Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 15



“We, have sunwriter reports from as far away as fifty miles upwind,” said Vato Armduran, the S.E.S. chief engineer. “The look-outs say there is very little ptertha activity—so you should be all right on that score—but the wind speed is rather higher than I would have wished.”

“If we wait for perfect conditions we’ll never go.” Toller shaded his eyes from the sun and scanned the blue-white dome of the sky. Wisps of high cloud had overpainted the brighter stars without screening them from view, and the broad crescent of illumination on Overland’s disk established the time as mid-foreday.

“I suppose that’s true, but you’re going to have trouble with false lift when you clear the enclosure. You’ll need to watch out for it.”

Toller grinned. “Isn’t it a little late for lessons in aerodynamics?”

“It’s all very well for you—I’m the one who’s going to have to do all the explaining if you kill yourself,” Armduran said drily. He was a spiky haired man whose flattened nose and sword-scarred chin gave him something of the appearance of a retired soldier, but his practical engineering genius had led to his personal appointment by Prince Chakkell. Toller liked him for his caustic humour and lack of condescension towards less gifted subordinates.

“For your sake, I’ll try not to get killed.” Toller had to raise his voice to overcome the noise in the enclosure. Members of the inflation crew were busily cranking a large fan whose gears and wooden blades emitted a continuous clacking sound as they forced unheated air into the skyship’s balloon, which had been laid out downwind of the gondola. They were creating a cavity within the envelope so that hot gas from the power crystal burner could later be introduced without it having to impinge directly on the lightweight material. The technique had been developed to avoid burn damage, especially to the base panels around the balloon mouth. Overseers were bellowing orders to the men who were holding up the sides of the gradually swelling balloon and paying out attachment lines.

The square, room-sized gondola was lying on its side, already provisioned for the flight. In addition to food, drink and fuel it contained sandbags equivalent to the weight of sixteen people which, when taken with the weight of the test crew, brought the load up to the operational maximum. The three men who were to fly with Toller were standing by the gondola, ready to leap on board on command. He knew the ascent had to begin within a matter of minutes, and the emotional turmoil connected with Lain and Gesalla and Glo’s burial was steadily fading to a murmur in lower levels of his consciousness. In his mind he was already voyaging in the ice-blue unknown, like a migrating soul, and his preoccupations were no longer those of an ordinary Land-bound mortal.

There was a sound of hoofbeats nearby and he turned to see Prince Leddravohr riding into the enclosure, followed by an open carriage in which sat Prince Chakkell, his wife Daseene and their three children. Leddravohr was dressed as for a military ceremony, wearing a white cuirass. The inevitable battle sword was at his side and a long throwing knife was sheathed on his left forearm. He dismounted from his tall bluehorn, head turning as he took in every detail of the surrounding activity, and padded towards Toller and Armduran.

Toller had not seen him at all during his time in the army and only at a distance since returning to Ro-Atabri, and he noted that the prince’s glossy black hair was now tinged with grey at the temples. He was also a little heavier, but the weight appeared to have been added in an even subcutaneous layer all over his body, doing little more than blur the muscle definition and render the statuesque face smoother than ever. Toller and Armduran saluted as he approached.

Leddravohr nodded in acknowledgement. “Well, Maraquine, you have become an important man since last we met. I trust it has made you somewhat easier to live with.”

“I don’t class myself as important, Prince,” Toller said in a carefully neutral voice, trying to gauge Leddravohr’s attitude.

“But you are! The first man to take a ship to Overland! It’s a great honour, Maraquine, and you have worked hard for it. You know, there were some who felt that you were too young and inexperienced for this mission, that it should have been entrusted to an officer with a long Air Service career behind him, but I overruled them. You obtained the best results in the training courses, and you’re not encumbered with an aircaptain’s obsolete skills and habits, and you are a man of undoubted courage—so I decreed that the captaincy of the proving flight should be yours,

“What do you think of that?”

“I’m deeply grateful to you, Prince,” Toller said.

“Gratitude isn’t called for.” Leddravohr’s old smile, the smile which had nothing to do with amity, flickered on his face for an instant and was gone. “It is only just that you should receive the fruits of your labours.”

Toller understood at once that nothing had changed, that Leddravohr was still the deadly enemy who never forgot or forgave. There was a mystery surrounding the prince’s apparent forbearance of the last year, but no doubt at all that he still hungered for Toller’s life. He hopes the flight will fail! He hopes he is sending me to my death!

The intuition gave Toller a sudden new insight into Leddravohr’s mind. Analysing his own feelings towards the prince he now found nothing but a cool indifference, with perhaps the beginnings of pity for a creature so imprisoned by negative emotion, awash and drowning in its own venom.

“I’m grateful nevertheless,” Toller said, relishing the private double meaning of his words. He had been apprehensive about coming face to face with Leddravohr again, but the encounter had proved that he had transcended his old self, truly, once and for all. From now on his spirit would soar as far above Leddravohr and his kind as the skyship was soon to do over the continents and oceans of Land, and that was genuine cause for rejoicing.

Leddravohr scanned his face for a moment, searchingly, then transferred his attention to the skyship. The inflation crew had progressed to the stage of raising the balloon up on the four acceleration struts which constituted the principal difference between it and a craft designed for normal atmospheric flight. Now three-quarters full, the balloon sagged among the struts like some grotesque leviathan deprived of the support of its natural medium. The varnished linen skin flapped feebly in the mild air currents coming through the perforations in the enclosure wall.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Leddravohr said, “it is time for you to join your ship, Maraquine.”

Toller saluted him, squeezed Armduran’s shoulder and ran to the gondola. He gave a signal and Zavotle, co-pilot and recorder for the flight, swung himself on board. He was closely followed by Rillomyner, the mechanic, and the diminutive figure of Flenn, the rigger. Toller went in after them, taking his position at the burner. The gondola was still on its side, so he had to lie on his back against a woven cane partition to operate the burner’s controls.

The trunk of a very young brakka tree had been used in its entirety to form the main component of the burner. On the left side of the bulbous base was a small hopper filled with pikon, plus a valve which admitted the crystals to the combustion chamber under pneumatic pressure. On the opposite side a similar device controlled the flow of halvell, and both valves were operated by a single lever. The passageways in the right-hand valve were slightly enlarged, automatically providing the greater proportion of halvell which had been found best for providing sustained thrust.

Toller pumped the pneumatic reservoir by hand, then signalled to the inflation supervisor that he was ready to begin burning. The noise level in the enclosure dropped as the fan crew ceased cranking and pulled their cumbersome machine and its nozzle aside.

Toller advanced the control lever for about a second. There was a hissing roar as the power crystals combined, firing a burst of hot miglign gas into the balloon’s gaping mouth. Satisfied with the burner’s performance, he instigated a series of blasts—keeping them brief to reduce the risk of heat damage to the balloon fabric—and the great envelope began to distend and lift clear of the ground. As it gradually rose to the vertical position the crew holding the balloon’s crown lines came walking in and attached them to the gondola’s load frame, while others rotated the gondola until it was in the normal attitude. All at once the skyship was ready to fly, only held down by its central anchor.

Mindful of Armduran’s warning about false lift, Toller continued burning for another full minute, and as the hot gas displaced more and more unheated air through the balloon mouth the entire assemblage began to strain upwards. Finally, too intent on his work to feel any sense of occasion, he pulled the anchor link and the skyship left the ground.

It rose quickly at first, then the curved crown of the balloon entered the wind above the enclosure walls, generating such a fierce extra lift that Rillomyner gasped aloud as the ship accelerated skywards. Toller, undeceived by the phenomenon, fired a long blast from the burner. In a few seconds the balloon had fully entered the airstream and was travelling with it, and as the relative airflow across the top dropped to zero the extra lift also disappeared.

