Gangway!

    The lifting of the fog didn't do much to lift the captain's spirits. It only meant he could see those ruffians more clearly, and nothing about them reassured him. They looked to be a breed of man which spent much of its time biting other people and being bitten in return. There was a frayed, toughened, gnawed, tooth-marked look about them, with here and there an eyepatch, or a dangling sleeve, or a suspiciously stiff leg.

    Slowly the San Andreas slipped away from her pier, with Captain Flagway watching through his cabin porthole. The crew might be truculent and frightening, but they appeared competent, moving about their duties in a sea-manlike fashion that Captain Flagway himself had never been able to duplicate.

    The ship sagged across the Bay toward the pier normally occupied by the New World, where the other day they had all gone into the water in the rented wagon. Roscoe's crew tied up broadside to the end of the pier and then ran a pair of wide planks out onto the pier from amidships.

    Captain Flagway remained where he was, watching. He'd been present for all the pla

    Roscoe went ashore. The crew remained aboard ship, strolling around the deck in a kind of angry, dangerous boredom, growling at one another from time to time like lions irritated by fleas.

    The captain stayed in his cabin. His stomach rumbled softly, not like a lion at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

    The balloon came sailing through the foggy air. There was utter silence up here, the streets and roofs seen patchily below through breaks in the fog like a dream incompletely remembered. In the basket swaying beneath the great bulb of the balloon sat Gabe, Vangie, Roscoe and Ittzy, each one silent, pensive, waiting, thinking his own thoughts. This was the highest from the ground that any of them had ever been, and none of them much liked it.

    Gabe sat on a coil of heavy rope, Roscoe hunkered between the canisters of laughing gas, Vangie stood braced against the side of the basket with her arms folded and her chin lifted in the heroic pose of a woman going down on the ship with her man, and Ittzy sat on a wooden box marked DYNAMITE and read slowly but soberly in a book titled THE HANDLING OF A. NOBEL'S DYNAMITE IN CONSTRUCTION, DEMOLITION AND MINING EMPLOYMENT, Or, The Art of Explosives in the Modern Age.

    Vangie spoke only once during the voyage through the air. "Gabe," she said, "I want you to remember what I'm saying, in the years to come. You aren't going to get away with this. I'll be baking a fresh cake for you every month in prison-fifty years, that's six hundred cakes."

    "Uh huh," Gabe said.

    Vangie frowned at him. Then a breeze touched the basket, making it hop, and distracted her into grabbing the suspension cords to keep her balance. By the time she looked back at Gabe, he had twisted around and was watching over the side of the basket toward the ground, looking for landmarks.

    It was hard to make things out in the fog. Still, through the occasional wispy holes it was possible to recognize the ornate elaborate decorations on the rooftops of the Nob Hill mansions. One more hilltop to cross, if Gabe's calculations were correct, and they would be over the Mint.

    He faced the inside of the basket again. Vangie continued to frown in his direction but had nothing more to say. Roscoe looked almost as uncomfortable in the air as he usually did around Francis. Ittzy continued to read his book, occasionally licking a fingertip and turning a page, then licking the fingertip again and turning the page back, to frown at what he'd already read. The book appeared to be heavy going for Ittzy, but Gabe's confidence in him was undimmed. Ittzy would be all right.

    Gabe licked his own finger, and held it up to test the moist foggy wind. It was still on course, easy and steady, leading them to the Mint. He smiled contentedly, ignored Vangie's disapproving looks, and when he next twisted around to look over the side of the basket there was the Mint, dead ahead.

    The fog was begi

    The balloon-brightly colored, painted in astrological and other cabalistic signs, and bearing in great red letters the name PROFESSOR NEBULA (whoever he might be)-drifted over the courtyard and then over the main building of the Mint. At the right point, as he judged it, Gabe yanked the bag-release cord to open the valve and let enough gas out to lower the balloon to the roof.

    Nothing happened.

    Gabe frowned at the cord in his hand, frowned up at the balloon, frowned over the side at the roof of the Mint, drifting slowly by no more than ten feet below. He tugged again at the cord, and again nothing happened.

    Vangie said, "What's the matter?"

    "Nothing," Gabe muttered, and yanked at the cord some more. "Not a damn thing."

    Everybody was now looking at him in alarm. They were drifting along, at the wind's pace. Soon they'd drift past the Mint and right on out over the Bay… Finally in desperation, Gabe pulled the whisky flask from his hip pocket and shot a hole in the balloon.

    Something began to hiss.

    But they weren't descending.

    Gabe yanked the cord again, but it broke and he stood staring at the useless frayed end in his hand.

    They were almost past the Mint when Roscoe removed an enormous horse pistol from his sash and shot a bloody great hole in the balloon.

    Now it descended. In fact it descended very rapidly, till the basket thumped solidly onto the roof of the Mint. Gabe was half-crushed by warm bodies; he pushed them away, but the deflating bag of the balloon settled on down and draped itself in billowing folds over them all.

    Finally they came batting and pawing their way out from under. Vangie was muttering how she'd known it was never going to work. Ittzy was still reading the book on explosives.

    Roscoe emerged with vast pistols in both hands, ready to demolish any army that might appear.

    But none did. Evidently nobody had been alarmed by the gunshots. For one thing gunshots were not unheard of in San Francisco. For another it was not an instinctive reaction for people on the ground to look straight up in the air when they heard shots.

    When they were sure no one was coming to investigate their arrival on the roof, they all ducked back under the collapsed balloon again to drag out their equipment. Pulling the canisters and the rope and the dynamite, they emerged from the balloon once more and Vangie took the opportunity to whisper in Gabe's ear, "Gabe, this is an omen. Things are going to go wrong. We can still give it up, mix with the regular people in the tour, get out of here just as though it had never happened."

    He gave her a surprised look. "Everything's fine," he said. "What's the problem?"

    Roscoe asked, "What was that thing you were shooting?"

    "My flask," Gabe said. "It holds six shots." Vangie picked it up.

    Roscoe shook his head in admiration. "They make guns to look like almost anything, don't they?"