"If you could ground the ships . . ." murmured Adelie. "If you could ground the ships and put the guns out of action . . . Then the steam rams could deal with the Show Boat and Terran H.Q. . . She raised her voice. "But we must have men—guns and ships and men. If the rockets are grounded, we can batter them to pieces from the river."
"Miss Dale!" exclaimed the Under-Bishop. "I cannot sit and listen to your sacrilegious speech! You know that the use of firearms is contrary to the Law."
"You're quite mad, Bishop Riverside, if you think that we can achieve anything without them." She turned to Corbin. "Captain, I thought that you were told to place this man under arrest."
"And I thought that I made it clear," he told her, "that I am not obeying an illegal order."
"There'll be charges to face when we're back in New Orleans!" growled Barbee.
"Made by whom, Commodore? I refuse to arrest a high official of the Church at the behest of an heretical madwoman."
"Captain Corbin," said Adelie softly. "General Gilmore, please listen to me. I know that what I am asking—yes, asking, not demanding—may seem quite mad. But, believe me, I am in a position to appreciate the danger to our world more than you are, can ever be. I have been the honored guest of the Earth women. I have worked with them and—God forgive me—for them. I thought that I was working for the greater good of Beulah Land, but I was mistaken. I have sinned—but in no way that you, Under-Bishop Riverside, could ever comprehend. I was ambitious—and that, too, was a sin. But I would atone, before it is too late.
"We must act, gentlemen. The sands are running out, and fast, and unless we take measures, drastic measures, we shall not be able, ever again, to call this world our own. So I ask just this—that the fleet be ordered to proceed up river without delay. Let me have a few hours' sleep, to refresh myself, and then we, with the other Captains and military officers, will discuss what is to be done, what can be done, to undo the evil that I, a weak, sinful, ambitious woman, have brought upon my mother world ..."
Her voice failed and she sagged there, haggard, drooping, on the verge of collapse.
But she rallied. "I throw myself on your mercy, gentlemen. Deal with me as you will—after we have saved our planet. But give me ships and give me men, I implore you. Give me ships and guns and men— now!"
Gilmore was whispering urgently with Corbin. I could not hear what they were saying. And then the Captain got to his feet. He said slowly, without conviction, without enthusiasm, "We will proceed . . ."
"Thank you, gentlemen," murmured Adelie. The radiance of her smile brought all the beauty back to the smoke-grimed, tear-stained face. "I knew that I could rely on you."
There was a loud clatter as Riverside pushed his chair back. "Fools!" he screamed. "Fools! A woman weeps—and you forget your duty to your nation, your Church. A woman would lead you all, with your ships and your men, into a burning, fiery furnace! She would deliver you bound into the hands of those other, shameless women, the blasphemers, who must have come in their ships from Hell itself. A woman weeps, and you are as wax in her hands!"
I saw the gleam of his knife as he pulled it out from his black robes. I saw Adelie—but slowly, too slowly— try to throw herself clear of his mad rush. Both the Old Man and myself jumped forward to save her— but we collided and sprawled, half stunned and helpless, on the deck.
Adelie was down, fighting desperately, her left hand grasping the Under-Bishop's right wrist, her right hand about his scrawny throat. She was a strong woman but she was tired, and now Riverside was stronger than she. Claire ran towards the struggle, tripped over me as I was about to rise. The General was about to intervene when Corbin caught his arm.
"This is not our fight," he said. "But the outcome of it will tell us what we have to do. We, as laymen, dare lay hands on neither Saint nor Bishop."
"And watch murder done?"
"It will not be murder. It will be judgment." As he spoke, Corbin put out his foot to trip Barbee.
"Out of my way, Holy Joes!" snarled Bean, pushing Gilmore and Corbin to one side. His short sword whistled, literally, from its scabbard, flashed up and then viciously down—and my idea of judgment was accomplished. He pulled Adelie to her feet, stood with his left arm supporting her, his drawn sword in his right hand, facing Corbin and the General.
He spat. "A fine bunch you are, standing by and watching a woman murdered! Albany is gone—Godless Albany, you called us!—but we bred better men than you, with all your piety, ever will!"