At the same time, a rippling distortion caused by the initial impact of the wind expelled some gas back out through the mouth of the balloon, and now the ship was actually losing height as it was borne away to the east at some ten miles an hour. The speed was not great compared to what other forms of transport could achieve, but the airship was designed for vertical travel only and any contact with the ground at that stage was likely to be disastrous.

Toller fought the unintentional descent with prolonged burns. For a tense minute the gondola headed straight for the line of elvart trees at the eastern edge of the airfield as though attached to an invisible rail, then the balloon’s buoyancy began to reassert itself. The ground slowly sank away and Toller was able to rest the burner. Looking back towards the line of enclosures, some of which were still under construction, he was able to pick out the white gleam of Leddravohr’s cuirass among the hundreds of spectators, but—already—the prince seemed to be part of his past, his psychological importance diminishing with perspective.

“Would you like to make a note?” Toller said to Ilven Zavotle. “It appears that the maximum wind speed for take off with full load is in the region of ten miles an hour. Also, those trees should go.”

Zavotle glanced up briefly from the wicker table at his station. “I’m already doing it, captain.” He was a narrow-headed youngster with tiny clenched ears and a permanent frown, as fussy and fastidious in his ways as a very old man, but already a veteran of several test flights.

Toller glanced around the square gondola, checking that all was well. Mechanic Rillomyner had slumped down on the sandbags in one of the passenger compartments, looking pale of face and distinctly sorry for himself. Ree Flenn, the rigger, was perched like some arboreal animal on the gondola’s rail, busily shortening the tether on one of the free-hanging acceleration struts. Toller’s stomach produced a chill spasm as he saw that Flenn had not secured his personal line to the rail.

“What do you think you’re doing, Flenn?” he said. “Get your line attached.”

“I can work better without it, captain.” A grin split the rigger’s bead-eyed, button-nosed face. “I’m not afraid of heights.”

“Would you like something to be afraid of?” Toller spoke mildly, almost courteously, but Flenn’s grin faded at once and he snapped his karabiner on to the brakka rail. Toller turned away to hide his amusement. Capitalising on his dwarfish stature and comic appearance, Flenn habitually breached discipline in ways which would have earned the lash for other men, but he was highly expert at his work and Toller had been glad to accept him for the flight. His own background inclined him to be sympathetic towards rebels and misfits.

By now the ship was climbing steadily above the western suburbs of Ro-Atabri. The city’s familiar configurations were blurred and dulled by the blanket of anti-ptertha screens which had spread over it like some threaded mould, but the vistas of Arle Bay and the Gulf were as Toller remembered them from childhood aerial excursions. Their nostalgic blue faded into a purple haze near the horizon above which, subdued by sunlight, shone the nine stars of the Tree.

Looking down, Toller was able to see the Great Palace, on the south bank of the Borann, and he wondered if King Prad could be at a window at that very moment, gazing up at the fragile assemblage of fabric and wood which represented his stake in posterity. Since appointing his son to the position of absolute power the King had become a virtual recluse. Some said that his health had deteriorated, others that he had no heart for skulking like a furtive animal in the shrouded streets of his own capital city.

Surveying the complex and variegated scene beneath him, Toller was surprised to discover that he felt little emotion. He seemed to have severed his bonds with the past by taking the first step along the five-thousand-mile high road to Overland. Whether he would in fact reach the sister planet on a later flight and begin a new life there was a matter for the future—and his present was bounded by the tiny world of the skyship. The microcosm of the gondola, only four good paces on a side, was destined to be his whole universe for more than twenty days, and he could have no other commitments…

Toller’s meditation came to an abrupt end when he noticed a purplish mote drifting against the white-feathered sky some distance to the north-west.

“On your feet, Rillomyner,” he called out. “It’s time you started earning your pay on this trip.”

The mechanic stood up and came out of the passenger compartment. “I’m sorry, captain—the way we took off did something to my gut.”

“Get on to the cannon if you don’t want to be really sick,” Toller said. “We might be having a visitor soon.”

Rillomyner swore and lurched towards the nearest cannon. Zavotle and Flenn followed suit without needing to be ordered. There were two of the anti-ptertha guns mounted on each side of the gondola, their barrels made of thin strips of brakka bonded into tubes by glass cords and resin. Below each weapon was a magazine containing glass power capsules and a supply of the latest type of projectile—hinged bundles of wooden rods which opened radially in flight. They demanded better accuracy than the older scattering weapons, but compensated with improved range.

Toller remained at the pilot’s station and fired intermittent bursts of heat into the balloon to maintain the rate of climb. He was not unduly concerned about the lone ptertha and had issued his warning as much to rouse Rillomyner as anything else. As far as was known, the globes depended on air currents to transport them over long distances, and only moved horizontally of their own volition when close to their prey. How they obtained impulsion over the final few yards was still a mystery, but one theory was that a ptertha had already begun the process of self-destruction at that stage by creating a small orifice in its surface at the point most distant from the victim. Expulsion of internal gases would propel the globe to within the killing radius before the entire structure disintegrated and released its charge of toxic dust. The process remained a matter for conjecture because of the impossibility of studying ptertha at close range.

In the present case the globe was about four-hundred yards from the ship and was likely to stay at that distance because the positions of both were governed by the same air-flow. Toller knew, however, that the one component of their motion over which the ptertha had good control was in the vertical dimension. Observation through calibrated telescopes showed that a ptertha could govern its attitude by increasing or decreasing its size, thus altering its density, and Toller was interested in carrying out a double experiment which might be of value to the migration fleet.

“Keep your eye on the globe,” he said to Zavotle. “It seems to be keeping on a level with us, and if it is that proves it can sense our presence over that distance. I also want to find out how high it will go before giving up.”

“Very good, captain.” Zavotle raised his binoculars and settled down to studying the ptertha.

Toller glanced around his circumscribed domain, trying to imagine how much more cramped its dimensions would seem with a full complement of twenty people on board. The passenger accommodation consisted of two narrow compartments, at opposite sides of the gondola for balance, bounded by chest-high partitions. Nine or so people would be crammed into each, unable either to lie down properly or move around, and by the end of the long voyage their physical condition was likely to be poor.

One corner of the gondola was taken up by the galley, and the diagonally opposite one by the primitive toilet, which was basically a hole in the floor plus some sanitation aids. The centre of the floor was occupied by the four crew stations surrounding the burner unit and the downward facing drive jet. Most of the remaining space was filled by the pikon and halvell magazines, which were also at opposite sides of the gondola, with the food and drink stores and various equipment lockers.

Toller could foresee the interplanetary crossing, like so many other historic and glorious adventures, being conducted in squalor and degradation, becoming a test of physical and mental endurance which not all would survive.

In contrast to the meanness and compression of the gondola, the upper element of the skyship was awesomely spacious, rarified, a giant form almost without substance. The linen panels of the envelope had been dyed dark brown to absorb the sun’s heat and thereby gain extra lift, but when Toller looked up into it through the open mouth he could see light glowing through the material. The seams and horizontal and vertical load tapes appeared as a geometric web of black lines, emphasising the vastness of the balloon’s curvatures. Up there was the gossamer dome of a cloud-borne cathedral, impossible to associate with the handiwork of mere weavers and stitchers.

Satisfied that the ship was stable and ascending steadily, Toller gave the order for the four acceleration struts to be drawn in and attached by their lower ends to the corners of the gondola. Flenn completed the task within a few minutes, imparting to the balloon/gondola assemblage the slight degree of structural stiffness needed to cope with the modest forces which would act on it when the drive or attitude jets were in use.

