Land and Overland Omnibus

PART II

The Cold Arena





Chapter 6



As they walked to the palace's principal entrance Gesalla Maraquine talked continuously about domestic trivia—a tactic which Toller found more baffling and infuriating than if she had chosen to maintain a cold silence.

He had not been able to return home in the twelve days which had elapsed since the visitation by the skyship from Land, and consequently had been pleased when Gesalla had ridden up from the estate to spend the night with him. But her stay had provided none of the comforts for which he had hoped. She had arrived in a strange mood, enigmatic and slightly distant, and on learning that he had insisted on going aloft with the first fortress had become positively acidic. Later, in bed, she had responded to his advances with a dull compliance which was more hurtful than outright rejection and which had caused him to abandon all thoughts of lovemaking. He had lain apart from her all night, physically and mentally frustrated, and when he had lapsed into sleep there had been dreams of falling—not just of ordinary falling, but of the day-long drop from the weightless zone…

"Cassyll is waiting for you," Toller cut in forcibly. "It's good that you'll have his company on the ride home."

Gesalla nodded. "It's very good—after all, you might have decided to take him into the sky with you."

"What are you saying? The boy has no interest in flying."

"He had no interest in guns, either—until you put him to work on those cursed muskets. Now I see almost as little of him as I do of you."

"Is that what this is all about?" Toller stopped his wife in the busy, high-ceilinged corridor, waited until a group of officials had moved out of earshot, and said, "Why didn't you come out with it last night?"

"Would you have changed your plans?"

"No."

Gesalla looked exasperated. "Then what would have been the point in my speaking out?"

"What was the point in coming to the palace in the first place?" Toller said. "Was it to cause me pain?"

"Did you say pain?" Gesalla gave an incredulous laugh. "I heard about your plunge into insanity with that beast of a swordsman, Karkarand, or whatever his name is."

Toller blinked at her, thrown by the apparent change of subject. "It was the only way…"

"Now you're going up there when there is absolutely no need for it. Toller, how do you think I feel, knowing that my husband would rather court death than go on living with me?"

Toller strove for a suitable answer, gaining time through the fact that two clerks carrying ledgers were passing close by and giving him inquisitive looks. This was the sort of situation in which Gesalla could strike a near-superstitious fear into him. Her oval face was hard, pale and beautiful, and behind those grey eyes was a mind that could far outpace his own, making it impossible for him to best her in an argument, especially an important one.

"I know there is little evidence of it thus far, but this is a time of crisis," he said slowly. "I am only doing what is required of me, and I hate it as much as…" He allowed the sentence to tail off as he saw that Gesalla was shaking her head emphatically.

"Don't lie to me, Toller. Don't lie to yourself. You are enjoying all this."

"Nonsense!"

"Answer just one question for me—do you ever think of Leddravohr?"

Again disconcerted, Toller conjured up then drove from his mind a vision of the military prince, the man whose hatred had altered his entire life and with whom he had fought a duel to the death on the day their ships had touched down on Overland all those years ago.

"Leddravohr?" he said. "Why should I think of him?"

Gesalla produced the sweet, sweet smile which often preceded her deadliest thrusts. "Because you were a pair of sixes, you and he." She turned and walked away quickly, her straight-backed figure slipping through barriers of people with an ease he could not emulate.

Nobody can say that to me, he thought in dismay, trailing in Gesalla's wake. In spite of his efforts to overtake, she had passed through the arched entrance and was in the sunlight of the forecourt before he reached her side, and Cassyll was already bringing two bluehorns forward.

Cassyll Maraquine was as tall as his father, but the maternal component of his build was evident. His physique was of the lean and long-muscled type, giving him the capability—as Toller had learned through a number of failed challenges—of running for two or three hours at a stretch with virtually no diminution of speed. He bore a strong resemblance to his mother, with a fine-featured oval face and thoughtful grey eyes beneath a widow's peak of black hair.

"Good foreday, mother, father," he said and immediately gave all his attention to Toller. "I brought samples of the new batch of pressure spheres. Not one of them has failed or even distorted under test, so we can start producing reliable muskets right away. I have them in my saddle bag—do you want to see?"

Toller glanced at Gesalla's set countenance. "Not now, son. Not today. I'm leaving it to you and Wroble to take care of the production planning—I have other work in hand."

"Oh!" Cassyll raised his eyebrows and gazed at his father in open admiration. "So it's really true! You're going aloft with the first of the fortresses!"

"It has to be done," Toller said, wishing that Cassyll had reacted differently. He had been away from home on the King's business during much of his son's upbringing and had always considered himself blessed in that, far from showing resentment, the boy had regarded him as a glamorous adventurer and a father of whom to be proud. There had been no sense of competition with Gesalla for their son's mind, even after the boy had developed a strong interest in the new science of metallurgy, but now the triangular relationship was changing and presenting difficulties—just when Toller was least able to deal with them. The first two sky fortresses had been constructed in only a few days, far too short a time for a thorough study of the problem areas, and the forthcoming ascent was looming so large in his thoughts that all else seemed slightly unreal to him. In his heart he was already soaring up into the dangerous blue reaches of the sky, and he had become impatient with earthly matters.

"I'll speak to Wroble before nightfall," Cassyll said. "How long will you be away?"

"Perhaps seven days on this first ascent. Much depends on how smoothly the operation proceeds."

"Good luck, father." Cassyll shook Toller's hand, then held one of the bluehorns steady for Gesalla to mount it. She swung herself up into the saddle with practised grace, her divided riding skirt giving her full freedom of movement, and looked down at Toller with an expression which seemed to indicate an odd mixture of anger and sadness. The silver streak in her hair shone like a military emblem.

"Aren't you going to wish me good luck also?" he said.

"Why should I? You assured me the ascent would be perfectly safe."

"Yes, but…"

"Goodbye, Toller." Gesalla wheeled the bluehorn away and rode off towards the palace gates.

Cassyll gazed after her in perplexity for a moment. "Is anything wrong, father?"

