Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 14



As commander of the spaceship, Toller would have liked to have been at the controls when the Kolcorron burned its way out of the weightless zone at the beginning of the voyage to Farland.

During training sessions, however, it had become apparent that he was the least talented of the crew when it came to the new style of flying. The ship's length was five times its diameter, and keeping it in a stable attitude while under way required precise and delicate use of the lateral jets, an ability to detect and correct yawing movements almost before they had begun. Gotlon, Wraker and Berise seemed to do it without effort, using infrequent split-second blasts on the jets to keep the crosshairs of the steering telescope centred on a target star. Zavotle and Bartan Drumme were competent, though more heavy handed; but Toller—much to his annoyance—was prone to make overcorrections which involved him in series of minor adjustments, bringing grins to the faces of the other fliers.

He had therefore given Tipp Gotlon, the youngest of the crew, the responsibility for taking the ship out of the twin planets' atmosphere.

Gotlon was strapped into a seat near the centre of the circular topmost deck. He was looking into the prismatic eyepiece of the low-powered telescope which was aimed vertically through a port in the ship's nose. His hands were on the control levers, from which rods ran down through the various decks to the main engine and the lateral thrusters. The fierceness of his gap-toothed grin showed that he was keyed up, anxiously waiting for the order to begin the flight.

Toller glanced around the nose section, which in addition to accommodating the pilot's station was also intended as living and sleeping quarters. Zavotle, Berise and Bartan were floating near the perimeter in various attitudes, keeping themselves in place by gripping handrails. It was quite dim in the compartment, the only illumination coming from a porthole on the sunward side, but Toller could see the others' faces well enough to know that they shared his mood.

The flight would possibly last two hundred days—a dauntingly long period of boredom, deprivation and discomfort—and, regardless of how dedicated a person might be, it was only natural to experience qualms at such a moment. Things would be easier after the main engine had begun to fire, finally committing everybody to the venture, but until that psychological first step had been taken he and the crew were bound to be racked by doubt and apprehension.

Growing impatient, Toller drew himself to the ladder well and looked down into the ship. The cylindrical space was punctuated by narrow rays of sunlight from portholes which created confusing patterns of brightness and shadow in the internal bracing and among the bins which housed the supplies of food and water, firesalt and power crystals. There was a movement far down in the strange netherworld and Wraker, who had been checking the fuel hoppers and pneumatic feed system, appeared at the bottom of the ladder. He came up it at speed, agile in spite of his bulky suit, and nodded as he saw Toller waiting for him.

"The power unit is in readiness," he said quietly.

"And we are likewise," Toller replied, turning to meet Gotlon's attentive eyes. "Take us away from here."

Gotlon advanced the throttle without hesitation. The engine sounded at the rear of the ship, its roar muted by distance and the intervening partitions, and the crew members gradually floated downwards to take up standing positions on the deck. Toller looked out of the nearest porthole just in time to see the cluster of store sections and habitats slide away behind the ship. Some heavily muffled auxiliary workers were hanging in the air near the structures, all of them vigorously waving their farewells.

"This is quite touching," Toller said. "We're being given a rousing send-off."

Zavotle sniffed to show his scepticism. "They are merely expressing heartfelt relief at our departure. Now, at last, they can quit the weightless zone and return to their families—which is what we would be doing if we had any sense."

"You forget one thing," Bartan Drumme said, smiling. "Which is…?"

"I am returning to my family." Bartan's boyish smile widened. "I get the best of both worlds, so to speak—because my wife is waiting for me on Farland."

"Son, it is my considered opinion that you should be the captain of this ship," Zavotle said solemnly. "A man needs to be crazy to set out on a journey such as this—and you are the craziest of us all."

The Kolcorron had been under way for a little more than an hour when Toller began to feel uneasy.

He visited every compartment of the ship, checking that all was as it should be, but in spite of his being unable to find anything wrong, his sense of disquiet remained. Unable to attribute it to any definite cause, he chose not to confide in Zavotle or any of the others—as commander he had to provide resolute leadership, not undermine the crew's morale with vague apprehensions. In contrast to his own mood, the others seemed to be relaxing and growing more confident, as was evidenced by the sprightliness of the conversation on the top deck.

Finding the talk distracting, Toller went back down the ladder and, feeling oddly furtive, positioned himself at a midships porthole, in a narrow space between two storage lockers. It was the sort of thing he had sometimes done in childhood when he needed to shut off the outside world, and in the contrived solitude he tried to pinpoint the source of his forebodings.

Could it be the fact that the sky had unaccountably turned black? Or could it be a deep-seated worry, an instinctive emotional protest, over the idea of building up to a speed of thousands of miles an hour? The main engine had been firing almost continuously since the start of the voyage, and therefore—according to Zavotle—the ship's speed already had to be far in excess of anything in man's previous experience. At first there had been a clearly audible rush of air against the hull, but as the sky darkened that sound had gradually faded away. Sunlight slanting in through the porthole made it difficult for Toller to perceive the outside universe clearly, but the eternal calm seemed to reign as always, yielding no evidence that the ship was hurtling through space at many hundreds of miles an hour.

