"I guess they're in a rush," said Captain Relish. "I hear the natives are restless."
Working in unison, the crane bore the great Halloween bulk closer and closer.
Nancy turned to Remo and Chiun.
"I need your help."
"Name it," said Remo.
"Yes," added Chiun. "Name it and a price will be determined later."
Remo winked as if to say, "Don't worry about it."
"Deal. I need you two to guide the head down safely. I know you can do amazing things, can you handle that?"
"Sure," said Remo.
"For a price to be determined later," Chiun said blandly.
"We'll worry about that then," said Nancy.
Captain Relish escorted them to an inflatable pontoon bridge that carried them over the shallow water to an open passenger door in the side of the anchored craft.
"The cargo bay is aft," he said, leading them through an interior that very much resembled a truncated passenger jet. A door in the rear gave into the cargo area. It lay open to the dazzling African sun.
Nancy gave the area a quick once-over. She turned to Captain Relish. "I think you'd better leave. Captain. That's ten tons of reptile meat about to come down in a relatively confined space."
The captain ducked out.
The cranes' operators brought the beast over to the waiting cargo hold of the ekranoplane. They were good. They got it into exact position without unnecessary jockeying. It blocked the sun.
Slowly, the cables began paying out.
"Okay," Nancy said nervously, as the creature's shadow grew. "We shouldn't have to worry about the tail. But if the head folds under the body, it could be crushed. At the very least, the windpipe could be constricted."
"Just grab the head and keep it from the body, right?" asked Remo.
"Right. You can do that?"
"Sure."
Nancy withdrew to a safe distance, where she made white-knuckled fists on and off during the remaining part of the fifteen-minute operation.
She saw it all, and questioned none of it.
The whiplike tip of the tail touched first and began coiling like a serpent dropping into a box. It was the other end she was worried about.
The undersized head, mouth slightly open and eyes closed, inched closer and closer to the stainless steel of the bulkhead floor.
Remo and Chiun took up positions under it. Small as it was in comparison to the thick neck, the head dwarfed them both. Like construction workers guiding a girder into position, they took hold of the snout and chin and with a nod to each other, walked it away as the body continued down.
The head was heavy enough, Nancy knew. But the greater weight lay in the tremendous pumpkin-striped neck.
Somehow, the pair knew exactly what to do. They moved left when the neck began to kink right and vice versa. They seemed to have an instinct for the way the reptile's weight was redistributing itself. It was as if, Nancy thought, they used the creature's own inert muscles against itself. That, more than their eerily effortless strength, impressed her most.
When the great padded feet touched the floor, they had the neck almost fully elongated. This was the crucial part.
Then it was over. Suddenly, effortlessly. The legs folded up on either side of the great bulk of the body and the wrinkled underside touched the floor. The ship hardly jarred.
And the neck, fully elongated now, lay flat, with the head resting on its chin.
Nancy came up and looked the beast over without saying a word.
The Master of Sinanju watched her and said to his pupil, "She is not very effusive in her gratitude."
"Give her a minute," Remo said. "She has to check everything out. Like you, when we fly."
"I am not flying in this maimed air vehicle. It has no wings."
"I don't get it, either."
Nancy let out a yelp of annoyance.
They ran to meet her.
"Damn Damn Damn Damn!" she was saying.
"What?" asked Remo.
"I forgot to sex the beast."
"Oh," said Remo.
Chiun took Remo aside and whispered, "What manner of female wishes to mate with a dragon?"
"She doesn't mean it that way."
"What way does she mean it?"
"She's trying to figure out what sex it is."
"It is a female," Chiun called.
Nancy looked up. "How can you tell?"
"Male dragons have larger heads. Females but tiny ones, because they have smaller brains. Just as with human females."
"Thank you for that illuminating bit of information," Nancy said thinly.
Chiun wrinkled up his tiny nose. "She does not sound grateful."
"Give her time," said Remo.
"I am willing to be patient as long as I receive my dragon bone," Chiun allowed.
"Nobody said anything about her being that grateful."
"A toe bone then. Until the beast dies a proper death. Then I may claim the leg bone of my choice."
"Do they even have toes?" Remo asked.
"True dragons do."
"But this is art African dragon. You never know about them. Maybe you should check."
His whole face wrinkling now, the Master of Sinanju floated up to the animal's rear right leg. He bent to examine tire fleshy pad. Nancy noticed this and asked, "Looking for thorns, by chance?"
"I am seeking a toe."
"Why?"
"To see if this monstrosity has one."
"Well, it does. Several of them. Happy now?"
The Master of Sinanju straightened. He looked into Nancy's faintly humorous eyes.
"I will be as soon as the largest toe is removed and given to me."
"Are we back to that?"
"I have never left," snapped Chiun.
Outside the craft, a great roar went up. At first, it sounded like a cheer. But the sound went on and on and grew angry. Nancy didn't understand a word of it. But anger, she understood.
"I'd better see what that is," she said.
"It is the king, appearing before his subjects," said Chiun.
"You understand what they're saying?"
"No, I understand the sound that is made by subjects of a strong king."
"Sounds more like a lynching in progress, if you ask me," Remo said.
"That's why I'm looking into this," said Nancy. "Will you two watch Old Jack?"
"Fear not," said Chiun in a loud voice. "No harm will befall this noble animal while the Master of Sinanju is his protector."
"And I'll stick around in case Chiun gets carried away playing 'this little piggy,' " said Remo.
"Pah!" said Chiun.
Nancy rushed for the forward exit hatch.
Chapter 14
Skip King sat in the VIP row behind the podium at which the president of the Republic of Gondwanaland was shaking his thick-fingered fist at the growing crowd.
The crowd was shaking its fists back. Both sides looked angry, but who could tell? This was the Third World, where shaking fists might be the local equivalent of a Hitler salute, or merely wild applause. King had taken dozens of corporate seminars, where he was taught that in Great Britain tabling a proposal meant the opposite of what it did in the U.S., that the deeper you bowed to a Japanese counterpart the more respect you showed-and lost-and that when an Arab sheikh took your hand while walking, it didn't mean he had fallen in love with you. Necessarily.
King had taken a crash course in Gondwanalandian customs, but his mind had been so overloaded with the visions of what this project would do to his career he could hardly pay attention, never mind take actual notes. He knew he'd spend most of his time in the jungle, anyway. Who cared which side of the road people drove on?
So he sat listening to the back-and-forth shouting in an incomprehensible language and hoped against hope this was an example of enthusiastic support and not the first stages of rioting.
Placards and signs were going up now. King sat up in his wooden folding chair, between the sweating war minister and the sweltering cultural minister, both of whom looked like they had been submerged in a fryo-lator until brown, and craned to see them.