The S.S. Queen of Expy was the largest ship yet to dock at Port Dechantagne, almost twice as large, in terms of tonnage, as the H.M.S. Minotaur, the battleship that had brought the first colonists to this shore. Her four massive smokestacks were no longer pouring out giant black clouds as they had done all the way from Greater Brechalon. The great ship was now, ever so slowly, turning without the aid of any tugs, so that she could connect to a dock that was so much more primitive than she was used to. It all put Saba Colbshallow in mind of a very fat lady trying to maneuver herself around in a bathtub.

“How long do you suppose before they can get the gangplank up?” wondered Eamon Shrubb, who like Saba stood in his heavy blue reefer jacket and blue constable’s helmet.

Saba consulted his pocket watch. The ornate little hands showed 10:30. A snowflake settled upon its glass face, just above the six. He turned his face skyward and saw a few more large white flakes falling toward him.

“A while,” he said. “Tea?”

Eamon nodded, and the entire police force walked across the gravel road to the cart that Aalwijn Finkler had set up to sell hot drinks and cakes.

There were exactly five vending carts in Port Dechantagne, and all five were within fifty yards of the dock. In addition to Finkler’s, there was Mr. Kordeshack selling fish and chips, Mrs. Gopling selling smoky sausages, Mrs. Luebking, selling scarves, mittens, and knit caps for those who had either not brought warm clothing or were unable to find it in their luggage, and Mr. Darwin, who sold purses, wallets, belts, and hat bands, all made of dinosaur skin.

“Two teas,” said Saba, setting a ten-pfennig coin on the cart.

“Sugars?” asked Aalwijn.

“One.”

“Three,” said Eamon.

“Milk?” asked Aalwijn.

“No.” With no cattle in the colony and few goats, the only milk available was in tins. While this was fine for cooking, most people had given up milk in their tea because of the metallic taste.

The snow started coming down more heavily as the two constables sipped the steaming tea from the small, plain porcelain cups. When they had finished, they set the cups in the bin on the side of the vending cart reserved for dirty dishes. Saba turned around and looked at the S.S. Queen of Expy.

“I don’t think it’s moved,” said Saba.

“What’s Expy?” asked Eamon.

“It’s an island.”

“Does it have a queen?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How come they named a ship Queen of Expy then?”

“That’s just something they do.”

“I don’t think it’s moved,” said Eamon.

“Come on,” said Saba. “Let’s do a tour.”

“Together?”

“Sure.”

The two constables started off to the north, walking past the warehouses, and reaching the end of Bainbridge Clark Street, and the edge of Augustus P. Dechantagne Park. The park occupied ten acres just past the narrowest part of the peninsula, and was mostly composed of a large grassy area where during the summer, people had picnics, and played football or cricket. On its western edge was a copse of several dozen large trees and rose garden with a gazebo, a reflecting pool, and the base for a statue that had not yet been completed. The base was four foot square and two feet high, and would eventually hold a life-sized statue of the man for whom the park was named. It already had his name embossed upon it, along with the phrase “Stand Fast, Men”. Trailing through the park and the rose garden within it was a winding cobblestone path, which Saba and Eamon took. They stopped between the statue base and the reflecting pool, which was completely frozen over.

“You knew him pretty well, eh?” asked Eamon, indicating the spot where the statue would someday be.

“Yep. He was a great guy. He used to tell me dirty stories when I was a kid, and he usually gave me a couple of pfennigs when he saw me. That was big money for me then.”

“Sure,” said Eamon, who had grown up in a poorer family than Saba’s. “Do you know what it’s going to look like?”

I stepped onto the ledge, which looked as though it must have been a landing pad for some type of small air-going vessel. It was about sixty-five feet square, and hung down about one hundred feet below the rest of the city. Standing at the edge were the metallic being who was now helping me onto the level surface of the deck, and Noriandara Remontar who was watching warily.

“I started to pull you up,” she explained, “but this thing took the rope from me and did it for me.”

