“Ma’am, let’s not panic yet. I don’t know all the factors that make up a tragedy with this sap; I’m still learning, myself. All I’m suggesting is that maybe it’s one reason you’re getting such a population of the things here, collecting at the riverbank. It’s possible someone wrecked a craft and it’s leaking, or it happened once before. Or maybe with all the servicemen, and sailors, and pirates, and airmen … maybe you’ve got a whole lot of men here who are looking to escape their problems. Now I’m asking you, Miss Early, can you tell me anything at all that might help me out, given what I’ve just told you? I’m aware that I’m in a house of … that I’m in a ladies’ boarding house, and it sees a great number of visitors from the kinds of men I’m talking about. So I’m asking you, and praying to God that you’ll cooperate with me even though I’m sure you’ve got no great love for the Republic … do you know of your clients abusing any substance that might fit this bill?”

She took a deep breath and said quietly, “Yes, I do know. They don’t call it sap here — they call it devil dust—but that’s what you’re looking for, Ranger Korman. You’re looking for the men who make and sell devil dust.”

He snapped the fingers of his free hand and said, “I knew it! And I don’t suppose you could point me toward anyone involved in the manufacture or distribution of this devil dust, could you? Obviously I’d never mention it was you who sent me.”

“I can’t,” she admitted. “None of my ladies are allowed to touch it, or anything like it. This isn’t that kind of place, and these aren’t those kinds of women, no matter what you might think.”

“I never said—”

“I know what you did and didn’t say. But I can’t help you find it, unless…” She rose from her seat, pushing it aside. “I know someone who might have an idea.”

“A customer or two?”

“He’s more like a resident, these days,” she muttered. “A Texian. I wouldn’t accuse him of using the dust, but if anyone could point you toward it, it’d be Mr. Calais. Let me see if he’s indisposed.”

Horatio Korman rose from his seat and waited for her to lead the way again. “He lives here?”

“He might as well. Wait here. I’ll knock, and bring him up.”

Down on the second floor, she stood outside Delphine’s room and rapped in her most businesslike fashion. Momentarily it was opened by the girl in question, mostly dressed.

Behind her, Fenn Calais was seated in a pair of pants and nothing else. He looked up from a chessboard. “Miss Early?”

“Mr. Calais, you’re up. Excellent. And I’m glad I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Only the whipping this girl is giving me.” He scooted off the bed, which he was using as a seat, with the board on an end table. “You never do give room and board to the dumb ones, do you, Miss Early?”

“Not if I can help it. Could I possibly have a word with you? In my office? Momentarily?”

“Should I dress?”

“It’s up to you. There’s a Ranger present, if that makes a difference.”

He nodded solemnly. “It does.” Rather than reaching for his shoes or shirt, he grabbed his hat, jammed it onto his head, and said, “Let’s go.”

Eleven

Captain Cly and his crew members had spent as long as possible getting further acquainted with the intricacies, quirks, and foibles of the strange machine. By the onset of nightfall, they knew it well enough to usher it around even in the dark — not speedily, not perfectly, but effectively.

Could they shuttle it around the lake? Absolutely.

Would they be able to navigate the river in it? Debatable. But no longer negotiable.

Word had come from the Valiant, by taps and spies and eventually Norman Somers, that the ship wouldn’t wait much longer. Texas was homing in, hovering and sweeping, gathering enough forces to chase the airship carrier farther out into the Gulf. It wouldn’t be safe for the Union to hang around any closer, any longer.

They had forty-eight hours to bring Ganymede out to the Gulf to dock with Valiant. After that, the window would close and the opportunity would be lost … perhaps indefinitely.

As the sun set on that afternoon, the shadows all stretched out until they lost their shape, and the lake was dropped into the golden-edged dimness of twilight.

And then, these tense, frightened, brilliant men set their plan irrevocably into motion.

It was a precision operation, planned to the very smallest detail and — as Cly learned from Chester Fishwick — it had been dry-rehearsed at quiet, sneaky length. Not with the actual Ganymede in tow, of course. That would be too risky. They’d get only one shot at moving the enormous contraption from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, and it had to count.

Eleven men worked as a unit, setting up an enormous cagelike contraption — a custom-made crane bracing a winch with the power to do what a thousand men would be hard-pressed to accomplish.

Lights flared to life throughout the bayou, dimmed by shades and covered with blue or red glass. They burned in lanterns, on poles, marking the pier’s edges as the hoist began to crank. The craft began to rise.

On the lake’s banks, just at the spot where it could be described as land instead of muddy water, a set of braced reinforcements had been sunk into the soggy earth to shore it up against the Ganymede’s unseemly weight. Backed up to these reinforcements, the two rolling-crawlers were hitched to the largest wheeled platform Cly had ever seen. The pilfered Texian machines were set up like a pair of draft horses, ready to pull.

Houjin whispered the captain’s own concerns. “Will those machines be able to tow it? And will they fit through the road leading out of the bayou?”

Before Cly could tell him that he didn’t know, Anderson Worth replied, “Those things can pull it, no problem. But they can’t cut through the bayou, not the same way you folks came inside it. There’s a secondary road — one we’ve been building up for the last few months. We’ve cut it as wide as we can, given it all the beams, braces, and support possible, and we’ve covered it up with the nettings, like the ones we use in the camp.”

“An entire road?” Houjin gaped.

Worth patted him on the shoulder. “Not a very long one. Less than a mile of it, even. It only has to reach from the swamp to the streets outside Metairie. From Metairie, we’ll have to haul tail to make it to New Sarpy without anyone seeing us.”

“How do you plan to do that?” Troost asked, watching as the winch worked hard against the dead, dangling bulk of the Ganymede’s hull. It was halfway out of the water, and still rising — and the pier was sagging where one leg of the enormous hoist contraption was braced. One of the other legs was pushing a clump of railroad ties deeper into the mud with every clicking rotation.

Mr. Worth smiled without any mirth. “We’ve got lots of friends between here and New Sarpy, and we’ll have to rely on them to look the other way while we’re working. There’s a warehouse on Clement Street where we’ve made room to dry-dock Ganymede over the next day. And then, tomorrow night, we throw her into the river and you boys will take her out to sea.”

“Easy as that,” Troost observed, but whether or not he was being funny, it was hard to say.

Cly said, “Simple as that, anyway. I think we’ll be all right. She handles like a big, drunk salmon — but she does handle, and that’s something. With your boats topside, guiding us with the poles … it should be fine. We’ll be counting on you, though,” he said, bobbing his head at Wallace Mumler and Honeyfolk Rathburn, who had done most of the poling so far. “I don’t like moving blind. You’ll have to keep us out of trouble.”

“And we will,” vowed Mumler, who’d come to stand beside them as the big ship rose.