"Nothing we are unable to put right, son. Take good care of your mother." Toller watched Cassyll mount and ride after Gesalla, then turned and walked back into the palace, moving like a blind man opposed by currents of humanity. He had taken only a few paces when he heard a woman's footsteps hurrying behind him. The idea that it might be Gesalla coming back to put things right between them was irrational, but nevertheless he felt the beginnings of a surge of gladness as he halted and turned to face the person who was overtaking him. The emotion subsided in disappointment as he saw a petite, black-haired woman in her mid-twenties who was wearing the saffron uniform of an air-captain. Blue patches stitched to the shoulders of the thickly embroidered jupon showed that she had been seconded to the hastily formed Sky Service. Her face was firm-jawed and full-lipped, with unfashionably full eyebrows which seemed poised to frown.

"Lord Toller," she said, "may I have a word with you? I am Skycaptain Berise Narrinder, and I've been trying to see you for days."

"I'm sorry, captain," Toller said. "You have chosen the most inopportune time."

"My lord, this will take but a moment—and it is a matter of some importance."

The fact that the woman had not been deterred by his refusal caused him to look more closely at her, and far back in his mind there flickered the thought that she would have been highly attractive but for the anomaly of being in uniform. He was immediately angry with himself, and again wished that Queen Daseene did not have so much influence over her husband. It had been on Daseene's insistence that women had been admitted to the Air Service, and she had prevailed on Chakkell to permit female volunteers to join skyship and fortress crews.

"All right, captain," Toller said, "what is this matter of some importance?"

"I was told that it was your personal decision that no woman would take part in the first twelve ascents to the weightless zone. Is that true?"

"Yes, it's true. What of it?"

Berise's eyebrows now formed a continuous line above intent green eyes. "With the greatest respect, my lord, I wish to claim the right of protest granted to me under the Terms of Service."

"There are no Terms in wartime." Toller blinked down at her. "Leaving that aside, what have you to protest about?"

"I volunteered for flight duty and was rejected—simply because I'm a woman."

"You're in error, captain. If you were a woman with experience of piloting a ship to the weightless zone and carrying out the inversion manoeuvre you would have been accepted, or at least considered. If you were a woman with gunnery experience or with the strength to move fortress sections you would have been accepted, or at least considered. The reason that you were rejected is that you are unqualified for the work. And now may I suggest that we both resume our duties?"

Toller turned quickly and was beginning to walk away when the look of frustration he had seen in Berise's eyes struck a responsive chord within him. How many times in his youth had he too frowned and chafed when thwarted by regulations? He had an instinctive distaste for the idea of sending a woman into the front line of battle, but if he had learned one thing from Gesalla it was that courage was not an exclusively male attribute.

"Before we part, captain," he said, checking his stride, "why are you so anxious to climb to the midpoint?"

"There will never be another opportunity, my lord—and I have as much right as any man."

"How long have you been flying airships?"

"Three years, my lord." Berise was carefully observing the formalities of address, but her stern expression and heightened colour made it clear that she was angry at him, and he liked her for it. He had a natural sense of kinship with people who were unable to disguise their feelings.

"My ruling about the assembly flights is unchanged," he said, deciding to show her that the years had not robbed him of his humanity, that he could still sympathise with youth's ambitions. "But when the fortresses are in place there will be frequent supply flights, and the fortress crews themselves will be rotated on a regular basis. If you can curb your impatience, albeit briefly, you will have ample opportunity to prove your worth in the central blue."

"You are very kind, my lord." Berise's bow seemed deeper than was necessary, and her smile could have suggested amusement as much as gratitude.

Did I sound pompous? he thought, watching her walk away. Is that young woman laughing at me?

He considered the questions for a moment, then clicked his tongue in annoyance as it came to him how trivial was the subject which had diverted him from his major responsibilities.

The parade ground at the rear of the palace had been chosen as the launch site, partly because it was fully enclosed, partly because it made it easy for King Chakkell to keep a close eye on every aspect of the sky fortress project.

The fortresses were wooden cylinders—twelve yards in length and circumference and four in diameter—each of which had been built in three sections. Two prototypes had been produced in the initial war effort and the sections comprising them were lying on their sides at the western edge of the ground, looking like giant drums. The huge balloons which were to carry them into the weightless zone had already been attached and were lying on the baked clay, their mouths held open by ground crew, and hand-cranked fans were being used to inflate them with unheated air. It was a technique which had been devised at the time of the Migration to lessen the risk of damage to the linen envelopes when hot gas was fired into them from the burners.

"I still say it's madness for you to go aloft at this stage," liven Zavotle said as he crossed the parade ground with Toller. "And even now it isn't too late for you to appoint a deputy."

Toller shook his head and placed a hand on Zavotle's shoulder. "I appreciate your concern, liven, but you know it can't be done that way. The crews are terrified as it is, and if they thought I was afraid to go up there with them they would be completely useless."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"You and I have been in the weightless zone before, and we know how to deal with it."

"The circumstances were different," Zavotle said gloomily. "Especially for our second visit."

Toller gave him a reassuring shake. "Your system will work—I'll stake my life on that."

"Spare me the jests." Zavotle parted from Toller and went to confer with a group of his technicians who were waiting to observe the take-off. He had proved himself so valuable to the sky fortress project that soon after their first meeting Chakkell had appointed him Chief Engineer, thus making Toller redundant to a large degree and freeing him for the first ascent. As a result, Zavotle felt responsible for thrusting his friend into dangers whose extent could hardly be guessed, and he had been increasingly morose over the past few days.

Toller glanced up at the sky, to where the great disk of Land was poised at the zenith, and once again it came to him that he might die up there, midway between the two worlds. On analysing his reaction to the thought, the disturbing thing was that he felt no real fear. There was a determination to avoid being killed and to guide the mission through to a successful conclusion, but there was little of the normal human sense of dread at the possibility of having his life snuffed out. Was that because he could not envisage Toller Maraquine, the man at the centre of creation, meeting the same fate as all ordinary mortals—or had Gesalla been right about him? Was he really a war-lover, as the long-dead Prince Leddravohr had been—and did that explain the malaise which had begun to affect him in recent years?

