The Fabulous Riverboat

After supper the drums relayed a message from Hacking. Firebrass would be arriving tomorrow, some time before noon.

Sam retired to his office. By the light of lamps burning fish oil—soon they would have electricity—he and Van Boom and Tanya Velitsky and John Wesley O'Brien, the engineers, discussed their ideas about the Riverboat and drew rough sketches on paper. Paper was still scarce, but they would need enormous amounts for their blueprints. Van Boom said that they should wait until they were able to make a certain kind of plastic. Lines could be drawn on this with magnetized "pens" and corrections could easily be made by demagnetizing. Sam replied that that was fine. But he wanted to start building the Riverboat the moment the amphibian was completed. Van Boom said that he could not agree to that. Too many things were in the way.

Before the meeting broke up Van Boom pulled a Mark I gun out of a large bag. "We have ten of these now," he said. "This one is yours, compliments of Parolando's Engineering Corps. And here are twenty packages of powder and twenty plastic bullets. You can sleep with them under your pillow."

Sam thanked him, the engineers left and Sam barred the door. Then he went into the back room to talk to Joe Miller awhile. Joe was still awake, but he said he was taking no sedation that night. He would be getting up in the morning. Sam bade the giant good night and went into his bedroom, next to the pilothouse. He drank two shots of bourbon and lay down. After a while he managed to doze, though he was afraid that the three-o'clock rain would wake him as usual and he would have trouble getting back to sleep.

He awoke, but the rain was long past. Shouts came from somewhere and then an explosion that rattled the pilothouse. Sam leaped out of bed, wrapped a kilt around his waist, seized an ax and ran into the pilothouse. He suddenly remembered his pistol, but he decided he would go back for it when he found out what was going on. The River was still smothered in fog, but hundreds of dark figures were spilling out of it, and the tops of tall masts were sticking out above it Torches were flaring all over the plains and in the hills. Drums were beating.

There was another explosion. A brightness in the night with bodies flying in all directions.

He looked through the starboard port. The gates of the log wall around King John's palace were open, and men were streaming out. Among them was the stocky figure of John.

By then more men had appeared out of the mists over the River. Bright starlight showed them lining up and moving out, rank after rank. The first of the invaders were by now in the great factories and advancing swiftly across the plain toward the foothills. Some explosions occurred inside factories as bombs were thrown to dislodge the defenders. And then a red tail flared out, disappeared, and something black shot toward him. Sam threw himself to the floor. A roar came beneath him, the floor heaved, and the glass ports blew in. A whiff of acrid smoke came to him and was gone.

He should get up and run, but he couldn't. He was deafened and frozen. Another rocket would be coming his way, and that one might be closer.

A giant hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him up. Another hand slid under his legs and he was being carried out. The arms and the chest of the giant were very hairy and as hard-muscled and as warm as a gorilla's. A voice as deep as if it were at the end of a railroad tu

"Put me down, Joe," Sam said. "I'm all right, except for my shame. And that's all right, too, I ought to feel ashamed."

His shock was fading, and a sense of relative calm flowed in to fill the vacuum. The appearance of the massive titanthrop had steadied him. Good old Joe—he might be a dumb subhuman and sick at the moment, but he was still worth a battalion.

Joe had put on his suit of leather armor. In one hand was the haft of an enormous double-headed ax of steel.

"Who are they?" he rumbled. "They from Thoul Thity?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "Do you feel up to fighting? How's the head?"

"It hurtth. Yeah, I can fight okay. Vere do ve go from here?"

Sam led him downhill toward the men collecting around John. He heard his name called and turned to see the tall lanky figure of de Bergerac, Livy by his side. She carried a small round shield of leather-covered oak and a steeltipped spear. Cyrano held a long, dully shining blade. Sam's eyes widened. It was a rapier.

Cyrano said, "Morbleu!" He switched to Esperanto. "Your smith gave this to me just after supper—he said there was no sense in waiting."

Cyrano whipped the rapier, cutting the air with a sharp sound. "I've come alive again. Steel—sharp steel!"

A nearby explosion made them all dive for the ground. Sam waited until he was sure that another rocket was not coming and then looked at his pilothouse. It had received a direct hit; its front was blown open; a fire was racing through it and would soon be in the texas. His diary was gone, but he could retrieve his grail later. It was indestructible.

In the next few minutes the wooden missiles, tails flaming, arched out, wobbling, from wooden bazookas held on the shoulders of the Parolandoj rocketeers. The missiles landed near and sometimes among the enemy and exploded with gouts of fire and much black smoke, quickly carried away by the wind.

Three ru

So much for King John's spy service, Sam thought. Unless—unless he is in on the attack. But if he were he wouldn't be standing out here where he's likely to get killed any moment...

Anyway, Arthur of New Brittany would never make a deal with the uncle who had murdered him.

The rockets continued to arc down from both sides, the five-pound warheads with their rock-fragment shrapnel taking a toll. The Parolandoj had the advantage; they could lie flat while their rockets exploded among upright targets. The invaders had to keep moving, otherwise they might just as well go home.

Nevertheless, it was frightening to lie on the ground and wait for the next noisy blast and hope that it would not come closer than the last one. There were screams from the wounded that were not, however, as heartrending as they would have been if Sam had not been so deafened that he could barely hear them and if he also had not been too worried about himself to think of others. Then, suddenly, the rockets had quit blowing up the world. A huge hand shook Sam's shoulder. He looked up to see that many around him were getting to their feet. The sergeants were yelling into the stu

Ahead was a dark body, a sea of screaming whooping fiends. They ran up the hill and the first, second and third ranks fell, pierced by arrows. But those behind did not break. They leaped over the fallen and kept on coming. Suddenly, the archers were being hammered down or thrust through or clubbed.

Sam kept close behind Joe Miller, who moved ahead slowly, his ax rising and falling. And then the giant was down, and the enemy were struggling on top of him like a pack of jackals on a lion, Sam tried to get to him; his ax smashed through a shield and a head and an uplifted arm and then he felt a burning pain along his ribs. He was pushed back and back, while he slashed away with the ax and then it was gone, wedged in a skull. He stumbled over a pile of wood. Above him was the burning floor of his smashed house, still held up by three burning pylons.