"We're fine. You just hold off, Porter. We got Merritt back. —You keep your distance, the lot of you, til I'm done talking."
"Ask Merritt where those explosives are."
"He says the People are going to blow the dam. —Listen to me, you—I don't know the whole story; I ain't had time to ask him, but you hold off out there til I make my mind up. And I mean that. You know I do."
"You were always blind to him, Selby—but take your time. If he's got an answer to this, let's hear it."
"I'll tell you the answer," Merritt shouted back and recklessly leaned against the railing to do it. "Miller's death was a surprise to me and so was it that they had the explosives. They got them without my help."
"We ain't sure," a new voice cut in, "but what you sent them after them for you."
"That's not true!" Merritt shouted back.
"You never wanted that dam to work, Merritt." That was Porter again. "You fought it all the way. I hear you was trying to get off this world when the governor's men caught you up in New Hope."
"I built that dam. What more do you want? And if you don't want it blown apart, get more guards up there on that site tonight."
"If the People can use explosives, who showed them how, Merritt? Answer us that one."
"I never showed them. But they're ready to fire. Maybe Miller did—I have no way of knowing."
"That's a lie." The voice was that of one of the Miller cousins. "That's a rotten lie, Merritt, to save your own hide."
"I can't argue it with you, John. I don't know how they got them. Maybe they got them from Dan after he'd fixed them at the site; or maybe he meant to blow them in their camp—maybe he tried. But the People have brains to figure things out. They're intelligent beings, and they have the means to destroy the dam. Anything could set those charges off now. Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll blow themselves up before they get to the dam, but they know I'm loose and they'll know they haven't much time left.
Get up there and warn those men on guard duty, whether you think I'm lying or not. There's too many of the People out there for a few rifles to stop."
"And maybe you want us all to go running off up there for reasons of your own."
"Porter," said Amos, "maybe you'd better listen to him."
"You believe that offworlder, Selby? Then you'll believe anything."
"I think we're all standing in a confounded unlucky place if that dam goes."
"I think he'd like to send us all up that trail into an ambush while he's at it—and leave the station unguarded."
"Are you going to send men up to the dam or not?"
There was a long hesitation, no one volunteering. "Sure," said Porter. "We'll check it out. But we'll check out a few things with Merrill first. Put down that rifle, Amos. He isn't worth it."
"You do your talking from there, Porter. First man steps out front I'll try to scare him, but I can't see much in this rain and I don't want to shoot my neighbors. You just keep your distance. And while you're at it, send someone up to round up a relief party for the men at the dam, or are you just going to leave them up there alone?"
"What do we do now, Dad?" Jim asked quietly, when there was silence from the crowd.
"I think you and Sam better fire up that boiler. We got one way out of here and besides, I don't trust Porter to send that relief party at all."
"Amos—" Merritt began, offering gratitude.
"Sam, I'm figuring you're telling the truth, or part of it. If I find out otherwise you'd better not be in my sights. Get moving. I don't know how close we can get old Celestine to that dam, but if it goes, I figure we'll be the first to know."
The wind was coming down out of the narrows, driving a blinding rain and spray against little Celestine, and she moved slowly, painfully slowly, her deck awash and her bow probing darkness and uncharted channel.
"Don't know how much farther we'll make it," Amos said. He took a fresh grip on the rain-slick wheel and let one hand go again to wipe his forearm across his eyes.
Spray hit them and current and wind tried to turn them; Amos fought them even again, but the chug of the engines faltered and Jim grabbed for the doorlatch and ducked out, slammed it after. The boat wallowed, rolled, and rock hove up starboard in the lightnings.
"I'll see if Jim needs help," Merritt said, and had his hand on the latch when Celestine tilted and shuddered in every plank. With a squeal of wood the boat wallowed back to rights again. Merritt let go the breath he had held and Amos breathed an obscenity.
Again the boat scraped rock and Amos put the wheel over hard in the attempt to clear it. She hung a moment, screaming, and dragged herself past the obstacle on a surge of the river.
There was no need to search after Jim: the door ripped open and he thrust his soaked head into the wheelhouse, hanging in the doorway.
"We can't get any farther. Dad, for—"
"Ain't no boat ever made farther than this, for sure," Amos shouted back. "I know, son, I know, and I'm heading for the only landing we got."
He was plying the wheel with all his concentration now fixed ahead, rock walls and rocks half-submerged looming up out of the lightning-lit spray like a swift-moving nightmare. Celestine was moving now toward the nearside bank, where Merritt recalled a single stretch of shore that sloped gradually up to the heights beyond, a place piled high with brush and sand.
And if in seeking that shore they took Celestine's bottom out and the boiler blew—it would be quick, at least.
The bank entered their view, a great line of brush lit with the sporadic flashes of lightnings, between the rise and fall of Celestine's spray-drenched bow.
"Boy," said Amos, "you and Sam get out there on that deck and get ready to jump. Carry cable if you can. I don't want to lose the old girl if I can help it."
Merritt grasped the doorframe and pulled himself out after Jim; and holding where they could, they worked their way to the bow and the coiled cable. The shore was coming up fast now, dipping and rising crazily in the dark, and suddenly Celestine's bow hit sand. The shock hurled them both to the deck, and even as they were getting to their feet again the boat was tilting and slewing round to the action of the current
A final lightning flash showed the shore almost under them, and Jim put his hand at Merritt's back and urged him over the rail.
He hit the water, a numbing shock of cold; and for a moment he fought, then found bottom with his feet and broke surface. He moved back from Celestine's dark shape just as the cable snaked out and uncoiled toward his uplifted hands. Jim went over the side, and together they seized the cable and dragged it toward a projecting rock, snubbed it round and tried to hold it.
It tore from their hands, ripping flesh raw, and Celestine turned her bow from the shore and was taken by the current.
"Dad!" Jim howled into the wind.
A moment later a shadow leaped from the nearside rail into the water, a white splashing afterward in the lightnings, and Amos came stumbling up onto the bank coughing and swearing at once. He cast one look back at stricken Celestine, that had swung half-about and was heeling toward a swifter current, then seized Jim and Merritt each by a shoulder and turned them for the higher bank, pushing them into movement.
The scent of burning was on the wind as they came upon the road, an acrid, foul smoke. The rain had slackened by now to a spattering of drops, most of that shaken from trees by the wind, but the fire-scent was strange on the wet air.
And when they had come near the construction area itself, there was something clearly ablaze, red winking through the trees.