The Game of X: A Novel of Upmanship Espionage by Robert Sheckley

in the clutch and throttle. We thundered away to the east. Working the throttle carefully, I got us past San Michele and Murano, gaining distance easily on our pursuer. We were almost parallel to San Giacomo in Palude before we ran aground again.
    It took longer to slide the hydroplane off this time. Our pursuer became visible as a low-powered launch of extremely shallow draft, coming for us across the flats. He closed the gap to about fifty yards, and I heard shots as I put in the throttle.
    Then we thundered away again, throwing up a great curtain of white spray between us and our pursuer and making enough noise to scare the guards on the Yugoslav border. I bobbed and weaved through the stakes, knocking down any that didn’t get out of my way fast enough, and praying that I wouldn’t take a chunk of wood in the propeller.
    We approached Mazzorbo, gaining easily on the launch, and Karinovsky hit me on the arm and shouted for a left turn. I followed instructions and ran aground again.
    “It’s hopeless,” Karinovsky said. “We’d better swim to Mazzorbo.”
    “Wade, you mean. Anyhow, we’d never make it.”
    The launch was closing the distance; its occupants had begun firing again. I said, “Get up on the stern.”
    “What are you going to do?”
    “Either back her off or blow her up,” I told him. He nodded sadly and scrambled onto the stern. I climbed into the cockpit and put the clutch into reverse. Karinovsky’s weight might lift the bow enough to get us off. Or it might not. I stamped on the throttle.
    The Rolls-Royce engine howled like a wounded dinosaur. A ton of water was sucked up by the propeller and spewed into the air. The operator of the motor launch might have thought we were blowing up; I thought so myself. He sheered off abruptly, slowed, and lost way for a few moments before turning back toward us. I couldn’t hear their guns above the engine, but I saw two starred holes appear in the safety glass of the windshield. Another bullet smashed into the instrument panel, obliterating the fuel gauge. The tachometer was still working, showing 5,000 rpms with the needle deep in the red. It was probably a matter of seconds before the engine tore off its mounts and exploded through the cowling.
    Then the hydroplane slid off the bar and began to pick up speed backwards. Karinovsky, hanging on to a cleat with his good hand, was nearly thrown off. I shifted to neutral, dragged him into the cockpit, and shifted again.
    There was no time for anything fancy. The next sandbar was going to be our last, anyhow. I put the throttle to the floor and pointed the hydroplane at Palude del Monte.
    It wasn’t a bad way to go, if you really had to go. The supercharger screamed, and the heavy pistons tried to punch through their cylinders. The hydroplane climbed out of the water, balancing on her two sponsons and the bottom edge of her propeller. The bow trembled, trying to go airborne. I saw the long, hazy edge of a sandbar ahead. I drove straight into it, and the hydroplane hurdled the bar and flew like a bird. The propeller chewed on nothing, and the tachometer tried to bend itself around the limit peg. Then we hit water, bounced into the air again, hit and bounced, and then leveled off. We had made it. The shore was dead ahead of us, and I tried to get my foot under the accelerator.
    I wasn’t fast enough.
    The supercharger chose that moment to come unglued. Spinning six times faster than the engine’s crankshaft, the impeller simply disintegrated. The quill shaft between engine and supercharger flew apart, and the main shaft followed. The engine, spinning free, began to throw pistons, punching them through the engine. Chunks of ragged metal exploded through the cowling. The propeller joined in the fun and began shedding blades.
    The hydroplane continued to move at a barely diminished speed.
    We left the water and drove onto a marshy beach. The hydroplane didn’t seem to notice that we were on land. It continued to