The Steam Mole (29 page)

“Your ankle is hurt, and you need to sit down and have it seen to,” said Jack. “Make him sit, Clara.”

Lampy wasn't used to being pushed around by girls, but from what Tim said, he'd better get used to it from this one. She started to get up, so Lampy sat down. It was much easier on the ankle. “He learns quicker than Tim,” said Clara, grinning. “Don't even try and argue until you're able to run. Ask Tim.”

“Too true,” said Tim, who had been standing behind them.

“Tim Barnabas!” exclaimed Jack's missus, trying to sit up again.

“Stay down, Mary.”

Tim squatted down next to her. “Hello, Dr. Calland.”

She reached up for him and he leaned forward and gave her an awkward kiss on the cheek.

“I was so afraid for you, Tim.”

“I was so upset about you, ma'am. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and dig a shelter with the mole.”

“I'll come with you,” said Clara. “Hello, Captain Malkis!”

“You've led us a merry chase, cadet,” the captain said. “I gather you're the expert driver. We'll need shelter, and then I suspect we'll need to send the worst of the injured back to the power station.” He squatted down and held out a hand to Jack. “Captain Joaquim
Malkis. You're the luckiest man alive, Calland,” said the captain. “I can see your daughter in you.”

“And from what I can gather from my daughter, you're best the captain of the greatest crew that ever lived.”

“That's about right,” said Clara. “Except when he's wrong, of course.”

“I shall ignore that, cadet, until I can assign you to slops duty,” said Captain Malkis. “Now Mr. Calland, I believe you saw these troops?”

“Yes. They're readying for action, and we saw motor-trucks coming in on the railway.”

Lampy kept quiet, thinking about it all. Thinking and wondering, as Jack gave the details to the captain. He was a noticing feller was Jack. Counted things…Lampy noticed something himself. The mole hadn't moved.

Then the lieutenant got down, in a hurry. Came up to the captain. “Sir. Pardon me for interrupting, sir, but the patient in there is delirious. Insisting he has to be back before the eighteenth…
for the attack.
” The lieutenant paused. “That's tomorrow, sir. I don't think we can dig holes and wait it out. If it goes ahead, if they succeed, sir, we'll be trapped out here, even if the Imperial forces don't find us. And the summer is still coming. We'll need to get back.”

“Moving thirty-seven people. Some of them injured,” the captain pointed to Lampy. “But not until you've seen to that foot, lieutenant. I'll get Ambrose and start to get things in train.”

“Give him the instruction, sir, and you're to rest. MO's orders,” said Lieutenant Willis.

“And the MO trumps the skipper,” said the captain. “Very well, Willis. My back hurts a bit, I'll admit.”

The lieutenant was deft and quick…and it hurt like billy-o when he moved Lampy's foot. “I'd guess you have a broken fibula, the smaller of the two bones in your leg. Breaks of the tibia or fibula when jumping or landing awkwardly is one of the more common
fractures, and I'm fairly certain that's what you've done. We need to splint and immobilize that. You're not moving it for the next three or four weeks, son.” He turned to the girl who hovered next to him. “We need two of those splints. I'm going to put one either side. He really needs plaster-of-Paris, but strapping in is the best I can do.” He turned back to Lampy. “You need to keep the foot up as much as possible. That'll bring the swelling down.”

“Will…will I be able to walk again?” Lampy was ashamed that he let his fear show.

“Oh, yes. I should think in six weeks you'll be right as rain. If you don't keep it still, preferably in plaster-of-Paris, it won't heal and you won't ever get mobility back again, though.”

Lampy kept his foot dead still through the strapping process. He needed that foot, to hunt and to live as a man should live.

“It's going to look a sight, sir, but I think we can do it,” said Lieutenant Ambrose to the captain. “We can get most of the seriously injured inside the vehicle. It'll be crowded, but possible. There are handrails and running boards on the outside of the mole. We've collected some rope from the launch gear, and we're trying to unbolt the landing gear, and we'll make a sort of trailer. Then we'll put the horses on a long string behind that, just in case. We're not going to move fast, just steadily westward. As the crow flies, or rather, the
Wedgetail
would have flown, we can't be more than thirty to forty miles out. Of course, we have to collect more fuel, and it isn't going to be a straight route back. But five or six hours should do it.”

Tim had a feeling the lieutenant was thinking of travel by sea or by air. But he wasn't going to comment. It didn't matter that much, did it? He and Clara were back together with the
Cuttlefish
crew, and that was the important thing. Clara seemed to quite like making decisions. Tim made them if he had to. He was happy to have people he trusted making them for him, after the last while. But of course the captain noticed and asked his opinion.

