Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 3



The height gauge consisted of a vertical scale from the top of which a small weight was suspended by a delicate coiled spring. Its operating principle was so simple and effective—as a ship rose higher and gravity lessened the weight moved upwards on the scale—that only one modification had been introduced in fifty years. The spring, which would once have been a hair-like shaving of brakka wood, was now made of fine-drawn steel. Metallurgy had made great strides in Kolcorron in recent decades, and the guaranteed consistency of steel springs made gauges easy to calibrate.

Toller studied the instrument carefully, making sure it indicated zero gravity, then floated himself out of the cabin and over to the ship's rail. The fleet had reached the weightless zone in the middle of a daylight period, which meant that the sun's rays were washing across him in a direction parallel with the deck. In one direction the universe appeared its normal dark blue, plentifully scattered with stars and silver spirals, but in the other there was a surfeit of light which made viewing difficult. Below his feet, Overland was a huge disk exactly bisected into night and day, the latter half making its own contribution to the general luminance; and over his head, although occulted by the ship's balloon, the Old World was similarly adding to the confusion of radiance.

On a level with Toller, starkly floodlit by the sun, were the three other balloons which supported airship gondolas in place of the lightweight box structures normally used by skyships. The smooth outline of each gondola had been marred by the addition of a vertically mounted engine, the exhaust cone of which projected well below the keel. Further down the sky, ranged in groups of four against the glowing complexities of Overland, were the sixteen ships making up the main part of the fleet. Seen from above, their balloons looked perfectly spherical and had the apparent solidity of planets, with load tapes and lines of stitching to represent meridians. The roar of jet exhausts filled the sky, occasionally reaching an accidental climax as a number of ships fired their pulsed bursts in unison.

Toller was using binoculars to search for the circular group of permanent defence stations, and wishing for a speedy method of finding them regardless of the disposition of sun and planets. The nub of the problem was that he had no real idea which direction was most likely to yield results. His reading of the height gauge could be out by tens of miles, and the convection currents which helped make the air bridge between the world so cold often gave ascents lateral dispersions of the same order. Large though they were on the human scale, the stations were insignificant in the chill reaches of the central blue.

"Have you lost something, young Maraquine?" The voice was that of Commissioner Trye Kettoran, official leader of the expedition, who had chosen to fly in one of the modified ships. He was subject to low-gravity sickness and had hoped that the comfort of an enclosed cabin would lessen the severity of his attacks. His expectations had been in vain, but he was enduring his illness with great fortitude in spite of his age. At seventy-one, he was by far the oldest member of the expedition. He had been appointed by Queen Daseene precisely because he had clear recollections of the old capital of Ro-Atabri and therefore was well qualified to report on present conditions there.

"I have orders to inspect the Inner Defence Group," Toller said. "The Service was hard pressed to loft twenty ships for this expedition, and as a result we are forced to omit a fifty-day inspection—but if I see anything going seriously wrong I am empowered to divert one of the expedition's ships for as long as it takes to put things right."

"Quite a burden of responsibility for a young captain," Kettoran said, his long pale face showing faint signs of animation. "But—even with the aid of those splendid glasses—what kind of inspection can you carry out at a range of several miles?"

"A superficial one," Toller admitted. "But in truth all we have to concern ourselves with at this early stage is the general alignment of the stations. If one is seen to have separated from the others, and to be drifting towards Overland or Land, it is simply a matter of nudging it back into the datum plane."

"If one begins to fall, won't they all follow suit?"

Toller shook his head. "We are not dealing with inert pieces of rock. The stations contain many kinds of chemicals—pikon, halvell, firesalt, and so on—and a slight change in conditions can lead to the production of gases which could leak through a hull if a seal weakens. The thrust produced may have no more force than a maiden's sigh, but let it go on for a long time—then augment it with the growing attraction of gravity—and, all at once, one is confronted with an unruly leviathan which is determined to dash itself upon one world or the other. In the Sky Service we consider it prudent to take corrective action long before that stage is reached."

"You have quite a way with words, young Maraquine," Kettoran said, his breath pluming whitely through the scarf which was protecting his face from the intense cold of the weightless zone. "Have you ever considered diplomacy as a career?"