The thought was a disquieting and depressing one, and he pushed it aside to concentrate on his immediate duties. All day there had been intense activity around the six fortress sections as supplies were loaded and secured, and last-minute adjustments were made to engines and equipment. Now the area was comparatively empty, with only the launch teams and the flight crews standing by their odd-looking ships. Some of the latter exchanged words and glances as they saw Toller approaching and knew that the 2,500-mile ascent was about to begin. The pilots were all mature men, selected because of their flying experience during the Migration; but most of the others were youngsters who had been chosen for their physical fitness, and they tended to be highly apprehensive about what was to follow. Understanding their worries, Toller put on a show of being relaxed and cheerful as he reached the row of slow-stirring balloons.

"The wind conditions are perfect, so I will not detain you," he told them, raising his voice against the clattering and whirring of the inflation fans. "I have only one thing to say. It is something you have heard many times before, but it is so important that it is worth repeating here. You must remain tethered to your ships at all times, and wear your parachutes at all times. Remember those basic rules and you will be as safe in the sky as you are on the ground.

"And now let us be about the work with which the King has entrusted us."

His closing words were far from being as inspirational as he would have liked, but a traditional speech delivered in high Kolcorronian would have seemed incongruous in the context of the strangest war in human history. In past conflicts the common man had always been emotionally involved—largely through fear of what an invading horde would do to his loved ones—but in this case most of the general populace were quite unaware of any threat. In a way it was an unreal war, a contest between rulers, where a few gladiators were thrown into the ring like tumbling dice to bring about an arbitrary decision, largely influenced by their ability to endure pain and deprivation, on the viability of a political idea. How was he to explain, justify and glorify that to a handful of hapless individuals who had been lured into the King's service, originally, by the prospect of steady pay and a soft life?

Toller went to his own ship, giving the signal for the five other pilots to do likewise. He had chosen to fly a fortress midsection because it looked less airworthy than the closed endsections and its crew needed an extra boost to their confidence. A temporary floor had been installed a short distance below one rim, and on that were the crew stations and lockers containing various supplies.

The centrally mounted burner was one which had served in the Migration and had been lying in Chakkell's stores for more than twenty years. Its main component was the trunk of a very young brakka tree which had been used in its entirety. On one 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 other side a similar mechanism controlled the flow of halvell, and both valves were operated by a common lever. The passageways in the latter valve were slightly enlarged, automatically supplying the greater proportion of halvell which had proved best for sustained thrust.

Because the section was lying on its side the floor was vertical and Toller had to lie on his back in his chair to operate the burner's controls. His sword, which he had not thought to discard, made the attitude all the more awkward. He pumped up the pneumatic reservoir, then signalled to the inflation supervisor that he was ready to begin burning. 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 short to reduce the risk of heat damage to the balloon fabric—and the great envelope began to distend further and lift clear of the ground. The inflation crew raised it further by means of the four acceleration struts, which constituted the principal difference between the skyship and a craft designed for normal atmospheric flight. Now three-quarters full, the balloon sagged among the struts, the varnished linen skin pulsing and rippling like a giant lung.

As it gradually rose to the vertical position the crew holding the balloon's crown lines came walking in and attached them to the section's load points, while others gently rotated the section until its axis was perpendicular. All at once the section was ready to take to the air, held down only by the pull of the men holding its trailing ropes. The remainder of the flight crew scaled its sides on projecting rungs and took their places.

Toller nodded in satisfaction as he glanced along the line of craft and saw that the other crews had gone aboard in unison with his own. It was a departure from established Kolcorronian practice for a group of ships to take off simultaneously, but successful assembly of the fortresses in the weightless zone was going to depend on precision flying in close formation. Zavotle had decided that a mass take-off would help the pilots familiarise themselves with the technique, and also give an early indication of where problems could lie. There had been no time for trial ascents, and the crews would have to learn new skills under the tutelage of the severest and most unforgiving taskmaster of all.

Having assured himself that the other five pilots were ready to fly, Toller waved to them and fired a prolonged burst to initiate the climb. The roar of the burner was magnified in the vast echo chamber of the balloon which now blotted out most of the sky, and at the end of the blast the handlers released their lines on command from the launch supervisor. As the ship began to drift vertically upwards, with no breeze to impart a lateral component to its motion, Toller stood up and looked over the rim of the section into the slowly receding parade ground. He picked out the compact form of liven Zavotle, easily distinguishable because of his prematurely white hair, and waved to him. Zavotle did not respond, but Toller knew he had been seen and that Zavotle was wishing he could exchange places rather than have another man put his ideas to the test.

"Bring in the struts, sir?" The speaker was the rigger, Tipp Gotlon, a lanky gap-toothed youngster who was one of the few volunteers on the flight.

Toller nodded and Gotlon began working his way around the circular deck, drawing in the free-hanging acceleration struts by their tethers and securing them to the rim. Mechanic Millyat Essedell, a competent-looking, bow-legged man with several years of Air Service experience, was not required to do anything at this stage of the flight, but he was crouched at his equipment locker, busily sorting and checking the tools. The midsection ships had three-man crews—as compared with five in the end-sections—because they were burdened with the extra weight of the armaments the fortresses would use against invaders.

Satisfied that his companions were reliable, Toller directed all his attention into finding a burn ratio which would give a climb speed in the region of twenty-four miles an hour. He settled on a rhythm of four seconds on and twenty seconds off—well remembered from his first interplanetary crossing—and for the next ten minutes the pilots of the other ships practised keeping exactly level with him. They made a striking spectacle, being so huge and close, with every detail sharply etched in pure light, while the world gently sank into the blue haze of distance.

The ships had become Toller's only reality.

Looking down on the sketchy geometries of the city of Prad, he could feel little affinity with the place or its inhabitants. He had again become a creature of the sky, and his preoccupations were no longer those of mere land-locked beings. Affairs of state and the posturing of princes now mattered little in comparison with the condition of a rivet or the correct tensioning of a rope or even the strange ruminative sounds which a balloon would sometimes emit for no apparent reason.

