"Fire your torpedo!" John said loudly. "Fire now, you fools!"
Peder Tordenskjold, the chief gunnery officer, said, "Distances are deceiving now, sir. But the airship must've launched the torpedo already."
All glanced at the panel chronometer. The torpedo, if it hit, should do so within thirty seconds. That is, it would if the dirigible were as close to the boat as it seemed to be. The Azazel would have dropped the missile while it was only a few feet above The River. Lightened by the release of the heavy missile, it would have risen swiftly. Its speed would be increased also by the loss of weight. So, if it were now over, or almost over, the enemy, the torpedo should be about to strike.
The Not For Hire should be taking evasive action by now. Though the airship may not have been seen by the eye, the torpedo would be detected by the sonars of the enemy. Its location and speed would be instantly known, its shape and size indicated. The enemy would know that a torpedo was speeding toward its stern, as John inelegantly put it, "driving right up Sam Clemens' asshole."
John stopped. His face was a study in fury. "By God's teeth, how could it have missed at such close range?"
"It couldn't have," Strubewell said. "Maybe it malfunctioned. Didn't go off."
Whatever had happened, the enemy had escaped the torpedo. Behind it the semicircle of the Azazel, which had disappeared for a moment, rose again. The pilot and the bombardier would either have jumped out or be just about ready to jump. Their parachutes, equipped with a compressed-gas device, would unfold fully the moment they leaped clear of the gondola. Without that, they would not open before the two hit The River.
Burton estimated that the two men had to have left the semirigid by now. It would be set on automatic pilot now, and the clock in the release mechanism of the bomb would be ticking away. Another mechanism would be valving off hydrogen to lower the craft. When the bomb fell, the airship would be lightened and would rise. But not far. A few seconds afterward, if the explosion did not ignite the gas, a fourth mechanism would detonate a smaller bomb.
Burton looked out the port screen. The decks of the Rex were blazing in a dozen places; from the shells and rockets. Firefighters, clad in insulation suits, were spraying the flames with water and foam. Within about two or three minutes, the fires would be extinguished.
Burton heard the captain say, "Hah!"
He turned. Everybody except the pilot was gazing out of the port screen. The sausage shape of the dirigible was directly above the Not For Hire. Its nose would soon touch the back of the pilothouse.
"Incredible!" Burton said.
"What?" the captain said.
"That no one on the boat has seen it yet."
"God is with me," John said. "Now, even if it is seen, it will be too late. It can't be shot down without imperiling the boat."
Tordenskjold said, "Something happened to the torpedo release mechanism. It's malfunctioning. But when the bomb goes off, it'll set the torpedo off."
John spoke to the pilot. "Get ready to bring her around. When I give the word, head directly for the enemy."
The chief radio operator said. "The two launches are heading for us, sir."
"Surely they can see the Azazel now!" John said. "No, they haven't!"
"P'raps the Not For Hire's radio is knocked out, too," Burton said. ‘
"Then He is indeed on our side!" John said.
Burton grimaced.
A lookout said, "Sir! The enemy launches are approaching on the port sternside."
Radar reported that both launches were at a range of four hundred yards. They were separated from each other by one hundred and twenty feet.
"They're planning to take us in our starboard side when we're on the other side of our circle," Strubewell said. "They think the motherboat should be firing on us by then."
"I can see that," John said somewhat testily. "You'd think by now that they'd be trying to signal the Hire. The radio must be out, too, but surely they could send up flares."
"There goes one," Strubewell said, pointing at the bright bluewhite glare in the sky.
"Now they'll see the Azazel]" John cried.
It was about thirty feet above the flight deck of the enemy or at least it seemed to be. It was difficult to estimate at that distance. It was not up to the pilothouse yet. That was apparent, since if it had been, it would have collided with the structure.
Something dark and small dropped through the area of bright sky between the airship and the Not For Hire.
"There goes the bomb!" John cried.
Burton couldn't be sure, but it seemed to him that the bomb had fallen on the stern of the flight deck, perhaps at its edge. The bombardier must have set its timed automatic-release mechanism, and then he and the pilot had jumped. But the timing had not been right. The release should have been activated when it was in the middle of the deck. Or, better, as close to the pilothouse as possible.
The explosion wreathed the flight deck in flames and silhouetted the pilothouse and the tiny figures in it.
The airship soared upward, bending in the middle, its keel twisted by the blast. And its envelope burst into flames, the hydrogen in it one huge ball of fire.
"The torpedo!" John shouted. "The torpedo! Why didn't it fall?"
Perhaps it had, and it couldn't be seen from the Rex.
But it should have been set off by now.
Now Burton could see the dirigible drift down, flaming. Its forward part fell upon the stern of the Not For Hire and then slid off into The River through the great hole made by the forty-pound bomb. The Not For Hire plowed on, leaving the blazing and spreading-out envelope behind it. The stem was aflame, too, the wooden flight deck burning furiously.
John yelled, "God tear those two to pieces in the deepest pits of Hell! They're cowards! They should have waited a few seconds more!"
Burton thought that the pilot and the bombardier had been very brave indeed. They must have waited until what seemed to them to be the last possible second before being able to jump. Under such pressure, they couldn't be blamed for having made such a slight miscalculation. Nor was it their fault that the torpedo had not exploded. They'd made several trial runs with a dummy torpedo, and the release mechanism had worked then. Mechanical devices frequently malfunctioned, and it was their bad luck, and the bad luck of their comrades, that it had failed now.
However, the torpedo might still go off. Unless it had slid off the stern with the wreck.
John was not so unhappy when he saw that the blast had ripped off all of the two lower decks of the pilothouse structure except for two vertical supporting metal beams and the elevator shaft. And these were bending forward slowly under the weight of the control room.
Somehow, a few people in the room had survived. They were silhouetted against the holocaust on the rear of the flight deck.
"God's balls!" John said. "He has spared Clemens so that I may take him prisoner!"
He paused, then said, "They won't be able to steer! We have them in our hands!"
He spoke to the pilot.
"Bring us up along the enemy's port at pointblank range!"
The pilot looked wide-eyed at his captain, but he said, "Aye, aye, sir."
John spoke to Strubewell and Tordenskjold then, telling them to ready the crew for broadsides first and then for boarding.
Burton hoped that he would be ordered to join his marines. They had been sitting deep within the hurricane deck, behind locked doors, waiting. During the entire battle, they had not been informed of anything. All they knew was that the boat had rocked and shaken from time to time, and thunder had roared outside their room. Doubtless, they were all keyed up, nervous, sweating, wondering when they would see action.