The three sea monsters didn’t charge the barge.
They thrashed in the swell like huge horses trapped in an unseen harness, their crimson skin pulsing in wild, uneven flashes of violet and black.
On the cliffs of Port Haven, three thousand citizens stood numbed in terror.
The priests of the Sea God began to chant their funeral litanies, tossing bundles of dried sage into the surf and wailing that the final doom of the continent had arrived.
Giles Croft stood at the rail of the Gull-Wing, his stopwatch ticking in his palm.
He didn’t reach for a cutlass or an oil jar. He reached for the brass throttle valve on the air-powered air pipe hub.
“The sound pressure is too sharp,” Giles said, adjusting the valve by an eighth of a turn.
“We’re hitting forty-four point eight hertz. That’s causing deep ringing hum in their skull joint padding.