"No, but I may have to if I fail to locate these accursed wooden sausage skins before long."

"I will help you—anything to take my mind off the fact that my stomach wants to rise into my mouth." Kettoran knuckled his watery eyes with a gloved hand, began surveying the sky and within a few seconds—to Toller's surprise—gave a satisfied exclamation.

"Is that what we're in search of?" he said, pointing horizontally to the east, past the three modified skyships. "That line of purple lights…"

"Purple lights? Where?" Toller tried in vain to see something unusual in the indicated part of the sky.

"There! There! Why can't you…?" Kettoran's words faded into a sigh of disappointment. "You're too late—they have gone now."

Toller gave a snort of combined amusement and exasperation. "Sir, there are no lights—purple or otherwise—on the stations. They have reflectors which shine with a steady white glow, if you happen to catch them at the right angle. Perhaps you saw a meteor."

"I know what a meteor looks like, so don't try to—" Kettoran broke off again and pointed at another part of the heavens. "There's your precious Defence Group over there. Don't try to tell me it isn't, because I can see a line of white specks. Am I right? I am right!"

"You're right," Toller agreed, training his binoculars on the stations and marvelling at the speed with which luck had directed the old man's gaze to the correct portion of the sky. "Well done, sir!"

"Call yourself a pilot! Why, if it hadn't been for this unruly stomach of mine I would have…" Kettoran gave a violent sneeze, retreated into the cabin and closed the door.

Toller smiled as he heard further sneezes punctuated by muffled swearing. In the five days of the ascent to the weightless zone he had grown to like the commissioner for his humorous grumpiness, and to respect him for his stoicism in the face of the severe discomforts of the flight. Most men of his age would have found some means of evading the responsibility thrust upon him by Queen Daseene, but Kettoran had accepted the charge with good grace and seemed determined to treat it as yet another in a lifetime of routine chores undertaken on behalf of the ruler.

Toller returned his attention to the defence stations and was relieved to see that they formed a perfectly straight line. When he had first qualified as a skyship pilot he had enjoyed the occasional maintenance ascents to the stations. Entering the dark and claustrophobic hulls had been a near-mystical experience which had seemed to conjure up the spirit of his grandfather and his heroic times, but the futility of the so-called Inner Defensive Group's very existence had quickly dominated his thoughts. If there was no threat from Farland the stations were unnecessary; if the enigmatic Farlanders ever were to invade their technological superiority would render the stations irrelevant. The wooden shells were merely a token defence which had in some measure eased the late King Chakkell's mind, and to Toller their principal value was that maintaining them was a way of preserving the nation's interplanetary capabilities.

Having satisfied himself that there was no need to make a diversion from the vertical course, he lowered the binoculars and gazed thoughtfully at the furthermost of the other three ships making up his echelon. It was the one commanded by Vantara. Ever since the foreday he had learned that the Countess was taking part in the expedition he had been undecided about which approach to use in future dealings with her. Would an air of aloofness and dignified reproval wring an apology from her and thus bring them together? Or would it be better to appear cheerful and unaffected, treating the incident of her report as the sort of boisterous skirmish which is bound to occur when two free spirits collide?

The fact that he, the injured party, was the one who planned reconciliation had occasioned him some unease, but all his scheming had proved redundant. Throughout the preparations for the flight Vantara had managed to keep her distance from him, and had done so with an effortless grace which denied him the consolation of feeling that he was important enough to be evaded.

One hour after the fleet had passed through the datum plane the group of defence stations had shrunk to virtual invisibility, and the pull of Land's gravity was imperceptibly adding to the ships' speed. A sunwriter message from General Ode, the fleet commander, was flashed back from the flagship instructing all pilots to carry out the inversion manoeuvre.

