"Think it over, Colonel Lafayette. You have heard our stories. You know that the menace is not Albany, but the Earth ships that threaten our way of life, our world, everything that we have worked for and hold dear."
"And this wasn't an emotional appeal?" asked Lafayette dryly.
An Archer entered the tent, saluted smartly.
"An officer from the spaceships, Colonel!" he reported. "To see you."
"Tell her to come in."
The girl who entered we had seen before—in Albany.
She delivered the same message: "Hand over the prisoners, or else ..."
"Aren't you making rather a habit of this?" asked Claire.
"Aren't you making rather a habit of being a prisoner, Miss King? There are inducements, perhaps. . . . What is your reply, Colonel?"
"Tell Miss Willis that she shall have my reply in an hour's time," said Lafayette. He waited until the messenger had gone, then turned to Adelie. "All right. This is what I was waiting for. Will Barbee attack tonight? What is the signal?"
We waited in the tent, the five of us from the steam ram, listening to the half comprehended, muted tumult of military preparation. Claire sat with me; Bean paced up and down, his hand on the hilt of his short sword. Adelie stood with Captain Beynon, very close to him.
Lafayette came back into the tent.
"We're starting the fire now," he said. "Better come out and see the fun."
We followed him into the open air. The night was dark and clear, windless. From the slight rise—too low to be called a hill—on which the camp stood we could see the brilliantly lit spaceships, could see the river. There was something there on the water—something low and long and dark, waiting. Abruptly there was a flare of orange light from behind us, a gust of heat. A man came running up to us, saluted, gasped, "lire in the cookhouse, Colonel!"
The dark shape on the river was moving now, upstream, gaining speed. I began to wonder, belatedly, who was aboard the Show Boat, shuddered at the thought of the innocent Gospel Singers, who might have returned to their quarters aboard the vessel, trapped in the burning, sinking ship.
Somebody, some alert watch officer aboard Memphis Belle, raised the alarm. There was a clangor of bells, the booming of the steamer's whistle.
Too late, we thought—not knowing that the defensive measures had already been taken. From the river came a great flare of white flame, a deafening concussion. The long hull of the steam ram lifted clear of the water, breaking as it did so. Burning oil spilled from her.
Whistles blew in the camp. There was the sound of a bugle. By the light of the still burning tent we saw the men and the horses forming up, saw the gleam of swords. Lafayette shouted, "The charge still takes place! Are you coming?"
"Yes!" cried Adelie. "Come on!"
We followed the Colonel to a position at the head of his men. There were six horses there. I didn't see any of the others mount—I was too occupied in scrambling, somehow, aboard my own animal. Somebody thrust a sword at me. I took it, wondering what I should do with it, transferred the reins to my left hand.
The bugles were braying, now, and the drums were rattling, and, slowly at first, we started off down the slope to the spaceships. I could see the Colonel, well ahead, with Adelie by his side. Claire and Bean were to my right, the Old Man on my left. I started to say something to Claire, then had to clutch desperately to keep my balance. I lost my sabre.
The Colonel raised his sword, shouted, "Charge!"
Somehow I was part of the horse, and the horse was part of me, and the motion was more like flying than anything I had experienced in either the airship or the helicopter. The thunder of hooves filled the night, the thunder of hooves and the shouting of men, and the rattle of guns.
Bean was down. His horse screamed and stumbled, fell. Horses were screaming behind me. Then we were on top of the first gun pit, and the screaming of the women was like the screaming of the horses, and the swords that were bright as they slashed down were dull as they were uplifted.
The fire was taking us from the side, now, from both sides. Lafayette was pulling to his right, away from the ships. His intention was plain—to silence the guns before attempting anything else. We silenced the guns—and I thought, These may be women, but they are murderers. They murdered Albany.
The bugles were braying again and the horsemen were rallying around Lafayette. Claire was with me still, and the Old Man, and Adelie. Of the Archers— half had survived.
"The ships!" shouted the Colonel. "To the ships!"
