The Fabulous Riverboat

About midnight, Sam accompanied Hacking and party to the big thirty-room, second-story, stone-and-bamboo building set aside for state guests. This was halfway between his quarters and John's palace. Then he drove his jeep to his home, three hundred yards away. Joe sulked a little because he had wanted to drive, even though his legs were far too long for him to try this. They staggered up the ladder and barred the door. Joe went into the rear and flopped on his bed with a crash that shook the house on its stilts. Sam looked out the ports just in time to see Cyrano and Livy, their arms around each other, lurch into the door of their hut. To their left, set above them, was von Richthofen's hut, where he and Gwenafra had already gone to bed.

He muttered, "Good night!" not knowing just whom he was addressing, and fell into his own bed. It had been a long, hard and trying day, ending up with a huge party at which everybody had drunk stupendous quantities, of purple passion or grain alcohol and water and chewed much dreamgum and smoked much tobacco and marihuana.

He awoke dreaming that he was caught in a California earthquake on the Fourth of July.

He leaped out of bed and ran on the trembling floor to the pilothouse. Even before he reached the ports, he knew that the explosions and the earth-shaking were caused by invaders. He never reached the ports, because a rocket, whistling, its tail flaming red, struck one of the stilts. The roar deafened him, smoke whirled in through the broken ports and he pitched forward. The house collapsed, and its front part fell down. History repeated itself.

25

He banged into the wood and broken glass and earth and lay with the wall under him while he tried to come up out of his stu

"I don't know how, it's a miracle, but I'm not hurt bad," Sam said. "Just bruised and cut by glass."

"I didn't have time to put on my armor," Joe said. "But I got my akth. Here'th a thword for you and a pithtol and thome bulletin and powder chargeth." "Who the hell can they be, Joe?" Sam said.

"I don't know. Thee! They're coming in through the holeth in the vallth vhere the dockth are."

The starlight was bright. The clouds that sent the rains down every night at three o'clock had not yet come, but the mists over The River were heavy. Out of these, men were still pouring to add to the masses spreading over the plains. Behind the walls, in the mists, must be a fleet.

The only fleet that could get close without causing an alarm would be the Soul City fleet. Anybody else arriving at this hour would have had to have been within view of the spies that Sam and John Lackland had set up along The River, even in hostile territory. It couldn't be Iyeyasu's fleet; that was still sitting in the docks as of the report received just before midnight.

Joe peered over a pile of wood and said, "There'th a hell of a battle around John'th palathe. And the guetht houthe, vhere Hacking and hith boyth vath, ith on fire."

The flames lit a number of bodies on the ground and showed the tiny figures struggling around the log stockade of John's palace. Then, the ca

"That's John's jeep!" Sam said, pointing at the vehicle which had just driven up behind the ca

"Yeah, and it'th our ca

"Let's get to hell out of here!" Sam said, and he scrambled over the lumber and in the opposite direction. He could not understand why the invaders had not sent men to his house yet. The rocket that had hit had come from the plains. And if Hacking and his men had sneaked out of the guesthouse to launch a surprise attack in conjunction with an attack from the supposed ore boats, then Sam should have been a primary target along with John Lackland.

He'd find out later what it was all about—if there was a later.

That Hacking's men had gotten hold of the ca

There was only one good thing about the invaders having their hands on the ca

Ahead was Cyrano and Livy's hut. The door was open, and the place was empty. He looked up the hill. Lothar von Richthofen, clad only in a kilt, carrying a rapier in one hand and a pistol in the other, was ru

There were other men and women coming toward him. Among them were a few crossbowmen.

He shouted at Lothar to organize them, and he turned to look down on the plains. The docks were still black with men. If only the ca

Then a big dark machine came through a wide breach in the wall. Sam cried out with dismay. It was the Firedragon III given to Hacking. But where were the three amphibians of Parolando?

Presently he saw two coming toward the hills. Of a sudden, the steam machine guns in the turrets began to stutter hissingly, and his men—to men!—were falling. The Soul Citizens had captured the amphibians!

Everywhere he looked, he saw a battle raging. There were men fighting around the Riverboat. He cried out again, because he could not endure the thought of its being damaged. But no ca

Rockets from the hills behind them were soaring over their heads and blowing up among the army below. Enemy rockets rose in reply; scores of red flames streaked above them; some came so close they could see the blur of the cylindrical body, the long bamboo stick protruding from the rear, and a whoosh as an exceptionally large one shot about ten feet above their heads. It just missed the top of the hill and blew up with a tremendous blast on the other side. Leaves from a nearby irontree fluttered down.

The next half hour—or was it two hours?—was a shrieking, yelling, shouting, gunpowder-stinking, bloodstinking, sweating, bowel-churning chaos. Tune after time, the Soul Citizens charged up the hill, and tune after time they were repelled by rockets, by sixty-nine-caliber plastic bullets, by crossbow bolts and longbow arrows. Then a charge carried them through to the defenders, and it was rapier, broadsword, ax, club, spear and dagger that drove them back.

Joe Miller, ten feet high, eight hundred pounds heavy, his hairy hide drenched with blood—his own and others—swung his ax with its eighty-pound nickel-steel head at the end of an oak shaft three niches thick and six feet long. It crashed through oak shield and leather armor, brushed aside rapiers and spears and axes, split breastbones, took off arms and necks, halved skulls. When his enemies refused to come near him, he charged them. Time and again, he broke up charges that might otherwise have succeeded.

Many flintlock Mark I pistols were fired at him, but their shooters were so u