ferryboat to the Underworld, leaving the shores of life behind them forever. I had no coins for the boatman. A shiver ran over my body. My armor glowed from the heat, but my blood ran icy cold. Then, the idea hit me. I knew what we would have to do, and it was terrifying.
###
'You're completely out of your mind.' A river of molten gold reflected off Snow Leopard's faceplate. His pink eyes burnt with emotion. We were all gathered together. We'd carefully dragged Redhawk all the way from the aircar to the shore of the glowing river. His armor was riddled with holes, but we had sealed it. He was badly wounded, but Priestess was taking good care of him. I had no doubt Snow Leopard had already made his decision about my idea, one way or the other, but we would have to go over it again. Snow Leopard wanted to be sure he was right.
'We can do it, Snow Leopard—we can do it!' I insisted. 'It's not that wide. All we have to do is reach the far shore! It'll get us there!'
'It'll kill us. You're crazy. There's no guarantee it'll work!'
'There's no guarantee in your Legion contract either,' I quietly reminded him. 'You always told me that.'
'We'll sink! Like a stone!'
'No, we won't, we'll float! Sweety's done the calculations. We laser the parts from the fuselage of the aircar. Then we weld it together with the plasma, fill in the gaps, and we've got a cenite boat—a raft. We can even rig up a tiller! We can build it in no time, and then we can move off this rock! We can reach the other side and hide or continue the mission, whatever you want! Redhawk can just lie there in the boat, and we'll be off! Otherwise, we're dead!'
More Legion fighters and Omni tracers streaked overhead. I pointed at the burning hulk behind us. 'Sooner or later someone's going to have time to check that out.'
'This is the craziest idea I've ever heard.' Snow Leopard stared at that awful river, hypnotized. The mountain trembled. An explosion of yellow sparks glittered over the lava. A deep rumble shuddered in our bones.
'It's a great idea,' Psycho said dreamily. 'It's the best idea Thinker has ever had. We ride—we ride the fire, right into Hell.'
'It's insane,' Priestess said quietly. 'But everything we do here is insane—I'm for it, because it means easy transport for Redhawk. We can't carry him much further. We just can't. And it doesn't matter if we die, does it? We die anyway.'
'You're all nuts,' Warhound declared. 'This must be a psycho ward. Why don't we just jump off the cliff into the lava and swim there? Huh? Maybe that will work, too. How long do you think our armor will hold out?'
'We should name the river,' Psycho said, ignoring Warhound. 'Beta River. How's that? Beta River—our very own river. I never had a river before.'
The lava groaned past us, great glowing chunks of semi-liquid rock, bobbing along in slow motion in a glittering red-gold river of liquid sunshine, volcano blood. Snow Leopard silently gazed into the river. Finally he stirred.
'It's insane,' he said. 'We do it. Let's get started on the boat.'
###
Adrenalin flooded my system as we launched the boat. I was certain we would all die, but I didn't care—I was proud of that crude, ugly boat. A beautiful boat, I thought, perfect for our needs and fitting for a Legion squad. We installed some railing for handholds and a tiller. We had several long cenite poles, which we hoped would be useful for steering and to avoid floating boulders of semi-solidified lava. It was a primitive, functional metal boat, scarred and burnt white by our plasma welding, watertight and lavatight. Priestess had traced a giant Legion cross onto the deck, and Psycho had named our boat, bold white letters lasered onto the side:
'All right,' Snow Leopard ordered, 'let it go!' We eased off on the cables and the boat splashed into the lava. The bow disappeared immediately under a wave of glowing red lava. For an instant I thought it would go under, then the bow popped up again, shedding streams of liquid rock. The aft remained secured to our launching site by scavenged power cables. The boat floated, buffeted back and forth in the flow, lava breaking over the sides and oozing over the decks, spitting and hissing. It was my idea but I could hardly believe it. It was floating!
'It's working!' Priestess exclaimed.
'Lord! I thought it would sink like a stone!' Warhound said.
'It's floating—look at that!' Psycho seemed delighted and amazed.
'Deadman's death! It's working!' I confirmed. I was just as amazed as Psycho.
'Tenners, get the equipment on board,' Snow Leopard ordered. 'We're moving out!'
###
I leaped onto the metal planking, supercharged with adrenalin, the last one on board. Redhawk lay on the deck, conscious and raving, with Priestess on her knees, holding him down. Our gear surrounded them. Snow Leopard held the tiller. Psycho and Warhound wielded long metal poles, on their knees, arms wrapped around the railings. The boat lurched and jiggled shakily as I played out the last cable securing us to the shore.
Snow Leopard shouted, 'Cast off! Let it go!'
I released the cable. It slid out of my grasp and snapped loose. The boat lurched away from the jagged shoreline and into the center of the river. I dropped to my knees—loose, free, floating, a chip of life on a river of death. Now we moved with the lava. A great groaning assailed our ears. A sudden eruption from the river showered us with flaming debris. Sparks filled the air. The boat lurched and shuddered. Snow Leopard squatted by the tiller, leaning first one way, then another. The island disappeared behind us. Psycho and Warhound tested the poles, and soon they glowed. I seized another one.
'Make for the shore!' Snow Leopard ordered.
'Watch that rock!' I said. A huge, rolling, glowing boulder of half-solidified lava bore down on us like a titanic floating mountain. A fireberg! Warhound and I reached out and touched it with our poles. The poles sank into the soft rock.
'Careful!' Snow Leopard warned.
'We're sinking!' I shouted.
'Going under!' Warhound confirmed it.
'Move to this side!' Psycho urged us. One side of the boat went under, waves of lava pouring over the edge. We shifted to the other side and the lava slid off and the boat stabilized. The mountain floated off to one side—we now moved at the same speed, and it no longer seemed a threat. We drove our poles into the molten rock of the lava river, searching for bottom.
'All right, head for the shore,' Snow Leopard ordered, 'Now! Otherwise, we take that drop into the lake!'
Two black furry shapes flashed over us.
'What was that?'
'Look out!' Another, a flickering, snapping blur, whistling through the air just above our heads. And another, shooting right past my faceplate, lost in the shadows.
'It's a bird!'
'A bat!'
'It had wings!'
Volcano birds! Satan's vultures, the Deathbirds, looking us over. My skin turned ice cold.
Irritated, Snow Leopard cut us off. 'If you're all through nature watching, we've got a problem. The pressure is too strong. We can't control the boat.'
It was bad news, but true. I had just about reached the conclusion myself that the poles were useless. We couldn't find the bottom.
We floated downstream, helpless. We kept trying, but our efforts to control the boat were futile. I knew what it meant—we were headed for the falls I'd seen just before we crashed, a great lavafall where this hellish river made a sheer drop into the lava lake. Six lost souls, drifting on Death's Road.
A hot wind suddenly struck us from above, a high pitched whining, the lava river rippling from the pressure. I looked up. A great starship passed slowly over us, hovering, a blunt triangle of blackened metal, scarred and burnt by many fiery drops. I recognized the type immediately. 'Class Z Omni starship,' Sweety announced. 'This type is a