“Uh. Probably longer, sir,” Tim answered. “The up and down and going round seems to take more time. And the steam mole can probably push through anything, but it's not worth it. If we get stuck we have a huge problem, so we need to take care.”

“I told you he was officer material, sir,” said Lieutenant Ambrose.

“I'm not so sure I want to be!” said Tim, truthfully. “It's…it's a lot of responsibility.”

That made the captain smile and the lieutenant laugh. “I think if we could get rid of candidate officers who didn't realize that, we'd start with half as many and be twice as well off,” said the captain. “Most of them only learn that later. When will we be ready to start loading?”

“Two hours, sir. The question I have is what happens to the flying wing?”

“Ask the copilot. They may hope to recover it, or destroy it to stop it falling into enemy hands.”

So Tim was sent to do so, while the lieutenants and the captain organized rosters of who would be where and do what.

The copilot was with the surviving engineer, helping to unbolt the two wheels from the flying wing, with half a dozen of the submariners helping. He was glad enough to step aside and speak to Tim.

“So you're the lad who wasn't dead,” he said cheerfully. “The wrath of heaven was nice compared to that skipper of yours talking to the mob at Dajarra about what they'd done to you.”

“Uh. His crew is pretty important to him.”

“I got that!” said the copilot. “Now, what do you want, youngster?”

“The captain wants to know what needs to be done about the flying wing when we leave here. Do we set fire to her or something?”

“Standing orders are to destroy it, if possible, only if we fall behind enemy lines. And this is still part of Westralia. They might send a lifter-airship and haul her out. She's not that badly damaged, poor old bird. We'll take what we need and leave the rest.”

“Has she got anything we can use as fuel?”

The copilot laughed. “I'll ask the engineer what he thinks of the possibility of running your machine on aero-fuel. We can get the two final reserve tanks out, easy enough. They're only twenty gallons each. I reckon flying wings from down south will be over here and searching by midmorning tomorrow. Might be useful for signal fires if the steam contraption doesn't make it.”

Tim found himself feeling defensive about the “steam contraption,” but left it at that and went back to the captain to report. And an hour and forty-eight minutes later the steam mole and its contrived trailer were ready to go. Tim found it quite funny that he and Clara were the only two with any experience driving the steam mole, and so would take turns in doing so.

“Besides, you're fairly small, and the cab is quite crowded,” said Lieutenant Ambrose cheerfully. “You get to hang on the outside first, though. Clara's driving.”

“It's rough country here, and she's better than I am,” said Tim. “She's had more practice.”

“So she told us when someone suggested the engineer from the flying wing might drive,” said Lieutenant Ambrose.

Tim was assigned to the makeshift trailer, which had been bolted together and then roped onto the back. All it had to save the passengers from bouncing as high as the moon was the fact that the mole flattened the bumps with its endless treads. The bars had been padded with some of the sheepskins from the flying wing, and Tim was grateful for them. He'd have been more grateful for some springs on the wheels. He said so to the copilot.

“It's worse when you're landing. One rock and she wants to dig her wing tip in.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” admitted Tim.

“The new wings have this arrangement of a magnet in a tube, but I'd have to get the engineer to explain it to you. Flying and navigation is my thing!”

He was only a few years older than Tim, and they fell into conversation about navigation first and then the rest of the world. He was intensely curious about that. Tim found him easy to talk to, not like most of the Westralians who had avoided talking to him. He said so.

“Ah. Depends on who you get in with and where they come from. I grew up on a farm in South Australia, and I only had black kids to play with, and my da made a point of getting on with the local tribe.
But some farmers didn't, and also the railway…well a lot of the workers are scared blacks will take their jobs. Bit stupid when there are three jobs for every willing man, but the bosses encourage it. ‘Give trouble and we'll get the blacks in.' Leads to nasty situations. But I never really heard of it going to murder before.”

“It happens more than you know, then. Lampy's uncle was shot for fun down at someplace called Boiler or something.” It had been niggling at Tim like a toothache since they got to
Cuttlefish
's crew and he'd been told by several of his friends what a good time they'd had in Westralia. If it didn't affect you, you didn't know about it.

“Boulia! There was a big fuss about the railway-men shooting some old abo down there. But it all turned into a tall story. There was one witness who swore black-and-blue he'd seen it, and laid charges. You should talk to Sergeant Morgan about it. He was the investigating officer, and nearly got himself tossed out of the force because he insisted it did happen. But they never found a body, and the bloke who was accused denied it, and so did his mates. Morgan searched the area himself. I mean there have been a few incidents, but it is against the law.”

