Here, too, Heywood had done with professional skill his bravo's work, but he had lavished no such care on the makeshift raft designed for the last journey he had not thought to take himself. The rough board holding Kurland's boots bent upward, cracked, bent double, and split lengthwise. He jerked his legs free.
Hooking his boots under a second plank, he slid his bare feet from the sleek black leather. Twisting about, he clamped a body-scissors on the gasping Irene Francinet. His powerful back muscles doubled, coiled upon themselves, lifting her inert figure from the dark water running over the partially submerged planks where she lay bound. They creaked, straining, as he exerted a pitiless pressure on her bowed ribs and chest. The steady leverage of her body slowly twisted loose the outer planks of the raft, and split two of them cleanly from the rough framework.
Gasping, he let her fall, then swung her again in her loosening bonds, letting her drop down against his own chest.
"Quickly," he snapped. "Your hands to my wrists! Before the ropes swell."
She pressed herself against him, wet and cold in the gathering darkness, fumbling with the ropes still holding him fast which had given him the tremendous leverage to break her own bonds. It was a struggle between her slim fingers and the expanding Jovian fibers of the cords, but he had been in time. She undid the knots and a moment later he had torn his hands free and sat up. With one swift move he slipped her gag off and ripped at her remaining bonds. Board after board tore free and shot off into the darkness, and when he had unfastened the last of the thin ropes holding her, stuffing them under his gun belt, there was little of the raft Heywood had thrown together but the big door they crouched on and a tangle of crazily-angled planks astern where the dead jackal's booted leg still thrust up stiffly from the swirling waters.
"Here!" Kurland bit at her, thrusting a broken shaft of wood into her chilled, numb fingers. "Paddle, girl, if you want to see the Sun again!" And he dug in on his side with another fragment of the plank he had broken.
Irene bowed, exerting what strength her long, drug-induced sleep from the planetoid and consequent imprisonment had left, trying her best to keep up with Kurland's long, plunging strokes. The raft's wild career into the depths of the Montral mountains was checked, then halted. They watched the distant circle of light marking the tunnel entrance, hoping against hope that its faint glimmer of phosphorescent light might not fade and dwindle once more. For a moment the raft held, then slowly inched backward against the current, lurching perilously through the dashing tunnels of the underground river.
Kurland glanced swiftly about. An element of his success both as peaceful racketeer and hunted outlaw had been his ability to subordinate his naturally sanguine temperament to the circumstances of the moment. He realized the awkward craft must collapse long before it was forced upstream to the quay from whence it had been launched. And should it hold, it was only too evident the paddlers could not. He tossed aside his board and stood up, drawing her up beside him.
"You can swim?" he asked. It was more a statement than a question, for the proud corps of Recorders were the pick of the Solar System's trained agents.
"Yes," she replied. "Can we make it?"