Attached to a lashing hook at the pilot’s station was the rip line, dyed red, which ran up through the balloon to a crown panel which could be torn out for rapid deflation. As well as being a safety device it served as a rudimentary climb speed indicator, becoming slack when the crown was depressed by a strong vertical air flow. Toller fingered the line and estimated that they were ascending at about twelve miles an hour, aided by the fact that the miglign gas was slightly lighter than air even when unheated. Later he would almost double that speed by using the drive jet when the ship entered the regions of low gravity and attenuated air.

Thirty minutes into the flight the ship was high above the summit of Mount Opelmer and had ceased its eastward drift. The garden province of Kail stretched to the southern horizon, its strip farms registering as a shimmering mosaic, with each tessera striated in six different shades varying from yellow to green. To the west was the Otollan Sea and to the east was the Mirlgiver Ocean, their curving blue reaches flecked here and there by sailing ships. The ochraceous mountains of Upper Kolcorron filled the view to the north, their ranges and folds compacted by perspective. A few airships gleamed like tiny elliptical jewels as they plied the trade lanes far below.

From an altitude of some six miles the face of Land looked placid and achingly beautiful. Only the relative scarcity of airships and sailing craft indicated that the entire prospect, apparently drowsing in benign sunlight, was actually a battle-ground, an arena in which mankind had fought and lost a deadly duel.

Toller, as had become his habit when deep in thought, located the curiously massive object given to him by his father and rubbed his thumb over its gleaming surface. In the normal course of history, he wondered, how many centuries would men have waited before essaying the voyage to Overland? Indeed, would they ever have done so had they not been fleeing from the ptertha?

The thought of the ancient and implacable enemy prompted him to cast around and check on the position of the solitary globe he had detected earlier. Its lateral separation from the ship had not changed and, more significantly, it was still matching the rate of climb. Was that proof of sentience and purpose? If so, why had the ptertha as a species singled out man as the focus of its hostility? Why was it that every other creature on Land, with the exception of the Sorka gibbon, was immune to pterthacosis?

As though sensing Toller’s renewed interest in the globe, Zavotle lowered his binoculars and said, “Does it look bigger to you, captain?”

Toller picked up his own glasses and studied the purple-black smudge, finding that its transparency defied his attempts to define its boundaries. “Hard to say.”

“Littlenight will be here soon,” Zavotle commented. “I don’t relish the idea of having that thing hanging around us in the dark.”

“I don’t think it can close in—the ship is almost the same shape as a ptertha, and our response to a crosswind will be roughly similar.”

“I hope you’re right,” Zavotle said gloomily.

Rillomyner looked round from his post at a cannon and said, “We haven’t eated since dawn, captain.” He was a pale and pudgy young man with an enormous appetite for even the vilest food, and it was said that he had actually gained weight since the beginning of the shortages by scavenging all the substandard food rejected by his workmates. In spite of a show of diffidence, he was a good mechanic and intensely proud of his skills.

“I’m glad to hear your gut is back to its normal condition,” Toller said. “I would hate to think I had done it some permanent mischief with my handling of the ship.”

“I didn’t mean to criticise the take-off, captain—it’s just that I have always been cursed with this weak stomach.”

Toller clicked his tongue in mock sympathy and glanced at Flenn. “You’d better feed this man before he becomes faint.”

“Right away, captain.” As Flenn was getting to his feet his shirt parted at the chest and the green-striped head of a carble peered out. Flenn hastily covered the furry creature with his hand and pushed it back into concealment.

“What have you got there?” Toller snapped.

“Her name is Tinny, captain.” Flenn brought the carble out and cradled it in his arms. “There was nobody I could leave her with.”

Toller sighed his exasperation. “This is a scientific mission, not a… Do you realise that most commanders would put that animal over the side?”

“I swear she won’t be any trouble, captain.”

“She’d better not. Now get the food.”

Flenn grinned and, agile as a monkey, disappeared into the galley to prepare the first meal of the voyage. He was small enough to be completely hidden by the woven partition which was chest high to the rest of the crew. Toller settled down to refining his control over the ship’s ascent.

Deciding to increase speed, he lengthened the burns from three to four seconds and watched for the time-lagged response of the balloon overhead. Several minutes went by before the extra lift he was generating overcame the inertia of the many tons of gas inside the envelope and the rip line became noticeably slacker. Satisfied with a new rate of climb of around eighteen miles an hour, he concentrated on making the burner rhythm—four seconds on and twenty off—part of his awareness, something to be paced by the internal clocks of his heart and lungs. He needed to be able to detect the slightest variation in it even when he was asleep and being spelled at the controls by Zavotle.

The food served up by Flenn was from the limited fresh supplies and was better than Toller had expected—strips of reasonably lean beef in gravy, pulse, fried grain-cakes and beakers of hot green tea. Toller stopped operating the burner while he ate, allowing the ship to coast upwards in silence on stored lift. The heat emanating from the black combustion chamber mingled with the aromatic vapours issuing from the galley, turning the gondola into a homely oasis in a universe of azure emptiness.

Partway through the meal littlenight came sweeping from the west, a brief flash of rainbow colours preceding a sudden darkness, and as the crew’s eyes adjusted the heavens blazed into life all around them. They reacted to the unearthliness of their situation by generating an intense camaraderie. There was an unspoken conviction that lifelong friendships were being formed, and in that atmosphere every anecdote was interesting, every boast believable, every joke profoundly funny. And even when the talk eventually died away, stilled by strangeness, communication continued on another plane.

Toller was set apart to some extent by the responsibilities of command, but he was warmed nonetheless. From his seated position the rim of the gondola was at eye level, which meant there was nothing to be seen beyond it but enigmatic whirlpools of radiance, the splayed mist-fans of comets, and stars and stars and ever more stars. The only sound was the occasional creak of a rope, and the only sensible movement was where the meteors scribed their swift-fading messages on the blackboard of night.

Toller could easily imagine himself adrift in the beaconed depths of the universe, and all at once, unexpectedly, there came the longing to have a woman at his side, a female presence which would somehow make the voyage meaningful. It would have been good to be with Fera at that moment, but her essential carnality would scarcely have been hi accord with his mood. The right woman would have been one who was capable of enhancing the mystical qualities of the experience. Somebody like…

Toller reached out with his imagination, blindly, wistfully. For an instant the feel of Gesalla Maraquine’s slim body against his own was shockingly real. He leapt to his feet, guilty and confused, disturbing the equilibrium of the gondola.

“Is anything wrong, captain?” Zavotle said, barely visible in the darkness.

“Nothing. A touch of cramp, that’s all. You take over the burner for a while. Four-twenty is what we want.”

Toller went to the side of the gondola and leaned on the rail. What is happening to me now? he thought. Lain said I was playing a role—but how did he know? The new cool and imperturbable Toller Maraquine … the man who has drunk too deeply from the cup of experience … who looks down on princes … who is undaunted by the chasm between the worlds … and who, because his brother’s solewife does no more than touch his arm, is immediately smitten with adolescent fantasies about her! Was Lain, with that frightening perception of his, able to see me for the betrayer that I am? Is that why he seemed to turn against me?

The darkness below the skyship was absolute, as though Land had already been deserted by all of humanity, but as Toller gazed down into it a thin line of red, green and violet fire appeared on the western horizon. It widened, growing increasingly brilliant, and suddenly a tide of pure light was sweeping across the world at heart-stopping speed, recreating oceans and land masses in all their colour and intricate detail. Toller almost flinched in expectation of a palpable blow as the speeding terminator reached the ship, engulfing it in fierce sunlight, and rushed on to the eastern horizon. The columnar shadow of Overland had completed its daily transit of Kolcorron, and Toller felt that he had emerged from yet another occultation, a littlenight of the mind.

Don’t worry, beloved brother, he thought. Even in my thoughts I’ll never betray you. Not ever!