Glad of the break in the shipboard routine, Toller drew himself along a safety line to the midsection, to where Lieutenant Correvalte was at the engine controls. Correvalte, who was newly qualified, looked relieved when he heard that he was not expected to handle the inversion. He relinquished the controls and positioned himself a short distance away as Toller began the delicate task. The ship had four slim acceleration struts which joined the gondola to the balloon's equatorial load tape, and which gave the whole assemblage the modest degree of stiffness required for flying in the jet propulsion mode. Although the balloon itself was very light, a flimsy envelope of varnished linen, the gas within it had a mass of many tons, with inertia to match, and had to be coaxed with infinite care when any change of direction was called for. A pilot who was too enthusiastic in his use of the ship's lateral jets would soon And that he had driven the top end of a strut through the envelope. While not necessarily serious in low-gravity conditions, that kind of damage was difficult and time-consuming to put right—and the offender was always given good cause to regret his error.

For what seemed a long time after Toller had begun firing one of the tiny cross-mounted jets it seemed that its thrust was having no effect, then with grudging slowness the great disk of Overland made its way up the sky. As it showed itself above the ship's rail, hanging before the crew in all its painted vastness, the immense convexity that was the Old World emerged from behind the balloon and drifted downwards. There was a moment during which, simply by turning his head from side to side, Toller could see two worlds laid out in their entirety for his inspection—the twin arenas in which his kind had fought all the battles of evolution and history.

Superimposed on each planet, and similarly lit from the side, were the other ships of the fleet. They were in varying attitudes—each pilot inverting at his own pace—arcs of white condensation from their lateral jets complementing the global cloud patterns thousands of miles below. And embracing the spectacle was the frozen luminous panoply of the universe—the circles and spirals and streamers of silver radiance, the fields of brilliant stars with blue and white predominant, the silent-hovering comets and the darting meteors.

It was a sight which both thrilled and chilled Toller, making him proud of his people's courage in daring to cross the interplanetary void in frail constructs of cloth and wood, and at the same time reminding him that—for all their ambitions and dreams—men were little more than microbes labouring from one grain of sand to another.

He would not have cared to admit as much to any of his peers, but it was a comfort to him when the inversion manoeuvre had been completed and the ship was sinking back into humanity's natural domain. From now on the air would grow thicker and warmer, less inimical to life, and all his preoccupations would begin to resume their normal importance.

"That's how it's done," he said, returning control of the vessel to Correvalte. "Get the mechanic to convert the engine back to burner mode, and tell him to make sure that the heaters are working properly."

Toller emphasized the final point because, although the aerial environment would indeed grow less harsh as the ship lost height, the direction of the airflow over the ship would be reversed. The considerable amount of heat lost from the balloon's surface would be borne upwards and away in the slipstream instead of bathing the gondola with an invisible balm which helped protect its occupants from the deadly coldness of the mid-passage.

The engine had to be shut down while being converted from a thrust creator to a producer of hot gas for conventional aerostatic flight, and Toller took advantage of the period of quietude to go into the forward cabin in search of nourishment. Nobody had ever explained the baffling sensation of falling which men experienced in and close to the weightless zone, but it had been spoiling his appetite for more than a day and as a result he was in the ambivalent position of needing food while not actually wanting it. The selection of fare he found in the provision nets—strips of dried meat and fish, cereals and puckered fruit and berries—was less than seductive. He rummaged through what was available and finally settled for a slab of grain cake which he chewed upon without enthusiasm.

"Don't despair, young Maraquine!" Commissioner Kettoran, who had wedged himself into a seat at the captain's table, was feigning cheerfulness. "We'll soon be in Ro-Atabri, and once we're there I'll take you to some of the best eating places in the world. Mind you, they'll be in ruins—but I'll take you to them anyway." Kettoran winked at his secretary, Parlo Wotoorb—who was across the table from him—and both old men hunched their thin shoulders in amusement, looking strangely alike.