There was machine gun fire from the airlock of Sylvia Pankhurst, but the shooting was poor. The airlock doors of Eve Curie were closed. As we approached her we saw the white fire blossom and spread under her stern, saw her lift, slowly at first. The heat hit us like a physical blow—the heat and the waves of sound.
She lifted, slowly—and we turned to run. The screaming roar of her was behind us, and the heat was burning the clothes from our backs, and horses and men were crying out dreadfully as the fire licked down on them. Claire's horse stumbled and fell, and I caught her somehow, dragged her from her saddle and slung her roughly across the shoulders of my own mount.
I lost my reins and the horse bolted.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
chapter seventeen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When the horse stopped, I fell off rather than dismounted. But I managed to stay on my feet, and I lifted Claire down. We sat under the cover of the snow ferns, very close together. I could feel her trembling, and knew that I was shaking as badly as she. The horse wandered off dejectedly. We made no attempt to stop him. The glare of Eve Curie's exhaust still filled the sky.
"She's come in now," said Claire in a matter-of-fact, too matter-of-fact, voice. "She's come in, and Adelie's dead, and your Captain, and little Bean. And the Colonel's dead, and so's Captain Barbee with his Sword of the Lord. And we're left." Her voice was slipping from matter-of-factness to the beginnings of hysteria. "What do we do? What can we do? What can we do?"
I held her closely to me.
"Claire, snap out of it. We're still alive. We'll do something."
"Such as?" she demanded. "Face facts, my dear. We're outcasts, the pair of us, in a world in ruins. We should have died with the others ..."
"We have each other," I said tritely.
"Very touching," remarked somebody in a familiar voice. I looked up. It was dark now that the spaceship had landed, but there was enough light from the snow ferns to see that it was Bean. "Do you mind if I join the Survivor's Club?" he asked politely. He sat down. "Where are we, by the way?"
"This path, up the hill, leads to the Locks," I told him.
"I wonder if your ship's still there . . . We could take her up river until things blow over . . ."
"If she's still there. If things ever do blow over," I said.
"Listen!" whispered Claire. "Horses . . ."
We heard a man's voice. "They'll never manage this path. We shall have to continue on foot . . ."
"As you please," replied a woman almost inaudibly.
"Captain Beynon!" I called. "Adelie!"
"Paul!" she cried. "It's Clement!" Then, to me, "Is anybody with you?"
The others answered her.
The Old Man and Adelie came round the bend of the path, walking slowly and painfully. Like us, they were filthy and bedraggled, their clothing scorched and torn and stained. Adelie was limping badly. But they were as pleased to see us as we were to see them.
We were evidence—as they were to us—that the world hadn't quite come to an end.
Then, after a while, with frequent pauses for rest, we climbed the hillside path to the Locks. Dawn—an ominous red dawn—was just breaking as we reached the top, as we stumbled gratefully from the rough uphill track to the smooth, level concrete. Richmond Queen was still there, in the basin—we could see her twin funnels in black silhouette against the crimson sky.
Slowly we walked towards the ship, wondering what had been happening since
we had left her, since we had been taken from her. There were craters in the concrete, and there was a large area blackened by fire, an untidy scattering of unidentifiable debris.
There were no lamps burning aboard Richmond Queen, no smoke coming from the funnels. There was no gangway watchman. We stepped aboard, and the deck rang hollow under our feet, and the ship was, we know, dead . . . "Anybody aboard?" I shouted. "Anybody aboard?" But I was certain that there would be no answer to my hail.
We went all through her, but we found nobody. Everything had been left in good order, although neglect was all too evident. The Log Books had been taken from the pilot house.
"I'm going to my quarters," said the Old Man at last. "Will you slip down to the Lock Master's house, Whitley? Get him up and find out what's been happening."
Claire came with me, and Bean. We thought at first, after we had been hammering on the door for a long time, that the Lock Master had abandoned his post. But, at last, we heard footsteps, heard the rattle and grate of the key in the lock of the door.