Ilven Zavotle stood up at the burner and looked out to the north-west. “What do you think of the globe now, captain? Is it bigger or closer? Or both?”

“It might be a little closer,” Toller said, glad to have an external focus for this thoughts, as he trained his binoculars on the ptertha. “Can you feel the ship dancing a little? There could be some churning of warmer and cooler air as littlenight passes, and it might have worked out to the globe’s advantage.”

“It’s still on a level with us—even though we changed our speed.”

“Yes. I think it wants us.”

“I know what I want,” Flenn announced as he slipped by Toller on his way to the toilet. “I’m going to have the honour of being the first to try out the long drop—and I hope it all lands right on old Puehilter.” He had nominated an overseer whose petty tyrannies had made him unpopular with the S.E.S. flight technicians.

Rillomyner snorted in approval. “That’ll give him something worth complaining about, for once.”

“It’ll be worse when you go—they’re going to have to evacuate the whole of Ro-Atabri when you start bombing them.”

“Just take care you don’t fall down the hole,” Rillomyner growled, not appreciating the reference to his dietary foibles. “It wasn’t designed for midgets.”

Toller made no comment about the exchange. He knew the two were testing him to see what style of command he was going to favour on the voyage. A strict interpretation of flight regulations would have precluded any badinage at all among his crew, let alone grossness, but he was solely concerned with their qualities of efficiency, loyalty and courage. In a couple of hours the ship would be higher than any had gone before—if one discounted the semi-mythical Usader of five centuries earlier—entering a region of strangeness, and he could foresee the little group of adventurers needing every human support available to them.

Besides, the same subject had given rise to a thousand equally coarse jokes in the officers’ quarters, ever since the utilitarian design of the skyship gondola had become common knowledge. He himself had derived a certain amusement from the frequency with which ground-based personnel had reminded him that the toilet was not to be used until the prevailing westerlies had carried the ship well clear of the base…

The bursting of the ptertha took Toller by surprise.

He was gazing at the globe’s magnified image when it simply ceased to exist, and in the absence of a contrasting background there was not even a dissipating smudge of dust to mark its location. In spite of his confidence in their ability to deal with the threat, he nodded in satisfaction. Sleep was going to be difficult enough during the first night aloft without having to worry about capricious air currents bringing the silent enemy to within its killing radius.

“Make a note that the ptertha has just popped itself out of existence,” he said to Zavotle, and—expressing his relief—added a personal comment. “Put down that it happened about four hours into the flight … just as Flenn was using the toilet … but that there is probably no connection between the two events.”

Toller awoke shortly after dawn to the sound of an animated discussion taking place at the centre of the gondola. He raised himself to a kneeling position on the sandbags and rubbed his arms, uncertain as to whether the coolness he could feel was external or an aftermath of sleep. The intermittent roar of the burner had been so intrusive that he had achieved only light dozes, and now he felt little more refreshed than if he had been on duty all night. He walked on his knees to the opening in the passenger compartment’s partition and looked out at the rest of the crew.

“You should have a look at this, captain,” Zavotle said, raising his narrow head. “The height gauge actually does work!”

Toller insinuated his legs into the cramped central floorspace and went to the pilot’s station, where Flenn and Rillomyner were standing beside Zavotle. At the station was a lightweight table, attached to which was the height gauge. The latter consisted of nothing more than a vertical scale, from the top of which a small weight was suspended by a delicate coiled spring made from a hair-like shaving of brakka. On the previous morning, at the beginning of the flight, the weight had been opposite to the lowest mark on the scale—but now it was several divisions higher.

Toller stared hard at the gauge. “Has anybody interfered with it?”

“Nobody has touched it,” Zavotle assured him. “It means that everything they told us must be true. Everything is getting lighter as we go higher! We’re getting lighter!”

“That’s to be expected,” Toller said, unwilling to admit that in his heart he had never quite accepted the notion, even when Lain had taken time to impress the theory on him in private tutorials.

“Yes, but it means that in three or four days from now we won’t weigh anything at all. We’ll be able to float around in the air like … like … ptertha! It’s all true, captain!”

“How high does it say we are?”

“About three-hundred-and-fifty miles—and that agrees well with our computations.”

“I don’t feel any different,” Rillomyner put in. “I say the spring has tightened up.”

Flenn nodded. “Me too.”

Toller wished for time in which to arrange his thoughts. He went to the side of the gondola and experienced a whirling moment of vertigo as he saw Land as he had never seen it before—an immense circular convexity, one half in near-darkness, the other a brilliant sparkling of blue ocean and subtly shaded continents and islands.

Things would be quite different if you were lifting off from the centre of Chamteth and heading out into open space, Lain’s voice echoed in his mind. But when travelling between the two worlds you will soon reach a middle zone—slightly closer to Overland than to Land, in fact—where the gravitational pull of each planet cancels out the other. In normal conditions, with the gondola being heavier than the balloon, the ship has pendulum stability—but where neither has any weight the ship will be unstable and you will have to use the lateral jets to control its attitude.

Lain had already completed the entire journey in his mind, Toller realised, and everything he had predicted would come to pass. Truly, they were entering a region of strangeness, but the intellects of Lain Maraquine and other men like him had already marked the way, and they had to be trusted…

“Don’t get so excited that you lose the burn rhythm,” Toller said calmly, turning to Zavotle. “And don’t forget to check the height gauge readings by measuring the apparent diameter of Land four times a day.”

He directed his gaze at Rillomyner and Flenn. “And as for you two—why did the Squadron take the trouble to send you to special classes? The spring has not altered in strength. We’re getting lighter as we get higher, and I will treat any disputing of that fact as insubordination. Is that clear?”

“Yes, captain.”

Both men spoke in unison, but Toller noticed a troubled look in Rillomyner’s eyes, and he wondered if the mechanic was going to have difficulty in adjusting to his increasing weightlessness. This is what the proving flight is for, he reminded himself. We are testing ourselves as much as the ship.

By nightfall the weight on the height gauge had risen to near the halfway mark on the scale, and the effects of reduced gravity were apparent, no longer a matter for argument.

When a small object was allowed to drop it fell to the floor of the gondola with evident slowness, and all members of the crew reported curious sinking sensations in their stomachs. On two occasions Rillomyner awoke from sleep with a panicky shout, explaining afterwards that he had been convinced he was falling.

Toller noticed the dreamlike ease with which he could move about, and it came to him that it would soon be advisable for the crew to remain tethered at all times. The idea of an unnecessarily vigorous movement separating a man from the ship was one he did not like to contemplate.

He also observed that, in spite of its decreased weight, the ship was tending to rise more slowly. The effect had been accurately predicted—a result of the fading weight differential between the hot gas inside the envelope and the surrounding atmosphere. To maintain speed he altered the burn rhythm to four-eighteen, and then to four-sixteen. The pikon and halvell hoppers on the burner were being replenished with increasing frequency and, although there were ample reserves, Toller began to look forward to reaching the altitude of thirteen-hundred miles. At that point the ship’s weight, decreasing by squares, would be only a fourth of normal, and it would become more economical to change over to jet power until the zone of zero gravity had been passed.

The need to interpret every action and event in the dry languages of mathematics, engineering and science conflicted with Toller’s natural response to his new environment. He found he could spend long periods leaning on the rim of the gondola, not moving a muscle, mesmerised, all physical energies annulled by pure awe. Overland was directly above him, but screened from view by the patient, untiring vastness of the balloon; and far below was the home world, gradually becoming a place of mystery as its familiar features were blurred by a thousand miles of intervening air.

By the third day of the ascent the sky, although retaining its normal coloration above and below, was shading on all sides of the ship into a deeper blue which glistered with ever-increasing numbers of stars.