Still chewing, Toller nodded gravely to acknowledge the witticism. Kettoran and Wotoorb had been contemporaries of his grandfather. They had actually known him—a privilege he envied—and both had survived to quite an advanced age with no apparent erosion of their faculties. Toller doubted that he would reach his seventies with the same degree of fortitude and resilience. It had always seemed to him that there was a special quality about the men and women who had lived through the great events of recent history—the ptertha plague, the Migration, the conquest of Overland, the war between the sister worlds. It was as though their characters and spirits had been tempered in the crucible of their times, whereas he was destined to live through a fallow period, never knowing for sure if he had it within him to respond to, and as a consequence be ennobled by, a great challenge. Try as he might, he could not imagine the tamed and stable circumstances of his day yielding up adventures which were in any way comparable with those which had earned Toller the Kingslayer his place in legend. Even the journey between the worlds, which had once been the dangerous limit of men's experience, had become a routine matter…

A sudden brightness washed in through the portholes on the left side of the room—momentarily rivalling the prisms of sunlight which slanted across the table from the opposite wall—and somebody outside on the open deck gave a howl of fright.

"What was that?" Toller was starting for the door, hindered by the lack of gravity, when there came an appalling burst of sound, akin to the loudest thunderclap he had ever heard. The room tilted and small objects chattered noisily in their brackets.

Echoes of the thunder were still booming and surging when Toller got the door open and was able to propel himself out of the cabin. The ship was twisting in violent air currents which drew groans and creaks from the rigging. Lieutenant Correvalte and the mechanic were clinging to lines by the engine, their shocked faces turned towards the north-west. Toller looked in the same direction and saw a restless, swirling core of fiery brilliance which quickly dwindled into nothingness. All at once the sky was placid again, the silence complete except for faint cries coming from men on other ships.

"Was it a meteor?" Toller called out, aware of the question's superfluity.

Correvalte nodded. "A big one, sir. It missed us by about a mile, perhaps more, but for a moment I thought our time had come. I never want to see anything like that again."

"You probably never will," Toller said reassuringly. "Get the rigger to check the envelope for damage, particularly around the strut attachments. What is the fellow's name?"

"Getchert, sir."

"Well, tell Getchert to look lively—it's time he did something to earn his salt on this trip."

As Correvalte moved away towards the aft superstructure, where the ordinary crew members were housed, Toller gripped a transverse line and drew himself to the rail. Now that the inversion had been carried out he could see only the ships of his own echelon and, below him, the balloons of the four leading vessels, but all seemed well with the fleet in general. He had made many ascents to the weightless zone and as a result had become inured to the thought of a meteor actually striking a ship. It was one of the rare cases in which he could draw comfort from thinking about man's insignificance in the scale of cosmic events. His ships were so small and the universe so large that it would be quite unreasonable for one of the blazing cosmic bullets to find a human mark.

It was ironic that only minutes earlier he had been privately bemoaning the humdrum nature of interplanetary flight, but if there were to be dangers he wanted them to be of a type which could be challenged and overcome. There was precious little glory to be wrung from casual extermination by a blind instrument of nature, a commonplace fragment of rock speeding through the void from…

Toller raised his head, directing his gaze to the south-east, to the part of the sky where the meteor must have originated, and was intrigued when he picked out what looked like a tiny cloud of golden fireflies. The cloud was roughly circular and was expanding rapidly, its individual components brightening with each passing second. He stared at it, bemused, unable to recall having seen anything similar amid the sky's sparkling treasures, and then—like the abrupt clarification of an image in an optical system—his sense of scale and perspective returned, and there came a terrible realization.

He was looking at a swarm of meteors which appeared to be heading directly towards the fleet!

His understanding of the spectacle transformed it, seeming to increase the tempo of events. The shower opened radially like a carnivorous blossom, silently encompassing his field of vision, and he knew then that it could be hundreds of miles across. Unable to move or even to cry out, he gripped the ship's rail and watched the blazing entities fan ever outwards, racing towards the peripheries of his vision, still in utter silence despite the awesome energies being expended.

I'm safe, Toller told himself. I'm safe for the simple reason that I'm too small a prey for these fire-monsters. Even the ships are too small…

But something new was happening. A radical change was taking place. The obsidian horsemen from the far side of the cosmos, who had pursued their courses through total vacuum for millions of years, had at last encountered a denser medium, and they were destroying themselves against barriers of air, the gaseous fortifications which protected the twin planets from cosmic intruders.

Favourable though the encounter was for any creature living on the surface of Land or Overland, it boded ill for travellers taken by surprise at the narrowest point of the bridge of air between the two worlds. The meteors, racked by intolerable stresses, began to explode, and as they shattered into thousands of diverging splinters they were bound to become less discriminatory in their choice of targets.