Walking slowly and unsteadily Corbin went back to his seat.
"This," he said, "has been a lesson. To all of us.
The Under-Bishop sacrificed his life for what he knew —for what we all know, in our innermost hearts—to be right. He was slain by the Godless—just as you, Your Holiness, were saved by the Godless. Albany has been destroyed, and that was our mission, even though the destruction was carried out by another agency.
"I recommend that the fleet return down river."
"Who is with me?" asked Adelie, all vitality gone from her voice. Without waiting for an answer she walked from the saloon. The Old Man and Bean followed her, Claire and I behind them.
Barbee joined us as we were standing, tired and miserable and silent, by the brow leading from Bishop Wyndham's main deck to the steam ram. He was grinning sourly and massaging the broken knuckles of his right hand.
He said, "I added my quota to the blood of the martyrs."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
We got away just in time. As we cast off we heard the bugles blowing, heard the thunder of running feet on wooden decks as the archers rushed to their battle stations. Their shafts, however, were as ineffectual as rockets and cannon balls had been, glancing harmlessly off the steam ram's armoured hide.
Even so, Barbee took offense.
"The damned, sanctimonious, psalm-singing bustards!" he swore. "If Corbin were the only man aboard that scow I'd use my flame thrower—but I can still ram!" He bellowed down the open hatch into the body of the ship, "Action Stations! Action Stations! Secure all!" He turned to us. "Stay to watch if you like —but keep well clear of the wheel and telegraph!"
Sword of the Lord pulled away and clear from the transport, throbbing with the power of her engines,
her forced draught roaring. Slowly she came round. I was amazed at the wide radius of her turning circle until I realized that Barbee wished to gain both distance and momentum before his attack. A voice called from below, "Flame thrower ready, Captain!"
"Secure the flame thrower. I'm not using it."
Round we came, and round, until our sharp prow was pointed directly at Bishop Wyndham's broadside. I saw somebody tall and thin—Corbin it must have been—run up the ladders to the bridge of the transport, saw the paddles suddenly and frenziedly increase their speed. The arrows, now, were falling thick and fast. But we, in the conning tower—the overhead plates having been let down—could afford to laugh at them.
Barbee took the wheel himself, gradually altering course until he was running parallel with Bishop Wyndham—which vessel was trying to turn away from him. He overhauled the transport, ran ahead of her, then put his wheel hard over to port. Sword of the Lord came round hard and fast, heeling over almost on to her beam ends. Bishop Wyndham, still turning to port, presented her exposed starboard side. I saw little of the collision; the impact knocked me off my feet. I heard the crash, and the rending of timbers, and Barbee's quiet voice ordering, "Full Astern!"
When I got up we were heading at full speed towards the fog bank and astern of us Bishop Wyndham, with a heavy list to starboard, was limping in towards the bank.
Barbee reduced speed as soon as he was in the fog. Fog, did I say? It was more smoke than fog, thick and acrid and suffocating, and the waves of heat from the burning city made the conning tower like an oven. There was a whistle from the engine room voice pipe. "Answer it, Whitley!" snapped Barbee.
"Is that the conning tower?" demanded the engineer. "What the hell are you pumping thr
ough the forced draught? My fires won't burn in an atmosphere of secondhand exhaust gases!"
"They'll have to," I told him. "But we'll be out of the smoke soon."
I hoped that I was right.
Then, at last, it was light ahead and growing lighter, and it was no longer a painful effort to draw breath. We could see, dimly at first, the banks of the river—the river banks and the wreckage through which we were steaming. The faltering beat of the engines steadied, accelerated.
Barbee was peering up river through his binoculars. He said, "I can't see the Albany transports yet. Can't even see any smoke. They must have kept on going up to the Landing."
"They'll not have done that, Captain," Bean told him. "That's the last thing they'll have done."
"What do you think, Beynon?" asked Barbee.
"I agree with Mr. Bean. They'll not want any further contact with the Earthwomen."
"You must think us monsters," whispered Claire.
