THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

The plan had worked out. The airship had hugged the mountains to the north, coming down to an altitude below the tops of the highest hills at times. It had gone east for some distance, then had eased out over the treetops to The River. And it had sped full power then, the bottom of its control gondola only a foot or so above the surface.

All was going well, and now the Azazel was behind the Not For Hire. Its bulk was shielded by the enemy boat, undetectable by its mother vessel's radar.

Burton, standing near John, heard him mutter, "By the Lord's loins! Now we'll see if the airship is swift enough to catch up with Sam's boat! My engineers had better be right! It would be ironic if, after all this work and pla

Salvoes from the enemy struck the Rex along the starboard decks. Burton felt stu

This had been the worst punishment suffered yet. There were huge holes in many places on all the decks. The explosions had not only punched these on the decks and in the hull, but corridors filled with people had been blown open. A number of rocket-launching mechanisms, loaded with missiles, had gone up, adding their explosions. Several steam machine-gun turrets were knocked off their foundations.

The starboard paddlebox or wheelhousing had been almost blown off by two shells. But the paddle wheel was still operating at one-hundred-percent efficiency.

"Clemens must have seen those shells hit the paddlebox," John said. "He could be fooled into thinking that he's crippled us. By Christ's cup, we'll make him think so!"

He gave the order to put the boat into a wide circle. The i

"He'll come aru

"Ay, he's bound toward us like a great beast out of Revelation1." John said. "But he doesn't know that there's an even more fearsome monster hot on his tail, about to vomit death and hellfire all over him! It's the vengeance of God!"

Burton felt disgusted. Was John actually equating himself with his Creator? Had his brains become a trifle addled from the shock of shells and rockets? Or had he always secretly felt that he and God were co-partners?

"They'll have to estimate distance with the eye, and in this light they won't do well," John said. "Their sonar isn't going to do any range calculation, either!"

The enemy would be getting more than return pulses from the beam directed at the Rex. The sonar operators were going to be confused. They'd see pulses from four different targets on their screens. Three would be from tiny remotely controlled boats circling in the lake, each emitting sound pulses of the same frequency as those of the enemy transmitter. The little vessels also contained noise generators which simulated the pounding of giant paddlewheels against the water.

Burton could see the upper structures of the Not For Hire silhouetted against the blazing stars and the shimmering gas sheets on the eastern horizon.

And then he saw a dark semicircle, the upper part of the Azazel, against the celestial illumination just above the Not For Hire.

"Fire your torpedo!" John said loudly. "Fire now, you fools!"

Peder Tordenskjold, the chief gu

All glanced at the panel chronometer. The torpedo, if it hit, should do so within thirty seconds. That is, it would if the dirigible were as close to the boat as it seemed to be. The Azazel would have dropped the missile while it was only a few feet above The River. Lightened by the release of the heavy missile, it would have risen swiftly. Its speed would be increased also by the loss of weight. So, if it were now over, or almost over, the enemy, the torpedo should be about to strike.

The Not For Hire should be taking evasive action by now. Though the airship may not have been seen by the eye, the torpedo would be detected by the sonars of the enemy. Its location and speed would be instantly known, its shape and size indicated. The enemy would know that a torpedo was speeding toward its stern, as John inelegantly put it, "driving right up Sam Clemens' asshole."

John stopped. His face was a study in fury. "By God's teeth, how could it have missed at such close range?"

"It couldn't have," Strubewell said. "Maybe it malfunctioned. Didn't go off."

Whatever had happened, the enemy had escaped the torpedo. Behind it the semicircle of the Azazel, which had disappeared for a moment, rose again. The pilot and the bombardier would either have jumped out or be just about ready to jump. Their parachutes, equipped with a compressed-gas device, would unfold fully the moment they leaped clear of the gondola. Without that, they would not open before the two hit The River.

Burton estimated that the two men had to have left the semirigid by now. It would be set on automatic pilot now, and the clock in the release mechanism of the bomb would be ticking away. Another mechanism would be valving off hydrogen to lower the craft. When the bomb fell, the airship would be lightened and would rise. But not far. A few seconds afterward, if the explosion did not ignite the gas, a fourth mechanism would detonate a smaller bomb.

Burton looked out the port screen. The decks of the Rex were blazing in a dozen places; from the shells and rockets. Firefighters, clad in insulation suits, were spraying the flames with water and foam. Within about two or three minutes, the fires would be extinguished.

Burton heard the captain say, "Hah!"

He turned. Everybody except the pilot was gazing out of the port screen. The sausage shape of the dirigible was directly above the Not For Hire. Its nose would soon touch the back of the pilothouse.

"Incredible!" Burton said.

"What?" the captain said.

"That no one on the boat has seen it yet."

"God is with me," John said. "Now, even if it is seen, it will be too late. It can't be shot down without imperiling the boat."

Tordenskjold said, "Something happened to the torpedo release mechanism. It's malfunctioning. But when the bomb goes off, it'll set the torpedo off."

John spoke to the pilot. "Get ready to bring her around. When I give the word, head directly for the enemy."

The chief radio operator said. "The two launches are heading for us, sir."

"Surely they can see the Azazel now!" John said. "No, they haven't!"

"P'raps the Not For Hire's radio is knocked out, too," Burton said. ‘

"Then He is indeed on our side!" John said.

Burton grimaced.

A lookout said, "Sir! The enemy launches are approaching on the port sternside."

Radar reported that both launches were at a range of four hundred yards. They were separated from each other by one hundred and twenty feet.

"They're pla

"I can see that," John said somewhat testily. "You'd think by now that they'd be trying to signal the Hire. The radio must be out, too, but surely they could send up flares."

"There goes one," Strubewell said, pointing at the bright bluewhite glare in the sky.