Read The Fabulous Riverboat for Free Online Page B

Lothar and Sam grinned at him.
    He continued. The wind grew stronger, and the air became misty. He began to get uneasy. He wanted to turn back, but by now he did not want to lose the respect of the leader. He would go every inch of the way toward their unknown goal with them. "You didn't know where they were going?" Lothar said. "Not egthactly. They vanted to get to the headvaterth of the River. They thought maybe the godth lived there, and there the godth vould admit them into the true aftervorld. They thaid that thith vorld vathn't the true vorld. It vath a thtage on the vay to the true vorld. Vhatever that ith."
    One day, Joe heard a rumble that sounded as faintly but yet as near as gas moving within his bowels. After a while, as the noise became like thunder, he knew it was water falling from immense heights.
    The ship swung into a bay protected by a finger of land. The grailstones no longer lined The River. The men would have to catch fish and dry them. There was also a store of bamboo tips on the ship; these had been collected in the sunlit region for just such an eventuality.
    The leader and his men prayed, and the party began climbing a series of cataracts. Here the superhuman strength of Tehuti-Joe Miller helped them in overcoming obstacles. Other times, his great weight was a hindrance and a danger.
    Upward they went, wet because of the everpresent spray. When they came to a cliff smooth as ice for a thousand feet up, they despaired. Reconnoitering, they found a rope dangling from the face of a cliff. It was formed to towels tied together. Joe tested its strength and climbed up, hand over hand, his feet braced against the cliff, until he reached the top. There he turned to watch the others follow him. The chief, first after Joe, tried much easier, and halfway up to the top he could go no farther. Joe pulled him and the extremely heavy weight of the rope to the top. He did the same for each man in the party.
    "Where in hell did the rope come from?" von Richthofen said.
    "Someone had prepared the way for them," Clemens said. "Given the primitive technology of this planet, no one could have found a way to get that rope up to the rock around which one end of the rope was tied. Maybe a balloon might have lifted a man up there. You could make a balloon of Riverdragonskin or human skins, you know. You could make hydrogen by passing steam over highly heated charcoal in the presence of a suitable catalyst. But in this world of scarce metal, where's the catalyst?
    "Hydrogen could be made without a catalyst but at an enormous cost in fuel. But there was no evidence of the furnaces needed to make the hydrogen. Besides, why would the towels be left behind, when they'd be needed again? No, some unknown person, let's call him The Mysterious Stranger, put that rope there for Joe and party. Or for whoever might come along. Don't ask me who he was or how he did it. Listen. There's more."
    The party, carrying the rope, walked for several miles in the mist-ridden twilight on a plateau. They came to another cliff where The River broadened out above them into a cataract. It was so wide, it seemed to Joe that there was enough water to float the moon of Earth upon it. He would not have been surprised to see that great silver-andblack orb appear on the brink of the cataract far above and hurtle down that thunder of waters and be smashed to pieces on the rocks in the maelstrom foot.
    The wind became stronger and louder; the mist, thicker. Drops of water condensed on the towels they had now fastened around themselves from head to foot. The cliff before them was as mirror-smooth and perpendicular as the one just ascended. Its top was lost in the fog; it could be only fifty feet high or could be ten thousand. They searched along the foot, hoping for some kind of fissured And they found one. It was like a small door at the juncture of plateau and cliff. It was so low, it forced them to get down on hands and knees and crawl. Joe's shoulders rubbed