By the time the practice period had ended the squadron had attained a height of two miles and Toller gave the signal for a vertical dispersion to take place. The manoeuvre was carried out quickly and without mishap, changing the tight horizontal group into a loose stepped formation which could face the onset of night with little risk of collision.

Toller had driven himself to the point of exhaustion before the take-off, sometimes getting only two hours sleep in a night, and it was during the enforced idleness of the ascent that his body claimed its due compensation. Even while operating the burner he would sometimes lapse into a torpor, counting off the rhythm by instinct, and much of his rest periods were spent in dozing and dreaming. Often when he awoke he genuinely had no idea where he was, and would gaze up at the patient, looming curvatures of the balloon in fear and confusion until he had deduced what it was and where it was taking him. At other times, especially at night when the meteors flickered continuously all around, he would not succeed in awakening fully and in his tranced condition imagined that he was on an ascent of long ago, in the company of men and women who had long since died or been turned into strangers by the processes of time, all of them voyaging into the future with varying degrees of trepidation and hope.

The changing patterns of night and day enhanced his temporal disorientation. As the ascent continued Overland's night grew shorter and its littlenight expanded, slipping towards the equilibrium which would be attained midway between the sister planets, and Toller found himself almost losing track of the sequence. The surest measure of time's passing became the ship's altimeter—a simple device consisting of nothing more than a vertical scale, from the top of which a small weight was suspended by a delicate coiled spring. At the beginning of the flight the weight had been opposite the lowest mark on the scale, but as the climb continued and the pull of Overland's gravity diminished, the weight drifted upwards in a perfect analogue of the flight, a miniature ship sailing a miniature cosmos.

Another reliable indicator of progress was the increasing coldness. On Toller's first ascent the crew had been surprised by the phenomenon and had been considerably distressed as a result, but now thickly quilted suits were available and the low temperatures were made tolerable. It was even possible, while seated close to the burner, to achieve a cosy, cocooned warmth—a condition which abetted Toller's persistent drowsiness, and in which he could spend hours staring into the darkening blue of the sky, at fierce stars scattered on overlapping whirlpools of light, at the splayed luminance of comets, and at Farland hanging in the distance like a green lantern.

One of the most important problems facing the mission was that of recognising the exact centre of the weightless zone. Toller knew that in theory there was no actual zone of weightlessness, that it was a plane of zero thickness, and that a fortress positioned as little as ten yards to one side or the other would inevitably begin the long plunge to a planetary surface. It had been assumed, however, that reality would be more forgiving than absolute equations and would allow some leeway, no matter how slight.

Toller's first job was to show that the assumption had been justified.

The six ships had switched over to jet propulsion days earlier, when the lift generated by hot air had become negligible, but now their engines were silent as they hung in a gravitational no-man's-land. Toller found it eerie that the crews could communicate well with each other simply by shouting—although their voices seemed to be absorbed quickly in the surrounding immensities, they could in fact carry for hundreds of yards. For many minutes he had been busy with the device, invented by Zavotle, which was intended to show up any significant vertical motion of his ship. It consisted of a small pan containing a mixture of chemicals and tallow which gave off thick smoke when ignited, and a bellows-like attachment with a long nozzle. The machine made it possible to shoot out from the side of the ship tiny balls of smoke which retained their form and density for a surprisingly long time in the still air. Zavotle's idea was that the smoke, being no heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, would create stationary markers by which the ship's motion could be gauged. Basic though the system was, it seemed to be effective. Toller had forbidden Essedell and Gotlon to move in case they tilted the circular deck, and he had been sighting the smoke puffs along the line of the handrail for long enough to convince him there was no relative displacement.

"I'd say we're holding," he shouted to Daas, pilot of the second midsection, who had been carrying out similar observations. "What say you?"

"I agree, sir." Daas, barely visible as a swaddled figure at the rail of his ship, waved to supplement his message.

Foreday had just begun and the sun was positioned "below" the six craft, close to the eastern rim of Overland. The upflung brilliance was illuminating the underside of the fortress sections, casting their shadows on the lower halves of the balloons, adding an unnatural and theatrical aspect to the scene. Toller suddenly became aware of a sense of elation as he surveyed the unearthly spectacle. He felt well-rested and strong after the brief hibernation of the ascent, ready to do battle in a new kind of arena, and within him was a peculiar sensation of such intensity that he was obliged to pause and analyse it.

There seemed to be a core of lightness which had nothing to do with the zero gravity conditions, and from that core came varicoloured rays—the metaphor was too simple, but the only one available to him—characterised by feelings of joy, optimism, luck and potency, which infused every part of his mental and physical being. The overall effect was strange and at the same time oddly familiar, and it took him several seconds to identify it and realise that he felt young. No more than that, and no less—he felt young!

An emotional reaction followed almost immediately.

I suppose many would think it strange for happiness to come to a man at a time like this. He relaxed his grip on the handrail slightly, allowing his feet to drift upwards from the deck, and the dreaming disk of Overland, cupped in its slim crescent of brightness, came into view beneath the ship. This is why Gesalla compared me to Leddravohr. She senses the fulfilment I get when called upon to defend our people, but she is unable to share in it and therefore she becomes jealous. No doubt she is anxious about my safety, and that too prompts her to say things she later regrets in the privacy of the bedchamber…

"I'm ready to go, sir." Gotlon's voice came from close behind Toller, calling him back into the practical universe. Toller brought his feet down on to the deck and turned to see that the young rigger, without awaiting the order, had donned his full personal flight kit. His lanky form was all but unrecognisable in the thick quilting of a skysuit, which included fur-lined gauntlets and boots. The lower half of his face was hidden by a woollen muffler, through which his breath emerged in white vapourings, and his form was further bulked out by a parachute pack and by the air jet unit strapped to his midriff.

"Shall I go out now, sir?" Gotlon fingered the karabiner on the tether which was keeping him close to the ship's rail. "I'm ready."

"I can see you are, but curb your impatience," Toller said. "There must be a full audience for your exploits."

