"All right," I announced, "everyone move out!"
Lori was hyperventilating. I helped John sling her over his shoulder and held her while he balanced her precariously. I picked up Jimmy's gun and handed it to the kid, then gave Darla her pistol back. It took a while to get everyone ready, but finally I had them filing out into the hall and to the right, hugging the walls, with Roland taking point. Everyone was armed but John and Susan. I was the last one out. I stood at. the door and looked at Wilkes. His eyes pleaded with me.
I was about to say something when a low, rumbling sound shook the floor and the connecting hatch suddenly flew to splinters. A Reticulan came striding through, bearing a strange silver weapon of curving surfaces and a bell-shaped business end. I ducked behind the bulkhead and brought the.44 around and fired. The alien's head exploded into puffs of pink mist, shards of chitin clattering against the walls and floor. The body kept walking toward me. I backed away, turned, and ran down the hall, whirling and backpedaling every few steps until I made it to a comer. I stopped for one last look and saw the headless body topple into the hall, its legs still working. No one else came out. The others were looking back at me. I barked at them to keep going.
A little further ahead, the Teelies stopped to pick up their backpacks, which they had left in the hallway. I grabbed John's and struggled into it while we ran. I rushed to the head of the line and told Roland to bring up the rear.
There was smoke in the corridor, and shouting and crashing sounds came from somewhere up ahead. As we neared the source of the disturbance, the smoke got steadily thicker, until we had a choice of turning back or asphyxiating. I did not want to face the Reticulans, and as far as I knew there was no stairway to the lower decks in that direction, which is what we needed. But there was a side corridor nearby that looked like it led to a way out on deck. I ducked down it and made sure everyone followed me before I went to the head of the line again. I cracked the hatch and found that it opened onto the starboard deck, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go out there.
Beyond the railing and out to sea, a blood-red moon squatted on the horizon. Silhouetted against it was the outline of what I took to be another megaleviathan, minus the ship-structure, slowly closing off the Laputa's starboard beam. Above, the air was filled with flying motes of fire. Giant shapes crossed the glowing disk of the moon, batlike, nightmare shapes, and from all around came the sound of great leathery wings flapping. Dots of flame circled the Laputa like swarms of fireflies, some suddenly deorbiting to come arcing down on the ship. I heard a thump and looked to my right. One had hit the deck not far away. It bounced against the bulkhead and came to rest against a stack of deck chairs. It was a melon-size flaming ball of something, a pitchlike substance probably, trailing a length of fireproofed braided lanyard. The fabric-and-wood-frame deckchairs ignited immediately. I craned my head out to get a better view. Spot fires flared everywhere along the upper deck, and fire details rushed everywhere, shouting, trailing firehoses like white wriggling snakes. I didn't want to go out there, but there was no choice. I looked for the nearest stairs for B Deck, saw none, but decided it was best to head aft.
"Put me down. God damn it!"
It was Lori, screaming at John. I closed the hatch and walked back. John was setting her down and apologizing profusely. She took a swing at him, missed, and when I took her arm she sent a haymaker toward me. I caught her wrist.
"Lori, settle down! It's me, Jake! Remember?"
Her eyes focused on me and the hysterical hatred drained from her face. She blinked and looked again. "Who? Oh, yeah. Yeah." She looked around, bewildered. "What happened? Where are we?" Then she noticed the sheet and her lack of clothes. "What the punkin'hell…?"
"A pirate mega is attacking the ship," I told her, thinking it better to concentrate on the present problem than on past traumas which she may or may not remember. "We have to get belowdecks."
That brought her around. "Are they firebombing?"
"Yes, and it looks like they're pulling alongside to board."
"Where are we?"
"Top deck, starboard, near the bow."
"This way ― and hurry!"
We went out on deck and made our way aft, keeping a lookout for falling fireballs. The bombardment continued, but most of the orbiting lights had fallen. It seemed like a coordinated attack, with the bombardment probably scheduled to cease just prior to the boarding attempt. I saw now that the fireballs were making circular epicycles as they orbited, and when two searchlight beams from the ship converged in the air above us and to our right, I saw what bore them. These weren't merely sailing fish, but giant airborne animals that looked like mythic sea serpents, with long tapering bodies and mighty pinions beating the night air. On their backs rode smaller animals, Arfies; from what I could make out. One Arfie in each flight crew, the bombadier, twirled a fireball around his head before letting it go. The ship's exciter batteries were taking their toll. The beast in the searchlight beams blossomed into an orange ball of fire, momentum carrying flaming remnants into a descending arc ahead. But there were too many of them, and apparently only two operating batteries.
"Look out!"
It was Roland, and I looked back. Something was swooping toward us, coming directly from behind. We all hit the deck, and I felt air swoosh over me as the animal passed. It smacked into the deck further ahead and went crashing into a canopied dining terrace, then stopped. We got up and looked, backing away prudently, but before anyone could make the intelligent decision to turn and run, big shapes flopped toward us from out of the darkness ― Arfies, four 9f them, armed with crude axes and other, stranger implements. I shot at one of them but apparently missed, or it may have been that the animal was very hard to bring down. Roland and Darla started firing. Darla's first shot seared off a forward flipper of one of them, but he kept coming too, barking insanely, picking up his dropped weapon with the other flipper and charging. Roland used half a charge to flame another of them in its tracks, then turned the beam on the one I had missed, with the same result. But the two remaining were fast ― and big. Up until then I had only seen Arfies at a distance. They were massive beasts, with blubbery rolls of fat padding their undersides and powerful muscles along the flanks to work the flippers. They looked almost nothing like seals or walruses now ― more like amphibian versions of a Brahma bull. We backed as we fired. I got off two more shots with little effect, but Darla finally got her target cut to pieces and it slumped over unmoving. Roland was digging in his pockets for another charge, and Darla was now out. I fired my last round at the remaining Arfie, then threw the gun at it. He kept coming and we all ran, scattering, but the thing chose to follow me. I was wondering what happened to the kid. He was off to my right, hitting his gun with his fist as he ran.
"Won't work!" he yelled.
I yelled for him to throw it over and he did. It was an odd make with a tricky safety catch, which I knew about from having owned one. I thumbed off the safety, turned, and emptied the powerpak in one steady beam right at the creature's head. It was dead by the time it hit me, but it hit like a runaway rig.
The next thing I knew, I was being helped to my feet. I was shaken up, but more or less in one piece.
"You almost flew off the deck," Roland told me, handing me the dream wand, which I had stuffed in my back pocket.
"Thanks." I took the wand and slipped it into a side pocket of John's backpack. I looked aft and saw that the flying sea serpent was still pinned in the wreckage of the dining terrace, its wings snarled in the canvas canopy and thrashing uselessly. "We can't go that way, unless we want to deal with that thing. Lori, can you get us belowdecks another way?"