Chapter 36
The inflation of Little Susie was still further delayed. Grimes didn’t like the way that the fliers were hovering not overly far overhead, circling watchfully, gliding and soaring against the rising wind, maintaining their position relative to the island. It seemed to him that the airborne predators were far too interested in what was going on.
He said, “It will take three of us to handle this operation. It should be more—but three bodies is all we have. Somebody will have to stand by the valve on the helium cylinder, ready to shut off immediately. The other two of us will be kept busy handling the lines. Nobody will be able to keep a proper lookout.”
“We’ll just have to carry on and take a chance. Commodore,” said Sanchez.
Grimes looked at the young man severely.
“As a spaceman, Raoul, you should know that chances aren’t taken, except when the circumstances are such that there’s absolutely no option.”
“As now, sir.”
“No. I admit that we have not had time to explore this island thoroughly—but you must have noticed, as I did, that at the northern end there is quite a miniature jungle of low bushes. In spite of their proximity to the water they are dry looking bushes. But not too dry. . . .”
Get on with it! said the young man’s expression although he remained silent.
“All animals,” went on Grimes pedantically, “fear fire. That holds good on every world that I have visited. I am sure that this one is no exception. My proposal is this—that we start a fire among those bushes, hopefully not too fast-burning but one with plenty of smoke. The wind will blow the smoke right over us. As we work we shall require goggles and handkerchiefs, well wetted, to tie over our noses and mouths. The fliers—unless they are related to the legendary phoenix—will not be at all inclined to dive into the heart of an apparent conflagration. . . .”
“Not so apparent. Commodore,” said Sanchez. “But it’s a good idea. As long as we don’t get barbecued.”
“We’ll try just a small sample of shrubbery first,” Grimes told him. “And, at the same time, we’ll make sure that this mosslike growth is not flammable. We don’t want to have to work with flames licking around our ankles.”
“Especially,” said Su Lin, “since our getaway craft will carry only one person . . .”
Grimes’s plan worked.
The undergrowth at the northern end of the island was flammable but not explosively so; in fact, even with the laser in use, it was not all that easy to start the brush fire. Once Grimes got it going, however, it kept on going. A column of black, almost intoxicatingly aromatic smoke arose, drifting up the slope to cover the activities of the balloon crew, rising into the cloudless sky at an acute angle. Overhead, the fliers departed down wind. Were they really frightened? wondered Grimes, or were they hopeful that land animals fleeing the conflagration could be swooped upon as they ran in panic? The other local predators were doing well for themselves. The shockers, incapable themselves of swift motion, trapped the little, many-legged things that ran over them, in the river the water centipedes were feeding well.
Luckily there were very few sparks. Even though helium, unlike hydrogen, is an inert gas, any large burning fragment could have melted a hole in the envelope fabric. But the slowly swelling balloon was unscathed.
Grimes and Su Lin tended the guy lines, straightened out folds in the slowly distending fabric. They had to work, he said later, like one-armed paperhangers. Little Susie slowly took shape, lifting from the ground as she acquired buoyancy. And, although dwarfed by the bulk of the wrecked airship, she was not so little. She was not beautiful either. Despite the careful calculations and the painstaking implementation of these during the cutting and gluing of the segments she was a sadly lopsided bitch. But she was, thought (and hoped!) Grimes, airworthy. She strained at her mooring lines, anchored to the ground by grapnels from Fat Susie’s stores. She was eager to be off.
“Shut off and disconnect,” ordered Grimes, his voice muffled by the wet handkerchief covering his mouth. “After all this trouble we don’t want to burst her. And now, Su Lin, if you’ll be so good as to pack me a tucker box I’ll be off. Expect me back when you see me. I’ll be as quick as I can mustering help.”
“But you’re not going, Commodore,” said Sanchez. “I’m not going?” (All the time Grimes had assumed that he would be piloting the balloon.) “I’m not going? Damn it all, it’s my job.”