“It looks like an automaton,” I said, using the closest word in the Amatharian vocabulary to robot. The creature stacked the rope neatly near the precipice, and began rolling around on wheeled feet, picking up debris here and there that had blown on to the deck. “It looks like a maintenance man.”

“That is not a man,” she sneered. “It is grotesque.”

“I thought Amatharians were more tolerant of other species. It is probably designed to look something like the Meznarks.”

“Oh it is,” she said. “The Meznarks had three eyes and four arms, just as this thing does. They have legs though and not wheels. It is not the Meznarks that I find so grotesque. It is this artificial representation of them.”

“They probably made their machines look as much like them as possible so that they could feel more comfortable around them.” I suggested.

“They should not be comfortable around them,” replied the Princess. “It is one thing to have a machine as a tool, to enhance one’s abilities. It is another thing entirely to have a machine as a replacement for a person, whether that replaced person is a companion, a coworker, a slave, or a master. It disgusts me.”

I nodded. I had known people who chose to make machines their masters, and it was disgusting, whether the machine was a robot, a computer terminal, or a time clock.

“Perhaps,” I changed the subject, “if there are machines still working here, then there may well be living Meznarks as well.”

“Hmm,” she said, still irked about the robot.

I began looking around for a way to the upper levels from the deck, and was rewarded with a platform on the side opposite where I had been lifted up. This platform was open on all sides but had a small raised control panel in the center of it, and another just beside the platform on the main deck.

“Looks like a down-going room,” I said, using the Amatharian term for elevator.

“Down-going room,” muttered the Princess.

“Shall we go on up?” I asked.

“Why don’t you push this control and see if it works first.”

I pressed a button on the control panel beside me, and without any warning, the elevator platform dropped from the deck in a free fall. We looked over the edge as the device plummeted far down into the canyon below, finally crashing to the ground.”

“Down-going room,” muttered the Princess.

We looked around some more, and finally located a rung ladder on the outside of one of the struts that held the landing platform by its corners to the main part of the city. We climbed up about sixty-five feet to a hatch that opened with a large lever. The ladder continued on and after about two hundred more feet, a second hatch similar to the first led to the main city deck. We stepped out onto a broad avenue between tall buildings.

The temperature was somewhat lower than it had been on the ground, but it was beautifully sunny. We were near the center of the city, and had we not known that we were floating high in the air, we probably would not have been able to guess. There was still an eerie feeling pervading the place, though. The buildings were not in ruins, though they were in disrepair and in disarray. It was very quiet.

“How long do you suppose this thing has been deserted?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to have been that long,” replied Noriandara Remontar. “Perhaps the Oindrag didn’t attack this city. Perhaps they were killed by disease.”

“Maybe we should reserve our judgment until we see one of the Meznarks.”

The Princess nodded and started toward the nearest building, a large edifice with a series of steps leading up to the entrance. I followed her, and we both entered through a large square door way. The interior of the building was a huge open atrium and in the center was a metal sculpture of what, on Earth, might be called modern art.

“What is that thing?” asked Noriandara Remontar.

“It’s an art object,” I replied. “It’s an abstract.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, and I recalled that all the statuary that I had seen in Amathar was of very realistic people.

“My people create art of a similar type. It represents some intangible thing— possibly courage or love or beauty, or it is meant to invoke the feeling of looking at the ocean or of feeling the breeze in your face.”

“I still don’t understand,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be better to create a statue of a person who was courageous, or a person who was loving, or a person who was beautiful? And if one lived in a flying city, and one wanted to look at the ocean, couldn’t one just fly to the nearest ocean. And if one wants to feel the breeze in his face, he has only to step outside this building.”

“Yes, I suppose that is true,” I conceded.

