1899- Journey to Mars

Ekka looked behind her at Dakota. He was still belted in the seat. His eyes were big, but he was not panicked. Ekka saw courage in the young face.

Pat slammed the robot again with the extinguisher as it again emerged through the hole in the deck and onto the bridge. The blow staggered it for an instant, but the robot swung a backhand blow and the metal fist hit Garrett in the chest, knocking him into the wall, where he slid to the floor in a sitting position. The robot hopped toward Bixie, and Guthrie’s glowing heart.

Billy judged a hundred things at once and he was sure it wouldn’t be enough. The Argent continued to decelerate, and they were at the outer edge of the atmosphere. Without more speed they would not penetrate enough for Earth’s gravity to keep them with the planet, and they would flitter away like a leaf in the wind. In the Engine Room, the transmogrifier shuddered and regained its spin as heavy smoke flowed from it and out the rent in the hull. The vibrations from the missing anchor bolt and the robot’s battering of it shook the entire ship, but Billy had power again. He pushed the Argent to maximum, hearing the screams of the engine and knowing they had little time before the great machine gave out a final time.

Koothrappally’s eyes came open. He looked about him, glanced through the windscreen at the Earth below and yelled at Billy over the howling wind, “Full dive! Full dive now!”

“Diving,” Billy said calmly. He worked the controls and sent the Argent on a starboard turn at full dive.

The ship’s sudden move flipped the Golden Man back down into the Engine Room and out the hole in the hull. Edgar Burroughs barely had time grasp a wall pipe to save himself from being swept out of the ship when the robot sailed through and knocked him spinning. “That was close,” he said to himself. He looked back toward the engine, and then, back to the gaping hole in the hull. He saw a golden metal hand grasping the edge of the ragged hole.

The ship’s interior heated considerably, but the hull stayed intact. On the bridge, Koothrappally tried to brace himself with a hand to the wooden walls and yelped in pain at the sudden burning.

Billy used a wet sleeve to wipe sweat from his forehead and keep it out of his eyes.

Ekka scanned the Earth below them and saw only ocean. She glanced again at her son, then turned again to the window, focusing all her intent on finding a safe place for the Argent.

In the Engine Room, Edgar regained his feet. Pat Garrett’s fire extinguisher came into his hands and he pounded at the robot’s hand with it, but the Golden Man pulled itself into the ship a second time and knocked the roustabout across the room. This time he didn’t rise.

Billy steered the ship downward in a wind-whistling dive until he was sure they were low enough, then he eased back on the levers and the Argent creaked from the increased inertia.

Ekka spotted a small chain of islands ahead. She touched Billy’s shoulder and pointed, then she unbelted and arose. She leapt over the chairs down into the Engine Room and charged the Golden Man. It swung a fast blow at her head, but Ekka grasped the robot’s arm and used her strength and leverage and the robot’s own momentum to flip it over her shoulder and across the room. It crashed into the transmogrifier and broke the last anchor bolt from the floor.

The robot struggled to stand, but the engine bounded sideways across the floor and knocked it down again.

The smell of burned wires was strong, even with the hurricane-like draft out the hole in the hull.

The Argent slowed. Billy recognized the islands immediately below them. Hawaii. And they were close. The Argent’s crippled engine had dropped the ship to less than two thousand feet in altitude, and they now sailed through hot sulfurous air over Mount Kilauea’s red molten lake of lava only three hundred feet below the ship.

The robot sprang off the floor and into Ekka, surprising her. It grasped her arm and flung her into the bulkhead. Her body lay across that Edgar Burrroughs and Avinash Rathmandu.

On the bridge, Bixie suddenly pulled Dakota’s head close to hers and held Guthrie’s heart between them. It glowed blue again, and fingers of light touched both Bixie and Dakota, and the little Jamiacan looked into the boy’s eyes.

“I needs dis, Dakota, if I am to save dis ship and all who be’s aboard her.”

Dakota nodded, and allowed Bixie to take the pulsing orb from his hands.

Bixie moved to the hole in the deck of the bridge and dropped down to the Engine Room below. She quickly stepped to the ragged hole in the outer hull and looked down on the volcano below. The heated air coming up from the lake fluttered her hair. She turned and yelled, “Mistah Golden Man!”

The robot turned and she wiggled the orb at it.

Billy fought to right the ship a mere hundred feet above the lava lake. Hot rising updrafts buffeted the Argent, but he had control again. He glanced behind and down through the hole in the deck and saw the Golden Man almost to Bixie, who stood perilously close to the hole. Billy yelled, “Bixie!”

She said, “Dis be de only way, Billy.” She held the red glowing orb out toward the Golden Man, taunting it. The robot hopped forward.

Bixie jumped out of the Argent and the robot followed her into the air. She held Guthrie’s orb out to to tease the robot even as they fell. When they were fifty feet above the lava, Bixie turned face down and threw the orb toward the center of the glowing lava. The Golden Man used the rocket from his remaining leg to chase it.

Bixie struck the side of the cinder cone and sent up a small puff of dust.

The glowing orb, Guthrie’s heart, punched through the surface of the molten lava lake and disappeared. Chasing after it, the Golden Man flew straight down into the lava.

On the bridge of the ship, Billy and Dakota leaned forward to see Bixie’s body at the edge the cinder cone. Dakota sobbed, and Billy couldn’t speak. He fought the controls to keep them aloft but the transmogrifier was in its last moments. He glanced down one last time and saw the robot’s melting remaining leg sticking out of the lake before it sank from sight.

The Argent cleared the far side of the cinder cone by mere feet, then turned sluggishly down the slope toward the ocean.

Billy fought the controls and hissed, “This thing glides like a brick.”

He flew it down the shoulder of the volcano and across the jungle below, sinking ever lower. “Come on, girl, make it.” He said. The Argent sailed so low that it hit three coconut palms before reaching open water. A big green coconut tore off the tree and shot into the Argent’s interior, bouncing around several times before spinning to a stop in the Engine Room beside a groggy Edgar, who sat up and looked around.