"Stop! You could not be so heartless!"
He tottered toward me, arms extended before him.
"You will tell me what you know in this," I said, "or I will animate you even further."
"Ask me anything else," he replied. "The secrets of the ages are open books to me. What would you care to have? Sophocles' missing dramas? The proof for Fermat's Last Theorem? The precise archaeological location of Troy? The—"
"You're stalling," I said. "Why— I see. We're that close, are we?"
His arms fell.
"Yes, we are," he said.
"But we've still a chance to make it, haven't we? It's going to be close—so close that minutes could actually make a difference, one way or another."
"You're smarter than I gave you credit for, Perry."
"I don't want your flattery, just some facts. The balloon must be the only way out. How long does it take to inflate?
"Approximately two hours," he answered.
"How long till we plunge into the Hole?"
"Perhaps three hours."
"How many people can it carry?"
"Four."
"That will never do. There are twelve of us."
"It will do," he replied, showing all of his teeth.
"I do not understand."
"Shall I explain?"
"I'm sure you'd like to. I'm also sure there isn't time. Good-bye."
I turned and rushed for the door.
"Eddie! Wait!"
I halted at the strange note of urgency I had never heard in his speech before.
"What?" I asked.
"Go armed."
"Why?"
"I've nothing against you personally. Just get your saber and wear it."
"All right," I said. "Thanks."
And I was out the door and running.
I came out of my quarters buckling the thing into place when I heard the cries from above, and a clash of metal on metal. Rather than heading for the cargo area where the balloon was stowed I climbed the companionway, to see what was doing.
As my head and shoulders came out of the companionway, a crewman who had apparently been guarding it thrust a staff at me. I fell back, drew my blade and cut at it, knocking it aside. He raised it again and I executed a simple chest cut, feeling it shear through ribs. He screamed. I surveyed the situation clearly then.
Captain Guy, Peters, and Hans Pfall were all aft, trapped upon the poop deck by the crewmen, who'd apparently decided the time was right for their mutiny. I noticed a stack of supplies beside one of the boats, a splash of red on the deck nearby. Captain Guy had blood on his shirtfront, also, and he leaned against the railing as if partly stunned. I suspected he had caught the crew in the act of abandoning ship, and the mutiny had commenced at that point.
Peters held a belaying pin in either hand. Pfall held a saber similar to my own. The five remaining crewmen looked back at the one I had just cut down. My presence at their rear seemed to influence their decision to attack forward. Uttering a cry, they rushed the three men.
Peters threw one of his clubs at the foremost, who had attacked the captain, knife in hand. It struck the man on the head, and he fell. Another was rushing toward Peters himself, saber upraised. In the meantime, Pfall had raised his blade into a guard position and was staring wide-eyed at his attacker, a burly fellow with a stiletto in one hand and a club in the other.
I shouted a hopefully distracting cry as I mounted the final stairs and headed in their direction, brandishing my blade. For the first time, as I did this, I became aware of a low, thundering sound, like a buried storm, coming from somewhere far forward of our vessel. It was more than a persistent note, for it also constituted a physically felt vibration which one detected down to the roots of one's teeth. To my horror, I understood its nature. I shouted again, and the rearmost man turned to face me. He was a tall, lean, wall-eyed individual who brandished a spiked club quite capable of snapping my blade if the nails with which he'd studded it connected properly.
I saw Peters avoid the swordsman's cut, stepping inside to parry with his club against his attacker's wrist.
Then he drove his massive right fist forward and upward. It was lost to sight of me then, blocked by his assailant's body. But suddenly the man was raised above the deck, bending double while lofted, blood spewing from his mouth. To my other hand, I saw Pfall fall back, blood upon his shoulder.
Then I had no attention for anyone's problems but my own, and I halted as my attacker's club was swung at me like a bat. I dropped my guard and retreated rather than risk my steel against such a juggernaut. He swung again, cross-body, and I retreated again, studying the way he moved, looking for an opening.
I heard Hans Pfall scream—a heavily accented outcry—and his blade rattled to the deck.
A flight of birds crossed over us from out of the northwest, crying E-teke-lili! as they passed.
My attacker raised his club over his right shoulder, and with both hands swung it in a diagonal cut past my chest. He laughed as I retreated again, and cried out. "You come to somethin', you gotta stop! No more runnin'! I get you then!" and I could only nod politely and smile, for I had noted that his recovery from a downward stroke was noticeably slower than from one which moved in a horizontal plane.
I heard Captain Guy's new attacker—to whom Peters had turned his attention on dispatching his own man—commence screaming, as Peters had caught his wrist, jerked him forward and torn his ear off with his teeth. While this was happening, the man Peters had knocked down with his thrown club began rising.
"E-teke— E-teke— Shit!" cried Grip, swooping by and defecating on Peters' attacker.
In the meantime, the Eidolon jumped, as if we had actually been lifted bodily from the waves—and I could not but be reminded of my strange experiences while aboard the ghostly Discovery—and when the Eidolon came down, our speed seemed to have increased. I half-expected green fire to dance along my blade.
Suddenly, it did. Had my thought summoned it? Did I possess some strange connection in this place even stronger than memory—with things I had touched in the past?
The tall crewman's eyes widened as the baleful gleam walked my weapon's edge. Yet he drew back his club over his left shoulder, and he swung it again. Again, I retreated. But not as before. Recalling an expensive lesson from a fancy-legged French fencing master who had once passed through town, I retreated but a single step with my left foot, drew back my right in an enormous hurry, brought my saber up, out, around and over, transforming it then into a point-weapon as I executed a stop-thrust which tore into the man's upper arm before he could recover from his missed swing. Immediately, I withdrew the point and executed a second thrust, to my assailant's throat. He took it properly.
I looked up then to see Peters throwing his unearred opponent against the one who had just risen. The man whose chest he had smashed lay sprawled, leaking blood through his ears and nose as well as his mouth. I glanced back, a precaution. The man whose chest I had cut open still lay beside the companionway. He was not breathing.
Three of the six, then, were down, two were attacking Peters, and the final one was just withdrawing his stiletto from a point somewhere below Hans Pfall's left ribcage. He turned his attention now to Peters, who had crouched and extended both his hands toward the two men he had dealt with before who now faced him again. Smiling, the burly man moved to assist them, swinging his club almost jauntily in his left hand, knife in his right, low and near to his hip. As he passed the still form of Captain Guy I heard a pistol's sharp report. The club slipped from his fingers and he dropped to one knee, left hand moving to clutch somewhere at his midsection.
Above the eternal growl of the Symmes' Hole I heard the man say, "I thought you was dead!" Then he dropped to his other knee and I could see past him to where Captain Guy still lay, back propped against a bollard, a derringer in his right hand, a small smile upon his lips.