As well as being ambitious, Gotlon was one of those rare individuals who were totally without fear of heights, and Toller felt lucky to have found him in the short time available. The crews of the six fortress sections had been in the weightless zone long enough to start getting used to floating in the air like ptertha, but a huge psychological barrier had yet to be surmounted.

Final assembly of the fortresses could not begin until it had been demonstrated that a man could untie himself, jump free of his ship and successfully return to it by means of his air jet. Although he had intellectual confidence in the hastily devised system, Toller was unashamedly relieved that he was not required to put it to the initial test. Once in reality, and many times since in nightmare, he had seen a man begin the 2,500-mile fall from the fringes of the central blue, at first moving so slowly that he seemed to be at rest, and then, as the gravitational yearning of the planet grew more insistent, dwindling and dwindling into the plunge which would last more than a day and end in death.

Toller's lungs were labouring in the rarefied air, and he felt a stinging coldness inside his chest as he shouted the necessary orders to the other five pilots. While all crewmen were lining up at the rails of their ships their eyes were fixed on Gotlon. He waved to them like a child attracting his friend's attention before a daring playground stunt. Toller allowed him the breach of discipline in the interests of general morale.

He scanned the five men in the nearest fortress end-section and with some difficulty, because of the all-enveloping skysuits, picked out Gnapperl, the sergeant who had been so vindictive in the matter of Oaslit Spennel's execution. Now ranked as an ordinary skyman, Gnapperl had not even tried to protest when Toller had selected him for the first mission, and had gone through his few days of training with a gloomy acceptance of his fate. It was not in Toller's nature to engineer another's death in cold blood, but Gnapperl had no way of knowing that and had become a very apprehensive and unhappy man—a state in which Toller was prepared to leave him indefinitely.

"All right," he said to Gotlon when he judged the moment to be right. "You may now part company with us—but be sure to return."

"Thank you, sir," Gotlon replied, with what Toller would have sworn was genuine pleasure and gratitude. He unclipped his line, raised himself by using his wrists until he was floating horizontally, then rolled over the rail and kicked himself clear of the side, using more force than Toller would have done. A bright blue void opened between him and the ship, and from one of the other vessels came the sound of a man quietly retching.

Gotlon slid away towards the stars, cradled in sunlight, gradually slowing as air resistance overcame his momentum, and by chance came to a halt in an upright position relative to those watching. Without pause, he twisted with an eel-like motion until he was facing away from the line of ships, and rapid movements of his right arm showed that he was pumping air into the propulsion unit. A few seconds later the hissing of the jet was faintly heard. At first it seemed to be having no effect, then it became apparent that he was indeed returning to his point of departure. His course was not perfectly true, and several times he had to glance back over his shoulder and adjust the direction of his air jet, but in a short time he was close enough to the ship to grasp the cane which Essedell was extending to him. Bracing his feet against the side, Essedell pulled on the cane and Gotlon came zooming in over the side like a man-shaped balloon.

"Well done, Gotlon!" Toller reached out casually with his right hand to arrest the weightless figure, and was surprised to find his arm painfully driven back beyond its normal traverse. The impact spun him round, still clutching Gotlon, and it was several seconds before the two men were able to stabilise themselves by gripping partitions. Toller was puzzled over what had happened, but the mystery was displaced from his thoughts by an outbreak of cheering and shouting from the crews of the other ships.

Toller had to acknowledge his own feelings of relief and reassurance. It was one thing to sit in a comfortable room in the palace and accept the pronouncements of clever men on the subject of celestial mechanics; but it was a different order of experience entirely to cast free of a ship and tread the thin air of the weightless zone, precariously balanced between two worlds, trusting one's life to little more than a set of blacksmith's bellows. But now he had seen it done! Having been performed once, the miracle was no longer a miracle. It had become part of the skyman's armoury of routine skills—and, importantly, had helped ease Toller's mind with regard to the ordeal which awaited him at the end of the mission.

He gave the order for all personnel to begin practising free flight. The period he could allow for the crews to adapt to the supremely unnatural activity was ridiculously short—but King Chakkell, with Zavotle's concurrence, had decided that time was the most vital factor in the preparations for the battle against Land. The small emergency cabinet had chosen to gear the war effort to meet the most unfavourable case: ten days for the reconnaissance ship to return to Land; two days for Rassamarden to react to the news it was carrying; and, on the assumption that part of his invasion fleet was already operational, a further five days for the vanguard of the enemy to reach the weightless zone.

Seventeen days.

By the end of that time, ran Chakkell's decree, there must be a minimum of six fortresses positioned at the midpoint and ready for combat.

Toller had been stunned by the announcement. The whole concept of fortresses had been presumptuous enough, but the notion of designing, building and deploying six of them in a mere seventeen days had struck him as being absurd in the extreme. He had, however, forgotten about Chakkell's unique combination of abilities—the ambition which had raised him to the throne, the gift for organisation with which he had once assembled a thousand-strong fleet of skyships, the ruthless determination which hurled aside or burst through every obstacle. Chakkell was an able ruler in years of peace, but he only came into his own during darker hours, and his fortresses were being built on time. It now remained to be seen whether the flesh-and-blood elements of his plan could withstand the same punishing degree of stress as those fashioned from inert matter.

Toller was highly conscious of others watching when it became his turn to push himself out from the side of the ship. He did his utmost to maintain an upright attitude with regard to the balloon and its cylindrical load, and was beginning to think he had succeeded when he realised that the great blue-and-white whorled disk of Land—which had been hidden by the balloon since the start of the ascent—appeared to be on the move above him. It drifted downwards and disappeared under his feet, to be followed by a remarkably similar apparition of Overland partaking in the same stately motion. There was no sensation of tumbling—he seemed to be the only stable object in a rolling universe in which the sun, the sister planets and the line of skyships followed each other in wavering succession—and he was grateful when the movement eventually slowed and ceased. He was also glad to discover that the experience of hanging in the blue emptiness was not as bad as he had feared. Apart from the inexplicable sensation of falling, which troubled all who entered the weightless zone, he felt reasonably secure and capable of functioning.

"Anybody who feels like grinning at my acrobatics should get it over with now," he shouted to the silently watching men. "The serious work begins in a few minutes, and there will be little cause for mirth, I can assure you."