There was chaos on the shore. Practically every citizen of Nutooka was pressed into the confines of the harbor. Some screamed. Some cried. Some waved to get the attention of the battleship off shore. No doubt all of them would have piled into small boats and rowed out to the ship, if Captain Mould had not already had all of the local boats scuttled. Even so, some of the people on shore jumped into the water, trying to swim out to the ship. The city of Nutooka itself was almost completely empty. This was not surprising, once one looked at the size of the army advancing upon it. For more than three years, the followers of the Ape god Guma and their allies, the antiforeigner Red Sashes, had built up their strength. Now they were ready to eliminate the Brechs, whose single naval installation was, they felt, the greatest blight on their great land of Enclep.

On the bridge of the battleship H.M.S. Superb, the captain and his first officer watched the locals’ panic, while several other officers hunched over a map of the region surrounding the port. Captain Mould was the youngest captain in the Royal Navy of Greater Brechalon, and looked every inch like a man capable of rising quickly in that prestigious service. His sharp nose and neatly trimmed beard gave him the look of a predatory bird, which his black eyes did nothing to diminish. He turned on his heel and looked at the men hunched over the map.

“Where are they exactly, Wizard Than?”

One of the officers, dressed no different than any of the others save a blue bar on the sleeve of his stiffly starched white uniform, waved his hand over the map and said, “Uuthanum.” A hundred tiny red dots appeared grouped in three large bunches on the map, indicating three massive arms of the approaching army.

“Whenever you are ready, Commander,” said the Captain.

“Aye, sir.”

Commander Staff seemed almost the polar opposite of his captain in some ways. Light blond and clean-shaven, his freckled face made him look far younger than his twenty-nine years. His small nose and well-formed mouth made him almost too pretty. For all that, he seemed nothing less of a naval man of action than his superior. He leaned over the ship’s phone.

“Sixteen degrees, eight minutes. Twenty-two degrees, five minutes. Elevation, make it five thousand yards. Load high explosive.”

The entire ship shook slightly as the two massive front facing turrets, each with three twelve-inch guns, turned into position. Once they were in place, Staff leaned back over the phone.

“Lay down a pattern of fire.”

Six giant guns fired, rending the air with a sound that thunder could only envy. Huge gouts of flame and monstrous clouds of acrid smoke shot across the bay. As soon as the flame was gone and the great sound began to die away, the guns fired off again. And again. And again. Three hundred massive shells were fired into the advancing army on the far side of the city of Nutooka.

“Hold fire,” said Staff into the phone. The thundering of the cannons ceased.

“Are they getting the message, Wizard Than?” asked the Captain.

The wizard and the other officers watched the red dots across the map. They began to spread out from the three masses of their original formation into an even dispersion throughout the jungle.

“Just what we hoped for, Captain,” said the wizard.

“You know what to do, Mr. Staff.”

Once again, Staff leaned over the phone. “Raise elevation to seven thousand yards. Load anti-personnel.” Then turning back to Captain Mould. “Ready, sir.”

“At your discretion, Mr. Staff.”

“Lay down your pattern of fire.”

The six giant guns began firing again. While the first three hundred shells had just grazed the advancing forces’ front, this extended volley fell right in their midst. The raised elevation spread the falling shells throughout the army. The first wave of fire, laid down with high explosive shells that had blown up upon impact, created huge craters in the jungle battlefield and knocked down thousands of trees. This second attack was made with anti-personnel shells, which burst upon impact releasing tens of thousands of flechettes, needle-like bits of iron, which then flew in all directions, slicing through the warriors on the ground and their terror-bird mounts, like hot tacks through butter. Captain Mould and Commander Staff stepped back to lean over the officers and look at the map. The red dots, indicating the cult fighters and the Red Sash terrorists were disappearing from the paper. The red dots were fading away not in ones and twos, but in hundreds, in thousands. By the time three hundred shells had been fired, only a tiny fraction of the symbols representing the enemy remained.

“All right Mr. Staff, hold fire.”

