Free Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 by Lord Kelvin's Machine Page A

falls . .
.," said Hasbro at St. Ives's back. But the rest of his words was lost in the watery tumult as the two men hurried up the
steepening hill, keeping to the edge of the trail and the deep shadows of the
steep rocky cliffs.
                   St. Ives patted his coat, feeling beneath it
the hard foreign outline of his revolver. He realized that he was cold, almost
numbed, but that the cold wasn't only a result of the wet arctic air. He was
struck with the overwhelming feeling that he was replaying his most common and
fearful nightmare, and the misty water of the falls seemed to him suddenly to
be the rain out of a London sky. He could hear in the echoing crash the sound of horse's hooves on
paving stones and the crack of pistols fired in deadly haste.
                   The revolver in his waistband suddenly was
almost repulsive to him, as if it were a poisonous reptile and not a thing built
of brass and steel. The notion of shooting it at any living human being seemed
both an utter impossibility and an utter necessity. His faith in the rational
and the logical had been replaced by a mass of writhing contradictions and
half-understood notions of revenge and salvation that were as confused as the
unfathomable roar of the maelstrom in the chasm.
                   There was a shout behind him. A crack like a
pistol shot followed, and St. Ives was pushed from behind. He rolled against a
carriage-sized boulder, throwing his hands over his head as a hail of stones
showered down around him, and an enormous rock, big as a cartwheel, bounded
over his head, soaring away into the misty depths of the abyss.
                   He pushed himself to his knees, feeling
Hasbro's grip on
                   his elbow, and he
peered up into the shadowy gloom above. There, leaping from perch to rocky
perch, was a man with wild hair and beard—Hargreaves, there could be little
doubt. Hasbro drew his revolver, steadied his forearm along the top of a rock,
and fired twice at the retreating figure. His bullets pinged off rocks twenty
feet short of their mark, but the effect on the anarchist was startling—as if
he had been turned suddenly into a mountain sheep. He disappeared on the
instant, hidden by boulders.
                   St. Ives forced himself to his feet, pressing
himself against the stony wall of the path. Hasbro tapped his shoulder and
gestured first at himself and then at the mountainside. St. Ives nodded as his
friend angled away up a rocky defile, climbing slowly and solidly upward. He
watched Hasbro disappear among the granite boulders, and for a moment he felt
the urge to sit down right there in the dirt and wait for him.
                   He couldn't do that, though. There was too
much at stake. And there was Alice to think of. Always there was Alice to think of. If revenge was the compelling
motive for him now, so what? He had to call upon something to move him up the
path; it might as well be raw hatred.
                   He sidled along carefully, grimly imagining
himself following the course of the rock that had plummeted over his head
moments ago. Icy dirt crunched underfoot, and the hillside opened up briefly on
his right to reveal a wide, steep depression in the rock—a sort of conical hole
at the bottom of which lay a black, silent tarn. The water of the tarn brimmed
with reflected stars that were washed with the blue-red light of the aurora. It
was a scene of unearthly beauty, and it reminded him of the alluring darkness
of pure sleep.
                   Abruptly he jerked himself away and climbed
farther up the trail, rounding a sharp bend. He could see high above him the
mouth of the smoking crater. Perched on the rim and hauling on the coils of a
mechanical bladder was the venomous Dr. Narbondo, the steamy reek of boiling
mud swirling about his head and shoulders. Hargreaves capered like a lunatic
beside him, dancing from one