Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 16



The Kolcorron completed two orbits of the planet at a height of more than three thousand miles, hurtling through the tenuous outer fringes of the atmosphere. And then, after Sondeweere was satisfied that she had taken all variables into account, she gave instructions for a series of firings of the main engine, the effect of which was to kill the ship's orbital speed.

The Kolcorron began to drop vertically towards the surface of Farland.

At first the rate of fall was negligible, but as the hours went by the speed built up and those on board began to hear a burbling rush of air against the planking of the hull. Tipp Gotlon was at the controls. Under Sondeweere's seemingly omniscient guidance, he brought the ship into a vertical attitude, tail down, and fired a long blast on the engine which not only checked the descent but produced a small upward velocity. At that stage the ship was surrounded by air which, although still rarefied, was capable of supporting human life for a reasonable period. The ship's upward movement would soon be halted and reversed by Farland's gravity, but for the time being the exterior working conditions resembled those of Overland's weightless zone—and the task of deploying the skyship began.

Before going outside, Toller went to the top deck for a final word with Gotlon, ascending the ladder with some difficulty because of his skysuit and the added encumbrances of the parachute and personal propulsion unit. A single ray of sunlight from a porthole was slanting across the compartment, casting a lemon-coloured glow over the pilot's face, upon which was an expression of moody discontent.

"Sir," he said on seeing Toller, "how is Zavotle coping with the outside work?"

"Zavotle is coping very well," Toller replied, aware of what was in Gotlon's mind. He had been disappointed on being told that he was to remain with the ship, and had argued that only the able-bodied members of the crew should take part in what promised to be an arduous and dangerous rescue mission. Toller had countered by saying that the role of the Kolcorron was of paramount importance to the whole project, therefore logic demanded that the best pilot should be left in control of the vessel. The tribute to his flying skills had mollified Gotlon only a little.

"The work I am given could as easily be done by a sick man," he said, returning to his original argument.

Toller shook his head. "Son, liven Zavotle is not merely a sick man. He would not thank me for telling you this, but there is little time remaining to him, and I think it is in his heart to be buried on Farland."

Gotlon looked uncomfortable. "I hadn't realised. So that's why he has been so crabbed of late."

"Yes. And if he were to be left here alone on the ship, and chanced to die, what would become of the rest of us?"

"I didn't say goodbye to him. I was resentful."

"He won't be concerned about that. The best thing you can do for Zavotle is to make sure that his logbook is returned safely to Overland. There is much in there that will be invaluable to future space travellers, including all that he has learned from Sondeweere, and I am charging you with the personal responsibility for · ensuring that it is delivered into King Chakkell's hands."

"I'll do my utmost to…" Gotlon paused and looked at Toller with eyes which had become strangely aware. "Sir, the mission… Are you in any doubt about the outcome?"

"No doubt at all," Toller said, smiling. He gripped Gotlon's shoulder for a second, then drew himself back to the ladder and went down it, controlling his bulk with difficulty in the confined space because of the weightless conditions.

When he got outside the ship, into the boundless sky, movement became effortless. The others were already at work, separating the skyship section from the main body of the Kolcorron, and Farland was an enormous, mind-stunning convex backdrop to their activities.

A white polar cap was visible on the planet, which had more cloud than Land or Overland, giving it a reflective power which enveloped the floating figures in a storm of brilliance. The sky in the lower half of the sphere of visibility had returned to the dark blue coloration with which Toller was familiar, but above him it shaded into a near-blackness in which the stars and spirals shone with unusual clarity.

He took a deep breath as he relished every aspect of the unearthly scene, feeling privileged, savouring the fact that he had been born into unique circumstances which had directed his life to this unparalleled moment.

Ahead of him was a new experience, a new world to ravish his senses, a new enemy to conquer; within him was the kind of fevered joy he had first known when riding down on Red One to engage a Lander fleet.

