"Is all ready, Mr. Whitley?" hailed the Old Man. He was standing on the wing of the bridge, Adelie with him.
"All ready, Captain!"
We heard the jangle of telegraph bells, saw Bean opening steam valves. The big wheel began to turn, faster and faster, lashing the water into muddy foam.
"What are you doing, Captain?" bawled the Lock Master.
"Stand by to cut, Whitley!"
"Stand by to cut, sir!"
"Cutr
The axe flashed down on the bar-taut line. Richmond Queen surged forward. It must have been a matter of seconds only before she hit the gate—but it seemed like years. Then she struck, with a crash of splintering timber and a screech of rending metal. She hit the gate, and it sagged outward, and for a long time (it seemed) she hung there, her stern wheel churning furiously. Then the gate gave, and the concrete of the dam gave with it, and the whole structure of the basin walls cracked and crumbled, subsiding into what had become a raging torrent. We scrambled back and clear—Claire and the Lock Master and myself—deafened by the noise of shattering concrete and rushing water.
But I saw her go. I saw her stern lift as she plunged, the wheel racing, threshing the air. I saw her go, and I heard, for the last time, the deep organ note of her whistle, the three farewell blasts.
We ran to the edge of the dam and we saw the wave, the wall of water, the ship and trees and wreckage on its crest, booming down on Wyndham's Landing. One of the spaceships must have been readied for blasting off—we saw her Venturis flare into vivid and dazzling incandescence. We saw her lift—but not far enough, not fast enough. The crest of the wave, the crest of the wave with Richmond Queen, broadside on, riding it, hit her before she was up and clear, overset her. Then there was nothing left of the old Queen but wreckage, and the rocket, horizontal now, out of control, was streaking for Memphis Belle like some huge projectile, flame and steam in her wake. The other spaceship toppled and fell, her vanes swept from under her, breaking in two as she crashed down upon the Monument.
Memphis Belle was gone now, and the Show Boat, their shattered wreckage mingling with the wreckage of the spaceship, their wreckage lifted high in air on the mushroom of flame and smoke and steam that climbed, roaring, up to and into the crimson overcast.
I held Claire to me, felt the sobs that were shaking her body. The Lock Master was saying something, but we ignored him and, in the end, he went away.
"We should never have come," said Claire at last. "We should never have come. We have ruined your world."
I thought of Beulah Land as it had been, as it was now. I tried to peer into the doubtful and hazardous future. My arm tightened about her waist.
"Wherever you are," I said, "there is the Glory Shore."
Glory Planet Page 14