Toller flinched as, with a wash of light and overlapping peals of thunder, the disintegrating meteors momentarily filled the whole sky. Suddenly they were behind him. He turned and saw the entire phenomenon in reverse, the great disk of radiance contracting as it raced into the remoteness of space. The main difference in its appearance was that there was less corpuscularity—the circle was a nearly uniform area of swirling flame. On leaving the last tenuous fringes of the twin worlds' atmosphere, the fiery bullets were deprived of fuel and quickly faded from sight. A numb silence engulfed the tower of ships.

How did we survive? Toller thought. How in the name of…?

He became aware of shouting from somewhere not far above him. There came a blurry explosion, typical of the pikon-halvell reaction, and he knew that at least one of the ships had been less fortunate than his own.

"Put us on our side," he shouted to Lieutenant Correvalte, who was frozen at the control station. Toller clung to the rail, impatiently straining to see upwards past the curvatures of the balloon, while Correvalte began the regulated intermittent firing of one of the lateral jets.

A few seconds later Toller's eyes were greeted by the bizarre spectacle of a bluehorn drifting downwards in the sunlit air, against the background of daytime stars. The explosion must have hurled it clear of the gondola in which it was being transported. It was barking in terror and lashing out with hoofed feet as it imperceptibly fell towards Land.

Toller turned his attention to the stricken ship, now coming into view. Its balloon had been reduced to a formless canopy of fabric panels. All four sides of the gondola had been blasted away from the base, and were still spinning slowly as part of an irregular ring which was made up of the figures of men, boxes of stores, coils of rope and general debris. Here and there among the floating confusion were flashes and fizzlings which emitted billows of white condensation as small quantities of pikon and halvell encountered each other and, not being confined, burned harmlessly against the pastel background of Overland.

Crew members from the other three ships of the same echelon were already launching themselves out from the sides of their vessels to begin rescue work. Toller scanned the struggling human figures which were part of the central chaos, and felt a pang of relief as he reached the unexpected conclusion that none of them was dead. He guessed that the gondola had received a glancing blow from a tiny meteor fragment and had turned on its side, thereby causing some of the green and purple power crystals to mingle and ignite, perhaps in the engine hoppers.

"Are we under attack? Are we to die?" The quavering words came from Commissioner Kettoran, his long pale face appearing at the door of the cabin.

Toller was about to explain what had happened when he noticed a movement at the rail of Vantara's ship. She had come to the side, accompanied by the smaller and less impressive figure of the lieutenant who had been with her at the time of their inauspicious meeting. Even at a distance the sight of the princess was enough to disturb Toller's composure. He saw that Vantara and her officer seemed to be concentrating their attention on the still-struggling bluehorn. The animal had lost all the momentum imparted to it by the explosion, and was apparently in a fixed position roughly midway between Vantara's ship and Toller's.

He knew, however, that the permanence of the spatial relationship was an illusion. The bluehorn and the ships were all in the grip of Land's gravity, and all were falling towards the surface thousands of miles below. The all-important difference was that the ships were receiving some degree of support from their hot air balloons, whereas the bluehorn was falling freely. This close to the weightless zone the discrepancy in speeds was hard to detect, but it was there nevertheless, and in accordance with the laws of physics was steadily increasing. Unless corrective action was taken quite quickly the bluehorn—a valuable animal—would be condemned to that fatal plunge, lasting more than a day and a night, which every skyman had experienced in bad dreams.

Vantara and the lieutenant, whose name Toller had forgotten, were busy with their hands and within seconds he realized why. They propelled themselves over the rail with weightless ease, and he saw they had donned their personal flight packs. The units, powered by miglign gas, were a far cry from the old pneumatic systems hastily invented at the time of the interplanetary war, but in spite of their advanced design they were tricky enough for the unpracticed operator.

Evidence of that fact came almost immediately when Vantara, failing to keep the thrust in line with her centre of gravity, went into a slow tumble and had to be righted and steadied by her companion. It occurred to Toller at once that the two women, obviously intent on retrieving the bluehorn, could be getting themselves into real danger. The terrified beast was still lashing out with its plate-sized hooves, one blow from which would be sufficient to pulp a human skull.