When Toller was lost in his tranced vigils the conversation of the crew members and even the roar of the burner faded from his consciousness, and he was alone in the universe, sole possessor of all its scintillant hoards. Once during the hours of darkness, while he was standing at the pilot’s station, he saw a meteor strike across the sky below the ship. It traced a line of fire from what seemed to be one edge of infinity to the other, and minutes after its passing there came a single pulse of low-frequency sound—blurred, dull and mournful—causing the ship to give a tentative heave which drew a murmur of protest from one of the sleeping men. Some instinct, a kind of spiritual acquisitiveness, prompted Toller to keep the knowledge of the event from the others.

As the ascent continued Zavotle was kept busy with his copious flight records, many of the entries concerned with physiological effects. Even at the summit of the highest mountain on Land there was no discernible drop in air pressure, but on previous high-altitude sorties by balloon some crew members had reported a hint of thinness to the air and the need to breathe more deeply. The effect had been slight and the best scientific estimate was that the atmosphere would continue to support life midway between the two planets, but it was vital that the predication should be verified.

Toller was almost comforted by the feel of his lungs working harder during the third day—more evidence that the problems of interworld flight had been correctly foreseen—and he was therefore less than happy when an unexpected phenomenon forced itself on his attention. For some time he had been aware of feeling cold, but had dismissed the matter from his thoughts. Now, however, the others in the gondola were complaining almost continuously and the conclusion was inescapable—as the ship gained altitude the surrounding air was growing colder.

The S.E.S. scientists, Lain Maraquine included, had been of the opinion that there would be an increase in temperature as the ship entered ratified air which would be less able to screen it from the sun’s rays. As a native of equatorial Kolcorron, Toller had never experienced really severe coldness, and he had thought nothing of setting off on the interplanetary voyage clad in only a shirt, breeches and sleeveless jupon. Now, although not actually shivering, he was continuously aware of the increasing discomfort and a dismaying thought was beginning to lurk in his mind—that the entire flight might have to be abandoned for the lack of a bale of wool.

He gave permission for the crew to wear all their spare clothing under their uniforms, and for Flenn to brew tea on demand. The latter decision, far from improving the situation, led to a series of arguments. Time after time Rillomyner insisted that Flenn, acting out of malice or ineptitude, was either infusing the tea before the water had boiled properly or was allowing it to cool before serving it around. It was only when Zavotle, who had also been dissatisfied, kept a critical eye on the brewing process that the truth emerged—the water had begun to boil before it had reached the appropriate temperature. It was hot, but not “boiling” hot.

“I’m worried about this finding, captain,” Zavotle said as he completed the relevant entry in the log. “The only explanation I can think of is that as the water gets lighter it boils at a progressively lower temperature. And if that is the case, what is going to happen to us when the weight of everything fades away to nothing? Is the spit going to boil in our mouths? Are we going to piss steam?”

“We would be obliged to turn back before you had to suffer that indignity,” Toller said, showing his displeasure at the other man’s negative attitude, “but I don’t think it will come to that. There must be some other reason—perhaps something to do with the air.”

Zavotle looked dubious. “I don’t see how air could affect water.”

“Neither do I—so I’m not wasting time on useless speculation,” Toller said curtly. “If you want something to occupy your mind take a close look at the height gauge. It says we’re eleven-hundred miles up—and if that is correct we have been seriously underestimating our speed all day.”

Zavotle studied the gauge, fingered the rip line and looked up into the balloon, the interior of which was growing dim and mysterious with the onset of dusk. “Now that could be something to do with the air,” he said. “I think that what you have discovered is that thinner air would depress the crown of the envelope less at speed and make it seem that we’re going slower than we actually are.”

Toller considered the proposition and smiled. “You worked that out—and I didn’t—so give yourself credit for it in the record. I’d say you’re going to be the senior pilot on your next flight.”

“Thanks, captain,” Zavotle said, looking gratified.

“It’s no more than you deserve.” Toller touched Zavotle on the shoulder, making tacit reparation for his irritability. “At this rate we’ll have passed the thirteen-hundred mark by dawn—then we can take a rest from the burner and see how the ship handles on the jet.”

Later, while he was settling down on the sandbags to sleep, he went over the exchange in his mind and identified the true cause of the ill temper he had vented on Zavotle. It had been the accumulation of unforeseen phenomena—the increasing coldness, the odd behaviour of the water, the misleading indication of the balloon’s speed. It had been the growing realisation that he had placed too much faith in the predictions of scientists. Lain, in particular, had been proved wrong in three different respects, and if his vaulting intellect had been defeated so soon—on the very edge of the region of strangeness—nobody could know what lay in store for those setting out along the perilous fractured glass bridge to another world.

Until that moment, Toller discovered, he had been naively optimistic about the future, convinced that the proving flight would lead to a successful migration and the foundation of a colony in which those he cared about would lead lives of endless fulfilment. It was chastening to realise that the vision had been largely based on his own egotism, that fate had no obligation to honour the safe conducts he had assigned to people like Lain and Gesalla, that events could come to pass regardless of his considering them unthinkable.

All at once the future had clouded over with uncertainty and danger.

And in the new order of things, Toller thought as he drifted into sleep, one had to learn to interpret a new kind of portent. Day-to-day trivia … the degree of slackness in a cord … bubbles in a pot of water… These were niggardly omens … whispered warnings, almost too faint to hear…

By morning the height gauge was showing an altitude of fourteen-hundred miles, and its supplementary scale indicated that gravity was now less than a quarter of normal.

Toller, intrigued by the lightness of his body, tested the conditions by jumping, but it was an experiment he tried only once. He rose much higher than he had intended and for a moment as he seemed to hang in the air there was a terrible feeling of having parted from the ship for ever. The open gondola, with its chest-high walls, was revealed as a flimsy edifice whose pared-down struts and wicker panels were quite inadequate for their purpose. He had time to visualise what would happen if a floor section gave way when he landed on it, plunging him into the thin blue air fourteen-hundred miles above the surface of the world.

It would take a long time to fall that distance, fully conscious, with nothing to do but watch the planet unfurl hungrily below him. Even the bravest man would eventually have to begin screaming…

“We seem to have lost a good bit of speed during the night, captain,” Zavotle reported from the pilot’s station. “The rip line is getting quite taut—though, of course, you can’t rely on it much any more.”

“It’s time for the jet, anyway,” Toller said. “From now on, until turn-over, we’ll use the burner only enough to keep the balloon inflated. Where’s Rillomyner?”

“Here, captain.” The mechanic emerged from the other passenger compartment. His pudgy figure was partially doubled over, he was clutching the partitions and his gaze was fixed on the floor.

“What’s the matter with you, Rillomyner? Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick, captain. I … I just don’t want to look outside.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t do it, captain. I can feel myself being drawn over the side. I think I’m going to float away.”

“You know that’s nonsense, don’t you?” Toller thought of his own moment of unmanning fear and was inclined towards sympathy. “Is this going to affect your work?”

“No, captain. The work would help.”

“Good! Carry out a full inspection of the main jet and the laterals, and make very sure we have a smooth injection of crystals—we can’t afford to have any surges at this stage.”

Rillomyner directed a salute towards the floor and slouched away to fetch his tools. There followed an hour of respite from the full burn rhythm while Rillomyner checked the controls, some of which were common to the downward-facing jet. Flenn prepared and served a breakfast of gruel studded with small cubes of salt pork, all the while complaining about the cold and the difficulty he was having in keeping the galley fire going. His spirits improved a little when he learned that Rillomyner was not going to eat, and as a change from lavatorial humour he subjected the mechanic to a barrage of jokes about the dangers of wasting away to a shadow.

