THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

Puffing on a cigar between his sentences, Sam would explain everything, well, almost everything, to his curious party.

Having led them through the A or boiler deck, Sam would then take them up the steps to the B or main deck.

“Navy people would call this series of steps a ladder,” he said. “But since most of my crew were landlubbers, and since we do have some reah ladders aboard, I decided to call the stairways stairways. After all, you go up them on steps, not rungs. In the same spirit, I dictated, despite the outraged protests of naval veterans, that walls should not be called bulkheads but walls. However, I did allow a distinction between your ordinary door and hatches. Hatches are those thick airtight watertight doors which can be locked with a lever mechanism.”

“And what kind of weapon is that?” a tourist would ask. He’d point at a long tubular duraluminum device looking like a cannon and mounted on a platform. Big plastic tubes ran into the breech.

“That’s a steam machine gun, .80 caliber. It contains a complicated device which permits a stream of plastic bullets, fed through a pipe from below, to be fired at a rapid rate from the gun. Steam from the boiler provides the propulsive power.”

Once, a person who’d been on the Rex said, “King John’s boat has a .75-caliber steam machine gun, several of them.”

“Yes. I designed those myself. But the son of a bitch stole the boat, and when I built this one, I made my guns bigger than his.”

He showed them the rows of windows, “not ports but windows,” along the exterior passageway. “Which some of my crew have the unmitigated ignorance or brazen gall to call corridors or even halls. Of course, they do that behind my back.”

He took them into a cabin to impress upon them its commodiousness and luxuriousness.

“There are two hundred and twenty-eight cabins, each of which is fitted for two persons. Notice the snap-up bed, made from brass. Eye-ball the porcelain toilets, the shower stall with hot and cold running water, the wash basin with brass plumbing, the mirrors framed in brass, the oak bureaus. They’re not very large, but then we don’t carry many changes of clothes aboard. Notice also the weapons rack, which may hold pistols, rifles, spears, swords, and bows. The carpeting is made of human hairs. And pop your eyes out at the painting on the wall. It’s an original by Motonobu, A.D. 1476 to 1559, the great Japanese painter who founded the style of painting called Kano. In the next cabin are some paintings by Zeuxis of Heraclea. There are ten in there. As a matter of fact it’s Zeuxis’ own cabin. He, as you may or may not know, was the great fifth-century B.C. painter born in Heraclea, a Greek colony in south Italy. It’s said of him that he painted a bunch of grapes so realistically that birds tried to eat it. Zeuxis won’t confirm or deny this tale. For myself, I prefer photographs, but I do have some paintings in my suite. One by a Pieter de Hooch, a Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. Near it is one by the Italian, Giovanni Fattori, A.D. 1825 to 1908. Poor fellow. It may be his final work, since he fell overboard during a party and was smashed to shreds by the paddle wheel. Even if he were resurrected, which isn’t likely, he won’t find pigments enough for a single painting anywhere but on this boat and the Rex”

Sam took them along the outside or promenade deck to the bow. Here was mounted an 88-millimeter cannon. So far, Sam said, it hadn’t been used, and new gunpowder would soon have to be made to refill the charges.

“But when I catch up with the Rex, I’ll blow Rotten John out of the water with this.”

He also pointed out the rocket batteries on the promenade, heat-seeking missiles with a range of a mile and a half and carrying warheads of forty pounds of plastic explosive.

“If the cannons miss, these’ll shred his ass.”

One of the women tourists was well acquainted with Clem-ens’ work and biographies about him. She spoke in a low voice to her companion. “I neyer realized that Mark Twain was so bloodthirsty.”