THE MAGIC LABYRINTH by Philip Jose Farmer

King John came down to look at the bomb. The clock was attached by wires to the fuse and the shapeless mass of plastic. Its hand indicated 10.20 minutes to go.

“There’s enough to blow a hole in the hull bigger than the starboard side itself,” a bomb expert said cheerfully. “Shall I remove it, Sire?”

“Yes. At once,” King John said coolly. “One thing, though. This doesn’t have a receiver radio, too, does it?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

John had frowned. He said, “Very strange. I just don’t understand this. Why should the deserters leave one of their number behind to set the time clock when they could far easier have blown it with a wireless frequency? McKenna could have been with them. They’d not have to, put one of their own in danger. It doesn’t make sense.”

Burton was with the group of officers accompanying John. He said nothing. Why bother to enlighten him, if indeed what he had to offer was enlightening?

McKenna had shown up immediately after the raid from the Parseval, and he’d volunteered to replace one of the men killed In it. It seemed evident to Burton, or at least a strong possibility, that McKenna had been dropped off from a plane or via parachute or glider from the airship Parseval. What did the twentieth-century call such people? The… “fifth column”… that was it. Clemens had planted this man for the day when the Not For Hire caught up with the Rex. He’d been ordered to blow up the boat when that day came.

What Burton didn’t understand was why Clemens had told McKenna to wait until then. Why hadn’t McKenna blown the boat at the first opportunity? Why wait for forty years? Especially since it was very likely that McKenna, after living with the Rexites for so many years, might have found himself sympathetic with them? He’d be isolated from his fellows on the Not For Hire and almost inevitably, and subtly, his loyalties would transfer from those who’d Become a distant memory to those he lived intimately with for a long time.

Or had Clemens not considered that?

That wasn’t probable. As anyone who’d read his works knew, Clemens was a master psychologist.

It was possible that Clemens had given McKenna orders not to destroy the Rex unless it was absolutely necessary.

King John gestured at the corpse and said, “Throw that filth into The River.”

It was done. Burton would have liked to find an excuse to have the body taken to the morgue. There he could open up the skull and inspect the cerebrum for a tiny black ball. Too late. McKenna would be opened up only by the fish.

Whatever had happened, it was over for McKenna. And though the one bomb had been found, the search continued for more. At last, it was called off. There was no secretly planted explosive device in the vessel or outside it. Divers had gone over every inch of the exterior of the hull.

Burton thought that the deserters, if they’d had their wits about them, would have made provisions to sink the craft before leaving. Then neither it nor the airplanes could have pursued them. But they were agents, loathing violence though able to deal with it if the situation required.

There had been only one way to make sure that McKenna was an agent of the Ethicals or an agent of Clemens’.

One thing was certain. Podebrad and Strubewell were not saboteurs.

But why had they stayed aboard?

He thought about the problem, puzzling over it a while, then said, “Hah!”

They were volunteers. They’d elected to remain with the boat because there was someone or someones on the Not For Hire whom they wanted to make contact with. He or she or they might be enemies or friends, but the two had their reasons for wanting to get hold of the person or persons. So, they’d made the very risky decision to stay with the Rex through the battle. If the Rex won, which it might, though the odds now seemed against it, then the two, if they survived, would be able to get to whoever it was that was on Clemens’ boat.