But there was something else there—an undertow of panic and despair. The worm at the core of his life had chosen that very instant to resume its coiling and uncoiling, reminding him that after Farland there was nowhere else to go. Perhaps, the now familiar thought came stealing, my grave is down there on that alien globe. And perhaps that is where I want it to be…

"We need those muscles of yours, Toller," Zavotle called out.

Toller jetted down to the aft section of the ship. The criss-cross ropes which bound the section to the main hull had already been slackened off the lashing pins, but the mastic was exerting an obstinate cohesive force which preserved the unity of the structure. Toller helped drive in wedges, work which was irksomely difficult because of the need to cling to the ship with one hand and contain the reaction of the hammer within his own frame. Levers were quite useless for the same reason, and in the end separation was only achieved by the group working their toes and fingers into the partial gap at one side and using their combined muscle power to rip the skyship clear of the mother craft.

It tilted away, wallowing gently, exposing the exhaust cone of the engine which would take the main ship back to Overland. Dakan Wraker had disconnected the control extensions in advance, and his task now was to rejoin the various rods to both engines and to check that they were functioning properly.

"We should have had jacks," Zavotle commented, his face pale and gleaming with sweat. "And have you noticed that it isn't cold here? We're farther from the sun and yet the air is warmer than in our own weightless zone. Nature delights in confounding us. Toller."

"There's no time to fret about it now." Toller flew to the skyship and took part in pushing it sideways, clear of the Kolcorron, with the combined thrust of five personal jets. The crew then began drawing the folded balloon out of the gondola, straightening it out and connecting the load lines. The acceleration struts, which had been sectionised to fit into the ship, were tricky to assemble, but the routine had been practised before the start of the voyage and was completed in good time. Wraker finished his work on the mother ship and within a few minutes of returning to the gondola had fettled its engine in readiness for inflation of the balloon. The operation was facilitated by the fact that the whole assemblage was slowly falling, creating a drift of unheated air into the balloon and helping prepare it for the influx of hot gas.

Toller, as the most experienced skyship pilot, took the responsibility for starting the engine in the burner mode and inflating the balloon with no heat damage to the lower panels. As soon as the insubstantial giant, with all its geometrical traceries, had been conjured into being above the gondola he turned the pilot's seat over to Berise and went to the side.

The Kolcorron was now falling slightly faster than the skyship, its varnished timbers gradually slipping downwards past those who watched from the gondola's rail. Gotlon appeared at the open midsection door and waved briefly before closing it and sealing the ship.

A minute later the main engine began to roar. The spaceship stopped sinking, hovered for a fleeting moment and started to climb. Its engine seemed to grow louder as it moved above the skyship and Toller felt the hot miglign gas blasting out of the exhaust, disturbing the equilibrium of the balloon and gondola. He watched the larger ship until it passed out of sight behind the curving horizon of the balloon, and suddenly he felt in awe of Gotlon, an ordinary young man who nevertheless had the courage to fly off into the void alone, trusting a woman he had never met to guide him into orbit with ethereal commands.

Not for the first time, it came to Toller just how foolhardy he had been in setting out to cross interplanetary space with scarcely an inkling of the dangers ahead. Such hubris surely merited disaster. For himself and Zavotle the ordained penalty was perhaps acceptable, but he had to do all that was in his power to ensure that his youthful companions were not drawn into the maelstrom of his own destiny.

The same thought was to recur to him many times during the six days that it took to descend to the surface of Farland.

Associating with the young fighter pilots, especially Berise, had shown him how much they resented any attempt at what they saw as wet nursing. He had to respect their feelings, but was in a dilemma because he knew their outlook was tinged with overconfidence, the unconsciously arrogant belief that they could triumph over any adversary, survive any danger. The exhilaration of riding jet fighters through the central blue had persuaded them that recklessness was a viable philosophy of life.

