The Fabulous Riverboat

But it took some practice before the proper coordination was achieved.

Luckily, there was no memory work involved in piloting a boat on this River. There were no islands, no sandbars, and there would be few logs with snags. If the boat got too close to shallow water, sonar activated an alarm bell. If a boat was ahead at night, or a log hidden in the water, the radar or sonar would indicate it and a red light would flash.

Sam watched Styles for half an hour while the banks floated by and the thousands of people on them waved and cheered. Or cursed, since many were disappointed because they had. been eliminated from the crew by the lottery. But he couldn't hear the curses.

Then Sam took over the piloting, and, after another half hour, asked John if he would like to try. John was dressed entirely in black, as if he were determined to do just the opposite of whatever Sam did. But he took the sticks and did well for an ex-king who had never done a lick of work in his life and had always let inferiors do whatever steering was necessary.

The boat sailed up past the dead Iyeyasu's kingdom, now split into three states again, and then Sam ordered the vessel turned back. Rob Styles got fancy and pivoted her "on a dime" as he said, demonstrating her maneuverability. While the port wheel backed, the starboard raced at full speed and the boat rotated as if stuck on a pin. Then she headed downstream. With the current and wind behind her, and the paddle-wheels turning at maximum speed, the Not for Hire raced along at sixty miles an hour. But not for too long. Sam had Styles bring her in close to the shore, where the sonar indicated about one foot of clearance between hull and bottom on the port side. Even above the slapping of the wheels and the splashing of water and the whistling and clanging of bells, they could hear the crowds. The faces whizzed by as if in a dream.

Sam opened the fore ports of the pilothouse so they could feel the wind and increase their impression of speed.

The Not for Hire raced all the way downstream to Selinujo, and then it turned again. Sam wished, almost, that there was another boat that he could race against. But it was being in heaven to have the only metal, electrically powered Riverboat in existence. A man couldn't have everything, not even in the after-Earthlife.

During the return trip, the huge hatch in the stern was lowered, and the launch slipped out through the entrance into The River. It cut back and forth at top speed and raced ahead of the mother boat. Its steam machine guns traced lines along the water, and the thirty steam guns on the Not for Hire shot back, though not at the launch.

The big three-place amphibian monoplane came out of the opening in the stern, too, and its wings were straightened out and locked, and then it took off. Firebrass was at the controls with his woman and Gwenafra as passengers.

A moment later, the tiny, one-seater, open-cockpit scout-fighter was shot off the top of the texas by a steam catapult. Lothar von Richthofen took it up, the wood-alcohol-burning motor buzzing, and raced ahead until he was out of sight. Then he returned, climbed and entertained with the first aerial acrobatics that the Riverworld had ever seen—to the best of Sam's knowledge.

Lothar concluded with a dive at the end of which he fired four rockets into the water and then the twin machine guns. These were .80 caliber and shot aluminum bullets from aluminum cartridges. There were one hundred thousand of these stored on the boat, and when they were all gone, they would not be replaced.

Lothar landed the tiny monoplane on the landing deck, the top of the texas, and the devices caught the hook trailed out by the plane. Even so, the whirling propeller stopped only ten feet from the smokestacks. Lothar took the plane up again and again landed. Then Firebrass returned in the amphibian, and he later took the wheeled plane up for one flight.

Sam looked down through the port front at the marines drilling on the fore part of the broad boiler deck. Under the midnoon sun, which heated the air to an estimated eighty degrees Fahrenheit, they marched back and forth and performed intricate maneuvers under Cyrano's orders. Their silvery duralumin plumed helmets were like those of the ancient Romans. They wore gray-and-red-striped chainmail shirts which fell halfway down their thighs. Their legs were cased in leather boots. They carried rapiers and long knives and the Mark II pistols. They were the pistoleers only, however. The main part of the marines were watching the show; these were the bowmen and the rocketeers.

Seeing Gwenafra's honey-colored head in the crowd on the main deck made him happy. He saw Livy's dark head near her, and he was unhappy.

Gwenafra, after another six months of a jealousy-ridden life with von Richthofen, had accepted Sam's offer and moved in with him. But Sam still could not see Livy without some pain of loss.

If it were not for Livy, and for John's presence, he would have been as happy as he could be. But she would be with them throughout the possibly forty years of the journey. And John, well, John made him uneasy and prowled through his nightmares.

John had been so willing to let Sam be the captain and so unhesitant about accepting the first mate's position that Sam knew he was up to no good. But when would The Mutiny, as Sam thought of it, take place? It was inevitable that John would try to take over the full command of the Riverboat, and any intelligent man, knowing this, would have dumped him, one way or the other.

But Sam had been too conscience-stricken by his killing of Bloodaxe. He could not commit another assassination, not even if he knew that John would not be permanently dead. A corpse was a corpse, and a double cross was a double cross.

The question was, when would John strike? At the begi

Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate.

A yellow-haired, near-giant entered the pilothouse. His name was Augustus Strubewell, he was John's aide-decamp, and he had been picked up by John during his sojourn in Iyeyasujo after Hacking's invasion. He had been born in 1971 in San Diego, California, had been an AllAmerican fullback, a captain of the U.S. Marines, decorated for bravery in the Middle East and South America and had made a career in the movies and TV. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, except that, like John, he bragged of his conquests among women. Sam did not trust him. Anybody who worked for John Lackland had to have something wrong with him.

Sam shrugged. He might as well enjoy himself for the moment. Why let anything rob him of the joy of the greatest day of his life?

He leaned out of the port and watched the marine drill team and the crowd. The sun sparkled on waves, and the breeze was cooling. If it became too warm, he could shut the ports and turn on the air conditioning. From the tall pole on the bow the flag of the Not for Hire flapped in the wind. It was square and bore a scarlet phoenix on a light-blue field. The phoenix symbolized the rebirth of mankind.

He waved at the people massed along the bank and pressed a button which set off a series of steam whistles and clanging of bells.

He drew in smoke from his fine cigar and stuck his chest out and paraded back and forth. Strubewell handed John a glass full of bourbon, and then he offered Sam another. Everybody in the pilothouse—Styles, the six other pilots, Joe Miller, von Richthofen, Firebrass, Publius Crassus, Mozart, John Lackland, Strubewell, and three other of John's aides—took a glass.

"A toast, gentlemen," John said in Esperanto. "To a long and happy journey and may we all get what we deserve."

Joe Miller, standing near Sam, the top of his head almost touching the ceiling, held a glass containing about half a quart of bourbon. He sniffed at the amber liquor with his monstrous proboscis and then tasted it with the top of his tongue.