THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

Herma

It was useless to say any more about that subject.

25

BURTON, SUFFERING AGAIN FROM HIS CURSED INSOMNIA, LEFT his cabin quietly. Alice slept undisturbed. He went down the dimly lit corridor, out of the texas, and onto the landing deck of the Rex. The fog was building up below the railing of the B deck. The A deck was entirely shrouded. Directly above, the sky blazed brightly, but to the west clouds were swiftly moving toward the boat. On both sides of The Valley the mountains cut off much of the sky. Though the Rex was anchored in a small bay two miles up from the strait, The Valley had broadened only a little here. It was a cold place, gloomy, despondency-making. John had had a difficult time keeping up morale here.

Burton yawned, stretched, and thought about lighting up a cigarette or perhaps a cigar. Damn his sleeplessness! In sixty years on this world, he should have learned how to overcome the affliction which had lasted fifty years on Earth. (He'd been nineteen when the terrible affliction had struck him.)

Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he'd tried a score or more. Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more efficacious than any he'd ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For some time, he'd been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.

Nur had said, "You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You could strike at the source."

"Yaas," Burton had replied. "If I knew what and where the source was, I could get my hands on it. I'd be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer the world."

"First, you'd have to conquer yourself," the Moor had said. "But when you did that, you'd find out that it wasn't worthwhile ruling the world."

The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walking in the semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, marching to the middle of the deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other's, wheeling, then striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.

During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton didn't hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens' men, John had set up night sentinels all over the boat.

Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amerind, in his own tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterward Burton said he'd heard a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed that he'd heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have been about 30,000 B.C.

Burton told the two he'd be going on to check the other guards. He walked down the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.

Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upward into the fog. Sirens were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat. People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice.

She cried out, "What happened?"

"I don't know," he said, "except that someone coshed me."

He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand against the wall.

"Here," she said, "I'll help you get to the sick bay."

"Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king."

"You're crazy," she said. "You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You shouldn't even be walking. You should be on a stretcher."

He growled, "Nonsense," and started to walk. She made him put his arm around her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow. He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They passed people ma

Alice called out to a man, "What happened?"

"I don't know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up The River."

Burton thought that if that was true, he'd been slugged by someone posted to insure that the thieves weren't surprised.

The "thieves," he was sure, had been crew members. He didn't think that anybody could slip aboard u

Arriving at the pilothouse, Burton had to wait a few minutes before the busy king could speak to him. Burton reported what had happened to him. John wasn't at all sympathetic; he was beside himself with rage, cursing, giving orders, stomping around.

Finally, he said, "Go to sick bay, Gwalchgwy

Burton said, "Yes, Sire," and he went to the C deck hospital.

Doctor Doyle x-rayed his skull, cleansed the wound on his head, bandaged it, and ordered him to lie down for a while.

"There's neither concussion or fracture. All you need is some rest."

Burton did so. Shortly thereafter, Strubewell's voice came over the loudspeaker. Twelve people were missing, seven men, five women.

John took over then, apparently too enraged to allow his first mate to call out the names of the missing. His voice shaking, he denounced the twelve as "treacherous dogs, mutinous swine, scurvy stinking polecats, cowardly jackals, yellow-bellied hyenas."

"Quite a menagerie," Burton said to Alice.

He listened to the roll call. All were suspected agents, all having claimed to have lived past 1983.

John thought they had deserted because they were afraid to fight.

If he weren't too furious to think straight, John would have remembered that the twelve had shown their courage in many battles.

Burton knew why they had fled. They wanted to get to the tower as quickly as possible, and they didn't want to be in~ a fight which they regarded as totally u

In fact, John had been worried that the Not For Hire might come up through the strait while the Rex was chasing after the launch. However, the guards on the path above the strait had a transceiver, and they would report instantly if the Hire moved toward the cha

Despite this, John was taking his chances. He was not going to allow the deserters to get away with the launch. He needed it for the coming battle. And he wanted desperately to catch and punish the twelve.

In the old days on Earth, he would have tortured them. He probably would like to put them to rack and wheel and fire now, but he knew that his crew, most of them anyway, wouldn't tolerate such barbarisms. They would permit the twelve to be shot, though they wouldn't relish the deed, because discipline did have to be maintained. Moreover, stealing the launch had compounded the felony.