There was appreciative laughter from the crews and renewed activity among the bulkily suited figures as they made their sorties with varying degrees of aptitude. Toller quickly realised that his own initial efforts were not as good as those of young Gotlon, but he persevered with the air jet and picked up the knack of propelling himself with fair accuracy to any point he wished to reach. The skill would have been easier to acquire had the exhaust been on his back, thus enabling him to face forward when in motion, but lack of time had forced the Air Service workshop to produce the simplest possible type of unit.

As soon as Toller was satisfied with his own competence he called the five other pilots to him for a final review of the forthcoming assembly procedure.

The conference was the strangest in which he had ever taken part, with six middle-aged men—all veterans of the Migration—hanging in a circle against a panoply of astronomical features, among which meteors continually darted like burning arrows. Three of the pilots—Daas, Hishkell and Umol—had been known to Toller since his days in the old Skyship Experimental Squadron, and he had relied upon their recommendations to a large extent when recruiting the remaining pair, Phamarge and Brinche.

"First of all, gentlemen," he said, "have we learned anything new? Anything which in your opinion affects the plan for building the fortresses?"

"Only that we should do it as fast as possible, Toller," Umol replied, using permitted familiarity. "I swear this cursed place is colder than the last time I was passing by. Look at this!" He pulled down his muffler to reveal a nose that was distinctly blue.

"The place is the same as ever, old hand," Daas told him. "Your trouble is you no longer have any fire in your balls."

"Did I say gentlemen?" Toller cut in, quelling Umol's obscene response. "Children, we have work to do, and nobody wants our task completed faster than I, so let us make sure we know what we are undertaking."

He spoke mildly, knowing from the little he could see of their faces that his companions were pleased with the success of the air jets and that their confidence in the project had increased accordingly. For the next few minutes he rehearsed the sequential stages of the assembly plan in detail. The first step was to rotate the six ships through ninety degrees to bring the fortress sections into their operational attitudes, with their lateral portholes facing both planets. It would then be necessary to unclamp the false decks and fire short bursts on the jets to drive the balloons, still trailing the decks, a short distance away from the circular sections. Once the sections were floating free they could then be linked with ropes, drawn together and sealed to form two cylinders with closed ends.

At that point the work force was scheduled to split into two separate groups.

Those whose duty it was to man the fortresses would go inside them and prepare for their lengthy stay in the weightless zone. Meanwhile, the six pilots—each accompanied by a rigger—would begin returning the precious balloons and engines to Overland for use in further missions. The early stages of the descent were straightforward enough and caused no forebodings among the experienced pilots. It was a matter of rotating the stripped-down craft through a further ninety degrees, and—using the engines in the thrust mode—driving them a short distance into Overland's gravitational field. The ships would be travelling upside down, something no commander liked doing, but that phase would last only a few hours, until they had regained enough weight to give them the balloonist's much-cherished pendulum stability for the descent. A final rotation through half-a-circle would normalise the ships' attitudes, putting Overland in its rightful place beneath the crews' feet, where it would remain for the rest of the journey home.

So far the flight plan and its techniques were conventional—something which any surviving pilot from the Migration could have outlined in seconds—but the strictures of the crisis situation had yet to be applied. Toller could remember, with diamond clarity, all the relevant words from that first meeting with Chakkell and Zavotle, the words which told him that the sky and he had not yet tested each other to the limit…

"The descent is going to be the worst part," Toller said. "Quite apart from the cold—which will be severe—the men are going to be sitting on an open platform, with thousands of miles of empty air beneath them. Just think of it! Trip on a rope and over the edge you go! It was bad enough in the old-style gondolas, but there you at least had the sidewalls to give you some sense of security. I don't like it, liven—five days of that sort of thing would be a bit too much for any man. I think we…" He stopped speaking, surprised, as he saw that Zavotle was nodding his head in evident agreement.

"You're absolutely right, quite apart from the fact that we simply cannot allow five days for the return," Zavotle said. "We shall need you and the other pilots back on the ground again much sooner than that, to say nothing of the balloons and engine cores."

"So…?"

Zavotle gave him a calm smile. "I suppose you have heard of parachutes?"

"Of course I've heard of parachutes," Toller said impatiently. "The Air Service has been using them for at least ten years. What are you getting at?"

"The men must return by parachute."

"Wonderful idea!" Toller clapped a hand to his forehead in case his sarcasm had not been noticed. "But—correct me if I'm wrong—does a man with a parachute not descend at roughly the same speed as a skyship?"

Zavotle's smile became even more peaceful. "Only if the parachute has been opened."

"Only if…" Toller walked around the small room, staring down at the floor, and returned to his chair. "Yes, I see what you mean. Obviously we can save some time if a man doesn't deploy his parachute until he is well into the fall. At what height should he open it?"

"How about, say, one thousand feet?"

"No!" Toller's reaction was immediate and instinctive. "You can't do that."

"Why not?"

Toller stared hard at Zavotle's face, reading the familiar features in an unfamiliar way. "You remember the first time we entered the central blue, liven. The accident. We both looked over the side and watched Flenn being taken away from us. He fell more than a day!"

"He didn't have a parachute."

"But he fell for more than a day!" Toller pleaded, appalled at what the intervening years had done to Zavotle. "It's too much to expect."

"What's the matter with you, Maraquine?" King Chakkell put in, his broad brown face showing exasperation. "The end result is the same whether a man falls for a day or a single minute—if he has no parachute he dies, and if he has a parachute he lives."

"Majesty, would you like to take that drop?"

Chakkell gazed back at Toller in simple bafflement. "Where's the relevance in your question?"

Unexpectedly, it was Zavotle who chose to reply. "Majesty, Lord Toller has practical cause for concern. We have no idea of the effects such a fall might have on a man. He might freeze to death … or asphyxiate… Or there may be ill effects of a different ilk—a pilot who was physically sound but insane would be of scant value to you." Zavotle paused, his pencil tracing a strange design on the paper before him. "I suggest that, as I was the one who proposed the scheme, I should be among those who put it to the test."

