The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (31 page)

“Yes. Hold tight; we’re going to get you out.”

“Out of the way, sonny boy,” said Sklar, and attacked the lock with his lock-picker. After several tries he said disgustedly: “Don’t fit. We’ll have to blast the lock. Graham, take the viewer and find Gil. Tell him to light a lonk fuze and then come back to us.”

Graham took the viewer and stole off towards the north end of the settlement. He found Gil laying out an elaborate series of noise- and fire-making preparations against the northernmost building.

When Graham had given his message, the Brazilian said thoughtfully: “I theenk I will keep the gelatin. It’ll be useful on our way back; in that loose rock it will be as good as a fragmentation bomb.”

He finished pegging out his fuzes, snapped his cigarette lighter into flame, and applied it to the ends. When the fuzes were all fizzing, they headed back towards the other end of the hamlet.

Back at the distillery, Graham asked: “The fuzes are lit; what are you going to do?”

Sklar replied: “When they go off I’m going to blast the lock with this.” He patted the machine gun.

“Won’t the shots go through the door and hit Betty?”

“I told her to get behind the cooling coils, so she’ll be pretty safe . . .”

Wham!
A sudden glare lit up the night sky and the shockwave buffeted them. The main explosion was followed by a series of lesser reports, and the pinkish flare of the incendiary mixture cast long lurid beams among the buildings.

Voices called into the night, to be drowned by further explosions. Somewhere doors opened and running feet pounded.

“Get back,” said Sklar. “Around the corner. Don’t want to hit you with a ricochet.”

The constable lay down on his back with his feet against the door of the distillery and began firing bursts at the wood around the lock. The hammering of the gun drowned out the other noises.

“Okus dokus,” said Sklar, and the three others ran around the corner of the building behind which they had taken refuge. Where the lock had been the door showed a gaping jagged black hole. With a little shaking the door came open.

“Betty!” called Graham.

“I come,” she said, and stepped out from behind the coils.

“Hurry,” said Sklar.

As Jeru-Bhetiru stepped out of the building, Graham saw that all she had on was a pair of men’s pants much too big for her and a pair of rope-soled Spanish shoes.

“Hey!” cried a voice, and a man started towards them between the rows of buildings.

Sklar, still holding the machine gun, whipped it to his shoulder and fired a burst. The man dropped. As he did so, the gun gave a final click and stopped firing, its bolt open.

“Take it,” said Sklar, and tossed it to Gil, who fumbled at his belt for another clip as he ran. They all trotted south back over the route by which they had come. The light of the fire allowed them to run without their flashlights—for a while at any rate. As if in answer to the fire, the eastern horizon had now begun to show the first faint pallor of dawn.

Somewhere behind them a gun cracked. And again. And again. A bullet hit a rock and screamed off.

Then they were out of the firelight and had to slow down to avoid stumbling. Gil said: “You go on; I cover you.” He knelt behind a rock and sighted on the little black figures boiling out of the buildings, silhouetted against the glow of the fire.

Graham, his earlier fears forgotten, lusted to feel the kick of a gun. He rested his pistol on another rock. As the machine gun clattered beside him the little figures ducked this way and that. Graham squeezed his trigger. The pistol bucked in his hand, but it was too far for pistol-shooting and he could not tell if he had hit anybody. They were all out of sight, now, but from among the hummocks came little twinkling flashes and the sound of shots.

“Go on,” said Gil. “We have to take turns at this.”

Graham reluctantly went on, soon catching up with the others by virtue of his long legs. They picked their way, unable to use their lights for fear of drawing fire. Presently Gil panted up after them, saying: “If you want a turn, Meester Gordon, here it is,” and handed him the gun. “Don’t stay too long; just enough to make them stop and take cover.”

Graham found a place between a couple of boulders that gave him a loophole of convenient size. He waited while the footsteps of the others died away behind him. Too bad, he thought, that Sklar’s paralyzer had such a short range . . .

After a long time a light appeared. Somebody was coming ahead slowly, sweeping the surface of the lava with a powerful flash. Graham sighted on the light and fired a burst.