“It is not, Governor Grimes,” Su Lin told him. “Raoul and I have talked this over. You are the Governor. You are the best hope we have, such as it is, of cleaning up the mess on this planet. You’re too precious to risk.”
“Me, precious!’” Grimes exploded. “Come off it, girl!” He turned to Sanchez. “You know, Raoul, that I’m a quite fair balloonist. Didn’t I teach you quite a bit about the art of free ballooning?”
“Yes, Commodore, and I learned from you. And I am, after all, a qualified airshipman.”
“Even so . . .”
“There’s another point,” said the girl. “We don’t know, we have no way of knowing, where the balloon is going to come down. With a little bit of luck it might be somewhere that’s just lousy with OAP members and supporters. On the other hand, it might be somewhere crawling with police, police informers and staunch supporters of Bardon and O’Higgins. Even if the descent is made unobserved, by night, the balloon pilot will still have to feel his way around cautiously, to find people whom he can trust. What chance would you have of doing that. Commodore? For a start, you’re an obvious outworlder with an Orstrylian accent that you could cut with a knife. Raoul’s a native. He knows people. He knows his way around . . .” It made sense, Grimes had to admit.
But he didn’t like it.
He and Sanchez stood in the billowing, eddying smoke through which the afternoon sun gleamed fitfully. They looked up at the misshapen Little Susie, bobbing fretfully at her moorings.
“A poor thing, but mine own,” murmured Grimes. “Look after her, Raoul.”
“I hope she looks after me,” said the pilot.
“You know,” went on Grimes, “this is the first time in my life that I’ve actually designed a ship. I really should be risking my own neck on her maiden flight, not yours . . .”
“You and Su Lin,” consoled Sanchez, “will be running plenty of risks staying here.”
“Mphm. Why remind me?”
“Sorry, Commodore. What will you do if I’m not back with help within, say, ten days?”
“Then we make a raft or a canoe and try to make our escape down river. In fact, I think we’ll make a start on the project tomorrow.”
“And that will be a ship, designed and built by yourself, that you will have the pleasure of commanding. But I hope, sir, that it never comes to that.” The pilot laughed. “You seem to have a thing about the name Susan. Your spaceship, the one in which you went privateering, is Sister Sue. The airship is Fat Susie. The balloon—Little Susie. What will you call the canoe or raft?”
“Wet Sue,” said Grimes after a moment’s thought.
“That sounds Chinese. It should please Su Lin . . .”
“Were you talking about me?” asked the girl, coming out of the ship with a plastic bag of foodstuffs and a flagon of water.
“Not exactly,” said Grimes.
“Oh. Well, here’re your provisions for the voyage, Raoul. As long as this wind holds they should last you as far as the nearest cantina.”
If you get there, thought Grimes.
“Bon voyage, Raoul,” said Su Lin. She put the food and drink into the chair suspended below the balloon (the added weight didn’t seem to worry it) and then threw her arms about the pilot and kissed him soundly. Grimes felt a stab of jealousy. “Bon voyage, and look after yourself.” Grimes made a show of checking everything before lift off. “Food . . . Water . . . Ballast . . . Now all we need is the crew. . . .”
“All present and correct, sir!” reported Sanchez briskly, saluting.
“Good. You know the drill, Raoul. That bag of assorted stones is your ballast. Don’t throw it all away in one grand gesture. You’ll probably have to jettison some weight after sunset when the helium cools and loses buoyancy. But don’t be a spendthrift. Once weight has been dumped you’ll not be able to get it back. Conversely, gas valved is lost forever . . .”
“Understood, Commodore.”
“Then, good luck, Raoul.” He extended his hand. Sanchez took it. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”
“We all need it, sir.”
Sanchez hung the flagon of water from one arm of the chair, the bag of food—bread, cold meats and fruit—from the other. He took his seat, buckled on and adjusted the safety belt.
“Ready?” asked Grimes. “Ready.”
“Trip for’ard grapnel.”