You had me fooled, you little weasel, Toller thought, listening to his former crewmate with a resurgence of his affection and respect. And, just for that, I will ensure that you remain where you belong—right here on the ground.

In general, there was little difference in outlook between the men who had volunteered for the mission and those who had simply been told they were taking part. Both groups understood very well that defying the King's will in a time of war would result in summary execution, and some of the volunteers had simply been making a virtue out of necessity, but confirmation of the fact that they could fly independently of the ships and come to no harm had boosted the general morale. If we have not died thus far, the reasoning had been, perhaps there is no reason for us to die at all. The outward sign of that optimism had been the shouting with which the men filled the sky as they developed their new skills and prepared for the next phase of the undertaking.

But now, Toller noticed, they had again fallen silent.

The last of the balloons had been separated from its fortress section, and—burdened with only its circular false deck and engine unit—had retreated a short distance from the centre of activity. Insubstantial though they were, the sheer hugeness of the gas-filled envelopes had made them dominant features of the aerial environment. In the mind they were vast friendly entities with the power to transport humans safely from world to world—and now, suddenly, they were withdrawing their patronage, abandoning their minuscule dependants in the hostile blue emptiness.

Even Toller, committed to the enterprise as he was, felt an icy slithering in his gut as he took note of how small the unsupported fortress sections looked against the misted infinities all around. Until that point it had seemed to him that the worst thing a man could be called upon to do was to take the long drop to the planetary surface, but he now felt almost privileged in comparison to those who would remain in the weightless zone. Privileged, yet in another way—and the realisation jolted him—oddly cheated.

What is happening to me? he thought, becoming alarmed. He had rarely given himself over to introspection, considering it a waste of time, but recently his emotional reactions to events had been so laden with ambivalence and contradiction that his mind had been obliged to turn inwards. And here was another example. In one instant he had pitied the fortress crews—and in the next he had come close to envying them! Few people knew better than he how illusory was the concept of military glory, therefore he could not have been seduced by his fleeting vision of a new breed of patriots, ultimate heroes, manning their fragile wooden outposts in the lonely reaches of the sky.

What is happening to me? he again demanded of himself. Why am I no longer satisfied by what satisfied me once? Why, unless I am deranged, do I press forward where any reasonable man would retreat?

Realisation that he was neglecting his duties prompted Toller to end the self-interrogation and propel himself closer to the first fortress under assembly. The mid-section and one end-section had been successfully aligned and brought together, and now the remaining component was about to be drawn into place. It had been deposited rather a long way from its companions, giving the men who were hauling on the link ropes time to develop a fast and effective rhythm. Clinging to the sides of the mid-section, four of them were working in unison with their free arms. The end-section, which had been sluggish at first, was now moving at a good speed and showed no signs of slowing down as it neared its assigned place. Toller knew it had no weight and therefore could cause no damage by colliding with the rest of the fortress, but on principle he disliked the use of excessive force in any engineering operation. He could foresee the section rebounding and having to be drawn in again.

"Stop hauling—it's coming in too fast," he shouted to the men on the link ropes. "Get ready to grip it and hold it in place."

The men acknowledged his command with waves and made ready to receive the advancing cylinder. Phamarge, who had been overseeing the task, signalled for another two men who were holding on to the short lashing ropes of the mid-section rim to assist their comrades. One of them pulled himself against the leather-covered rim and locked himself in place by clamping his thighs around it.

Toller watched the end-section close in on the waiting man. The wooden structure was losing very little speed and was easily compacting the stout ropes in its path—all of which, Toller thought, was rather strange for an object which was as weightless as a feather. Alarm geysered through his system as he recalled a similar anomaly at the end of Gotlon's first personal flight—the weightless man had delivered a surprisingly powerful impact, almost as though…

"Get off the rim!" Toller bellowed. "Get clear!"

The suited man turned towards him, but made no other movement. There was a frozen instant in which Toller recognised the rough-hewn features of Gnapperl, then the end-section drove against the remainder of the fortress. Gnapperl screamed as his thigh-bone snapped. The entire fortress bucked, dislodging men from its sides, and the end-section—still squandering kinetic energy—slewed a little and partially entered the main structure. Two opposing lengths of rim scissored across Gnapperl's body for a moment, ending his screams, before the fortress sections drifted apart and came to rest.

Toller reflexively triggered his air jet and only succeeded in pushing himself farther away from the scene. He twisted around, pumping more air into the unit, and propelled himself backwards into the confusion of drifting figures. Colliding gently with the mid-section, he grasped a lashing point to steady himself and looked at the injured man. Gnapperl was drifting free of the fortress, arms and legs spread, and there was a long rent across the front of his skysuit. Blood had soaked into the exposed insulation, making the tear resemble a dreadful wound, and bright red globules were floating in a swarm around him, glistening in the sunlight. Toller was left with no doubt that Gnapperl was dead.

"Why didn't the fool get out of the way when you told him?" Umol said, using a rope to draw himself closer to Toller.

"Who's to say?" Toller thought of the dead man's odd moment of paralysis before the impact, and wondered if Gnapperl would have been so slow to react had the warning come from anybody else. It could be that his mistrust of Toller had been responsible for his death, in which case Toller also bore responsibility.

"He was a down-looking brute, anyway," Umol commented. "If any of us had to go, he's the one I would have picked—and at least he taught us something useful."

"What?"

"That something which can crush a man on the ground can crush him up here. It doesn't seem to matter that nothing has any weight. Can you understand it, Toller?"

Toller wrenched his thoughts from morality to physics. "Perhaps being totally weightless affects our bodies. It's something we ought to be careful about in the future."

"Yes, and meanwhile there's a carcase to be disposed of. I suppose we could just leave it be."

"No," Toller said immediately. "We'll take him back to Overland when we go."