"And aren't we all monsters?" asked Adelie, almost inaudibly. "You, Captain Barbee with your flame thrower. And I, with my ambition. And your people, Bean, with their debonair young men riding high and safe in the clouds and dropping their bombs and darts on defenseless women and children . . ."
"Your Holiness," said Barbee gently, "you are tired and overwraught. Go below, please. You and Miss King may have my cabin. And the rest of you can make yourselves comfortable on the wardroom settees. Ill pass word down as soon as I sight anything."
We overhauled the ships out of Albany but made no attempt to enlist their aid. They were crowded with refugees and problems of organization would have taken too much precious time.
And then we had time to rest, to recuperate, on our way up river. It was a quiet passage at first, in other circumstances could have been a pleasant one. War had not touched these towns and villages, and in the first ones we visited the people knew nothing of the destruction of Albany and the sinking of her fleet.
We warned them, advised them. At every landing Adelie, clad in her white robes of office, accompanied by Barbee's buglers and drummers, would go ashore to say her piece, to tell the story of what had happened down river, to supervise the institution of a workable system of defense against any possible enemy.
Meanwhile, we had our own problems to discuss— offense rather than defense. The steam ram could do nothing against the spaceships, we knew, but Lafayette, presumably, was still at Wyndham's Landing with his Mounted Archers, and the Colonel would take his orders from Adelie, not from the Commandante. We worked out what we thought and hoped was a sound plan of attack. Barbee would put us ashore well down river from the Landing. We would approach by night, on foot, and make contact with
Lafayette, impressing on him the need for secrecy. That same night, or the following night, Barbee in Sword of the Lord, was to attack the Show Boat by ramming and with the flame thrower. The fire on the river, as well as creating a diversion, was to be the signal for a charge by the Mounted Archers on the spacewomen's position.
Oh, it was all worked out so very nicely, in every detail—but we failed to make allowances for one very important factor, communications. It was at Franklin —a tiny village on the eastern bank—that we realized this. They let us get ashore, did the villagers, and then, suddenly, we were surrounded by a mob of peasants armed with bows and arrows, with rusty swords and far from rusty sickles. They were led by the local Saint-in-Residence; word had come from New Orleans that the mutinous Sword of the Lord was to be detained and that the bodies, alive or dead, of sundry apostates, heretics, spies, traitors and pirates were to be delivered forthwith to the Council.
Adelie flared up into one of her spectacular rages.
"Fool!" she cried. "When my father hears of this he'll have you stripped of your robes and publicly whipped!"
"Your father?" The old man grinned. "Haven't you heard? He's dead." He waved the sheet of flimsy paper. "That's in here too. Now—are you all coming quietly?"
It was Barbee who saved us. He edged in to the rickety wharf, breathed on it with his flame thrower.
"You, with the dirty beard!" he yelled. "Call off your pups, or I burn your village to the ground!"
It was the first time that any of them had seen a flame thrower, and the brief demonstration had been of capabilities rather than of limitations. The Saint— a badly frightened old man—called his people off and, with servile alacrity, supervised the construction of a shaky, makeshift ramp by which we could re-embark; the wharf, by this time, was no more than still blazing ruins.
But he regained his courage.
"The Council shall hear of this!" he bawled after us.
Bravado such as Barbee's was all very well—but facts had to be faced. We knew, now, how we stood. From New Orleans the pigeons had gone fluttering up river and, wherever the birds had homed, every man's hand was turned against us. Commandante Willis would know that we had escaped from Albany and Colonel Lafayette would act as he was ordered by the Council.
What were we to do? What could we do?
Late into the night we talked, in the steam ram's cramped wardroom. Barbee was all for continuing up river and for launching a surprise attack (if surprise were still possible) upon the Show Boat, hoping thereby to destroy the Earthwomen's Headquarters Staff. Claire, not very hopefully, suggested that she report back for duty in a matter of fact way and then either attempt sabotage or try to win over Commandante Pearson and other senior officers. ("She'll clap you in cells," said Adelie, "as soon as she gets her hands on you. She'll not let you run around loose!")
Captain Beynon suggested that we try to adhere to our original scheme, saying that Lafayette, by this time, would know more of the Earthwomen than the fools in New Orleans and would, quite probably, listen to reason.
