The Steam Mole (26 page)

Up on the top of the tender, Tim hauled wood and dropped it into the feed for the furnace. He then lifted the cover and set about trying to break apart the pieces of limb that had crunched themselves into a tangle and somehow got a branch into the roller-wheels. It looked like the flying wing and the airship were going to battle it out.

The airship closed in on them, and also rose as fast as it could. Linda could see sudden puffs of smoke from the gondola. The flying wing banked sharply, then the pilot jinked the other way. The flying wing shuddered as if something had slapped it, but continued to climb. So did the airship. The flying wing had the edge in maneuverability and speed, but at climbing, well, the airship was doing better. And it was doing better at shooting at them. The flying wing slewed viciously again, then began to dive. The wing certainly could move a lot faster than the airship. It would easily outrun it, Linda thought.

Only it couldn't outrun bullets. The starboard engine suddenly blossomed flames and smoke as the pilot fought for control.

Jack, the soldier, and Lampy kept heading for the rough country. “Whatever that Westralian machine is, it's tough. Survived that bomb. I would have thought it would blow it to smithereens,” said Jack. “It should keep them off us, though. Keep the airship busy.”

“I think that airship got its own problems,” said Lampy, pointing. “That's one of them Westralian fliers. I saw them patrolling when I was here with my uncle.”

“Well, maybe we should make contact with the Westralian machine. If they can survive that bomb they must be quite something. Could give us shelter. I reckon they'll be quite glad to hear about the lot we escaped from,” Jack said, glancing at their prisoner. But McLoughlin was beyond noticing. He was white-faced and clinging to the horse's mane.

“He's going to fall off just now, I reckon,” said Lampy. He'd never thought he'd feel sorry for a soldier, but he did. One had to admire the way he stayed on a horse, if nothing else.

“Better reason to get him to that machine,” said Jack.

“I ain't having nothing to do with them Westralians, Jack.
They'll shoot any blackfeller they see. Prob'ly shoot you, too, with that hat. Hello. Look. One of them has climbed on top of the thing.”

And then Lampy swallowed hard. The man—and he wasn't particularly large—wore railway-man clothing.

Only…he was black. Well, as black as Lampy anyway.

And then, suddenly, even from here they could hear the gunfire.

It was coming from the airship. Lampy could see the little puffs of smoke from the cabin-thing that hung underneath it. The flying wing was behaving like a bat trying to get away from an owl.

The engineer climbed out of his nacelle and down the struts to the wing itself, clinging desperately, but at least away from the flames. With one set of engines out, the
Wedgetail
turned back toward the airship. And then Linda realized it was more than the engine sending them back. The pilot steered them in a sharp arc.

The captain of the airship must have realized what a burning engine would do to his great bag of hydrogen, and tried to turn away, venting hydrogen and dropping as they hurtled toward him. That might have been a mistake, as the flying wing now had more height and more maneuverability than his craft…and looking out of the window, Linda saw that the engineer clinging to the strut in the hundred-mile-an-hour wind had been joined by another—the copilot. And they were working on something, hauling at levers, despite being about a thousand feet up and out on the wing. The pilot flicked his eyes at them, and then, out on the wing, as they were racing ever closer to the airship, the copilot managed to wave. The pilot signaled to them to hold on.

The pilot dropped the wingtip and side-slipped. Linda hung on for dear life as the flying wing flipped over. They all fell about, except the pilot. He clung like a monkey to his levers as the flying wing shuddered, as if she'd been slapped, and began to dive and turn
hard again. And as she fell toward her seat, Linda saw the still-burning engine fly on without them, like a burning cannonball, straight for the airship.

She watched, time seeming to drag out, as the burning engine plunged toward the airship. The captain of the airship must have dumped all his ballast at once, and the airship rose.

It was going to miss—

And it did.

It missed the gas bag.

It hit the engine and steering vane instead, sending a tearing shower of debris and flame arcing downward. The airship went on rising, as the pilot of the flying wing tried to stabilize his craft. He beckoned Linda close and yelled in her ear, “Get ten men onto the starboard wing. Right!”

As they watched the aerial battle unfold from where they were hidden in the little fold in the landscape, Lampy glanced across the open flats to see that the Westralian machine had stopped. And a second person had joined the first on the roof of the tender. Even from here Lampy could see that this person had yellow hair…and wore a dress. He had barely time to take this in when the last act in the aerial battle took place.

“Mary McCree!” said Jack, shaking his head. “Did you see the poor fellow on the wing fall! That was some skill! But I think they've paid a dear price for it. They're losing height.”

The flying wing, which had changed from a bat fluttering away from an owl to a swallow fluttering away from a hawk, was indeed coming down. The airship wasn't. It continued to rise, but seemed to be drifting rather than flying. It certainly wasn't coming back this way.

At that point, McLoughlin did fall off his horse.

“I think,” said Lampy, as Jack got down to him, “we need to go to that steam engine. I go fetch 'em.”

“I'd better go,” said Jack, laying the groaning, semiconscious man flat. McLoughlin clung to Jack's hand.

“I'll be right for it,” said Lampy, hoping he was right about what he'd seen. At the same time he laid the rifle on its sling off his shoulder and forward onto his saddle bow. He rode closer. He sang out from a good three hundred yards off from the steam machine. Them dopey Westralians hadn't actually even seen him, they were too busy watching the flying wing coming down and the airship drifting off. But that was definitely a blackfeller…in the clothes of a railway-man. Sooty and dusty clothes, but railway-man clothes, and the girl was wearing a little straw hat, and yes, pleated skirts. They didn't look as if they were even his age, either of them. Mind you, there were plenty of men working at his age.

Linda scrambled into the crawl way to the wing. She got to the first submariner, pulled his earmuff aside, and yelled in his ear. Then she moved on to the next until she had ten moving over. Then she went back to the pilot's nacelle. The copilot was back, looking grim. He wrote: “Have to crash-land. Pass it on.” Then he wrote it again and gave her the two notes, pointing at the wing crawlways. He went back to the pipes he was working on, under the floor panel he had open.

Linda went to deliver the messages, then got herself back to her seat—to be handed a piece of rope.

“Tie yourself to the seat,” Clara's mother yelled in her ear.

Linda did her best with the rope. They were much lower…and moving far slower now. The ground was still going past rather fast. Linda looked out the forward window and braced herself. In the distance, she could still see the airship. They were barely fifty feet above
the gibber plain now, with the pilot fiercely intent, huddled over his controls, fighting for every last bit of air to slow them down and to put the flying wing down safely. They cut the surviving engine…and the next instant they were bouncing, and slewed wildly across the ground. Linda was wacked back into her seat and then slammed forward with her face onto her knees as the aircraft came to a stop.

The black-skinned railway-man and the woman were surely very surprised to see Lampy. Neither reached for guns. They waved instead. A little warily, it seemed to Lampy.

“Day-ee. We got a hurt man back there. You want to bring this machine closer. I don't think he can ride no more.”

“How far?” said the blackfeller, nodding.

“Maybe six hundred yards. Maybe a little more. He's hurt bad. You follow me, an' I show you.”