Techniques to combat it had been offered aplenty to him. The Hindus had a dozen; the Moslems, another dozen. Several of the savage tribes of Tanganyika had their sure-fire remedies. And on this world, he’d tried a score or more. Nur el-Musafir, the Sufi, had taught him a technique which had seemed more efficacious than any he’d ever learned. But after three years, slowly, inching in night by night, Old Devil Insomnia had secured a good beachhead again. For some time, he’d been lucky if he got a good sleep two out of seven nights.
Nur had said, “You could conquer insomnia if you knew what was causing it. You could strike at the source.”
“Yaas,” Burton had replied. “If I knew what and where the source was, I could get my hands on it. I’d be able to conquer more than insomnia. I could conquer the world.”
“First, you’d have to conquer yourself,” the Moor had said. “But when you did that, you’d find out that it wasn’t worthwhile ruling the world.”
The two guards by the rear entrance to the texas were walking in the semidarkness of the landing deck, wheeling, marching to the middle of the deck, each solemnly presenting his rifle to the other’s, wheeling, then striding back to the edge of the landing deck, wheeling, and so on.
During this four-hour watch, Tom Mix and Grapshink were on guard duty. Burton didn’t hesitate to talk to them, since there were two guards at the front of the texas, two in the pilothouse, and many more at different parts of the boat. Ever since the raid by Clemens’ men, John had set up night sentinels all over the boat.
Burton chatted for a while with Grapshink, a native Amerind, in his own tongue, Burton having taken the trouble to learn it. Tom Mix joined them, and he told them a dirty joke. They laughed, but afterward Burton said he’d heard a different version of it in the Ethiopian city of Harar. Grapshink confessed that he’d heard another version, too, when he was on Earth. This would have been about 30,000 B.C.
Burton told the two he’d be going on to check the other guards. He walked down the stairs to the B or main deck and went toward the stern. As he passed a diffused light in the fog, he saw something moving out of the corner of his left eye. Before he could turn toward it, he was struck on the head.
Some time later, he awoke on his back, staring upward into the fog. Sirens were wailing, some very near him. The back of his head hurt him very much. He felt the bump, winced, and his fingers came away sticky. When he struggled to his feet, swaying, dizzy, he saw that the lights were on all over the boat. People ran past him calling out. One stopped by him. Alice.
She cried out, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “except that someone coshed me.”
He started toward the bow but had to stop to steady himself with a hand against the wall.
“Here,” she said, “I’ll help you get to the sick bay.”
“Sick bay be damned! Help me to the pilothouse. I have to report to the king.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “You may have a concussion or a fractured skull. You shouldn’t even be walking. You should be on a stretcher.”
He growled, “Nonsense,” and started to walk. She made him put his arm around her shoulder so she could half-support him. They started again toward the bow. He heard the anchors being pulled up, the chains rattling in the holes. They passed people manning the steam machine guns and the rocket tubes.
Alice called out to a man, “What happened?”
“I don’t know! Somebody said the big launch was stolen. The thieves took it up The River.”
Burton thought that if that was true, he’d been slugged by someone posted to insure that the thieves weren’t surprised.
The “thieves,” he was sure, had been crew members. He didn’t think that anybody could slip aboard unnoticed. The sonars, radar, and infrared detectors were operating at night and had been ever since the raid. Their operators dared not fall asleep. The last one who’d done that, ten years ago, had been thrown off the boat into The River two minutes after being caught.