Back | Next
Contents

Twenty-two

There was a full set of charts aboard the camperfly, covering all of New Venusberg. There was electronic navigational equipment. There was an autopilot. It was a much bigger and far more luxurious aircraft than the one that Grimes had hired—how long ago?—at Port Aphrodite, one designed for use by tourists utterly lacking in airmanlike or navigational skills and to whom money would be no object.

Normally Grimes would have sneered at such a machine; he preferred to do things for himself rather than to have them done for him by robots. His contempt for push-button navigators was notorious. But now he would be content to leave things to the electronic intelligence while he got some much needed rest. It could be relied upon—he hoped—to steer a safe course over the seas, through the mountain passes, to Port Aphrodite. Little Sister must still be there. Once aboard her he and the women would be able to make their escape from this world of commercialised sex and sadism.

If his luck held.

For a while, however, he flew on manual control, on ostensible course for Camp Diana, until the camperfly was screened from sight of the Colosseum airport by the high hills. (On the chart the name Colosseum was not used; there was just an unnamed valley.) Then he switched to automatic and pushed the Port Aphrodite button, waited until he was sure that the aircraft had come around to the correct heading before going aft into the capacious cabin. Somebody, he saw, had been busy. There was a meal set out on the table—a tray of savoury pastries, a big pot of coffee, a bottle of brandy. Grimes looked and sniffed in anticipatory appreciation. Obviously the late Dr Callis had believed in doing himself well.

Darleen got up from her own seat, made a production of getting Grimes settled into a comfortable chair. Shirl poured him a mug of steaming coffee. Fenella Pruin watched sardonically.

"And now," she said, "perhaps the conquering hero will tell us what he intends doing next."

Grimes sipped his coffee, nibbled a pastry. He said. "I've set course for Port Aphrodite . . ."

"Straight back to your beloved Little Sister, of course."

"Do you have a sister, John?" asked Shirl. "You never told us."

"It's his ship," said Fenella.

The soft, background music, of which Grimes had hardly been conscious, was interrupted. "This is a news flash. A camperfly, number SCF2011, has been stolen from a private mountain resort in Caligula Valley. Its charterer, Dr Wilburn Callis, a visitor to New Venusberg, was murdered. Aboard the aircraft are two underpeople, females, and two true humans, a man and a woman. All four are dangerous criminals. Aircraft are requested to keep a sharp lookout for the stolen vehicle and to report any sighting at once.

"It is believed that the criminals will be heading towards Port Aphrodite."

The interrupted music resumed. Grimes gulped what was left of his coffee but his enjoyment of it had been ruined. Obviously the stolen camperfly was no longer an asset but a liability. He did not know what the aerial capability of the planetary police forces was but was certain that it must be considerable.

"Well," asked Fenella Pruin, "what are you going to do about it?"

He reached out for the box of Caribbean cigars, selected one of the slim, brown cylinders. It would not be as good as a pipe but he had long considered the fumes of smouldering tobacco an aid to thought. He ignited it with a flick of his fingernail, put the other end to his mouth. He inhaled. Shirl poured him more coffee.

"Aren't you going to do something?" demanded Fenella Pruin.

"I have no intention of flying into a screaming tizzy," he told her. "To begin with, I'm going to land. There may or may not be something flyable at the Colosseum that has the heels of us, but if there is it'll be after us as soon as they get it airborne . . ."

He got up from his chair, went forward to the control cab. He studied the screen which depicted the terrain over which they were flying, looked at the chart. But before he could bring the camperfly down he would have to get off the rhumb line—or was it a great circle course?—between the Colosseum and Port Aphrodite. There was enough metal in the camperfly's construction to make it a radar target, an anomalous echo that would be picked up by the instruments of pursuing aircraft.

He switched to manual, made a bold alteration of course to starboard. And was that a deep valley showing in the screen, ahead and a little to port? It was a dark rift of some kind, meandering through the general luminescence. He transferred his attention to the all-around lookout radar. The sky—ahead, astern, to both sides—was empty. So far. But he decided that it would be too big a risk to use landing lights.

At reduced speed he drifted down. The worst part of it was that the control cab was not designed for making a visual landing—not that much could be seen in the darkness. He watched the radar altimeter. Yes, that was a valley, or a canyon, and a deep one. He was directly over it now.

He stopped engines. The camperfly had sufficient buoyancy from its gas cells for its descent to be gentle. There was enough breeze, however, for it to be blown off its planned descent. Grimes restarted the engines to maneuver the unwieldy aircraft back into position, making allowance for leeway. But he could not foresee that at ground level there would be an eddy. The camperfly, instead of dropping neatly into the canyon, the walls of which gave ample clearance, drifted to the leeward rim. The port wing of the aircraft fouled something, crumpled. There was a loud hiss of escaping helium, audible even in the cabin. At first there was a violent lurch to starboard and then, as the damaged wing, no longer buoyant, tore free of the obstruction, a heeling over to port. On its side the camperfly dropped into the gulf. Luckily there was sufficient lift remaining in the undamaged gas cells for the descent to be a relatively gentle one.

She struck, with the port wing acting as a fender, cracking up beneath her. She settled, then almost at once was on the move again. Heavy blows shook her structure from beneath, from both sides. A strange, somehow fluid, roaring noise was audible in the control cab.

Grimes extricated himself from the tangle of female arms and legs into which he had been thrown, not as gently as he would have done in a situation of lesser urgency. He ignored the outraged squeals of the women. The dim lighting in the control cab was still on. He saw, through what had been the upper surface of the transparent dome and which was now a wall, this luminescence reflected from a black, swirling surface.

Water.

The camperfly had fallen into a swift running river and was being borne rapidly downstream. Even if she were holed by the rocks into which she was crashing there would be no danger of her sinking as long as the remaining gas cells remained intact. The situation, thought Grimes, could have been worse. This was better than either the Colosseum or the Snuff Palace.

Out of the frying pan, he thought, and into the washing up water . . .

Back | Next
Framed