Cities of the Red Night

directly down on any forces laying siege to Port Roger.

Nordenholz is supervising the construction of special boats designed to operate near the coasts. These are about fifty feet long, mounted on two pontoons. They will draw only a few feet of water and can be used in rivers and quickly launched or concealed. They will carry the maneuverable cannons and a good stock of mortars and grenades. He calls them Destroyers, since they have no other purpose. No provisions need be carried, just guns and gun crews, and the Destroyers will be so much faster than a galleon that they can easily avoid the fixed cannons.

I now turn my attention to improving the flintlock. My dissatisfaction with this weapon derives from an incident that occurred in a waterfront tavern in Boston. This place was near our old gun shop, and we were accustomed to take a beer there after work. One evening I was there with Sean Brady when a man came in who had been dismissed by my father for his drunken, lazy, quarrelsome habits and had stomped out, vowing vengeance on all of us.

There he stood at the bar, weaving and glaring at us with bloodshot eyes, and let loose a string of vile oaths and insults. Brady told him to mind his mouth or lose his teeth, whereupon the man pulled a flintlock pistol from his side pocket, leveled it at Brady's chest, and pulled the trigger. At this precise second the bartended, who was standing behind the ruffian and to one side, spat a stream of beer straight into the pan, causing the weapon to misfire. We then beat the man unconscious and threw him into the harbor and watched him sink.

Of what use are flintlock weapons with a driving rain behind you? And the length of time taken to reload far exceeds the firing time. The weapon lacks firing power—that is, the number of projectiles that can be fired in a given length of time. So back to the library.

I note that early cannonballs were breech-loading, and feel once again the admonitory prickling in the back of my neck. At that very moment a hand touches the nape of my neck. It is the Iguana who has come in silently with her twin. I look up at her.

'It's there in my head, but I can't quite get it out where I can see it.'

'Well, how did you see the exploding cannonball?'

Hans and I look at each other and grin.

Waring has told me about Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, who terrorized the Moslem world for years with a few hundred assassins. I pointed out that holding a single fortified position—as Hassan i Sabbah did at Alamut—is no longer possible, owing to improved weapons that I have already perfected and which will inevitably, in the course of time, fall into the hands of our prospective enemies. We need now a much wider area of occupation, Waring said cryptically: 'Well, that depends on what you are trying to do.'

As I was returning from the library this afternoon, a red-haired child of twelve or so popped out of a doorway, aimed a small pistol at me and pulled the trigger.

'Bang! You're dead.'

I had seen these toy pistols may times before and never concerned myself to find out exactly how they functioned, just as I had seen firecrackers without realizing the potentials of that toy. The child was reloading.

'Let me see that,' I demanded.

The child handed me his pistol, which had a flat hammer. The report resulted from the hammer's striking a little blister of powder glued between two pieces of paper. Suddenly I had the solution: firing device, charge, and ball in one unit, to be inserted and extracted through the breech. I bent down and the boy jumped up on my back, and I carried him into the gun shop as he fired his pistol in the air.

We are working round the clock on this design. Pallets are on the floor, and we take turns sleeping. We are producing double-barreled guns in both rifle and pistol form, for increased firepower.

In a week we have two rifles and two pistols, with a number of cartridges ready for testing. The test is carried out in the gun shop, since secrecy must be observed. A man-sized target is set up at one hundred feet. 'Pow Pow'—two bullets on target.

After the test I present the red-headed boy, whose name is Chan, with a rifle and give Strobe a pistol. At this Strobe is somewhat piqued. I retain the remaining two weapons for my own use. Plans are immediately dispatched by courier to all the settlements in these locations: on the Pacific side of the isthmus of Panama opposite the Pearl Islands;