Much to John’s disgust and disappointment, his men had discovered that every titanthrop interviewed was a member of the Church of the Second Chance. They refused to fight and in fact tried to convert the crew.
It was probable that there were titanthrops who had not succumbed to the preachings of the missionaries. But there” wasn’t time to look for them.
Now the airplanes lowered toward the launch while the people on shore, part of them average-sized Homo sapiens, part veritable Brobdingnags, lined the banks to watch these machines.
Suddenly, Okabe said, “The launch is heading for the right bank!”
He dived but not to fire. He couldn’t have hit the launch without also hitting many locals, and he was under orders not to anger them in any way if he could help it. John didn’t want to go through a hostile area after the Rex had sunk the Not For Hire.
“The deserters are jumping out of the launch and wading to the bank!” Okabe said. “The launch is drifting with the current!”
John cursed and then ordered the torpedo-bomber to land on The River. Its gunner must board the launch and bring it back to the Rex. And he must do it quickly before some local decided to swim out and appropriate the launch for himself.
“The deserters are mingled with the crowds,” Okabe said. “I imagine they’ll head for the hills after we’ve left.”
“God’s teeth!” John said. “We’ll never be able to find them!”
Burton, in the pilothouse at this time, made no comment. He knew that the agents would later steal a sailboat and continue up-River. The Rex would overtake it, if the Rex wasn’t sunk or too damaged to continue.
A few minutes after the launch was reberthed in the Rex and the two fighters had landed, a light on the pilothouse radio glowed orange. The operator’s eyes widened, and he was so astonished he couldn’t speak for a moment. For thirty years he and his fellow operators had waited for this to happen, though they’d not really expected it would.
At last the operator got the words out.
“Sire, Sire! The Clemens frequency!”
The frequency which the Not For Hire used was, of course, known. It could have been changed by Clemens, though even then the radio of the Rex would have scanned the spectrum until it had located it. But apparently Clemens had never seen any reason to shift to another wavelength. The few times that the Rex had received transmission from the Not For Hire, the message had been scrambled.
Not now. The message was not for the Parseval or the airplanes or launches of the Not For Hire. It was in nonscrambled Esperanto and meant for the Rex.
The speaker was not Sam Clemens himself. He was John Byron, Clemens’ chief executive officer. And he wished to talk to, not King John, but his chief officer.
John, who’d gone down to his quarters for sleep or dalliance with his current cabinmate, or both, was summoned. Strubewell did not dare to talk to Byron until his commander authorized it. John was at first determined to talk directly to Clemens. But Clemens, through Byron, refused to do that nor would he say why.
John replied, through his first mate, that there would be no communication at all then. But, after a minute, while the radio hissed and crackled, Byron said that he had a message to deliver, a “proposition.” His commander dared not speak to John face to face, as it were. Clemens was afraid that he’d lose his temper and cuss out King John as no one else in the universe had ever been cussed out before. And that included Jehovah’s denunciation of Satan before He hurled him headlong from Heaven.
Clemens had a sporting offer to make John. However, it was necessary, as John should now understand, that it be transmitted via intermediaries. After waiting half an hour to make Clemens swear and fume and fret, John replied via Strubewell.
Burton was again in the pilothouse and heard everything from the beginning. He was staggered when Clemens’ “proposition” was put forth.
John heard it all out, then replied that he’d have to talk about this to Werner Voss and Kenji Okabe, his top fighter pilots. He couldn’t order them to accept these conditions. And, by the way, who were Clemens’ two pilots?