True to his earlier boast, Flenn seemed quite unaffected by the soul-withering void which glimmered through chinks in the decking. At the end of the meal he actually chose to sit on the gondola wall, with one arm casually thrown around an acceleration strut, as he goaded the unhappy Rillomyner. Even though Flenn had tethered himself, the sight of him perched on the sky-backed rim produced such icy turmoil in Toller’s gut that he bore the arrangement for only a few minutes before ordering the rigger to descend.

When Rillomyner had finished his work and retired to lie down on the sandbags, Toller took up his position at the pilot’s station. He entered the new mode of propulsion by firing the jet in two-second bursts at wide intervals and studying the effects on the balloon. Each thrust brought creaks from the struts and rigging, but the envelope was affected much less than in experimental firings at low altitudes. Encouraged, Toller varied the timings and eventually settled on a two-four rhythm which acted in much the same manner as continuous impulsion without building up excessive speed. A short blast from the burner every second or third minute kept the balloon inflated and the crown from sagging too much as it nosed through the air.

“She handles well,” he said to Zavotle, who was industriously writing in the log. “It looks as though you and I are going to have an easy run for the next day or two—until the instability sets in.”

Zavotle tilted his narrow head. “It’s easier on the ears, too.”

Toller nodded his agreement. Although the jet was firing for a greater proportion of every minute than the burner had been doing, its exhaust was not being directed into the great echo chamber of the balloon. The sound of it was flatter and less obtrusive, quickly absorbed by the surrounding oceans of stillness.

With the ship behaving so docilely and according to plan Toller began to feel that his forebodings of the night had been nothing more than a symptom of his growing tiredness. He was able to dwell on the incredible idea that in a mere seven or eight days, all being well, he was due to have a close look at another planet. The ship could not actually touch down on Overland, because doing so would involve pulling out the rip panel, and with no inflation facilities it would be unable to depart again. But it was to go within a few yards of the surface, dispelling the last traces of mystery about conditions on the sister planet.

The thousands of miles of air separating the two worlds had always made it difficult for astronomers to say much more than that there was an equatorial continent spanning the visible hemisphere. It had always been assumed, partly on religious grounds, that Overland closely resembled Land, but there remained the possibility that it was inhospitable, perhaps because of surface features beyond the resolving power of telescopes. And there was the further possibility—an article of faith for the Church, a moot case for philosophers—that Overland was already inhabited.

What would the Overlanders look like? Would they be builders of cities? And how would they react on seeing a fleet of strange ships float down from the sky?

Toller’s musing was interrupted by the realisation that the coldness in the gondola had intensified in a matter of minutes. Simultaneously, he was approached by Flenn, who had the pet carble clutched to his chest and was visibly shivering. The little man’s face was tinged with blue.

“This is killing me, captain,” he said, trying to force his customary grin. “The cold has got worse all of a sudden.”

“You’re right.” Toller felt a stirring of alarm at the idea of having crossed an invisible danger line in the atmosphere, then inspiration came to him. “It’s since we eased off on the burner. The blow-back of miglign was helping to keep us warm.”

“There was something else,” Zavotle added. “The air streaming down over the hot envelope would have helped as well.”

“Damn!” Toller frowned up into the geometric traceries of the balloon. “This means we’ll have to put more heat in there. We have plenty of green and purple—so that’s all right—but there’s going to be a problem later on.”

Zavotle nodded, looking gloomy. “The descent.”

Toller gnawed his lip as, yet again, difficulties unforeseen by the earthbound S.E.S. scientists confronted him. The only way for the hot-air craft to lose altitude was through shedding heat—suddenly a vital commodity as far as the crew were concerned—and to make matters worse the direction of the air flow would be reversed during the descent, carrying the reduced amount of warmth upwards and away from the gondola. The prospect was that they would have to endure days in conditions very much worse than those of the present—and there was a genuine possibility that death would intervene.

A dilemma had to be resolved.

Was the fact that so much depended on the outcome of the proving flight an argument for going on and on, even at the risk of passing an imperceptible point of no return? Or was there a higher obligation to be prudent and turn back with their hard-won store of knowledge?

“This is your lucky day,” Toller said to Rillomyner, who was watching him from his usual recumbent position in a passenger compartment. “You wanted work to occupy your mind, and now you’ve got it. Find a way of diverting some heat from the burner exhaust back down into the gondola.”

The mechanic sat up with a startled expression. “How could we do it, captain?”

“I don’t know. It’s your job to work out things like that. Rig up a scoop or something, and start right now—I’m tired of seeing you lie around like a pregnant gilt.”

Flenn’s eyes gleamed. “Is that any way to talk to our passenger, captain?”

“You’ve spent too much time on your backside, as well,” Toller told him. “Have you needles and thread in your kit?”

“Yes, captain. Big needles, little needles, enough threads and twines to rig a sailing ship.”

“Then start emptying sandbags and making over-suits out of the sacking. We’ll also need gloves.”

“Leave it to me, captain,” Flenn said. “I’ll fit us all out like kings.” Obviously pleased at having something constructive to do, Flenn tucked the carble into his clothing, went to his locker and began rummaging in its various compartments. He was whistling in shivery vibrato.

Toller watched him for a moment, then turned to Zavotle, who was blowing into his hands to keep them warm. “Are you still worrying about relieving yourself in weightless conditions?”

Zavotle’s eyes became wary. “Why do you ask, captain?”

“You should be—it looks like a toss-up as to whether you produce steam or snow.”

Shortly before littlenight on the fifth day of the flight the gauge registered a height of 2,600 miles and a gravity value of zero.

The four members of the crew were tied into their wicker chairs around the power unit, their feet outstretched towards the warm base of the jet tube. They were muffled in crude garments of ragged brown sacking which disguised their human form and concealed the heaving of their chests as they laboured to deal with the thin and gelid air. Within the gondola the only signs of movement were the vapour featherings of the men’s breath; and on the outside meteors flickered in deep blue infinities, briefly and randomly linking star to star.

“Well, here we are,” Toller said, breaking a lengthy silence. “The hardest part of the flight is behind us, we have coped with every unpleasant surprise the heavens could throw at us, and we are still in good health. I’d say we are entitled to drink the brandy with the next meal.”

There was another protracted silence, as though thought itself had been chilled into sluggishness, and Zavotle said, “I’m still worried about the descent, captain—even with the heater.”

“If we survived this far we can go on.” Toller glanced at the heating device which Rillomyner had designed and installed with some assistance from Zavotle. It consisted of nothing more than an elongated S-shape of brakka tubing sections jointed with glass cord and fireclay. Its top end curved over into the mouth of the burner and its bottom end was secured to the deck beside the pilot’s station. A small proportion of each blast on the burner was channelled back down through the tube to send scorching miglign gas billowing through the gondola, making an appreciable difference to the temperature levels. Although the burner would necessarily be used less during the descent, Toller believed the heat drawn off from it would be sufficient for their needs in the two severest days.

“It’s time for the medical report,” he said, signalling for Zavotle to make notes. “How does everybody feel?”

“I still feel like we’re falling, captain.” Rillomyner was gripping the sides of his chair. “It’s making me queasy.”

“How could we fall if we have no weight?” Toller said reasonably, ignoring the fluttering lightness in his own stomach. “You’ll have to get used to it. How about you, Flenn?”

“I’m all right, captain—heights don’t bother me.” Flenn stroked the green-striped carble which was nestling on his chest with only its head protruding through a vent in his outer garment. “Tinny is all right, as well. We help keep each other warm.”

“I suppose I’m in reasonable condition, considering.” Zavotle made an entry in the log, writing clumsily with gloved hand, and raised his reproachful gaze to Toller. “Shall I put you down as being in fine fettle, captain? Best of health?”