"We had a close call," he shouted over his shoulder to Kettoran as he snatched a flight unit from a nearby rack. "Ask Correvalte about it!"

He went over the rail and sprang out into the sunlit air with the unit still in his hand. The twin worlds with all their intricate detail filled most of the sky on each side of him, and the space between was largely occupied by ranks of bulbous ships, plus wreaths of smoke and condensation through which miniature humanoid figures could be seen going about their enigmatic errands. Daytime stars and the brightest of the nebulae and comets effectively completed a full sphere of visual phenomena.

Toller, who had made a point of mastering the standard flight unit, used his drift time to strap the pack securely around his torso. He brought himself into a good alignment and fired a long burst which took him directly towards the bluehorn. The fierce chill of the mid world region, enhanced by slipstream, clawed at his eyes and mouth.

Vantara and her lieutenant were now close to the bluehorn, which was still barking and crowing in terror. They edged nearer to it and were beginning to uncoil the rope they had brought when Toller used his retro jet to bring himself to a halt close by. It was a long time since he had been within speaking distance of Vantara, and—in spite of the bizarre circumstances—he felt a tingling awareness of her physical presence. The very molecules of his body seemed to be reacting to an invisible aura which surrounded her. Her oval face, partially shaded by the cowl of her skysuit, was as lovely as he remembered it—enigmatic, utterly feminine, unnerving in its perfection.

"Why can't we meet in ordinary places, the way other people do?" Toller said.

The countess eyed him briefly, turned away with no change of expression and spoke to her lieutenant. "We'll bind the back legs first—it would be easier that way."

"I would like to try calming the beast down first," the lieutenant replied. "It's too risky to go behind it while it's so fretful."

"Nonsense!" Vantara spoke with the brisk confidence of one who had had extensive stables at her disposal since childhood. Forming a wide noose with the rope, she sailed closer to the bluehorn on a plume of miglign condensation. Toller was about to call out a warning when the animal, which was continually twisting its head around and had a full view of its surroundings, struck out with both hind legs. One of its enormous hooves grazed Vantara's hip, catching the material of her suit without impacting on her body. The imparted force put her into a spin which was checked almost at once by the cold-stiffened rope she was still holding. Had the bluehorn's hoof connected with her pelvis she would have been seriously injured, and it was apparent that she understood the fact because her face was pale when she regained a stable attitude.

"Why did you pull on the line?" she demanded of her lieutenant, her voice stinging with anger. "You drew me in! I could have been killed!"

The lieutenant's jaw sagged and she shot a scandalized glance at Toller, tacitly enlisting him as a witness. "My lady, I did no such—"

"Don't argue, lieutenant."

"I said we should calm the beast down before—"

"Let's not set up a court of enquiry," Vantara interrupted, her breath forming white wreaths of condensation in front of her face. "If you have suddenly become expert in animal husbandry you may retrieve this foul-tempered sack of bones. It's of pretty poor stock, anyway." She twisted in the air and propelled herself back towards her ship.

The lieutenant watched her depart, then looked at Toller, an unexpected smile plumping her already rounded cheeks. "The theory is that if this poor dumb creature had good breeding it would have known not to kick a member of the royal family."

Toller felt that the levity was misplaced. "The countess had a narrow escape."

"The countess brings these things down on herself," the lieutenant said. "The reason she took it on herself to retrieve the bluehorn—rather than leave the job to common hands—was that she wanted to demonstrate her natural control over bloodstock. She firmly believes in all the aristocracy's most cherished myths—that their males are born with an instinctive mastery of generalship; that the females are gifted in every branch of the arts and—"

"Lieutenant!" Toller's annoyance had been growing throughout the discourse and suddenly could no longer be contained. "How dare you speak thuswise to me about a superior officer! Don't you realize I could have you severely punished for that kind of talk?"

The lieutenant's eyes widened in surprise, then her expression became one of disappointment and resignation. "Not you, too. Not another one!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Every man who meets her…" The lieutenant paused, shaking her head. "I would have thought that after that business of the collision report… Do you know that the beautiful Countess Vantara did her utmost to have you deprived of your command?"