His own career hardly gave him the right to take a different standpoint, but he was haunted by the knowledge that from the start he had been woefully unfit to lead an expedition to Farland. Even Zavotle had not understood that in space a moving ship can continue at the same speed for ever with its engine shut down, and that the effects of any extra thrusts were cumulative. They would all have died on entering Farland's atmosphere had it not been for Sondeweere's intervention—and she had been right to condemn him for another crass oversight. He had not even considered the idea that Farland might be populated with ordinary beings, let alone talented super-creatures with powers far beyond his understanding. Sondeweere had assured him that landing on the planet would mean death for the astronauts, and as the descent continued he found it harder and harder to erect barriers of disbelief against her prediction.

Another contributor to his disquiet was Sondeweere herself. Her telepathic visitations had been no surprise to Bartan; Berise and Wraker seemed to have accommodated her in their systems of belief without much difficulty—but Toller had spent too many years as a materialist and sceptic not to feel his inner universe quake every time he thought of her.

The story about the symbon spores had been truly astonishing, but at least he could comprehend every part of it, and with comprehension came acceptance. The notion of direct mind-to-mind contact was in a different category, however.

Even though he had seen the curiously elusive image of her and had listened to her silent voice, something within him rebelled each time he recalled the experience.

It smacked too much of mysticism. If there really were other levels of reality, not accessible to his five ordinary senses, who was to say—to choose but one example—that religious beliefs about the transmigration of souls were unfounded? Where was one to draw the line? Sondeweere's private message for him was that his conviction that he understood the nature of reality, give or take a few minor areas of uncertainty, was and always had been a ludicrous conceit—and that was hard to swallow at his time of life.

Unsettling through Sondeweere's manifestations were, he had little respite from them. She appeared to the crew many times during the descent, especially in the final stages, giving instructions to slow their downward speed, to hover, and once even to ascend for an hour. Her objective was to guide them down through wind layers and weather systems, which were more evident than on Overland, to a landing site she had chosen.

At one stage she correctly warned them of a region of intense cold, many miles in depth, in which the temperature was even lower than that of the weightless zone although the air above and below was relatively warm. In reply to Zavotle's question she spoke of the atmosphere reflecting away some of the sun's heat and of convection currents carrying more of it down to sea level, resulting in a cold layer.

The very fact that Sondeweere knew of such things, she who until recently had been an unlettered agricultural worker, added to Toller's general misgivings. It substantiated her claim to have been sublimated into a superwoman, a genius beyond the ken of genius, and made him feel apprehensive about meeting her face to face. What would a goddess think of ordinary human beings? Would she look on them in much the same manner as they had regarded the gibbons which abounded in the Sorka province of old Kolcorron?

He would have expected Bartan Drumme to show some degree of concern over the same issue, but the youngster gave no sign of it. When not sleeping or taking his turn at the controls, he spent his time talking to Berise and Wraker, quite often swigging from one of the skins of brandy he had included in his kit. Berise had brought drawing materials and she devoted hours to sketching the others and making maps of the approaching planet, the latter mainly for the benefit of Zavotle. For his part, the little man appeared to be deteriorating at an increasing rate. He lay on his palliasse, forearms pressed against his stomach, and rarely became animated except when in communion with Sondeweere. Given the opportunity he would have questioned her for hours, but her visitations were always brief and her instructions terse, as though many other matters competed for her attention.

Unexpectedly, Toller got the most companionship from the crew member he knew least—Dakan Wraker. Although he had been born after the Migration, the soft-spoken man with the crinkly hair and humorous grey eyes had an intense interest in the history of the Old World. While helping Toller to grease and clean the muskets and five steel swords which had been brought on the mission, he encouraged him to talk for long periods about daily life in Ro-Atabri, Kolcorron's former capital city, and the practical arrangements by which it had spread its influence through an entire hemisphere. It transpired that he had ambitions to write a book which would help preserve the nation's identity.

