spare uniforms to be tossed overboard.
Then he noticed that the gondola floor was tipping slightly to the left. Of course. The cabins they'd been given were all on the port side. And toward the bow - so the gold was dragging down the airship's nose!
He ran forward until he spotted the familiar corridor. He threw open the door of Volger's cabin. It was empty, except for a bed, a storage locker, and the Stormwalker's wireless receiver on the desk.
Volger hadn't left the gold in plain view, of course. Alek pulled out the desk drawers, but found nothing. The locker held only clothes and weapons from the castle stores.
Dropping to the floor, he spotted a map case under the bed. Alek reached underneath and tried to drag it out, but it wouldn't budge - as heavy as a solid block of iron. He braced his feet on the bed and pulled at the case with both hands, but it still wouldn't move.
Then Alek realized that the bed had to be far lighter than the gold, and flung it aside. But the latches of the map case were locked. He'd have to throw the whole thing out. Alek stood and pushed open the window, then tried to pick up the case.
It wouldn't lift a centimeter off the ground. It was far too heavy.
"God's wounds!" he swore, kicking at the lock.
"Looking for this?"
Alek looked up. Count Volger stood in the doorway, holding a key.
"Give me that, or we're all dead!"
"Well, obviously. Why do you think I'm here?" Volger shut the door and crossed the room. "Beastly business, getting down from those engine pods."
"But why?"
Volger knelt by the map case. "Klopp needed some translating."
"No!" Alek groaned. "Why did you do this?"
Chapter 27
"Bring along a vast fortune in gold? I should think that would be self-evident." Volger unlocked the case with a flick of the key, then opened it.
The gold bars shone dully, a dozen of them - more than two hundred kilograms. Volger lifted a bar with both hands, grunting as he hurled it through the window. They both leaned forward, watching it flash in the sunlight as it fell.
"Well, that's seventy thousand kroner gone," Volger said.
Alek bent and lifted one, the muscles in his hands screaming as he heaved it up and out. "You almost got us all killed! Are you mad?"
"Mad?" Volger grunted, lifting another bar. "For trying to save what little of your inheritance you haven't already thrown away?"
"This is an airship, Volger. Every gram makes a difference!" Alek pulled another bar from the case. "And you bring gold bullion aboard?"
"I didn't think the Darwinists would cut it so close." Volger grunted again, another gold bar spinning away. "And just imagine how pleased you'd have been if I'd been right."
Alek groaned. Working alongside the Leviathan's crew, he had absorbed the airmen's mania about weight. But Volger thought in terms of heavy cannon and armored walkers.
Alek pushed another bar through the window - only six left.
"But we may as well finish the job," Volger said. "Throw it all out, like the walker and the castle and ten years' worth of supplies!"
"So that's what this is about?" Alek said, lifting another bar. "That I've thrown away all your hard work? Don't you realize we've gained something more important?"
"What could be more important than your birthright?"
"Allies." Alek pushed the gold bar out the window. As it fell, he thought he felt the deck leveling beneath him. Maybe this was working.
"Allies?" Volger snorted, then lifted another bar and flung it out. "So your new friends are worth throwing away everything your father left you?"
"Not everything," Alek said. "All my life you and my father prepared me for this war. Thanks to that, I don't have to hide from it. Come on, there are only four left. The two of us can lift them all at once."
"Still too heavy." Volger shook his head. "Your father was an idealist and a romantic, and it cost him dearly. I always hoped you'd inherited a bit of your mother's pragmatism."
Alek looked down at the case.
Only four gold bars... . He wondered what a boy like Dylan would say to such a fortune. Maybe it wasn't entirely mad, what Volger had done.
"Well," he said, "perhaps we could save one."
Volger smiled as he knelt, pulling one of the bars out and sliding it back under the bed. "There may be hope for you after all, Alek. Shall we?"
Alek knelt across from him, and together they heaved the case up, Volger's face