The Dark Design

The Dark Design is the 3rd book in the epic Riverworld saga, in which almost all of humanity has been resurrected along the shores of a 22 million mile long river. Why have humans been given another chance at life & who's behind it all? That's what Sir Richard Francis Burton & Sam Clemens set out to discover in two earlier novels, one by riding the "suicide express" (if you die on Riverworld, you're resurrected again at a random point on the river) & the other steaming on the greatest riverboat ever seen. Now Milton Firebrass, Clemens's former enemy, now his lieutenant, is planning to use the dwindling iron supply of Riverworld to create a great airship, which can fly to the North Polar Sea far more quickly than any boat can travel. There he hopes to learn the secret of the mysterious tower thought to house the beings who created the planet. Jill Gulbirra doesn't care as much about the mission as she wants the chance to captain the airship--in all likelihood the last airship to be constructed. But in landing the coveted role, she faces stiff competition--especially from the greatest swordsman of all, Cyrano de Bergerac, who turns out to be a natural pilot. But even if Jill can win the command of the airship & even if it can reach the river's headwaters, there's no guarantee it can get thru the mountain wall that surrounds the tower & it's likely that agents of the Ethicals--Riverworld's creators--are on board the airship, plotting its downfall. Worse still, somewhere along the way the airship is sure to encounter the Rex Grandissimus, the steamboat stolen by Sam's archnemesis, King John Lackland.