The torpedoes struck the water with a splash. Two wakes foamed from behind them. The transceiver yelped with Clemens’ voice. The giant boat quit turning and sped at an angle toward the bank to the left. Rockets spurted up from its decks. Some of them arced down toward the torpedoes and exploded immediately after plunging below the surface. Others headed toward the dirigible.
Greystock swore in Norman French. He hadn’t been quick enough. But the torpedoes would surely hit the boat, and if they did, King John’s orders would have been carried out.
But he did not want to die. He had his own mission.
Perhaps he should have dropped the bombs while he was passing over the boat. She had veered off when he had tried to get directly over her, and be had not wanted to change course too abruptly. He should have neutralized the crew earlier and then told Clemens he was bringing the airship in close so everybody could have a good look at her.
During these thoughts, he had automatically punched the button which released all his rockets. They headed toward the boats’ missiles, their heat detectors locked into the tailflames of the boat’s, just as the boats’ rockets were locked into the tailflames of his missiles.
The explosions from rockets meeting rockets shook the airship. Smoke spread before him, veiling the boat. Then he was through the dark clouds and almost on the Mark Twain.
By God’s wounds! One torpedo had just missed the starboard corner of the stem, and the second was going to hit it! No, it wasn’t! Its side had touched the corner, and it had veered off! The boat had somehow escaped both!
Now Clemens’ voice, yammering, told him that no more rockets would be released. Clemens was afraid that the airship would explode and, carried by the wind, would fall flaming onto the boat.
The balloon, trailing its plastic cable, was floating down-River, rising at the same time.
Clemens had forgotten that the airship’s bombs had not yet been released.
The second airplane, a two-seater amphibian, shot below him. Its pilot looked upward in frustration at him. They were too close to each other and he was going too fast to swing up to the right and shoot the nose machine guns. But the gunner in the cockpit behind the pilot was swinging his twin machine guns around. Every tenth bullet would be a tracer, phosphorous coated. Only one in a gas cell was needed to ignite the hydrogen. The Minerva was only 152 meters from the Mark Twain and was closing fast. Its motors were going at top speed. This, plus a 16-km/ph tailwind, meant that the boat could not possibly get away in time.
If only he could drop the bombs before the tracer bullets struck. Perhaps the gunner would miss. By the time he got his guns around, the airplane would be past the airship.
The side of the boat loomed up. Even if the dirigible wasn’t hit by the tracers, she was so near the boat that the bombs would blow up both vessels.
Estimating the arrival tune of the. Minerva over the paddlewheel-er, he set the release mechanism of the bombs with a twist of his wrist. Then he got out of the seat and dived through the open port. no time to put on a parachute. Besides, he was too near the water for it to open in time. As he fell, he was struck by a wave of air like a colossal winnowing fan. He spun, unconscious, unable even to think fleetingly of how he had lost his second-in-command under John Lackland. Or his plans to get rid of John and take over the captainship of the Rex Grandissimus for himself.
52
Peter Frigate had boarded the Razzle Dazzle a week after New Year’s Day of year 7 A.R.D. Twenty-six years later, he was still on the schooner. But he was getting sailweary and discouraged. Would the ship ever arrive at the headwaters?
Since he had first stepped aboard, he had passed, to starboard, 810,000 grailstones. That meant he’d traveled about 1,303,390 kilometers or 810,000 miles.
He had started in the equatorial zone, and it had taken a year and a half to get into the arctic regions, going not as the crow flies but as the snake wriggles. If The River had been as straight as a ruler, it would have taken the ship there in less than six months, maybe five. Instead, it was as twisted as a politician’s campaign promises after election.