It was damp and cold. A thick blanket of fog rolled slowly through Port Dechantagne, between the trees and houses, obscuring the creatures, large and small, that moved through the mist. It left decorations of condensation upon everything it touched. Police Constable Saba Colbshallow pulled out his gold pocket watch and flipped it open. The time read 6:53. He put the watch away and then stuffed both hands into the pockets of his reefer jacket. He stepped through the remains of the burned out house of Mrs. Yembrick, careful not to step on an exposed nail or a jagged timber.

“I thought I saw you over here.” Eamon Shrub stood at the edge of the building foundation. His uniform exactly matched Saba’s, from the helmet on his head, to the shin-high boots on his feet.

“What are you doing dressed for duty already?” wondered Saba. “You don’t come on till nine.”

“Dot was tossing and turning all night, so I got up early. Figured I might as well get ready. Talking of which, didn’t your shift end last night at nine?”

“You know how it is.”

Saba walked across the blackened foundation and Eamon walked around it. They met on the far side of what was left of the structure and shook hands.

“I can’t stop thinking about what’s going on with the lizzies,” said Saba. “I’m sure that something is up.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know. I caught one in town using false documentation and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. If they’re sharing their bracelets, then it’s possible we have many more of them in town than there should be. Then there’s whatever they’ve been getting from the ships in port. They’ve hauled away loads of crates from two ships that I know of and there may well have been more.”

“It’s probably someone trying to smuggle trade goods past the tax collector, and using lizzies for hired labor. Kind of like what the professor was doing, only in reverse.”

“Maybe. Even if that’s all it is though, it’s still quite a smuggling operation.”

“So what’s that got to do with Mrs. Yembrick?”

“Both times I trailed the lizzies carrying crates; they passed by this general direction. Then I took a look back through the log books and found that Mrs. Yembrick reported seeing lizzies in her window on three separate occasions.”

“That does seem a bit fishy in light of the fire,” offered Eamon.

“Exactly. So since I had no luck following our cold-blooded friends, I thought I would poke around here.”

“All right. I’ll poke with you.”

The two began making a sweep across the yard, carefully examining the ground for anything unusual. After only a few minutes, Saba noticed a pile of debris that seemed oddly placed. Several timbers had apparently fallen a good distance from the fire, and were sitting on five or six boards and a piece of canvas, none of which had been touched by the flames. The young constable began tossing the wood aside. By the time he had finished, Eamon had joined him to help pull the dirty canvas over.

“Did you remember Mrs. Yembrick having a root cellar?” asked Saba, looking down at the door on the ground.

“Can’t say as I did,” replied Eamon.

He bent down at one end of the door and Saba the other. They both lifted the portal open, revealing a set of stone steps leading down into the darkness. Saba, who was closest to the top step, started down. His fellow constable followed him into the darkness. There were exactly ten steps down to a large room with a dirt floor. Though shrouded in shadows, there was just enough dim morning light leaking in for them to see that all four walls were lined with stacks of long thin wooden crates.

With a single stride, Saba reached the stack of crates almost as tall as himself along the left hand side of the room. He lifted the lid of the topmost. Though it had once been nailed shut, the lid was now just sitting on the wooden box. Inside, there was nothing but a handful of straw packing. He kicked the bottom of the stack and could tell from the movement of the boxes that all were empty.

“Look over here,” said Eamon, who had moved to the back of the room.

He was pointing to one of the crates at the bottom of the stack against the wall farthest from the doorway. It had black printing painted across the wood. Saba had to kneel down in the darkness to read the writing. “.30 caliber Hecken 98”

“Oh sweet Kafira. Rifles.”

Senta finished washing her face and brushing her teeth. She walked back to her bed and examined the dress that lay there. Even though Zurfina had not returned, clothing continued to appear each morning. Sometimes Senta ignored it and wore one of the dresses that she had purchased for herself at Mrs. Bratihn’s, but more often she simply slipped into whatever strange accouterments appeared. She had already put on her underclothes, including her bustle, when she lifted up the dress by the shoulders to examine it. This one was actually not too bad. It was black with puffy white sleeves and white lace trim around the neckline and the bottom. The only problem was that the bottom was just below her knees.