Sanchez yanked sharply on one of the three mooring lines. The grapnel flukes swiveled, came free of the soil. “Trip port and starboard grapnels!” This time it was Grimes and Su Lin who jerked upwards on the lines. The grapnels lost their grip. The balloon lifted. Su Lin did not jump back and clear smartly enough and a fluke fouled her clothing, catching in the loosely buttoned front of her tunic. She was lifted from the ground. Grimes caught her dangling legs, held her. Cloth ripped. Little Susie continued her ascent, taking with her Su Lin’s upper garment.
Grimes actually ignored the half-naked girl whom he was holding tightly in his arms, stared up and after the rising balloon. She was rising steadily, carried along in the stream of smoke that was still coming from the brush fire. The fliers, well down wind, were staying clear of the reek of the burning. But would they continue to do so? The diminishing balloon was drifting into clear air. Su Lin disengaged herself from Grimes’s arms—he was hardly aware that she had done so—and was absent from his immediate presence very briefly. Then she was pressing something into his hands. It was a pair of binoculars that she had brought from the ship.
Grimes thanked her briefly, then put the powerful glasses to his eyes. The hemisphere of the balloon that he could see was holding its shape. There were (as yet, anyhow) no leaks, no ripped seams. Sanchez was sitting stolidly in his chair. But, Grimes saw as he adjusted the binoculars to obtain a wider field at the expense of magnification, the fliers, the circling, soaring and swooping carnivores, were closing in. The only weapon that Sanchez had with him was a long knife—and that was supposed to be used in lieu of a ripcord rather than to ward off attack. Too, his view obscured by the bulging gasbag, the pilot quite possibly was not even aware of his danger.
And what use would the shockers be as defensive weaponry? Grimes could see them plainly enough, gaudy patches on the silvery grey envelope. He had applauded his own cleverness in having them attached to Little Susie’s skin but now was having his doubts. Contact with them might well be lethal but their bodies would never be tough enough to stop a direct, stabbing assault by one of those long, murderous beaks.
So far there was no direct assault.
The fliers were making rings around the balloon with contemptuous ease, flying in ever diminishing circles. (Surely Sanchez must have seen them by now—but what could he do about them? Did Anarchists pray to Bakunin?) Closer they were coming to the helpless aerostat, closer and closer. And then a leathery wing brushed Little Susie’s taut skin—no, not her skin but the garishly colored plant attached to it.
Grimes watched the airborne predator falter in its flight and then fall, its great wings still outspread but unmoving. Dead or merely stunned, it was parachuting down. It did not reach the ground. The others were upon it, tearing it to shreds as it dropped. Grimes was reminded of maddened sharks feasting upon the injured but not yet dead body of a member of their own species.
Little Susie drifted on, steadily diminishing in the field of Grimes’s binoculars. Smoke was coming from her. Smoke? Yes. Grimes could just see that there was something dangling below the pilot’s chair, a bundle from which the thick fumes were issuing. Clothing? Possibly. Perhaps Sanchez’ jacket, probably Su Lin’s shirt.
The pilot’s ingenuity was to be commended, but . . . Weight was being sacrificed. As a result, gas might have to be valved. And then, with sunset (not far off), ballast would have to be dumped.
Was Sanchez sufficiently proficient a balloonist to juggle his buoyancy and ballast and still stay aloft for long enough to complete his voyage?
Grimes, he admonished himself, don’t be a back seat driver.
Then Little Susie was no more than a speck in the sky, and then she was gone. She had not fallen, Grimes told himself. She was still aloft, still flying steadily south. She was just out of sight, that was all.
“This wind is chilly,” said Su Lin.
He turned to look at her. She had her arms crossed over her naked breasts. She was shivering. Her creamy skin was speckled with smuts, some of them large, from the dying fire upwind. Her handkerchief mask and her goggles were still in place.
The effect was oddly but strongly erotic.
“There is nothing more that we can do today,” she said. “I am going inside. Are you coming?”
Why not? Grimes asked himself. Why not? He followed her into the ship.