Cities in Flight

To judge by their expressions, the other two still disapproved, but they took orders. The big man sat Chris down in a bucket seat before the broad front window and showed him how to grasp the two handles, one on each side of the half-circle of the control wheel, which were the throttles of the vehicle.

“It’s not enough simply to turn the wheel, because you must also deliver power to one tread or the other. To do that, you push the handle forward or back, to speed the treads or slow them down. Past the red mark here, the tread will reverse. If you’re not getting any traction, tilt the whole wheel forward on its column; that blows the tanks and allows the boat to settle in the mud. When the ground gets harder, the boat will of course climb up by itself and that will start the pumps; as the pressure in the tanks rises, the steering column tilts back to its original position automatically. Understand me so far?”

“But can I try?”

“Well, I suppose so. Yes. I have some talking to do abaft. Let me back the craft away from the pier, and then you can try crawling in a circle just outside the perimeter. Make sure you can always see your city beacon there.”

“Let me back it up, lord?” Chris said urgently.

“All right,” the big man said with amused indulgence. “But don’t be rough with it. Gently back of the red line on both throttles. That’s it. Not so fast. Gently! Now into neutral on the left. That’s it; see how it turns around?”

There was a shout from somewhere in the rear of the vessel, to which the big man responded with a tremendously rapid burst of speech, only a few words of which were intelligible to Chris. “I have to leave for a few minutes,” he added. “Remember, don’t try anything tricky, and don’t lose sight of the beacon.”

“No, lord.”

As the boat’s owner left the cabin, Chris caught a few more words, amusedly beginning to relate the story of the dock boy who had picked up a few stammering words of the language and immediately had decided that he was a pilot; then the voices dwindled to a blurred murmur. Chris spent the next few minutes testing the controls of the boat in small jerks and spurts, being as inexpert about it as he could manage, although the machine was really not difficult to master. Then, as directed, he set it to crawling in a fixed circle, counter-clockwise, left the bucket seat, and edged his way back to the door leading to the next chamber.

He had no idea what it was that he expected to overhear—he was simply avid for more information, to relieve the recent famine. He was certainly unprepared for what he got.

The men were talking in a rapid patois which differed sharply from the form of the Universal Language which the memory cells had been teaching him, but many phrases were clear and distinct:

“… can’t be done without keeping the city, that’s all there is to it.”

“… Disable it? … Don’t even have a blueprint of the machinery, let alone a map.”

“That can come later, after we’ve occupied … We’ve got thousands of commoners to throw away, but the defenses—It’s essential first to immobilize their Huacu, or whatever they call it here. We can’t afford to fight on their terms.”

“Then what’s the problem? We’ve got their two chief generals for hostages. We can hold them forever if necessary … Don’t even know the name of Castle Wolfwhip, let alone where it—”

There the conversation ended abruptly. With a grinding thump, the swan boat hit something and began clumsily to try to climb it. Chris was thrown to the deck, and on the other side of the doorway there was the sound of scrambling and of angry shouting. Then that too was cut off as the bulkhead swung to, of its own inertia.

Fighting to regain his balance against the blind lurching of the boat, Chris scrambled up, and dogged the bulkhead tightly closed all the way around. Was there any way to lock it, too? Yes, there was a big bolt that could be thrown which would hold the whole series of dogs in place, provided that it could not be unbolted from the other side. Well, he’d have to take his chances on that, though a fat padlock to complete the job would have made him feel more comfortable. Then, he clambered up the tilted, pitching deck to the control seat.

The boat had been doing its best to travel in a circle, but Chris had failed to realize that mud is a shifting, inexact sort of medium in which to turn a machine loose. The circle had been precessing, and the boat had run head-on into a dock. Okie cops were running toward it.

Chris reversed both engines, backing away from the city as rapidly as the boat would go, but that was not half as fast as he would have liked. Then he switched the vehicle around, end for end, and set it to whining and sliding squarely into the teeth of the storm, aiming it for the pip on the cross hairs which showed on the control board as its homing signal.