Up on the bridge Rosemary Lambourne hadn’t been sure about the first scrape, but like her eldest son she was perfectly in tune with the Swithland . Something had left her with heightened senses, a suddenly hollow stomach. She automatically checked the forward-sweep mass-detector. This section of the Zamjan was twelve metres deep, giving her a good ten metres of clearance below the flat keel, even overloaded like this. There was nothing in front, nothing below, and nothing to the side.
Then it happened again. The aft hull struck something. Rosemary immediately reduced power to the paddles.
“Mother!”
She bent over the starboard side to see Karl looking up at her.
“What was that?”
He beat her to it by a fraction.
“I don’t know,” she shouted down. “The mass-detector shows clear. Can you see anything in the water?”
“No.”
The river current was slowing the Swithland rapidly now the paddles were stilled. Without the steady thrash of the blades, the racket the colonists made seemed to have doubled.
It came again, a long rending sound of abused wood. There was a definite crunching at the end.
“That was aft,” Rosemary yelled. “Get back there and see what happened. Report back.” She pulled a handset from its slot below the communication console, and dropped it over the edge of the rail. Karl caught it with an easy snap of his wrist and raced off down the narrow decking, slipping through the knots of colonists with urgent fluid movements.
“Swithland , come in, please,” the speaker on the communication console said. “Rosemary, can you hear me? This is Dale here. What’s happening, why have you stopped?”
She picked up the microphone. “I’m here, Dale,” she told the Nassier ’s captain. When she glanced up she could see the Nassier half a kilometre upriver, pulling ahead; the Hycel was downriver on the starboard side, catching up fast. “It sounds like we struck something.”
“How bad?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you.”
“Rosemary, this is Callan, I think it would be best if we didn’t get separated. I’ll heave to until you know if you need any assistance.”
“Thanks, Callan.” She leant out over the bridge rail and waved at the Hycel . A small figure on its bridge waved back.
A screech loud enough to silence all the colonists erupted from the Swithland ’s hull. Rosemary felt the boat judder, its prow shifting a degree. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. They were almost dead in the water, it couldn’t possibly be a snag. It couldn’t be!
Karl reached the afterdeck just as the Swithland juddered. He could feel the whole boat actually lift a couple of centimetres.
The afterdeck was packed full of colonists and posse members. Several groups of men were lying down, playing cards or eating. Kids charged about. Eight or nine people were fishing over the stern. Cases of farmsteading gear were piled against the superstructure and the taffrail. Dogs ran about underfoot; there were five horses tethered to the side rail, and two of them started pulling at their harnesses as the brassy scrunching noise broke across the boat. Everybody froze in expectation.
“Out of the way!” Karl shouted. “Out of the way.” He started elbowing people aside. The noise was coming from the keel, just aft of the furnace room which was tacked on to the back of the superstructure. “Come on, move.”
A sayce snarled at him. “Killl.”
“Get that fucking thing out of my way!”
Yuri Wilken dragged Randolf aside.
The whole afterdeck complement was watching Karl. He reached the hatchway over the feed mechanism that shunted logs into the furnace. It was hidden beneath a clutter of composite pods. “Help me move these,” he yelled.
Barry MacArple emerged from the furnace room, a brawny twenty-year-old, sweaty and sooty. He had kept indoors for most of this trip, and carefully avoided any member of the posse. None of the Lambourne family had mentioned that he was an Ivet.
The noise came to an abrupt halt. Karl was very aware of the apprehensive faces focusing on him, the silent appeal for guidance. He held up his hands as Barry started to haul the pods off the hatchway. “OK, we’re riding on some sort of rock. So I want all the kids to slowly make their way forwards. Slowly mind. Then the women. Not the men. You’ll upset the balance with that much weight forward. And whoever those horses belong to, calm them down now.”
Parents hustled their children towards the prow. A hushed murmur swept round the adults. Three men were helping Barry clear the hatchway. Karl lifted off a couple of the pods himself. Then he heard the noise again, but it was distant this time, not from the Swithland ’s hull.
“What the hell—” He looked up to see the Hycel a hundred metres astern.
“Karl, what’s happening?” Rosemary’s voice demanded from the handset.
He raised the unit to his mouth. “It’s the Hycel , Mum. They’ve hit it as well.”
“Bloody hell. What about our hull?”
“Tell you in a minute.”
The last of the pods were cleared away, revealing a two-metre-square hatch. Karl bent down to unclip the latches.
That was when the second sound rang out, a water-muffled THUNK of something heavy and immensely powerful slamming into the keel. Swithland gave a small jolt, riding up several centimetres. Some of the more loosely stacked cases and pods tumbled over. The colonists shouted in panic and dismay, and there was a general surge for the prow. One of the horses reared up, forelegs scraping the air.
Karl ripped the hatch open.
THUNK
Ripples rolled away from the Swithland as it wallowed about.
“Karl!” the handset squawked.
He looked down into the hull. The log-feed mechanism took up most of the space below the hatch, a primitive-looking clump of motors, pulley loops, and pistons. Two grab belts ran away to the port and starboard log holds. The black mayope planks of the hull itself were just visible. Water was welling out of cracks between them.
THUNK
Karl stared down in stupefaction as the planks bowed inward. That was mayope wood, nothing could dint mayope.
THUNK
Splinters appeared, long dagger fingers levering apart.
THUNK
Water poured in through the widening gaps. An area over a metre wide was being slowly hammered upwards.
THUNK
THUNK
Swithland was rocking up and down. Equipment and pods rolled about across the half-abandoned afterdeck. Men and women were clinging to the rail, others were spread-eagled on the decking, clawing for a handhold.
“It’s trying to punch its way in!” Karl bellowed into the handset.
“What? What?” his mother shouted back.
“There’s something below us, something alive. For Christ’s sake, get us underway, get us to the shore. The shore, Mum. Go! Go!”
THUNK
The water was foaming up now, covering the hull planks completely. “Get this shut,” Karl called. He was terribly afraid of what would come through once the hole was big enough. Together, he and Barry MacArple slammed the hatch back down, dogging the latches.
THUNK
Swithland ’s hull broke. Karl could hear a long dreadful tearing sound as the iron-hard wood was wrenched apart. Water seethed in, gurgling and slurping. It ripped the log feeder from its mountings, crashing it against the decking above. The hatch quaked violently.
A gloriously welcome whine from the paddle engines sounded. The familiar slow thrashing of the paddles started up. Swithland turned ponderously for the unbroken rampart of jungle eighty metres away.
Karl realized people were sobbing and shouting out. A lot of them must have made it forward, the boat was riding at a downward incline.
THUNK
This time it was the afterdeck planks. Karl, lying prone next to the hatch, yelled in shock as his feet left the deck from the impact. He twisted round immediately, rolling over three times to get clear. Pods bounced and pirouetted chaotically. The horses were going berserk. One of them broke its harness, and plunged over the side. Another was kicking wildly. A blood-soaked body lay beside it.