"Do you know that you are supposed to use the proper form of address when speaking to a senior officer?" Toller was vaguely aware that there was something ludicrous about his manner—especially when the two of them were poised in blue emptiness between the swirled disks of planets—but he was unable to listen passively while Vantara was subjected to such acidulous criticism.

"I'm sorry, sir." The lieutenant's face had lost all expression and her voice was neutral. "Do you want me to see what I can do about the bluehorn?"

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Jerene Pertree, sir."

Toller now felt pompous, but could see no way out of the web he had woven around himself. "There's no scarcity of experienced handlers on this flight—are you sure you won't get yourself sent flying?"

"I grew up on a farm, sir." Jerene opened the valve of her propulsion unit a short distance, producing just enough thrust to drift her towards the bluehorn's head. The animal's bulging eyes rolled as she drew near and shining strands of saliva gathered in the air around its mouth. Toller felt a stab of concern—those massive jaws could easily rend human flesh beneath the stoutest garment—but Jerene was making gentle, wordless sounds which seemed to have an immediate soothing effect on the bluehorn. She slipped one arm around its neck and began stroking the animal's brow with her free hand. It submitted to her touch, visibly becoming docile, and in a few seconds she was able to slide its eyelids down over the staring amber eyes. Jerene nodded towards Toller, signalling for him to come in with the rope.

He jetted forward, bound the bluehorn's back feet together, paid out a short length of line and repeated the process with the forelegs. He was not accustomed to that kind of work, and all the while was half-expecting a violent response from the captive animal, but it allowed him to complete the operation without mishap.

By that time the chaos above was being brought under control. The stricken ship was being abandoned. Overland's surface was almost completely occulted by condensation trails as crewmen from other vessels began the work of salvaging supplies. They were shouting to each other, sounding almost cheerful as they realized how slight was the damage to the fleet as a whole, compared to what it could have been. It occurred to Toller that the expedition had been lucky in another respect—if the encounter with the meteor swarm had not happened so close to the weightless zone recovery from it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible. Every object he could see was falling towards Land, but the rate of descent was so leisurely that in practice it could be disregarded for the time being.

Men were also jetting upwards from the four ships of the first echelon, among them Sky-commodore Sholdde, chief executive officer for the expedition. Sholdde was a tough and laconic fifty-year-old, much favoured by the Queen because of the relish with which he tackled difficult assignments. The fact that he had lost a ship, although no blame could be laid at his door, was going to make him edgy and difficult to deal with for the rest of the flight.

"Maraquine!" he shouted at Toller. "What do you think you're doing there? Get back to your ship and see what extra stores you can take on board. You shouldn't be concerning yourself with that miserable flea-bag."

"How dare you call me a flea-bag!" Jerene murmured in Sholdde's direction, feigning indignation. "Flea-bag, yourself!"

"Look, I've already warned you about…" Toller, who had been about to admonish the lieutenant on her disrespect for senior officers, met the humorous glint in her brown eyes and his resolve foundered. He liked people who could make jokes at times of stress, and he had to admit that he would have had trouble summoning up the nerve to go as close to the frightened bluehorn's head as Jerene had done.

"You may rejoin your ship now," he said stiffly. "The farmers can collect their bluehorn when they're ready."

"Yes, sir." Jerene pushed herself clear of the quiescent animal and reached for the controls of her propulsion unit.

Toller now felt that he had been unfair. "By the way, lieutenant…"

"Sir?"

"You did well with the bluehorn."

"Why thank you, sir," Jerene said, smiling demurely in a way which left Toller almost certain that he was being mocked. He watched her jet away from him, trailing a cone of rolling white condensation, and his thoughts turned immediately to Vantara. She had narrowly escaped injury from the bluehorn's hoof and had done the right thing in retiring to her ship at once. It was unfortunate, though, that her doing so had deprived him of the opportunity to establish a better relationship between them.

But I've got time in hand, he thought, deciding to be philosophical. There'll be all the time in the world when we get to Land.