Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“Brilliant,” he said, and goosed the throttle with his foot.

The burners responded with a throaty whisper, and after a pause the aircraft began to rise. As they ascended, the heat of the sun was beginning to burn off the mist. The tree canopy began to appear as ragged patches of green. Reddish flowers grew in patches on the treetops like coral reefs.

At three thousand feet Gamay squinted through the haze. “I see something over there.”

Paul started the power plant and turned the steering wheel that controlled the cables running to the rudder until the airship came slowly about. With the water-cooled engine purring quietly, the airship gained speed slowly as it overcame its inertia, and before long the propeller was kicking them along at ten miles per hour. Gamay had found a pair of binoculars and was using them to scope out where they were going.

“Incredible,” she said as the mists cleared.

“What do you see?”

Gamay was silent for a second. “The Hand of God,” she said with quiet awe.

Paul hesitated. He hadn’t slept much and was slow on the uptake. “The Great Falls the Dutchman talked about?”

Gamay nodded. “Even at this distance it’s magnificent.”

Paul tried to increase their speed. He sensed something peculiar about the controls. The airship seemed to be dragging. He peered down and saw a red triangular object dangling from lines attached to the gondola.

“Hello,” he said. “We’ve got company.”

Gamay lowered the binoculars and followed Paul’s gaze. “It looks vaguely like a life raft. Made out of rubber tubing and mesh in the middle. They probably used it to drop people and supplies off on the tree canopy.”

“Sounds like a reasonable explanation. We’ll have to be careful it doesn’t catch in the treetops.” He lifted his head to check on their course. What he saw sent chills up his spine.

They were approaching a high headland that rose from the forest in the shape of a giant step. A river coursed from the forest toward the precipice of the plateau where rocky formations broke the flow into five waterfalls. With the sunlight sparkling off the white water the streams looked like gems being run through the fingers of a diamond merchant. The falls had the deceptive slow-motion look that water has when it plunges from a great height. A thick cloud of foglike condensation rose from the explosive force of thousands of gallons of water cascading into a lake directly below the steep-sided bluff.

Paul said, “Those falls make Niagara look like a herring brook.”

“All that water has to have an outlet.” Gamay scanned the perimeter of the lake. “Paul, over there! I can see the river. It’s flowing out of the lake. All we have to do is follow it.”

“Not unless you see a gas station, too,” Trout said with a glance at the propane fuel gauge. The tank was practically on empty. “We’re about to drop out of the sky.”

“We can still move forward. Get us as close to the river as possible. We’ll ditch this thing and use the raft.”

Trout did a mental rundown of a water splashdown. The gondola’s weight would pull it under the water. Residual air in the envelope might keep the gondola from going down immediately, but the hundreds of square feet of fabric would pose a hazard, trapping them in its folds. They should both be clear of the airship before it hit water and do their best to keep the raft intact. It could be their ticket out of the forest.

Paul quickly outlined his analysis and plan. “I think we should cut the raft loose before we land. Otherwise we could lose it.”

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sp; Gamay took another look over the side. Nine nylon lines, three at each corner, were attached to the dangling raft.

“There’s a Swiss Army knife in the storage box,” she said.

Paul tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb and tucked the knife in the big pocket of his cargo shorts.

“You take us in,” he said. “Get us as low to the water as you can. I’ll cut the raft free.”

“Then I bring this buggy to a hover and we abandon ship and go in for a swim,” Gamay said.

“As easy as one-two-three,” Paul said with a grin.

Gamay took over the steering wheel and put the airship into a slow turn away from the falls. Sunlight streaming through the mists that rose off the lake created multiple rainbows. Gamay hoped it was a good sign.

The gondola tilted from Paul’s weight as he climbed out onto the right side of the framework. He looked down at the red triangle swinging about thirty feet below and made his way to the rear of the gondola behind the tanks and burners. He sawed away at the lines attached to the rear left corner of the raft, then continued across the gondola’s framework and repeated his work. Attached to the gondola only by its nose lines, the raft bobbed and twisted in the wind.

Using a light foot on the burner control, Gamay aimed for a spot near the river, bringing the airship down in a long, easy glide. She was starting to think that his crazy scheme might work. Her optimism vanished as the burner went ploof, then was silent. They had run out of fuel at an altitude of a thousand feet.