Senta rolled her eyes then slipped on the dress. She reached behind her and easily fastened the row of tiny buttons that ran up the back. Opening her top dresser drawer, she rummaged around and found her knee-high socks with one-inch horizontal black and white stripes. She sat down on the bed and pulled them on, and then put on her black patent leather high heels. Looking in the cheval glass, she decided that it didn’t look too bad.

Once downstairs, she thought for a brief moment about preparing some breakfast, but decided she’d rather walk to Mrs. Finkler’s. It was a new month and her pockets were once again filled with her stipend. The desire not to have to clean the kitchen and the fact of her newfound wealth had both conspired to disincline Senta to cook since Zurfina had left. And as Bessemer didn’t seem to mind, preferring to catch and eat wild prey anyway, she scarcely took the time to prepare any meals at home anymore. She looked at the steel dragon’s empty corner and then headed out the front door.

Senta had almost completely crossed the yard before she noticed Graham standing at the gate. His brown hair was neatly combed and his freckled face had been recently scrubbed. He wore a tan and white horizontally striped shirt that made him look chubbier than he actually was and a new pair of dungarees cut extra long and rolled up into cuffs over his work boots. In his right hand, he clasped a handful of small white flowers.

“You look kind of ridiculous,” she said.

“You should talk. I mean… you look nice. Here, these are for you.” He shoved the handful of flowers in her direction.

“Thanks. I didn’t think there were any flowers in bloom yet.”

“These are the only ones. They grow in the dinosaur poo.”

“Pretty. So what made you decide to come around here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea. I haven’t seen you in a whole month.”

Graham mumbled something.

“What?”

“I said I guess I missed you or something.”

Senta smiled and stepping over to him wrapped her arms around his left arm.

“I was on my way to Mrs. Finkler’s for breakfast. Come with me.”

“I’ve already eaten,” said Graham. He didn’t say this to decline her invitation and she didn’t take it that way. It was understood between them that for him two meals in a row was no problem. “I’m buying though.”

“Then it will be a real date,” said Senta.

“No, not really.”

Graham turned and headed toward town, Senta still holding onto his left arm.

“I think you’ve grown since I saw you last,” said Senta, who was several inches taller than Graham.

“Yep. Da says I’m in a spurt. Look. If we’re going to be friends…”

“We are friends,” she corrected.

“Okay. Yes, we are friends. But you can’t go fighting my fights for me. You have to let me take care of myself. I’m a man.”

“Nope. That’s not how it works. You are my friend and if anyone messes with you, I will crush them.”

Graham stopped and pulled his arm from her grasp so that he could put both of his hands on his hips.

“And,” she continued. “If anyone messes with me, you can do the same, just like you did with that Freedonian wanker Streck.”

The boy thought for a moment. “Well, that seems fair.”

The past five days had been more grueling for Radley Staff than the previous five, and that was saying something. Getting his expedition home through the dinosaur filled forest, carrying one dead and one dying, had been more adventure than most people would have ever wanted. A pack of deinonychus had dogged their trail the entire way, but the party was large enough and well armed enough, that the beasts had kept their distance. Such was not true for the utahraptor that had rushed out of the trees. The seven foot tall, twenty-five foot long creature clamped its jaws down on Sanjo’s arm just as Staff pumped five rifle rounds into its fist-sized brain. Crashing to the ground, it nearly ripped the poor lizzie’s arm off. It was a wound that was sure to have killed a man, but after it was bandaged, Sanjo seemed already on the mend.

Glad that he didn’t have to worry about the lizardman, Staff did worry about Miss Jindra. The fact that he had dragged the beautiful young sorceress out into the forest seemed sure to be the cause of whatever blight had settled upon her. He felt guilty—only to find out that her illness was self-inflicted, the result of her theft of magically booby-trapped money. Even after discovering this fact, Staff insisted that she remain in the apartments of the M&S Coal offices and paid for the very best care.