“Yes, and all the sarcasm in the world won’t get me to change my decision—I’m turning the ship over immediately after littlenight.” Toller knew the co-pilot was still clinging to his opinion, voiced earlier, that they should delay turning the ship over for a full day or even longer after passing the zero gravity point. The reasoning was that doing so would get them through the region of greatest cold more quickly and with lost heat from the balloon protecting them from the chill. Toller could see some merit in the idea, but he would have exceeded his authority by putting it into practice.

As soon as you pass the midpoint Overland will begin attracting you towards it, Lain had impressed upon him. The pull will be very slight at first, but it will quickly build up. If you augment that pull with the thrust from the drive jet you will soon exceed the design speed of the ship—and (hat must never be allowed to happen.

Zavotle had argued that the S.E.S. scientists had not anticipated the life-threatening coldness, nor had they allowed for the fact that the thin air of the mid-passage exerted less force on the envelope, thus increasing the maximum safe speed. Toller had remained adamant. As captain of the ship he had considerable discretionary powers, but not when it was a case of challenging basic S.E.S. directives.

He had not admitted that his determination had been reinforced by an instinctive distaste for flying the ship upside down. Although during training he had been privately sceptical about the notion of weightlessness, he fully understood that as soon as the ship had passed the midpoint it would have entered the gravitational domain of Overland. In one sense the journey would have been completed, because—barring an act of human will translated into mechanical action—the destinies of the ship and its crew could no longer be affected by their home world. They would have been cast out, redefined as aliens by the terms of celestial physics.

Toller had decided that postponing the attitude reversal until littlenight had passed would use up all the leeway he had in the matter. Throughout the ascent Overland, though screened from view by the balloon, had steadily increased in apparent size and littlenight had grown longer accordingly. The approaching one would last more than three hours, and by the time it had ended the ship would have begun falling towards the sister planet. Toller found the progressive change in the patterns of night and day a powerful reminder of the magnitude of the voyage he had undertaken. There was no surprise as far as the intellect of the grown man was concerned, but the child in him was bemused and awed by what was happening. Night was becoming shorter as littlenight grew, and soon the natural order of things would be reversed. Land’s night would have dwindled to become Overland’s littlenight…

While waiting for darkness to arrive, Toller and the others investigated the miracle of weightlessness. There was a rare fascination in suspending small objects in the air and watching them hold their positions, in defiance of all of life’s teachings, until the next blast from the drive jet belatedly caused them to sink.

It is almost as if the jet somehow restores a fraction of their natural weight, ran Zavotle’s entry in the log, but of course that is a fanciful way of regarding the phenomenon. The real explanation is that they are invisibly fixed in place, and that the thrust from the jet enables the ship to overtake them.

Littlenight came more suddenly than ever, wrapping the gondola in jewelled and fire-streaked blackness, and for its duration the four conversed in muted tones, recreating the mood of their first starlit communion of the flight. The talk ranged from gossip about life in the S.E.S. base to speculation about what strange things might be found on Overland, and once there was even an attempt to foresee the problems of flying to Farland, which could be observed hanging in the west like a green lantern. Nobody felt disposed, Toller noticed, to dwell on the fact that they were suspended between two worlds in a fragile open-topped box, with thousands of miles of emptiness lapping at the rim.

He also noticed that the crew had stopped addressing him as captain for the time being, and he was not displeased. He knew there was no lessening of his necessary authority—it was an unconscious acknowledgement of the fact that four ordinary men were venturing into the extraordinary, the region of strangeness, and that in their mutual need for each other they were equal…

One prismatic flash brought the daytime universe back into existence.

“Did you mention brandy, captain?” Rillomyner said. “It has just occurred to me that some internal warmth might fortify this cursed delicate stomach of mine. The medicinal properties of brandy are well known.”

“We’ll have the brandy with the next meal.” Toller blinked and looked about him, re-establishing connections with history. “Before that the ship gets turned over.”

Earlier he had been pleased to discover that the ship’s predicted instability in and close to the weightless zone was easy to overcome and control with the lateral jets. Occasional half-second bursts had been all that was necessary to keep the edge of the gondola in the desired relationship with the major stars. Now, however, the ship—or the universe—had to be stood on its head. He pumped the pneumatic reservoir to full pressure before feeding crystals to the east-facing jet for a full three seconds. The sound from the miniature orifice was devoured by infinity.

For a moment it seemed that its puny output would have no effect on the mass of the ship, then—for the first time since the beginning of the ascent—the great disk of Overland slid fully into view from behind the curvature of the balloon. It was lit by a crescent of fire along one rim, almost touching the sun.

At the same time Land rose above the rim of the gondola wall on the opposite side, and as air resistance overcame the impulsion from its jet the ship steadied in an attitude which presented the crew with a vision of two worlds.

By turning his head one way Toller could see Overland, mostly in blackness because of its proximity to the sun; and in the other direction was the mind-swamping convexity of the home world, serene and eternal, bathed in sunshine except at its eastern rim, where a shrinking curved section still lay in littlenight. He watched in rapt fascination as Overland’s shadow swung clear of Land, feeling himself to be at the fulcrum of a lever of light, an intangible engine which had the power to move planets.

“For pity’s sake, captain,” Rillomyner cried hoarsely, “put the ship to rights.”

“You’re in no danger.” Toller fired the lateral jet again and Land drifted majestically upwards to be occulted by the balloon as Overland sank below the edge of the gondola. The rigging creaked several times as he used the opposing lateral to balance the ship in its new attitude. Toller permitted himself a smile of satisfaction at having become the first man in history to turn a skyship over. The manoeuvre had been carried out quickly and without mishap—and from that point on the natural forces acting on the ship would do most of his work for him.

“Make a note,” he said to Zavotle. “Midpoint successfully negotiated. I foresee no major obstacles in the descent to Overland.”

Zavotle freed his pencil from its restraining clip. “We’re still going to freeze, captain.”

“That isn’t a major obstacle—if necessary we’ll burn some green and purple right here on the deck.” Toller, suddenly exhilarated and optimistic, turned to Flenn. “How do you feel? Can your head for heights cope with our present circumstances?”

Flenn grinned. “If it’s food you want, captain, I’m your man. I swear my arsehole has cobwebs over it.”

“In that case, see what you can do about a meal.” Toller knew the order would be particularly welcome because for more than a day the crew had opted to go without food or drink to obviate the indignity, discomfort and sheer unpleasantness of using the toilet facilities in virtual weightlessness.

He watched benignly as Flenn pushed the carble back into its warm sanctuary inside his clothing and untied himself from his chair. The little man was obviously struggling for breath as he swung his way into the galley, but the black cabochons of his eyes were glinting with good humour. He reappeared just long enough to hand Toller the single small flask of brandy which had been included in the ship’s provisions, then there followed a long period during which he could be heard working with the cooking equipment, panting and swearing all the time. Toller took a sip of the brandy and had given the flask to Zavotle when it dawned on him that Flenn was trying to prepare a hot meal.

“You don’t need to heat anything,” he called out. “Cold jerky and bread will be enough.”

“It’s all right, captain,” came Flenn’s breathless reply. “The charcoal is still lit … and it’s only a matter of … fanning it hard enough. I’m going to serve you … a veritable banquet. A man needs a good… Hell!”

Concurrent with the last word there was a clattering sound. Toller turned towards the galley in time to see a burning piece of firewood rise vertically into the air from behind the partition. Lazily spinning, wrapped in pale yellow flame, it sailed upwards and glanced off a sloping lower panel of the balloon. Just when it seemed that it had been deflected harmlessly away into the blue it was caught by an air current which directed it into the narrowing gap between an acceleration strut and the envelope. It lodged in the juncture of the two, still burning.

“It’s mine!” Flenn shouted. “I’ll get it!”

