Joe Miller said, "Chehuth Chritht!"
Suddenly, shells struck the Rex. The starboard wheelhousing went up in flames, and smoke covered the pilothouse. Immediately following, gouts of flame arose along the starboard side. The shell had touched off a rocket battery, and the detonation of that had set off others in a series.
"Hot damn!" Sam said.
The smoke around the pilothouse cleared, though not so swiftly. The wind had died down, and the Rex had lost considerable speed.
"It's turning its port side to us!" Sam said.
Another flight of missiles arose, this time from the opposite side. Again, the Not For Hire's countermissiles struck, and the result was a blast in midair that shook the boat. But no damage was done.
By then Sam could see that the Rex was in serious trouble. Its decks on the starboard were blazing here and there, and it was turning away from them.
For a moment he thought that the Rex was fleeing. But no. It continued to turn. It was describing a small circle.
"The starboard wheel is malfunctioning or destroyed," he said, "They can't maneuver."
That knowledge relaxed him somewhat. Now all he had to do was to get out of effective rocket range and blast the Rex out of the water with his 88-millimeter and compressed-air cannons.
He gave the orders to do so. Detweiller turned the boat to put the necessary distance between it and its victim.
"Well, we didn't do so badly," he said exultingly to Byron.
"Not so far, sir."
"It's practically over! Don't you ever give way to human emotion, man?"
"Not on duty," Byron said.
Joe Miller said, again, "Chehuth Chritht!"
"What's the matter?" Sam said, grabbing Joe's enormous arm.
The titanthrop, his eyes goggling, strangling noises coming from his open mouth, pointed up and out to the stern. Sam stepped in front of him to look, but he did not get there.
The explosion tore the bulletproof glass out of the frame of the rear window in a solid piece and slammed it against him.
34
THE MOUSE HAD SPRUNG THE TRAP ON THE CAT.
While the Not For Hire was still two days' journey away, the crew of the Rex had removed from storage the envelope of a small airship made from the intestinal linings of dragonfish over two years ago. The hydrogen-generating equipment was set up on shore, and the envelope was inflated within the bamboo and pine hangar built two weeks ago.
The Azazel, as John had christened it, was a semirigid airship. The envelope depended upon the pressure of gas to fill it out, but a metal keel was attached to it. The control cabin and the two motor gondolas, salvaged from the wreck of Pode-brad's blimp, were fitted to the keel. The electrical and mechanical connections between control gondola and motor gondola and the elevators and rudder were attached. The fuel tanks were filled with methyl alcohol. The bomb and the torpedo were fitted to the release mechanisms halfway along the underpart of the ship.
The bombardier and the pilot got aboard the airship and took it up for a two-hour shakedown cruise. Everything worked well. And when the Rex left to do battle with the Not For Hire, the dirigible lifted to the desired height and began circling. Not until it became dark would it go through the high part of the strait.
As the Rex circled, imitating a crippled duck, the blimp was down-River behind the enemy vessel. It had come over the strait and then had turned right, cruising alongside, but not too near to, the mountains. Its black color would keep it from being visually observed by the enemy. There was a chance that the enemy radar would detect it. It was John's hope that it would be centered on the Rex. Clemens would think that the Rex had no more aircraft, so why make a radar sweep at a high altitude?
When the radar of the Not For Hire was destroyed, John was jubilant. Though his boat and crew had suffered terrible punishment, he danced with joy. Now the Azazel could creep up on the enemy, avoiding all but visual observation. And in this pale light, with the enemy's eyes only for the Rex, the airship had a good chance to get within striking distance.
The plan had worked out. The airship had hugged the mountains to the north, coming down to an altitude below the tops of the highest hills at times. It had gone east for some distance, then had eased out over the treetops to The River. And it had sped full power then, the bottom of its control gondola only a foot or so above the surface.
All was going well, and now the Azazel was behind the Not For Hire. Its bulk was shielded by the enemy boat, undetectable by its mother vessel's radar.
Burton, standing near John, heard him mutter, "By the Lord's loins! Now we'll see if the airship is swift enough to catch up with Sam's boat! My engineers had better be right! It would be ironic if, after all this work and planning, it was too slow!"
Salvoes from the enemy struck the Rex along the starboard decks. Burton felt stunned as the roar deafened him, shook the deck beneath him, and blew in a starboard port. The others looked as shocked as he felt. Immediately afterward, John was yelling at Strubewell to get the damage and casualty reports. At least, that is what his mouth must have been voicing. Strubewell understood. He spoke into the intercom, but it was difficult to hear him. Within a short time, he was able to get in some reports and to tell his captain. By then, Burton could hear well enough, though not as well as he would have liked to.
This had been the worst punishment suffered yet. There were huge holes in many places on all the decks. The explosions had not only punched these on the decks and in the hull, but corridors filled with people had been blown open. A number of rocket-launching mechanisms, loaded with missiles, had gone up, adding their explosions. Several steam machine-gun turrets were knocked off their foundations.
The starboard paddlebox or wheelhousing had been almost blown off by two shells. But the paddle wheel was still operating at one-hundred-percent efficiency.
"Clemens must have seen those shells hit the paddlebox," John said. "He could be fooled into thinking that he's crippled us. By Christ's cup, we'll make him think so!"
He gave the order to put the boat into a wide circle. The inner or starboard wheel was turned slowly while the outer or port wheel rotated under two-thirds power.
"He'll come arunning like a dog panting to finish off a wounded deer!" John said. He rubbed his hands and chuckled.
"Ay, he's bound toward us like a great beast out of Revelation1." John said. "But he doesn't know that there's an even more fearsome monster hot on his tail, about to vomit death and hellfire all over him! It's the vengeance of God!"
Burton felt disgusted. Was John actually equating himself with his Creator? Had his brains become a trifle addled from the shock of shells and rockets? Or had he always secretly felt that he and God were co-partners?
"They'll have to estimate distance with the eye, and in this light they won't do well," John said. "Their sonar isn't going to do any range calculation, either!"
The enemy would be getting more than return pulses from the beam directed at the Rex. The sonar operators were going to be confused. They'd see pulses from four different targets on their screens. Three would be from tiny remotely controlled boats circling in the lake, each emitting sound pulses of the same frequency as those of the enemy transmitter. The little vessels also contained noise generators which simulated the pounding of giant paddlewheels against the water.
Burton could see the upper structures of the Not For Hire silhouetted against the blazing stars and the shimmering gas sheets on the eastern horizon.
And then he saw a dark semicircle, the upper part of the Azazel, against the celestial illumination just above the Not For Hire.