Joao weighed the circumstances—high walls of trees on both sides, narrowing channel, high black walls of wet rock on both sides of the rapids. There was only one way to go: through it.
Current and distance required careful judgment: the pod’s floats had to hit the crosscurrent waves above the rapids at just the right moment for those waves to help break the river’s grip on the floats.
This’ll be the place, Chen-Lhu thought. Our friends’ll be here… waiting for us. He gripped a sprayrifle, tried to see both shores at once.
Rhin gripped the sides of her seat, pressed herself backward against the cushions. She felt that they were hurtling without hope toward the maelstrom.
“Something in the trees on our right,” Chen-Lhu said. “Something overhead.”
A shadow darkened the water all around them. Fluttering white shapes began to obscure the view ahead.
Joao punched the igniter, counted—one, two, three. Light off—throttle.
The motors caught with a great banging, spitting roar that drowned the sound of the rapids. The pod surged through the screen of insects, out of the shadow. Joao swerved them to avoid a line of foaming rocks in the upper pool. He nursed the throttle by the feeling of G-pressure against his back.
Don’t blow, baby, he prayed. Don’t blow.
“A net!” Rhin screamed. “They have a net across the river!”
It lifted from the water above the rapids like a dripping snake.
Reflex moved Joao’s hand on the throttle, sent the knob slamming against the dash.
The pod leaped, skimmed across a glossy pool. Slithering current tugged them sideways toward smooth black walls of rock. The net stood out directly ahead when the pod lifted, floats breaking from the water.
Up… up.
Joao could see the river plunge off beyond the net, water leaping in crazy violence there as though trying to escape the glassy black walls of rock.
Something slapped the floats with a screech and sound of tearing. The pod’s nose dipped, bounced up as Joao hauled on the wheel. A staccato rattling shook the craft. Spray filled the air all around.
In one flickering moment, Joao saw motion along the chasm’s rim. A line of boulders thundered down there, fell behind.
Then they were out of it, airborne and climbing—lurching, twisting… but climbing. Joao eased the throttle back.
The pod thundered over a line of trees, back across the river. Another tree-spiked hill hot beneath them. A long straight avenue of water opened up ahead of them like turbulent brown grease.
Joao grew conscious of Rhin’s voice: “Look at us go! Look at us go!”
“That was inspired flying,” Chen-Lhu said.
Joao tried to swallow in a dry throat. The controls felt heavy under his hands. He saw downstream a great bend in the river, and beyond that a wide island-broken lake of flooded land.
Brown river… flooded land, he thought.
He fishtailed the pod, shot a look back to the west. Brown clouds were piled there, with black beneath them: thunderheads! Rain in the hills behind us, he thought. Flood here. It must’ve happened during the night.
And he cursed himself for not noticing the change in water color earlier.
“What’s wrong, Johnny?” Chen-Lhu asked.
“Nothing we can do anything about.”
Joao eased the throttle back another notch, another. The motors sputtered, died. He shut off all fuel.
Wind whistled around them as Joao eased back on the wheel, trying to gain as much distance as possible. The pod began to stagger at the edge of stalling. He tipped the nose down, still nursing it for distance. But the pod flew like all pods—gliding like a rock.
The wind of their passage was an eerie whistling that filled the cabin.
The river curved off to the left through more drowned land. A thin furrow of turbulent water marked the main channel. Gently, Joao banked the pod, turned to follow that furrow. The water rushed up to meet them. The pod began to yaw and Joao fought the controls.
Floats touched in a splashing, rocking motion with too much drag. An eddy turned the pod. The right wing began to drop—lower, lower.
Joao aimed for a brown sand beach on their left.
“We’re sinking,” Rhin said, and her voice conveyed both surprise and horror in a flat tone of understatement.
“That right float,” Chen-Lhu said. “I felt it hit the net.”
The left float grated on sand, stopped, spun the sinking float in a short arc until it, too, touched. Something gurgled under the water to the right and a burst of bubbles lifted to the surface. Less than six millimeters of air remained between the right wing tip and the water.
Rhin buried her head in her hands and shuddered.
“Now what?” Chen-Lhu asked. And he felt shocked amusement as he heard the dismay in his own voice.
Now it is the end, he thought. Our friends will find us here. It is the end for sure.
“Now we repair the float,” Joao said.
Rhin lifted her face from her hands, stared at him.
“Out here?” Chen-Lhu asked. “Ahhh, Johnny…”
Rhin pressed the back of her left hand against her mouth, thought: Joao—he just said that to keep me from despair.
“Certainly, out here!” Joao snapped. “Now shut up while I think.”
Rhin lowered her hand, said, “Is it possible?”
“If they give us enough time,” Joao said.
He broke the canopy seals, folded it forward. The sound of brawling water impressed itself on his senses. He unfastened his safety harness, all the while looking around, studying the air, the jungle, the river.
No insects.
Joao climbed out, slipped down to the slanted surface of the left float, studied the jungle beyond the beach: a confusion of interlaced branches, vines, creepers and tree ferns.
“There could be an army just inside that jungle and we couldn’t see them,” Chen-Lhu whispered.
Joao looked up. The Chinese stood at the inner edge of the cabin.
“How do you propose to repair the float?” Chen-Lhu asked.
Rhin appeared beside him, waited for the answer.
“I don’t know yet,” Joao said. He turned, looked downstream. A line of ripples moved up the river there, pushed by a wind out of a furnace. The ripples fanned out before the wind and grew as the wind grew. Then the wind died. Air and water wavered in the damp heat. A pressure of heat radiated from the pod’s metal and from the beach.
Joao slid off into the water. It felt warm and thick.
“What about the cannibal fish?” Rhin asked.
“They can’t see me; I can’t see them,” Joao said. “A fair exchange.”
He splashed around beneath the rocket motors. The smell of unburned fuel was strong there and an oily glaze of it was beginning to trail off downstream. Joao shrugged, bent and ran a hand gently along the outer edge of the right float, wading forward as he explored the hidden surface.
Just back of the leading edge, his fingers encountered a jagged rip in the metal and trailing remnants of Vierho’s patch. Joao explored the hole. It was a dismayingly big one.
Metal scraped as Chen-Lhu dropped down to the left float, a sprayrifle in his hand. “How bad is it?” he asked.
Joao straightened, waded out to the beach. “Bad enough.”
“Well, can it be fixed?” Chen-Lhu demanded.
Joao turned, looked at the man, surprised by the grating quality in Chen-Lhu’s voice.
He’s frightened silly! Joao thought.
“We’ll have to get that float out of the water before I can be sure,” Joao said. “But I think we can patch it.”