Could that fact be related to his unease? Was some part of his mind troubled by the discrepancy between what he observed to be happening and what he knew to be happening?

Toller considered the notion briefly and pushed it aside—he had never been unduly sensitive, and travelling in space was not going to alter his basic nature. If he was going to be nervous it was more likely to be over some practical matter, such as having positioned himself so close to a porthole. The planking of the Kolcorron's hull was reinforced with extra steel hoops on the outside and layers of tar and canvas on the inside, imparting great strength to the ship's structure as a whole, but there were areas of vulnerability around the portholes and hatches. On one early test flight a porthole had blown out and a mechanic's eardrums had been ruptured, even though the accident had not occurred in true vacuum.

A brief hissing sound from the upper deck indicated that somebody had mixed a measure of firesalt and water to renew the air's life-giving properties. Perhaps a minute later its distinctive odour—reminiscent of seaweed—reached Toller's nostrils, mingling with the smell of tar which seemed to have been growing stronger.

He sniffed the air, realising that the tarry smell was indeed more noticeable, and his sense of alarm suddenly intensified itself. On impulse he removed one of his gauntlets and touched the black surface of the hull beside him. It felt warm. The degree of heat was far short of what would have been needed to soften the tar, less than his skin temperature, but it was strikingly in contrast with the chill he had expected. The discovery burst open a gateway in his mind, and all at once he knew exactly what had occasioned all his vague forebodings…

His entire body felt uncomfortably warm!

The quilted skysuit had been designed to keep the fierce cold of the weightless zone at bay, and had been barely adequate for its purpose, but now it was proving so efficient that he was on the verge of breaking into a sweat.

This can't be right! We can't be falling into the sun!

Toller was striving to bring his thoughts under control when the sound of the engine died away and in the same moment he heard Zavotle calling his name from the upper part of the ship. Finding that he was again completely without weight, Toller dived through the air to the ladder and went up it hand over hand. He drew himself on to the top deck by means of a rail and faced the rest of the crew, all of whom, with the exception of Gotlon, were clinging to their sleeping nets.

"Something strange is happening," Zavotle said. "The ship grows warm."

"I have noticed." Toller looked at Gotlon, who was regarding him from the pilot's seat. "Are we on course?"

Gotlon nodded vigorously. "Sir, we are exactly on course and have been since the outset. I swear to you that Gola has not departed the crosshairs for as much as one second." Gola was a figure in Kolcorronian myth who appeared before lost mariners and led them to safe havens, and the name had been given to the guide star selected for the first part of the outward journey.

Toller addressed himself to Zavotle. "Couldn't we nevertheless be moving sideways? Falling towards the sun, but with the prow of the ship pointed at Gola?"

"Why should we fall? And even if we were falling it's too soon for extra warmth to manifest itself on that account."

"If you look aft you'll see that we are still in the same relationship with Overland and Land," Berise added. "We are on course."

"This is something for my flight log," Zavotle said, almost to himself. "We have to take it that space is warm. It isn't surprising, really, because in space there is eternal sunshine. But the sun also shines in the weightless zone—and there a terrible coldness reigns. It's yet another mystery, Toller."

"Mystery or no mystery," Toller replied, deciding to act in a positive manner to offset the uncertainty which had been engendered by the first brush with the unexpected, "it means we can divest ourselves of these cursed suits, and that's something for which to be thankful. We can at least enjoy a little comfort."

By the third day of the flight a shipboard routine had become well established, much to Toller's satisfaction. He was aware of the dangers of monotony and-boredom which could lie ahead, but those were predictable human problems and he felt capable of dealing with them. It was when nature itself became capricious, giving the lie to man's most cherished beliefs, that he began to feel like a babe wandering in a dangerous forest.

Since the initial, and now welcome, discovery that space was comfortably warm, the nearest thing to a revelation to come along had been the observation—first reported by Wraker—that there were no meteors in the interplanetary void. To Toller's surprise, liven Zavotle had seized on the observation, apparently in the belief that it possessed some significance, and had made it the subject of another long entry in his log.

The little man's illness seemed to be progressing according to his expectations. Although he uttered no complaints he was visibly thinner, and spent much of his time with both fists pressed into his stomach. He had also, which was quite out of character with the old Zavotle, become short-tempered and acidulous with the younger crew members, particularly Bartan Drumme. The others, while convinced that Bartan was subject to spells of insanity, were tolerant in the matter whereas Zavotle frequently made him a target for ridicule. Bartan accepted the abuse with equanimity, secure in his fortress of delusion, but on several occasions Berise had been stung into taking his part and her relationship with Zavotle had become strained.

