THE MAGIC LABYRINTH

They lay there for several minutes dazed, bruised, deafened, bleeding, too numbed to realize that they were lucky to be alive.

35

SAM CLEMENS AND JOE MILLER CLIMBED DOWN THE LADDER leading from the hangar deck. The fire raged behind them. Then they were on the hurricane deck. Joe carried his colossal axe in one hand. He said, "You okay, Tham?"

Sam did not reply. He grabbed one of the titanthrop's fingers and pulled him oh around the corner. A bullet struck the bulkhead, its plastic fragments whizzing around them. None hit flesh, however.

"The Rex is right alongside us!" Clemens said.

"Yeah, I thaw that," Joe said. "I think they're going to try to board uth."

"I can't control my boat!" Sam cried. He looked as if he were going to weep.

Joe seemed as calm and as impervious to destruction as a mountain. He patted Sam on the shoulder. "Don't vorry. The boat'll chutht drift athyore. It von't think. And ve'll knock Chohn and hith aththholeth thilly."

Then both were hurled to the deck. Sam lay for a while, groaning, unaware that the Not For Hire had ripped off a paddlebox and wheel of the Rex. During the firing that broke out as soon as the boats had come to a stop, he continued to lie with his face pressed against the cold hard deck. A hand reached down and grabbed his shoulder and picked him up by it. He yelled with agony.

"Thorry, Tham," Joe rumbled. "I forgot mythelf."

Sam held his one shoulder. "You dumbbell, I won't ever be able to use that arm again!"

"You egthaggerate ath uthual," Joe said. "You're alive vhen by all rightth you thyouldn't be. Tho am I. Tho get vith it, Tham. Ve got vork to do."

Clemens looked up at the flight deck. The flames had by now covered not only that but had reached down into the hangar deck. There was not much to burn, however. The barrels of methanol that were usually stored there had been taken to the lowest deck before the battle had started. Though the flaming hydrogen was hot, it would burn itself out quickly.

As he thought this, he saw the flight deck cave in on itself. From this angle, he could only see its edges sticking out. But the crash that went with the falling parts told him that at least half of the structure had collapsed. And flame gusted out, like a dragon breathing at him.

Joe leaped forward, yelling, "Chethuth Chritht!"

He picked up Sam and continued forward until he had reached the edge of the hurricane deck. Then he dropped Sam.

"Tham, I think I'm burned!"

"Turn around," Clemens said. On inspecting the back, he said, "You clown! The armor saved you. You may be a little hot under the collar, but you're not hurt."

Joe went back to get the axe he'd dropped. Sam looked at the bulk of the Rex. Its port side was against the starboard port prow of his boat. Grappling lines were being shot or hurled from both sides on all three of the lower decks, and the boarding bridges were already extended. The walkways and the ports and hatches, as far as he could see, were crowded with men and women. All were either firing at pointblank range or getting ready to attack as soon as the lines were secured. The boarding bridges would be ma

He did not have a gun. Fortunately, there were plenty on the decks, dropped from nerveless hands. He picked one up, checked its chambers, removed a bandolier from a corpse, put it on himself, and removed bullets from the belt to put in the pistol. Joe's form loomed up from around the corner, startling him. He did not reproach Joe for being so silent, since Joe was supposed not to make noise. But he had thought his heart would stop.

"Vhat'll ve do now, Tham?"

"Join our men and let them know we're still alive and kicking," Clemens said. "That'll recharge their morale."

They arrived just in time to see the last of a large group storm onto the hurricane deck from the Rex. Below them, however, John's men were forcing back the would-be boarders from the Not For Hire. In fact, John's men were boarding his—Sam's boat—on some of the bridges.

Sam leaned over and emptied his pistol into the rear-guard of the boarders below. Two men fell, one going down in the narrow gap between the two vessels. But one of the boarders, still on the Rex, looked up and then shot his own pistol. Sam ducked as the first bullet screamed by his ear. The other missiles shattered against the railing or the hull just below the railing.

Joe was going to look over the railing then, but Sam yelled at him that if he did he'd get his head blown off.

After waiting until he was sure that the boarding bridges below were empty, he looked over and down. The deck below was jammed with struggling, shouting people and was noisy with ringing metal. Sam told Joe what he wanted to do. Joe nodded, lifting his great proboscis up and down like a log floating in a rough sea.

They ran across the boarding bridge, Joe bellowing to the men there that he and the captain were coming.

On both sides of their group were a few of the Rex crew, rapidly backing away before the superior force. These broke on seeing the great head and shoulders of the titanthrop above the crowd of Clemens' men. They ran as fast as they could, some diving into hatches, others leaping over the railing or through the gaps and into The River.

"That thyure ath hell didn't take long, did it, Tham?"

"No," Sam said. "I wish it was always that easy. Okay, Joe, you give them the orders."

The titanthrop yelled at the top of his voice at the men. They had no trouble hearing him. Indeed, at least half of the people halfway down both boats on this side must have heard the thunder. In fact, on one deck below and opposite, the battlers stopped for a few seconds.

The men ahead of Joe cleared to one side. Joe proceeded to the nearest ladder, Sam immediately behind him, and the others following. They went down the ladder to the hurricane deck and along it until they came to the boarding bridges. Here the men spread out, forming lines of two abreast at each of the eight bridges.

Sam checked that everybody was ready. Attacking John's men from behind them, from their own boat, tickled him. They would be demoralized when the titanthrop swung that Brobdingnagian axe upon their heads from behind them.

"Okay, Joe!" Sam yelled. "Go get ‘em!"

Joe, bellowing a war cry in his native language, ran across the metal strip. Sam came behind him. There was not room on the bridge for another person where Joe went. Besides, it was more discreet to stay behind him. ,

Things happened so swiftly that only in retrospect was Sam able to figure out what happened.

A great noise deafened him, and a shock traveled through the bridge and hurled him onto it. Almost immediately after, the far end of the bridge lifted up, bending as its hooks kept their hold on the railing, then tearing loose with a screech of metal.

Sam, clinging stu

Joe had dropped his enormous axe. It slid along the upward and sidewise tilting bridge and fell off into the gap between the boats.

Joe had not fallen, but now/he was bellowing in wrath. Or was it fear? It didn't matter. He was bellowing because both his arms were caught about his body by a noose.

The other end of the rope was being tied to a railing on the deck above. The man who had lassoed Joe from the hangar deck wore a Western sombrero, white enough to gleam in the pale light. His teeth flashed briefly below the wide brim.

Then Joe had fallen off the bridge. But, instead of going straight down into the chasm between the vessels, he swung down and then slammed against the hull of the Not For Hire. Joe quit bellowing then. His head lolled to one side, and he hung like a giant fly caught in the strand of an even larger spider.