"What do you want?" demanded the Lock Master, peering at us with suspicion and fear. "What do you want?"
"I'm the Mate of Richmond Queen" I told him. "Where's my crew?"
"Living ashore, down at the Landing. The boss woman of the rockets told 'em to get off the ship."
"What's all this damage?"
"One o' them damned Albany gasbags. Came over, it did, the same night that Albany got it. Trying for the gates, it was, dropping bombs. Just getting into bed, I was, when I heard this buzzing sound in the sky . . . So, like a bloody fool, I goes outside to see what it is. There's the airship, circling, an' I hears someone shout, 'Bombs away!' The blast knocks me flyin' head over feet, but I ain't knocked so silly I can't see one o' them flyin' windmill affairs, with her guns rattlin' away fit ter bust . . . An' that bloody gasbag did bust . . . Served them right."
"Any damage to the Locks?" I asked, cutting him short.
"I ain't happy about the gates," he said. "But they'll hold . . ."
It was light when we got back to the ship. As the dawn had promised, it was a red day, the overcast a sullen crimson. Flights of balloon birds—untidy, ragged squadrons—were passing overhead, low, heading to the nor'ard. From the south came a continuous low mutter of thunder.
We went straight to the Old Man's room, told him what we had learned.
"So the gate's damaged' he said. "Did you look at it?"
"Yes, sir. Another bomb would have done the trick —and done for the spaceships as well."
"That's what they were trying to do," said the Old Man. "It must have been the only airship to get away from Albany." He turned to Adelie. "It helps."
"Yes," she said. "It will make it easier."
"Before we do anything else, Whitley," said the Old Man, "we'll eat. Go down to the galley and see what you can rustle up. Then, after we've fed and rested, we'll raise steam."
It wasn't a very satisfying meal. There were dry biscuits and some salted builder crab which had seen better days, and the coffee was weak and tasted of tar. But we needed the food—just as we needed the rest that we weren't allowed to get. The furnaces were cold, and the water level in the boilers was low, and as soon as we had bolted the last mouthful we were building fires and manning the hand pump.
I assumed—as did Claire and Bean—that we should be going up river, that we should be putting as much distance as possible between ourselves and the spaceships.
Adelie helped with the heavy work at first, then left us. She said that she had some writing to do. It was an odd time to write, I thought—but the Old Man seemed to be of the opinion that her action was quite normal.
At noon we had a break for another meal, which we took on deck. The Old Man was worried about the smoke which now, in two long, straight columns, was streaming up in sharp silhouette against the red sky. "It can't be helped," he said. "But I hope that nobody notices it." He turned to Adelie. "Have you finished, my dear?"
"Almost," she said.
"Good. I'll leave you in charge of the deck, Whitley," he said to me. "Look after the furnaces. Let me know when we have two hundred and fifty pounds of steam."
chapter seventeen
We raked, and we threw on fresh billets of wood, and the needles of the gauges crept steadily up and up. It was Claire who first heard the music, the faint, mournful strains drifting up from Wyndham's Landing. At first I thought that it was imagination, then realized that somebody had got the Show Boat's steam calliope g°ing. Was it, I wondered, some sort
of burial service?
The fires could do without attention for a few minutes, so Claire, Bean and I walked ashore, wandered to the end ol the Lock. Looking down we could see the Monument and the spaceships, Memphis Belle and the Show Boat. The music was louder now, clearer, Beulah Land it was—mournful, nostalgic.
"And viewed the shining Glory Shore/' I sang softly, "My Heaven, my Home, for evermore . .
"It was our Glory Shore, too," said Bean.
"Oh Beulah Land> sweet Beulah Land . . Everything, somehow, fitted—the mournful strains of the calliope, the lowering, crimson sky, the feeling of building tension in the air. It was like the afternoon before the End of the World. But so many worlds had already come to an end . . . the Glory Shore was finished, seared and blackened by the roaring exhausts of the spaceships, littered with ruins and bodies . . .