Toller was loath to interfere, knowing that his old friend was being driven by a demon worse than his own, and he was trusting that Berise would not let the situation get out of hand. His own relationship with her—ever since their five days in the exclusive universe of the sinking skyship—was warm, comforting and totally dispassionate. They had found each other at a special time, a unique time during which their needs had been perfectly complementary, a time which would never come again, and now they were shaping their own separate courses into the future, without obligations or regrets. It had not even occurred to him to object when she had claimed a place with the expedition. He knew that she understood the dangers, that her reasons had to be at least as valid as his own.

Human interactions apart, Toller foresaw that food and drink—whether being ingested or eliminated—were likely to make the greatest demands on the crew's powers of endurance. There could be no fire for cooking, so the diet consisted of strictly apportioned cold servings of dried, and salted meat and fish, desiccated fruit, nuts and biscuits, washed down with water and one tot of brandy per day.

The fact that the main engine was being fired almost continuously, thus imparting some weight to everything, made the toilet procedures less onerous than in zero gravity conditions, but the experience remained one which called for reserves of stoicism. In the midships lavatory there was a complicated tubular exhaust with one-way valves—the only point at which the hull could be breached in space. Unavoidably, a small quantity of air was lost each time the device was operated, but the volume of gas generated by the firesalt was enough to compensate.

It had originally been envisaged that all six of the crew would take equal turns in the pilot's seat, but the plan was soon modified by practical considerations. Berise, Gotlon and Wraker were able to hold Gola on the crosshairs with ease, and Bartan was rapidly acquiring the same facility—but for Toller and Zavotle the task became even more irksome and tiring. Bowing to expediency, Toller rearranged the duty schedules to let the four young people keep the ship on its interception course with Farland, while he and Zavotle had more time to dispose of as they saw fit. Zavotle was able to occupy himself with astronomical studies and prolonged entries in his leather-bound log, but for Toller the extra hours were burdensome.

At times he thought about his wife and son, wondering what they were doing, and at others he gazed moodily through portholes at a frozen, unchanging panoply of stars, silver whirlpools and comets. In those periods the ship seemed to be permanently locked in place, and try as he might Toller was unable to accept that it was achieving the kind of speed necessary for the interplanetary crossing.

"Are you ready?" Bartan said to Berise. When she nodded he shut down the engine, floated himself out of the pilot's seat and held the straps for Berise while she took his place.

"Thank you," she said, giving him a cordial smile. He nodded politely, impersonally, made his way to the ladder and went down it, leaving Berise to share the top deck with Toller and Zavotle. Gotlon and Wraker were busy loading the fuel hoppers in the tail section.

"I think someone is developing a soft spot for young Bartan," Toller commented, addressing himself to nobody in particular.

Zavotle sniffed loudly. "If that is the case, then that someone is only wasting her time. Our Mister Drumme reserves all his affections for spirits of one kind or another—bottled or disembodied."

"I don't care what you say." Berise paused, hands resting lightly on the controls. "He must have loved his wife very much. If I died or disappeared soon after being married I'd like my husband to fly to another world in search of me. I think it's very romantic."

"You're nearly as mad as he is," Zavotle told her. "I hope we're not all going to be afflicted by some mental contagion, a pterthacosis of the mind. What do you say, Toller?"

"Bartan does his job—perhaps we should leave it at that?"

"Yes." Zavotle gazed through the porthole beside him for a few seconds, his expression becoming enigmatic. "Perhaps he does his job much better than I do mine."

Toller's interest was aroused not only by what the other man had said, but by something in his inflexion. "Is there something wrong?"

Zavotle nodded. "I selected a guide star which was supposed to put us on an interception course with Farland. Had I done the calculations properly, and chosen the guide star well, we should see it and Farland gradually drawing closer together ahead of us."

"Well?"

"We are only five days into the flight, but already it is apparent that Farland and Gola are moving apart. I have put off telling you because I was hoping—foolishly, I suppose—that the situation would change, or that I would be able to devise an explanation. Neither of those things has come to pass, so I must consider myself to have failed to discharge my duties."

"But it isn't all that serious, is it?" Toller said. "Surely, all we have to do is aim closer to Farland. We are not under any threat."

"Only the threat posed by incompetence." Zavotle produced a rueful smile. "You see, Toller, nothing is working out as I expected. Farland seems too bright, and also its image in the telescope is too large. I would swear it is twice as big as when we started out. Perhaps optical instruments work differently in the void. I don't know—I can't explain it."

"It could mean that we have completed half the journey," Berise said.

"I didn't ask for your opinion," Zavotle replied tartly. "You speak of matters far beyond your understanding."

Berise's eyebrows drew together. "I understand that when something appears to double in size the distance to it has been halved. It seems quite simple to my mind."

"To the simple mind everything appears simple."

"Let's have no bickering," Toller said. "What we need…"

"But the idiotic woman is suggesting that we have travelled nine or ten million miles in only five days," Zavotle protested, kneading his stomach. "Two million miles in a day! That is a speed of more than eighty thousand miles an hour—which is impossible. The true speed…"

The true speed of your ship is now in excess of one hundred thousand miles an hour, said the golden-haired woman who had shimmered into existence near the side of the compartment.