The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

Here, aware of the waters pressing against the hull, aware that he was below the surface of The River, he ran through the many rooms, large and small. He passed between the giant electric motors turning the paddlewheels which were driving the vessel toward destruction. Desperately, he tried to get into the large compartment holding the two launches. He would rip the wires out of the motor of one and take the other out into The River and so leave his sinister pursuer behind. But someone had locked the door.

Now he was crouching in a tiny compartment, trying to slow his rasping breath. Then, the hatch opened. Erik Bloodaxe’s figure loomed in the greyness. It moved slowly toward him, the great axe held in both hands.

“I told you,” Erik said, and he lifted the axe. Sam was powerless to move, to protest. After all, this was his own fault. He deserved it.

50

He awoke moaning. The cabin lights were on, and Gwenafra’s beautiful face and long honey-blonde hair were above him.

“Sam! Wake up! You’ve been having another nightmare!”

“He almost got me that time,” he mumbled.

He sat up. Whistles were shrilling on the decks. A minute later, the intercom unit shrilled. The boat would soon be heading for a grailstone and breakfast. Sam liked to sleep late, and he would just as soon have missed breakfast. But as captain it was his duty to rise with the others.

He got out of bed and shambled into the head. After a shower and tooth-brushing, he came out. Gwenafra was already in her early-morning outfit, looking like an eskimo who had traded her furs for towels. Sam got into a similar suit but left his hood down to put on his captain’s cap. He lit a corona and blew smoke while he paced back and forth.

Gwenafra said, “Did you have another nightmare about Bloodaxe?”

“Yes,” he said. “Give me some coffee, will you?”

Gwenafra dropped a teaspoonful of dark crystals into a grey metal cup. The water boiled as the crystals released both heat and caf­feine. He took the cup, saying, “Thanks.”

She sipped her coffee, then said,’ “There’s no reason to feel guilty about him.”

“That’s what I’ve told myself a thousand times,” Sam said. “It’s irrational, but when did knowing that ever make a fellow feel better? It’s the irrational in us that drives us. The Master of Dreams has about as much brains as a hedgehog. But he’s a great artist, witless though he is, like many an artist I’ve known. Perhaps including yours truly.”

“There isn’t a chance that Bloodaxe will ever find you.”

“I know that. Try telling the Dream Master that.”

A light flashed; a whistle blew from a panel on a bulkhead. Sam flicked its switch.

“Captain? Detweiller here. Arrival time at designated grailstone will be five minutes from now.”

“Okay, Hank,” Sam said. “I’ll be right out.”

Followed by Gwenafra, be left the stateroom. They passed down a narrow corridor and went through a hatch into the control room or bridge. This was on the top deck of the pilothouse; the other senior officers were quartered in the cabins on the second and third decks.

There were three persons in the control room: Detweiller, who had once been a river pilot, then a captain, then owner of an Illinois-Mississippi River steamboat company; the chief executive officer, John Byron, ex-admiral, Royal Navy; the brigadier of the boat’s Marines, Jean Baptiste Antoine Marcellin de Marbot, ex-general for Napoleon.

The latter was a short, slim, merry-looking fellow with dark-brown hair, snub nose, and bright blue eyes. He saluted Clemens and reported in Esperanto.

“All ready for duty, my captain.”

Sam said, “Fine, Marc. You can take your post now.”

The little Frenchman saluted and left the pilothouse, sliding down the pole behind it to the flight deck. Lights flooded this, showing the Marines in battle array lined up in its middle. The standard bearer held a pole on top of which was the boat’s flag, a light-blue square bearing a scarlet phoenix. Near him were rows of pistoleers, men and women in grey duraluminum coal-scuttle helmets topped by roaches of human hair stiff with grease, plastic cuirasses, knee-length leather boots, their broad belts holding bolstered Mark IV revolvers.