He didn’t have any time to sit by Miss Jindra’s bed. He spent almost all of his time during the five days after his return to Port Dechantagne, arranging for the funeral of Aakesh Mouliets, seeing to the needs of Mrs. Mouliets and her boy, and negotiating with the railroad for the construction of a spur line to the coal deposits. Staff had known that the Mirsannan culture was steeped in tradition, but he didn’t realize until now just how difficult it would make his life. There were all kinds of requirements for the burial of a Mirsannan, none of which were simple or straightforward. The coffin had to be made of cedar, a not impossible task. But the deceased had to have a pillow of ferret skins and the church had to be filled with peacock feathers, neither of which could be found within five thousand miles of Birmisia. Mirsannan men, or at least Mouliets, appreciated the demure Mirsannan woman, who as far as Staff could see, could do almost nothing on her own. Purna Mouliets did nothing but weep into her hankie, and while he could appreciate the genuine emotion for her beloved, Staff eventually wearied of her inability to stop crying long enough to approve or disapprove the elements of the funeral. Her son Sudas on the other hand scarcely took his face out of a book long enough to notice that his father was gone.

Mr. Lenahan Norich of the Mallontah and Birmisia Railroad had sent his personal assistant Anton Garner all the way to Port Dechantagne to negotiate the construction of a spur line. He arrived in his employer’s private railcar. The railroad was quite happy to build the additional track, but the guarantees they wanted in exchange were exorbitant. Had it been any other time, Staff would have asked for the influence of the royal governor, but two days before negotiations had begun, Iolanthe’s husband had committed suicide. Staff couldn’t help but have mixed emotions. At last the paperwork was signed and on the day of the funeral, more than one hundred lizardmen workers, supervised by a dozen engineers and foremen, began clearing the way for the iron rails that would soon follow.

Mouliets’ funeral was attended by about forty people. All of the M&S employees were there along with their families. Caitleen Harper, her daughter Melody Lanier, and her granddaughter Wenda were dressed in simple black. Theadora Vanita, in charcoal grey, was accompanied by a man that Staff had never seen before. It was an example, he thought, of how there was a match for anyone somewhere out in the world, because this fellow at six foot eight and at least three hundred pounds was probably the only person in Port Dechantagne capable of making Miss Vanita look dainty by comparison. A slight shudder went through Staff when he saw Mrs. Fandice. The woman, who had been remarkably helpful in arranging the funeral, wore a dress that dripped with artificial lilies. What was obviously meant to be a mourning dress looked more like something that would be worn by a street performer. She and her gorgeous niece, Loana Hewison, were accompanied by PC Colbshallow in his finest blue uniform. Staff escorted Miss Franka Rocanna, who looked as beautiful in her dark purple dress with antique lace, as she did at any other time. Her veiled hat disguised her strangely short red hair, but not her smoldering, dark eyes or dark, full lips. Edin Buttermore arrived with his wife and child. It was the first time that Staff had seen either of them since their arrival in Birmisia, and it appeared that life in the new land appealed to them. The haggard and frail appearance that he had noted on Julietta Buttermore’s face was gone, and the toddler, Easton, was as fat and happy as ever. Mr. and Mrs. Rutan wore expressions one might expect at a funeral. Of course, these were the expressions that they wore all the time. The Gliebermans, Beeman, his wife Acadia, and their six-year-old daughter Sherree all wore the same simple grey and white clothes that had originally made Staff assume that they were Zaeri. The little girl with her miniature eyeglasses and her tiny dress identical to her mother’s, carried a fluffy stuffed animal in one hand and a first year primer in the other. Ivo and Femke Kane were the last to arrive, just moments before the start of the service. Ivo Kane wore a long, black suit, and Mrs. Kane wore an identical one.