"What are you people doing?" asked the Lock Master, who had come up unobserved.
"Minding our own business," I told him.
We returned to the ship.
When the needles were touching the two hundred and fifty pounds calibration I went up to report to the Old Man. He was sitting, with Adelie, at his table, on which stood a decanter and glasses. "Will you call the others up?" he said.
When we were seated, Adelie poured the rum.
"We will drink," she said, "to the Glory Shore. To your Glory Shore, Clement and Claire. Don't spoil it. To yours, Mr. Bean . . ."
"Mine died with Albany," he said.
"And to ours, Paul. It hasn't been as clean as it should have been—but it has been . . . good. And I hope that something of it will live because of the manner of our dying." She handed me a bundle of closely written sheets. "Take this, Clement. My story. The story of what I did and what I thought and what I hoped, and of the mistakes I made. The story that will, I trust, help to save Beulah Land from conquest, from subjugation. Because there'll be other ships.
You know that, Claire. You know that Earth must have living room. Help to ensure that it's on our terms, not Earth's."
She paused for breath.
"Dying?" I said. "You talked of dying, Adelie . . . What do you mean? We shall be able to get by up river, all of us."
"But we aren't going up river, Whitley," said the Old Man patiently. "I'm going to order you ashore now—you and Claire and Bean. I want you to cut every line but one stern line, and I want you to stand by that with an axe."
"Cut the lines, sir?" I asked stupidly. "It won't take long, even as short handed as we are, to let go properly."
"What does it matter?" he said, smiling gently, and I realized then what his intention was.
"But there's no need for you to go with the ship, sir. Do as you say, yes. Cut the lines, and cut the last stern line when she's worked up to full revolutions —but you can be the man to cut it, from ashore."
"Oh, we could do it that way, Whitley—but it is necessary that Adelie die with the ship. We have decided that. If she lives after all that's happened—she will be the woman who sold Beulah Land to the Earthlings. But if she dies, spectacularly . . . Well, the blood of martyrs is strong medicine."
"I see," I said.
"Are you sure it's me, Paul, whom you want to die with?" asked Adelie, smiling a little sadly. "Are you sure that it's not Richmond Queen?"
He smiled back at her but did not reply. He said to us, "Off with you now. Goodbye—and good luck."
"Goodbye," said Adelie softly. I took her
in my arms then, and kissed her. "Be good to her," she whispered. "Think of me sometimes—but not too much . . ." She broke away, took Bean in her arms and kissed him.
"I got that kiss under false pretenses," said the Marine. "I'm staying."
"I order you ashore," said the Old Man.
"Then it's mutiny. Let me stay, Captain. Your place is on the bridge. Your place is on the bridge, with her. I'll look after the engines for you." He grinned crookedly. "It'll not be for long."
"Thank you, Bean," said the Old Man simply.
We went ashore, then, Claire and I, shaking hands with Bean at the gangway. He cast off the lashings of the brow, pushed it as we pulled. It clattered down to the concrete. He lifted and fitted the portable rail section into place. I walked forward, then with my axe, cut the headlines. The old Lock Master watched me in bewilderment, followed me aft. "What are you doing, young man?"
"Giving you some rope for new fenders," I told him. "It's time you put some out."
The steam calliope was still playing down at the Landing:
"Yes, we gathered at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river, Yes, we gathered at the river That flows by the throne of God!"
Yes, we'd all gathered at the river—the lost ships, the burned and sunken ships, Duke of Albany, Pride of Albany, Duchess, Bishop Wyndham, Sword of the
Lord and Ad Astra . . . And soon Richmond Queen would join them, and Memphis Belle, and Sylvia Pankhurst and Eve Curie . . .
"Yes, we gathered at the river . .
. * . and the mournful notes of the calliope, their stridency softened by distance, drifted up from the landing, drifted up under the lowering, crimson sky.
Glory Planet Page 13