise.

"But Sam flat out refused. He said that if anything happened to the airship, the laser would be lost. I wouldn't be able to return it to the Mark Twain. Iargued like mad, but I lost. And Sam did have a strong point. There's no way of knowing what dangers we'll run into, meteorological or otherwise.

"However, it was very frustrating."