"So we have an artist and a writer on one ship," Toller said. "You and Berise should form a partnership."

"I'd love to form any kind of partnership with Berise," Wraker replied in a low voice, "but I think she has her sights set on another."

Toller frowned. "You mean Bartan? But he's soon to be reunited with his wife."

"An ill-matched couple, don't you think? Perhaps Berise sees no future in the union."

In Wraker's comments Toller recognised an echo of his own thoughts, so it seemed that the only one who was not in doubt about the prospects for Bartan's strange marriage was Bartan himself. Mildly drunk for most of the time, Bartan appeared to live in a state of euphoria, supported by his monomania, buoyed up by the belief that when he met Sondeweere again all would be as it was before. Toller was at a loss to explain how the young man continued to nourish such naive expectations—but could any of the company claim to be displaying greater foresight?

Toller had noticed that even when Sondeweere used a word he had never heard before he nevertheless understood its meaning. It was as though the words themselves were merely convenient carriers, each one freighted with multitudinous layers of meaning and complementary concepts. When mind spoke to mind there were no misunderstandings or areas of vagueness.

No man who listened to Sondeweere's silent voice could doubt anything she said—and she had predicted that the rescue mission would end in tragedy.

It was dark when the skyship drifted down towards the plain—the kind of darkness Toller had previously known only during the hours of deepnight. While the ship still had some altitude there had been soft glimmerings of light visible here and there in the mysterious black landscape, indicative of scattered towns or villages. But this close to touchdown the only luminance came from the sky, and even the Great Spiral could do little more than add fugitive hints of silver to the mist which patchily shrouded the ground.

The air was seeded with moisture, and to Toller—equatorial dweller from a sun-scoured world—it seemed dauntingly cold, with a strange ability to draw the heat out of his body. He and the others had shed the cumbersome skysuits hours earlier, and now they were shivering and rubbing their goose-pimpled arms in an effort to keep warm. The air was also laden with the smell of vegetation, a dank essence of greenness more powerful and pervasive than anything Toller had ever known, and which told him more forcibly than his other senses that he was close to the surface of an alien planet.

As he stood at the gondola's rail he felt keyed-up, exhilarated, entranced—and also regretful that there was to be no opportunity to roam across Farland on foot in daytime and sample its wonders with his own eyes. If Sondeweere met the ship according to plan—and he had little doubt that she would—they would be able to take her on board within seconds. It would not even be necessary for the gondola's legs to make contact with Farland's soil before they headed skywards again under cover of night. By morning they would be out of sight of anybody on the ground, well on their way to a rendezvous with the Kolcorron.

Not for the first time, the thought caused Toller to frown in puzzlement. There seemed to be a wide divergence between the actual course of events and Sondeweere's confident forecast of a disastrous end to the venture. Everything seemed to be going too well. Had she simply been doing her best to keep the would-be rescuers out of possible dangers, or were there other factors in the situation which Toller had not considered and which she had chosen not to divulge? The extra element of mystery, the hint of lurking perils, worked on him like some potent drug, stepping up his heart rate and increasing his brooding sense of anticipation. He scanned the darkness below, wondering if the enigmatic symbonites could have intercepted and silenced Sondeweere, if the projected landing site could be thronged with waiting soldiers.

Wraker was now firing frequent short bursts into the balloon, reducing the speed of descent to a crawl, and as the ground came nearer Toller's eyes began to play malicious tricks on him. The darkness was no longer homogenous, but was composed of thousands of crawling, squirming shapes, all of them with the potential to be what he least wanted them to be. They ran beneath the drifting ship, silently and effortlessly keeping pace with it, their upraised arms imploring him to come within range and be cut and clubbed and hewn and hacked into anonymous fragments of flesh and bone.

It seemed a long, long time before the encompassing gloom relented and yielded up something unambiguous—a tremulous mote of pale grey which gradually lightened in tone and resolved itself into the figure of a woman dressed in white…