“Yeah, like what the shift-captain tried to do to me. They'd have got away with it, too, if it hadn't been for luck and Clara, and the
Cuttlefish
crew,” said Tim.

The copilot absorbed this. “Well. Westralia's not perfect. The abos can't vote like they used to do in Vic and New South Wales before direct Imperial rule, but they fall under the same law as everyone else here in Westralia. Not like in Queensland, with the aboriginal statute list. That's better and worse. But the truth is, I suppose, the police and magistrates turn a blind eye to a lot of the abuse.”

“The people who picked me up out of the desert didn't think much of them. Oh. We seem to be stopping.”

“Looks like a good spot to collect fuel.”

It was. A tangle of long-dead trees from somewhere farther north had been left here by a long-ago flood. It was hard to
imagine all of this under water, but the railway had been built to withstand it.

There were lots of people, but still only one bow saw, an axe, and a hatchet. The lieutenants were organizing so that they all got maximum use, but it was still going to be slow going. Tim looked at it and had a bright idea. “Sir, we could start the drill head and chop it up a bit,” he suggested to Lieutenant Willis.

“And give me a whole lot more patients, probably,” said the lieutenant. “Hoy, Amby, what do you think of this idea from young Barnabas?” He explained it.

“Ask Thorne. We haven't got anyone higher up from engineering here,” said Ambrose. “Might work. Might turn it all to sawdust.”

Thorne suggested they try it on one of the edges, so they did.

The results were…interesting. The wood, old and dry, got flung, rather than cut. Quite a lot of it did get broken. Some landed on the mole, and the dust made it difficult to see. “Not exactly brilliant,” said Lieutenant Ambrose, “but worth trying on the main lot.”

“If everyone stands clear,” said Lieutenant Willis. “
A long way
clear.”

So they did that, and then it was more a case of hauling the smaller, broken pieces of wood back to the tender and even onto the little trailer. It took a lot more wood than coal to run the mole. In the gathering dusk Tim walked off to go and collect some more pieces, when a voice called him from a few rocks on the side of the dry watercourse. Tim went over to see who wanted what, not thinking twice about it.

It was only when he saw the spear and the black face of its wielder grinning at him that he realized it hadn't been one of the crew, but the man who had taken him to the camp on the first night. “These your people, Tim Barnabas?”

Tim nodded. “Yes, they came looking for me on the flying wing. I'm trying to get them back home.”

“We see them fall out of the sky. You tellem go quick-quick,
'cause lots of soldiers in trucks comin'. Maybe seventy trucks. We goin' north. Thems comin' down your tail, maybe a day's walk back now. They're coming faster than we walk.” At this he turned and slipped away.

Tim turned and ran himself. This news needed to get straight to the Old Man. And Clara, because she was driving, and was good at backing him up when he needed it. “Captain Malkis, sir. I just had one of the aboriginals, the ones that saved me out there, come up and tell me that the convoy of soldiers is coming. I don't know how well they counted them, sir, but he says seventy trucks are a day's walk away from us.”

Tim had been afraid that the captain might not believe him, but the captain showed no such doubts. “Tell the lieutenants to get a move on, Barnabas. How well does this thing do at night for lights, Miss Calland?”

Tim heard Clara say “pretty good,” as he ran to find the lieutenants. Any thought of stopping or slowing for the night was not happening.

Soon they were bouncing on their way again.

Clara focused on driving. The steam mole's steady thumping helped to drown some of the more distressing groans when she hit a bad bump—things she'd barely noticed on her search for Tim. Well, they might have been in a flatter piece of the desert. She'd realized by now that it wasn't all the same. Lieutenant Willis, poor man, was trying to pad and strap and protect people as they trundled along. He'd used most of the precious supply of laudanum, and still McLoughlin and the two men with compound fractures were in considerable pain. McLoughlin was delirious and babbling—alternating between blowing up things and talking to his mother.

The moon helped, but it still took a great deal of concentration to
pick the best and smoothest path possible. The one headlight stabbed ahead in the darkness, and they tried to keep a compass bearing. And then news came from those perched on top of the tender.

There was a ribbon of lights far off in the desert.

“Will they see our light?” asked Clara warily.

“It's not that likely, Miss. We're looking back at them, and our light shines forward.”

“Where are they?”

“They're behind us, somewhere out on the plains a little to the southwest of us. They must have scouted a route.”

“We've been going uphill slowly but steadily,” said Clara. “Tim said the termite run went along the higher ground to avoid flooding.”

“Well,” said Nichol, who had climbed down to report this, “we're guessing they're still about as far off as we can see. They disappear every now and again.”