Cities in Flight

It was still several miles away, but even at this distance its massiveness was awe-inspiring. There were many towers in the city that were smaller; despite the lack of any adjacent structure with which to compare it, Chris guessed that the black, windowless pile could not be less than thirty stories high.

At first, he thought it was surrounded by a moat, but that was only an effect of foreshortening brought on by distance. Actually, it stood in the middle of a huge lake, so storm-lashed that Chris could not imagine how the clumsy swan boat could survive on it, let alone make any headway.

He pulled back on the throttles; but as he had suspected, the boat no longer answered to the manual controls. It plowed doggedly forward into the water. A moment later, the compressed air tanks blew with a bubbling roar, and the lake closed over the boat completely. It was now traveling on the bottom.

Now he no longer had even the lightning flashes to see by—nothing but the lights inside the boat, which did not penetrate the murky water at all. It was as though the transparent shell had abruptly gone opaque.

After what seemed a long while—though it was probably no more than ten minutes—the treads made a grinding noise, as if they had struck stone, and the vehicle came gradually to a halt. On a hunch, Chris tried the manuals again, but there was still no response.

Then the outside lights came on.

The swan boat was sitting snugly in a berth within a sizable cavern. Through the rills of yellow water draining down its sides, Chris saw that it had a reception committee: four men, with rifles. They looked down into the boat at him, grinning unpleasantly. While he stared helplessly back, the engines quit—

—and the outside door swung open.

They put him in the same cell with Anderson and Dulany. His guardian was appalled to see him—”Gods of all stars, Irish, now they’re snatching children!”—and then, after he had heard the story, thoroughly disgusted. Dulany, as usual, said very little, but he did not look exactly pleased.

“There’s probably a standard recognition signal you should have sent, except that you wouldn’t have known what it was,” Anderson said. “These petty barons did a lot of fighting among themselves before we got here—fleecing us is probably the first project they’ve been together on since this mudball was colonized.”

“Bluster,” Dulany commented.

“Yes, it’s part of the feudal mores. Chris, those men in the boat are going to take a lot of ribbing from their peers, regardless of the fact that they were never in any danger and they had sense enough to let you spin your own noose. They’ll be likely to take it out on you when you’re taken out for questioning.”

“I’ve already been interviewed,” Chris said grimly. “And they did.”

“You have? Murder! There goes that one up the flue, Irish.”

“Complication,” Dulany agreed.

Anderson fell silent, leaving Chris to wonder what they had been talking about. Evidently they had been planning something which his news had torpedoed—though it was hard to imagine even the beginnings of such a plan, for their captors, out of a respect for the two Okies which Chris knew to be more than justified, had left them nothing but their underwear. At last the boy said hesitantly:

“What could I have done if my interview were still coming up?”

“Located our space suits,” Anderson said gloomily. “Not that they’d have let you search the place, that’s for sure, but you might have gotten a hint, or tricked them into dropping one. Even wary men sometimes underestimate youngsters. Now we’ll just have to think of something else.”

“There are dozens of space suits standing around the wall of that big audience chamber,” Chris said. “If you could only get there, maybe one of them would fit one of you.”

Dulany only smiled slightly. Anderson said: “Those aren’t suits, Chris; they’re armor—plate armor. Useless here, but they have some kind of heraldic significance; I think the Barons used to collect them from each other, like scalps.”

“That may be,” Chris said stubbornly, “but there were at least two real suits there. I’m sure of that.”

The two sergeants looked at each other. “Is it possible—?” Anderson said. “They’ve got the bravado for it, all right.”

“Could be.”

“By Sirius, there’s a bluff we’ve got to call! Get busy on that lock, Irish!”

“In my underwear? Nix.”

“What difference does that—oh, I see.” Anderson grimaced impatiently. “We’ll have to wait for lights out. Happily it won’t be long.”

“How are you going to bust the lock, Sergeant Dulany?” Chris asked. “It’s almost as big as my head!”

“Those are the easy kinds,” Dulany said loquaciously.

Chris in fact never did find out what Dulany did with the lock, for the operation was performed in the dark. Standing as instructed all the way to the back of the cell, he did not even hear anything until the huge, heavy door was thrown back with a thunderous crash.