"You're right, Paul," said Adelie. "Lafayette's our only hope—but will he throw his men into almost certain death?"
"It may not be as bad as that," said the Old Mini. "The fire that friend Barbee will start will keep 'em occupied."
So up river we continued, cautiously, regulating our speed so that we passed settlements only by night, always scanning the skies for the Earthwomen's helicopters. Then, at last, we saw the glare from the floodlights at Wyndham's Landing, round the last bend, and Barbee nosed Sword of the Lord cautiously in to the bank. One by one we shook hands with him, walked along the foredeck, out along the ram and jumped ashore. Barbee knew his signals. This night, or the following night—or the night after—there was to be a fire in the camp of the Mounted Archers, the cookhouse tent going up in flames. Seeing this, Barbee was to attack. Should, after three nights, the signal not be given, Barbee was to use his own discretion.
We stood on the bank, watched the steam ram going astern and turning, a long, black shadow on the black water. We watched her until she was lost to sight, then started to trudge over the rough ground towards the glare of lights at the Landing.
It must have been all of half an hour before we fell in with Lafayette's outposts. Luckily they had been told to ask questions first and shoot afterwards. Even so, the manner of the men told off to escort us to the Colonel made it plain that we were prisoners rather than guests.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was hot in the Headquarters tent. There were too many people in it—Lafayette, and five of his officers, six sergeants and an armed guard of half a dozen Archers. The five of us from the steam ram were there.
Lafayette sat at the map-strewn, paper-littered table. He picked up, once again, the flimsy sheet that contained his latest orders from New Orleans.
He said, "I've heard your stories. Also—I've got this. I'm supposed to arrest you all and send you down river as soon as possible. On the other hand—the Commandante has told me—yes, told, not asked—to pass you all over to her should you fall into my hands. Needless to say, I do not take orders from the Commandante . . . But these orders, Miss Dale . . ."
"Yes, Colonel?"
"You know the bunch in the Palace better than I do. You were one
of them yourself. What is behind all this?"
"My father's dead, Colonel. He was a good man, and had the welfare of Beulah Land at heart. The Council rules until a new Bishop is elected. I know most of them. I can make a guess as to their motivations. They daren't do anything, anything, to offend the Earthwomen. Those orders you've got—they'll be changed as soon as they hear that Carrie wants us. You'll be told to hand us over."
"All right. I'll be told to hand you over. But . . . Shall I? As things stand at present—I command the only military force within striking distance of the spaceships ..."
"There's Barbee, and Sword of the Lord" said the Old Man.
"But what can he do against the ships, Beynon? He can dispose of Memphis Belle and the Show Boat if he wants to—and rob me of my transport by so doing. He can't attack the spaceships."
"Is the Show Boat still being used as Earth H.Q.?" asked Adelie.
"No. The Commandante must have got word of the steam rams and decided that she was too vulnerable to attack from the river. Everything's been moved back to the spaceships."
"A pity."
"Why? What did you have in mind?"
"Just—a plan. Barbee was to create a diversion by burning the Show Boat—and you and the Mounted Archers were to charge the spaceships and capture or destroy them."
"And you thought that I'd fall in with such a crazy scheme? Please give me credit for a little intelligence, Miss Dale."
"It'd be costly," said Adelie, "but it'd be a small price to pay for a world. Oh—the Earthwomen'll be back even if we destroy these two ships, but it'll not be for years. We shall have gained time to prepare."
"Almost you convince me. Almost."
Adelie got to her feet. She said, in a quiet voice, "I could make an emotional appeal, Colonel, as you know. I might not be able to swing you over to my side, quite—but I could carry your officers and men with me. I could preach the New Crusade—and, by so doing, start a chain reaction that would culminate in another Holy War. But I'm not going to—not any more. I want you to help me—but I want you to know what you're doing, why you're doing it. I want you to know that you face dishonor as well as death—because I know that the prospects of death don't frighten you. I want your men to know that they will be charging weapons far superior to any that they have ever faced before, and when the charge is successful they will be slaughtering women.
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