The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Burton looked eastward toward the strait. Unlike the areas above and below it, the strait had no banks. High hills rose abruptly along its length, hills which were smooth walls. Below the strait some­thing-no, two objects-were moving toward him, seemingly sus­pended above the fog.

He climbed a rope ladder to get a better look. The two objects were not suspended in the air. Their lower parts were just hidden by the mists. The nearest was a wooden structure with what seemed to be a human figure on its top. The second, much farther back, was a large, round, black object.

He called down. “Pete! I think it’s a raft! A very large one! It’s moving with the current, and it’s headed directly toward us! There’s a tower with a pilot on it. He isn’t moving, though, just standing there. Surely …”

No, not surely. The man on the tower had not moved. If he were awake, he would have seen that the raft was on a collision course.

Burton hooked an arm around a rope, cupped his hands, and bellowed warnings. The figure leaning against the guardrail did not move. Burton stopped shouting at him.

“Wake up everybody!” he thundered at Frigate. “On the dou­ble! We must get the boat out of the way!”

He climbed swiftly down and went over the side onto the dock. Here, where his head was below the surface of the fog, he could see nothing. By running one hand along the hull, however, he could feel his way to the mooring posts. By the time he had untied two lines, he heard the others on the deck above. He shouted that Monat and Kazz should get onto the dock on the other side and untie the lines there.

In his haste, he rammed into a post and for several seconds hopped around holding his knee. Then he resumed his work.

Having completed his part of unloosing, he groped back along the hull. Someone had by then let down the gangway. He went up it, his hands sliding along the railing, and came aboard. Now he could see the tops of the women’s heads and the American’s face.

Alice said, “What’s going on?”

“Have you gotten the poles out?” he said to Frigate.

“Yeah.”

He swung up onto the rope ladder again. The two objects were still on a course that must end at the docks. The man on the watch tower had not moved.

By now there were voices coming from the island. The Ganopo were awake and calling out questions.

Monat’s head and shoulders rose from the greyness. He looked like a monster sliding up out of the fog of a Gothic novel. The skull was similar to that of a human being’s, but the fleshy features made him seem only semihuman. Thick black eyebrows curved down alongside the face to knobbed cheekbones and flared out to cover them. Thin membranes that swung with the movement of his head hung from the lower part of his nostrils. At the end of his nose was a deeply cleft boss of cartilage. His lips were like a dog’s, thin, black, and leathery. The lobeless ears were convoluted like seashells.

Kazz bellowed somewhere near Monat. Burton could not see him since he was the second shortest of the crew, only about 5 feet or 1.5 meter tall. Then he came very close, and Burton could make out the squat figure.

“Get the poles and push the boat from the docks!” Burton yelled.

“Where in hell are they?” Besst called.

Frigate said, “I pulled them from the rack. They’re on the deck below it.”

Burton said, “Follow me,” and then he cursed as he stumbled over something and fell flat on his face. He was up again at once, only to bump into somebody. From the bulky shape, he thought it must be Besst.

After some confusion, the poles were gotten and their wielders were stationed along the sides. At Burton’s orders, they thrust the ends against the top of the dock, there being no room between the hull and the side of the dock for the poles to shove against the stone bottom of the underwater shelf. Since they had to fight against the current, which was strongest on the middle of the lake, they could only move the vessel very slowly. Once past the dock, they lowered the ends of the poles into the water and pushed against the rocky bottom. Even so, the poles slipped on the bare, smooth rock.