The Magic Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page B

gigantic aircraft of some sort descend to the top of the tower. And then he’d tripped over a grail left by some unknown predecessor and had fallen to his death. After being resurrected to a place in The Valley, he’d met Sam and had told his strange tale to him.
    The woman said, “What about this dirigible we’ve heard rumors of? Why didn’t you go on that instead of the boat? You could have gotten to the headwaters in a few days instead of the thirty or forty years it’ll take you on the boat.”
    That was a subject Sam didn’t like to talk about. The truth was that no one had even thought of an airship until shortly before the Not For Hire was to set out. Then a German dirigible man named von Parseval had come along and asked why he hadn’t built the ship.
    Sam’s chief engineer, Milton Firebrass, an ex-astronaut, had liked the suggestion. So he’d stayed behind when the Not For Hire left, and he’d constructed the floating vessel. He’d kept in radio contact with the boat, and when the ship did get to the tower, he’d reported that it was a little over a mile high and almost ten miles in diameter. The Parseval had landed on its top, but only one of its crew, a Japanese ex-blimp man and Sufi who called himself Piscator, had been able to enter. The others had been restrained by some invisible but tangible force. Before that, an officer named Barry Thorn had placed a bomb on the helicopter carrying Firebrass and some others on a scouting landing. He’d set the bomb off with a radio signal and then stolen a helicopter and flown off the dirigible. But he’d been wounded, and the copter had crashed at the base of the tower.
    Thorn was brought back to the dirigible and questioned. He refused to give information, but he was visibly shocked when he heard that Piscator had gotten into the tower.
    Clemens suspected that Thorn was either an Ethical or one of their subordinates, whom the X’s recruits called agents.
    He also had some suspicions that Firebrass had been one or the other. And perhaps the woman who’d died in the explosion of the helicopter, Anna Obrenova, had been an Ethical or agent.
    Sam had concluded from his examination of all available evidence that something had long ago stranded a number of agents and perhaps some Ethicals in The Valley. X was probably one of them. Which meant that agents and Ethicals would have to use the same means as the Valleydwellers to get to the tower. Which meant that there were probably some disguised agents or Ethicals or both on his boat. Which meant that there were probably also some on the Rex .
    Just why the Ethicals and agents hadn’t been able to use their aircraft to return to the tower, he didn’t know.
    By now he’d reasoned that anyone who claimed to have lived after A.D. 1983 was one of the beings responsible for the Riverworld. It was his idea that the post-1983 story was false and was a code which enabled them to recognize each other.
    He also reasoned that some of them might have figured that X’s recruits suspected this story-code. Therefore, they would be dropping that story.
    Clemens said to the woman, “The airship was supposed to be a scout, to find out the lay of the land. Its captain was under orders, however, to get into the tower if it was possible. Then he was to return to the boat and pick up myself and some others. But no one but a Sufi philosopher named Piscator could get in, and he didn’t come back out. On the way back, its captain, a woman named Jill Gulbirra, who took over when Firebrass was killed, sent a raiding expedition in a copter against the Rex . King John was captured, but he escaped by jumping from the copter. I don’t know whether or not he survived. The aircraft flew back to the Parseval and continued on its course to the Not For Hire. Then Gulbirra reported sighting a very large balloon and was heading for it when Thorn got loose again. He flew off in a copter. Gulbirra, suspecting he’d planted a bomb, searched for it.