The light went out. There were cries and the sound of men running and stumbling. Graham, calculating that they would shoot at the flash of his machine gun, ducked back behind the larger of the two boulders. Sure enough, a rattle of shots came, mingled with the shrill
ptweeoo!
of the ricochets. Then there was a sharper crack and a straight line of blue arc flashed into being. It ended among the rocks on the seaward side of Graham. That would be an Osirian shock gun.
Crack!
The blue arc winked again, close enough to make Graham’s muscles jerk with the electrical surge.

Graham edged around the other side of the large boulder and held his fire until he was sure he was lined up on the flashes of one of the guns of the pursuers, and fired a burst. Then, without waiting to see the results, he slid back behind the boulder and began crawling away. It would take them some time to find he had gone.

He could move a little faster now, for the light in the east was just beginning to show up the form of the rocks over which he was walking, though not yet their color. He caught up with his party just before they reached the ravine up which they had come from the beach, and which could now be seen as a darker gash in the dark tumbled surface.

“Here,” said Gil, leaning on his elbows, half-in and half-out of the ravine. Graham handed him the gun.

There was a sudden rattle of rock and a groan from the darkness below.

“What is it?” said Graham, lowering himself into the gash.

“I have turned my ankle,” said Varnipaz. Then: “It is all right; I can still walk on it.”

Graham followed his companions down the ravine to the beach, using hands like a monkey. Whatever the differences between the internal structure of human beings and Krishnans, it was interesting to know that the latter had ankles subject to sprains like those of people.

Behind Graham, the machine gun clattered once. Then over the sound of the surf he heard the overturning of rocks, and Gil stumbled and scrambled his way after them.

“Just a meenute!” called the Brazilian. “Before you run, give me a couple of those gelatin sticks!”

Varnipaz paused and fished the explosives out of the bag he carried. Gil and Graham fitted a couple of lengths of slow fuze into them, lit them, and tossed them as far as they could up the ravine.

Then they ran. Sklar and Jeru-Bhetiru were already far ahead of them. Graham passed Varnipaz, who limped painfully from his mishap. Graham knew they would have to hurry from now on. Hitherto conditions had been with them. The rough terrain favored the defense, and the light had been just strong enough to see one’s way without being bright enough for accurate shooting. Now however they would be out in the open with the light waxing every minute.

When they reached the place where the raft had been left, Graham found that Sklar had already untied the painter and tossed his paralyzer into the vessel, saying: “Graham, you and Varny take the rear end, on account of that’s heaviest. I’ll take the front. Don’t hit the propeller on the rocks.”

They picked up the raft while Gil flattened himself against the base of the cliff and aimed his machine gun back towards where the ravine debouched onto the beach.

As they neared the place where the sea should be, Graham saw with a thrill of horror that the water was not where it had been. It had begun to recede, and even as they ran towards it it fled before them, faster and faster.

“The tsunami!” Graham yelled. “Catch that water and get out to sea, quick!” He shouted back: “Come on, Gil! The wave’s coming!”

The gun clattered briefly, and then Gil was running after them. A muffled
boom
came from the direction of the ravine, and out of the corner of his eye Graham saw the puff of dust and rock fly into the air.

He could not tell if they had harmed the enemy by the explosion. Gil panted after them. They stumbled over loose shingle, sank ankle-deep in mud, and meandered around outcrops of jagged lava. On the exposed sea bottom seaweeds lay sprawled, and stranded sea creatures flopped and scuttled.

The sharp crack and bright flash of the electrostatic projector made Graham cast a glance back. In the dim pre-dawn light he could make out forms moving on top of the cliff and others sliding down it to the beach. He thought he saw the tall tailed reptilian figure of The’erhiya among them. Gunshots sounded, and the nasty crack of h-v bullets whipped about their ears.

Gil turned, threw himself down behind a rock, and aimed his machine gun—and suddenly collapsed, dropping the gun.

“Hold it!” said Graham, letting go his corner of the raft. He ran back a few steps. One glance at Gil, the top of whose head had been taken off by a bullet, was enough to tell him the young man was dead.