Upside down, the six ships had travelled all through the hours of darkness. In addition to the speed imparted by their jets, there had been a slight gain as Overland tightened her gravitational web, but the acceleration had been negligible so early in the descent. And as soon as daylight had returned—with Overland's binary dance swinging her clear of the sun—the engines had been shut down and air resistance had brought the vessels to a halt. The pilots had then used the tiny lateral jets to turn the ships over, an operation conducted in majestic slowness, with the universe and all the stars it contained wheeling at the behest of six ordinary men, and the sun obediently sinking to a new position beneath their feet.

The manoeuvre had been completed without mishap, and now it was time to do things which had never been done before.

Toller was strapped into the pilot's seat, with Tipp Gotlon near to him on the other side of the engine unit. The false deck on which they were sitting was a circular wooden platform, only four good paces across, and beyond its unguarded rim was a yawning emptiness, a drop of more than two thousand miles to the planetary surface. At varying distances the five other sky-ships were suspended in the void against the complex blue-and-silver background of the heavens. Their two-man crews, because they were in the cylindrical shadows of the decks, were only visible where silhouetted against glowing spirals or the splayed radiance of comets. The huge balloons, brilliantly illuminated on their undersides, had the apparent solidity of planets, pear-shaped worlds with meridians marked by load tapes and lines of stitching.

Toller was concerned less with the unearthly ambience than with the demands of his own microcosm. The deck space was occupied by a clutter of equipment and stores, from the pipe runs of the lateral jets to the lockers used for the storage of power crystals, food, water, skysuits and fallbags. Waist-high partitions of woven cane enclosed the primitive toilet and galley. From the latter protruded the lower part of Gnapperl's body, which had been lashed in place to forestall its unnerving tendency to rise up and meander in weightless conditions.

"Well, young Gotlon, this is where we part company," Toller said. "How do you feel about that?"

"Ready when you are, sir." Gotlon gave his centrally divided smile. "As you know, sir, it is my ambition to become a pilot, and I would be honoured if you would allow me to pull the rip line."

"Honoured? Tell me, Gotlon—are you enjoying this?"

"Of course, sir." Gotlon paused while an unusually large meteor burned across the sky below the ship, followed by a sonorous clap of thunder. "Well, perhaps it would be wrong to say I'm enjoying it, but I have no wish to do anything else."

A fair answer. Toller thought, resolving to keep an eye on the youngster's future progress. "All right, pull the line when you're ready."

Without hesitation Gotlon leaned forward, grasped the red line which ran down to the crew stations from the balloon's interior, and tugged hard on it. The line went slack in his hand. There was no perceptible change in the ship's equilibrium or dynamics, but high in the flimsy cathedral dome of the balloon something irrevocable had happened. A large panel had been torn out of the crown, surrendering the ship to the forces of Overland's gravity. From that moment onwards the ship and its crew could do nothing but fall, and yet Toller felt a strange timidity over the next inevitable step.

"I see no point in sitting around here," he said, taking no chances on having his feelings observed. His feet were already tucked inside his fallbag, which was a fleece-lined sack large enough to enclose his entire body. He unfastened his restraints, straightened up, and in the act of doing so noticed his sword, which was still tied by its scabbard belt to a nearby stanchion. For an instant he considered letting it remain. It was an inconvenient and incongruous article to be taken into the confines of the bag, but leaving it behind would have been like abandoning an old friend. He strapped the weapon to his side and looked up in time to see Gotlon—still smiling!—launch himself backwards from the edge of the deck.

Gotlon tumbled away into the sterile blue, sunlight glancing unevenly from the underside of his cocooned form until he came to rest some thirty yards from the ship. He made no attempt to modify his final attitude, and could have been thought lifeless but for the transient feathering of his breath.

Toller looked towards the sister ships and saw that other men, following Gotlon's example, were venturing into the thin air. It had been decided in advance that there would be no synchronisation—individuals would jump when they were ready—and suddenly he had a fear of being last, and being seen to be last, which outweighed his reluctance to perform the supremely unnatural act. Toller drew the fallbag up to his chest, pushed hard with his feet and sailed face downwards over the rim of the deck.

Overland slid into view beneath him, and they were face to face like lovers, and she was calling to him from thousands of miles below. Little was visible in the gibbosity where night still reigned, but in the sunlit crescent the equatorial continent could be seen to span the world, pale green powdered with ochres beneath traceries of white cloud, and the great oceans curved away to the mysterious watery poles.

Toller surveyed the entire hemisphere for a short time, chastened and subdued, then drew up his knees to make himself smaller and closed the neck of the fallbag over his head.

I did not expect to sleep.

Who would have thought that a man could sleep during the dizzy plunge from the central blue to the surface of the world?

But it's warm and dark in here, and the hours pass slowly. And as my speed gradually increases and the atmosphere grows thicker, I can feel the bag beginning to rock and sway, and there is a hypnotic quality to the soughing of the air as it rushes by. It is easy to sleep. Almost too easy, in fact. The thought has crossed my mind that some of us may not awaken in time to get out of the bags and deploy our parachutes, but surely that is a ridiculous notion. Only a man with a deep inner urge to end his life could fail to be ready when the time comes.

Sometimes I open the bag and look out to see how my companions are faring, but it is becoming impossible to find them, whether above or below me. We are falling at slightly different rates, and as the hours go by we are being strung out in a long vertical line. It is noteworthy that we are all falling faster than the ships—something which had not been predicted. The false decks, being symmetrically attached to the balloons, are trying to maintain a horizontal attitude even though the balloons have collapsed and are being dragged along in their wakes, thus creating greater air resistance.

As we left the ships behind I noticed the decks oscillating in the air stream, and the last time I picked them out they were like six slow-winking stars. I must relate all this to Zavotle and see if he wants to redesign the attachments so that the decks can fall edge-on. The ships would descend faster that way. The impact with the ground would be worse, but the engine cores are indestructible.

Sometimes I think about the men we left up there in the weightless zone, and have found genuine cause to envy them. They at least have something to do! An abundance of tasks to perform … the sealing of the fortresses with mastic … the hourly smoke readings to warn of drifting … the setting up of the pressurisation bellows … the preparation of the first meals … the checking of engines and armaments … the establishment of watch rotas…

The fallbag rocks gently, and the air whispers persuasively all around.

It is too easy to fall asleep in here…