He appeared on the gondola wall at the corner, unhooking his tether, and went up the strut at speed, using only his hands in a curious weightless scramble. Toller’s heart and mind froze over as he saw brownish smoke puff out from the varnished fabric of the balloon. Flenn reached the burning stick and grasped it with a gloved hand. He hurled the stick away with a lateral sweep of his arm and suddenly he too was separated from the ship, tumbling in thin air. Hands clawing vainly towards the strut, he floated slowly outwards.

Toller’s consciousness was sundered by two focuses of terror. Fear of personal annihilation kept his gaze centred on the smoking patch of fabric until he saw that the flame had extinguished itself, but all the while he was filled with a silent-shrieking awareness of the bright void between Flenn and the balloon growing wider.

Flenn’s initial impetus had not been great, but he had drifted outwards for some thirty yards before air resistance brought him to a halt. He hung in the blue emptiness, glowing in the sunlight which the balloon screened from the gondola, scarcely recognisable as a human being in his ragged swaddling of sackcloth.

Toller went to the side and cupped his hands around his mouth to aim a shout. “Flenn! Are you all right?”

“Don’t worry about me, captain.” Flenn waved an arm and, incredibly, he was able to sound almost cheerful. “I can see the envelope well from here. There’s a scorched area all around the strut attachment, but the fabric isn’t holed.”

“We’re going to bring you in.” Toller turned to Zavotle and Rillomyner. “He isn’t lost. We need to throw him a line.”

Rillomyner was doubled in his chair. “Can’t do it, captain,” he mumbled. “I can’t look out there.”

“You’re going to look and you’re going to work,” Toller assured him grimly.

“I can help,” Zavotle said, leaving his chair. He opened the rigger’s locker and brought out several coils of rope. Toller, impatient to effect a rescue, snatched one of the ropes. He secured one end of it and flung the coil out towards Flenn, but as he did so his feet rose clear of the deck, and what he had intended as a powerful throw proved to be feeble and misdirected. The rope unfurled for only part of its length and froze uselessly, still retaining its undulations.

Toller drew the rope in and while he was coiling it again Zavotle threw his line with similar lack of success. Rillomyner, who was moaning faintly with every breath, hurled out a thinner line of glasscord. It extended fully in roughly the right direction, but stopped too short.

“Good for nothing!” Flenn jeered, seemingly undaunted by the thousands of miles of vacancy yawning below him. “Your old grandmother could do better, Rillo.”

Toller removed his gloves and made a fresh attempt to bridge the void, but even though he had braced himself against a partition the cold-stiffened rope again failed to unwind properly. It was while he was retrieving it that he noticed an unnerving fact. At the beginning of the rescue effort Flenn had been considerably higher in relation to the ship, level with the upper end of the acceleration strut—but now he was only slightly above the rim of the gondola.

A moment’s reflection told Toller that Flenn was falling. The ship was also falling, but as long as there was warmth inside the balloon it would retain some degree of buoyancy and would descend more slowly than a solid object. This close to the midpoint the relative speeds were negligible, but Flenn was nonetheless in the grip of Overland’s gravity, and had begun the long plunge to the surface.

“Have you noticed what’s happening?” Toller said to Zavotle in a low voice. “We’re running out of time.”

Zavotle assessed the situation. “Is there any point in using the laterals?”

“We’d only start cartwheeling.”

“This is serious,” Zavotle said. “First of all Flenn damages the balloon—then he puts himself in a position where he can’t repair it.”

“I doubt if he did that on purpose.” Toller wheeled on Rillomyner. “The cannon! Find a weight that will go into the cannon. Maybe we can fire a line.”

At that moment Flenn, who had been quiescent, appeared to notice his gradual change of position relative to the ship and to draw the appropriate conclusions. He began struggling and squirming, then made exaggerated swimming movements which in other circumstances might have been comic. Discovering that nothing was having any good effect he again became still, except for an involuntary movement of his hands when Zavotle’s second throw of the rope failed to reach him.

“I’m getting scared, captain.” Although Flenn was shouting his voice seemed faint, its energies leaching away into the surrounding immensities. “You’ve got to bring me home.”

“We’ll bring you in. There’s…” Toller allowed the sentence to tail off. He had been going to assure Flenn there was plenty of time, but his voice would have lacked conviction. It was becoming apparent that not only was Flenn falling past the gondola, but that—in keeping with the immutable laws of physics—he was gaining speed. The acceleration was almost imperceptible, but its effects were cumulative. Cumulative and lethal…

Rillomyner touched Toller’s arm. “There’s nothing that will fit in the cannon, captain, but I joined two bits of glasscord and tied it to this.” He proffered a hammer with a large brakka head. “I think it will reach him.”

“Good man,” Toller said, appreciative of the way the mechanic was overcoming his acrophobia in the emergency. He moved aside to let Rillomyner make the throw. The mechanic tied the free end of the glasscord to the rail, judged the distances and hurled the hammer out into space.

Toller saw at once that he had made the mistake of aiming high, compensating for a full-gravity drop that was not going to occur. The hammer dragged the cord out behind it and came to a halt in the air a tantalising few yards above Flenn, who was galvanised into windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to reach it. Rillomyner jiggled the cord in an effort to move the hammer downwards, but only succeeded in drawing it a short distance back towards the ship.

“That’s no good,” Toller snapped. “Pull it in fast and throw straight at him next time.” He was trying to suppress a growing sense of panic and despair. Flenn was now visibly sinking below the level of the gondola, and the hammer was less likely to reach him as the range increased and the angles became less conducive to accurate throwing. What Flenn desperately needed was a means of reducing the distance separating him from the gondola, and that was impossible unless … unless…

A familiar voice spoke inside Toller’s head. Action and reaction, Lain was saying. That’s the universal principle…

“Flenn, you can bring yourself closer,” Toller shouted. “Use the carble! Throw it straight away from the ship, as hard as you can. That will drift you in this direction.”

There was a pause before Flenn responded. “I couldn’t do that, captain.”

“This is an order,” Toller bellowed. “Throw the carble, and throw it right now! We’re running out of time.”

There was a further pounding delay, then Flenn was seen to be fumbling with the coverings on his chest. Sunlight flared on the lower surfaces of his body as he slowly produced the green-striped animal.

Toller swore in frustration. “Hurry, hurry! We’re going to lose you.”

“You’ve already lost me, captain.” Flenn’s voice was resigned. “But I want you to take Tinny home with you.”

There was a sudden sweeping movement of his arm and he went tumbling backwards as the carble sailed towards the ship. It was travelling too low. Toller watched numbly as the terrified animal, mewing and clawing at the air, passed out of sight below the gondola. Its yellow eyes had seemed to be boring into his own. Flenn receded a short distance before he stabilised himself by spreading his arms and legs. He came to rest in the attitude of a drowned man, floating face-down on an invisible ocean, his gaze directed towards Overland—thousands of miles below—which had taken him in its gravitational arms.

“You stupid little midget,” Rillomyner sobbed as he again sent the hammer snaking towards Flenn. It stopped short and a little to one side of its target. Flenn, body and limbs rigid, continued to sink with gathering speed.

“He’ll be falling for maybe a day,” Zavotle whispered. “Just think of it … a whole day … falling… I wonder if he’ll still be alive when he hits the ground.”

“I’ve got other things to think about,” Toller said harshly, turning away from the gondola wall, unable to watch Flenn dwindling out of sight.

His brief required him to abort the flight in the event of losing a crew member or sustaining some serious structural damage to the ship. Nobody could have foreseen both circumstances arising as a result of one trivial-seeming accident with the galley stove, but he felt no less responsible—and it remained to be seen if the S.E.S. administrators would also regard him as culpable.

“Switch us back to jet power,” he said to Rillomyner. “We’re going home.”