Graham picked up the machine gun and fired at the moving figures. The gun barked once and then stopped. Mud in the works, thought Graham, and worked the bolt a couple of times until it seemed to slide easily. Then it fired several bursts without difficulty. The pursuers sought cover or threw themselves down flat.

Bullets and high-voltage arcs whipped past Graham. He felt a sudden blow on his right arm that almost knocked him over, then a sharp pain. He looked down: A bullet had gone through the sleeve of his shirt and grazed his arm. Luckily it was a flesh-wound only; a square hit might have taken his arm clear off as a result of the terrific m-v of modern firearms. He fired another burst—why does a target always look so much smaller over a gunsight than when looked at in the normal fashion? The bolt clicked and the gun, now uncomfortably hot, was empty again.

Graham got up and ran to catch up with the others. At least it was light enough now so you could really see where you were going. He zigzagged around the larger rocks and leaped over the smaller.

Varnipaz was still limping, and Jeru-Bhetiru was manfully carrying the corner of the raft that Graham had dropped. “Gil?” asked Varnipaz.

“Dead,” replied Graham. They had almost caught up with the receding water.

Sklar splashed into the surf and dropped the front end of the raft. The others pushed it off and piled aboard. Graham threw the machine gun into the body of the little vessel, pushed the raft ahead of him until he was knee-deep, and leaped in himself. Then he hunted around the outboard motor until he found the starting button. The motor buzzed into life, sending the water foaming back from the spinning screw. The raft gathered speed, which, added to the rapidly increasing velocity at which the receding water was bearing them away from Ascension, made them seem to be leaving at airplane velocity.

Shots still came after them. Graham put one of his reserve clips into the machine gun and fired back at the shore, though the pursuers were now so distant that from this unsteady platform he could do little more than spray the landscape in the hope of keeping down the return fire. Sklar and Varnipaz added to his barrage with a few shots from their pistols.

“Oh-oh!” said Sklar in the bow. “Here comes that wave of yours. Does anybody know how to pray?”

Graham put the gun on safety and looked around. He had always been in the habit of saying that, having studied tsunamis, he had no desire ever to see one in person. Now, it seemed, he was going to meet one whether he liked or not.

The earthquake wave did not take the steep clifflike form of a breaker. Instead the horizon—close at hand from their low position amongst the swells—seemed to hump itself up against the paling eastern sky little by little. The raft slowed as it headed up a steeper and steeper slope. Behind them the exposed sea bottom and the beach spread themselves out below their level. Ahead the slope of the tsunami extended away like that of a great rounded hill.

“Look!” cried Jeru-Bhetiru, pointing shoreward.

They were now on a level with the top of the small cliff, and rising higher. The water had stopped receding and was now rushing back shoreward. Far ahead and below them the edge of the water foamed over the exposed bottom towards the beach. They were still rising, so that now they were above the highest point on the northern peninsula, and could see clear across to the ocean beyond. To their right Graham glimpsed the March turtle farm before the waters overwhelmed it, liberating all the thousands of March’s turtles. Now their great hill of water was carrying them swiftly back towards the peninsula.

Along the beach, little figures, mere specks in the distance, could be seen frantically scrambling back up the cliff. The water roared up the beach, spurted high as it lapped against the cliff, and then submerged the cliff itself. Then the curve of the watery hill hid the land ahead from those in the raft. The raft went faster and faster, drifting north and shoreward, and began to spin round and round like a top. A great current was rushing around the northern tip of Ascension Island, rising higher and higher until most of the peninsula was one vast cascade over which sped a sheet of water. Graham gripped a couple of the rope handholds and hoped they would stay right side up. The roar of the water drowned everything else.

The raft pitched and heaved madly. Gouts of foam burst all around it, spraying its passengers with salt spray. Ascension Island slid past them as deep water poured over the northern peninsula. Ahead of the raft the water sped over the land to meet the other water that had poured around the northern end of the island in a millrace of leaping waves splashing tens of meters high.

Graham screamed: “Hold on!” at the top of his lungs, but could not even hear himself.

Now the whole peninsula was submerged, all but a few of the highest rocks, past which they spun. Then they were sliding down the long slope towards the maelstrom on the lee side which, though it had subsided somewhat, was still boiling.