The Fugitive Worlds (8 page)

Cassyll gave a reassuring chuckle. "Let me see for myself
this harbinger which troubles you so much—anything which
stills the famous Drumme tongue must be worthy of careful
perusal."

He was still in a mood of comparative levity when, having
prepared and aligned the telescope for him, Bartan stepped
aside and invited him to look into the eyepiece. The first
thing to meet Cassyll's gaze was a fuzzy disk of bluish
brilliance which resembled a soap bubble filled with sparkling
gas, but one touch on the focusing lever achieved a remark
able result.

There before him, suddenly, swimming in the indigo
depths of the universe, was a
world
—complete with polar snow caps, oceans, land masses and the white curlicues of
weather systems.

It had no right to exist, but it did exist, and in that moment of visual and intellectual confrontation Cassyll's first thought
—with no justification he could understand—was for the
future safety of his son.

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 weight
less 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 defense 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 Defense 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 horizon
tally to the east, past the three modified skyships. "That line
of purple lights. . . ."

"Purple lights? Where?" Toller tried in vain to see some
thing 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 exas
peration. "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 Defense 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 marveling 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 defense 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 defense 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 defense 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
maneuver.