The Ragged Astronauts

Chapter 15

“We, have sunwriter reports from as far away as fifty miles upwind,” said Vato Armduran, the S.E.S. chief engineer. “The look-outs say there is very little ptertha activity — so you should be all right on that score — but the wind speed is rather higher than I would have wished.”

“If we wait for perfect conditions we’ll never go.” Toller shaded his eyes from the sun and scanned the blue-white dome of the sky. Wisps of high cloud had overpainted the brighter stars without screening them from view, and the broad crescent of illumination on Overland’s disk established the time as mid-foreday.

“I suppose that’s true, but you’re going to have trouble with false lift when you clear the enclosure. You’ll need to watch out for it.”

Toller grinned. “Isn’t it a little late for lessons in aerodynamics?”

“It’s all very well for you — I’m the one who’s going to have to do all the explaining if you kill yourself,” Armduran said drily. He was a spiky haired man whose flattened nose and sword-scarred chin gave him something of the appearance of a retired soldier, but his practical engineering genius had led to his personal appointment by Prince Chakkell. Toller liked him for his caustic humour and lack of condescension towards less gifted subordinates.

“For your sake, I’ll try not to get killed.” Toller had to raise his voice to overcome the noise in the enclosure. Members of the inflation crew were busily cranking a large fan whose gears and wooden blades emitted a continuous clacking sound as they forced unheated air into the skyship’s balloon, which had been laid out downwind of the gondola. They were creating a cavity within the envelope so that hot gas from the power crystal burner could later be introduced without it having to impinge directly on the lightweight material. The technique had been developed to avoid burn damage, especially to the base panels around the balloon mouth. Overseers were bellowing orders to the men who were holding up the sides of the gradually swelling balloon and paying out attachment lines.

The square, room-sized gondola was lying on its side, already provisioned for the flight. In addition to food, drink and fuel it contained sandbags equivalent to the weight of sixteen people which, when taken with the weight of the test crew, brought the load up to the operational maximum. The three men who were to fly with Toller were standing by the gondola, ready to leap on board on command. He knew the ascent had to begin within a matter of minutes, and the emotional turmoil connected with Lain and Gesalla and Glo’s burial was steadily fading to a murmur in lower levels of his consciousness. In his mind he was already voyaging in the ice-blue unknown, like a migrating soul, and his preoccupations were no longer those of an ordinary Land-bound mortal.

There was a sound of hoofbeats nearby and he turned to see Prince Leddravohr riding into the enclosure, followed by an open carriage in which sat Prince Chakkell, his wife Daseene and their three children. Leddravohr was dressed as for a military ceremony, wearing a white cuirass. The inevitable battle sword was at his side and a long throwing knife was sheathed on his left forearm. He dismounted from his tall bluehorn, head turning as he took in every detail of the surrounding activity, and padded towards Toller and Armduran.

Toller had not seen him at all during his time in the army and only at a distance since returning to Ro-Atabri, and he noted that the prince’s glossy black hair was now tinged with grey at the temples. He was also a little heavier, but the weight appeared to have been added in an even subcutaneous layer all over his body, doing little more than blur the muscle definition and render the statuesque face smoother than ever. Toller and Armduran saluted as he approached.

Leddravohr nodded in acknowledgement. “Well, Maraquine, you have become an important man since last we met. I trust it has made you somewhat easier to live with.”

“I don’t class myself as important, Prince,” Toller said in a carefully neutral voice, trying to gauge Leddravohr’s attitude.

“But you are! The first man to take a ship to Overland! It’s a great honour, Maraquine, and you have worked hard for it. You know, there were some who felt that you were too young and inexperienced for this mission, that it should have been entrusted to an officer with a long Air Service career behind him, but I overruled them. You obtained the best results in the training courses, and you’re not encumbered with an aircaptain’s obsolete skills and habits, and you are a man of undoubted courage — so I decreed that the captaincy of the proving flight should be yours,

“What do you think of that?”

“I’m deeply grateful to you, Prince,” Toller said.

“Gratitude isn’t called for.” Leddravohr’s old smile, the smile which had nothing to do with amity, flickered on his face for an instant and was gone. “It is only just that you should receive the fruits of your labours.”

Toller understood at once that nothing had changed, that Leddravohr was still the deadly enemy who never forgot or forgave. There was a mystery surrounding the prince’s apparent forbearance of the last year, but no doubt at all that he still hungered for Toller’s life. He hopes the flight will fail! He hopes he is sending me to my death!

The intuition gave Toller a sudden new insight into Leddravohr’s mind. Analysing his own feelings towards the prince he now found nothing but a cool indifference, with perhaps the beginnings of pity for a creature so imprisoned by negative emotion, awash and drowning in its own venom.

“I’m grateful nevertheless,” Toller said, relishing the private double meaning of his words. He had been apprehensive about coming face to face with Leddravohr again, but the encounter had proved that he had transcended his old self, truly, once and for all. From now on his spirit would soar as far above Leddravohr and his kind as the skyship was soon to do over the continents and oceans of Land, and that was genuine cause for rejoicing.

Leddravohr scanned his face for a moment, searchingly, then transferred his attention to the skyship. The inflation crew had progressed to the stage of raising the balloon up on the four acceleration struts which constituted the principal difference between it and a craft designed for normal atmospheric flight. Now three-quarters full, the balloon sagged among the struts like some grotesque leviathan deprived of the support of its natural medium. The varnished linen skin flapped feebly in the mild air currents coming through the perforations in the enclosure wall.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Leddravohr said, “it is time for you to join your ship, Maraquine.”

Toller saluted him, squeezed Armduran’s shoulder and ran to the gondola. He gave a signal and Zavotle, co-pilot and recorder for the flight, swung himself on board. He was closely followed by Rillomyner, the mechanic, and the diminutive figure of Flenn, the rigger. Toller went in after them, taking his position at the burner. The gondola was still on its side, so he had to lie on his back against a woven cane partition to operate the burner’s controls.

The trunk of a very young brakka tree had been used in its entirety to form the main component of the burner. On the left 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 opposite side a similar device controlled the flow of halvell, and both valves were operated by a single lever. The passageways in the right-hand valve were slightly enlarged, automatically providing the greater proportion of halvell which had been found best for providing sustained thrust.

Toller pumped the pneumatic reservoir by hand, then signalled to the inflation supervisor that he was ready to begin burning. The noise level in the enclosure dropped as 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 brief to reduce the risk of heat damage to the balloon fabric — and the great envelope began to distend and lift clear of the ground. As it gradually rose to the vertical position the crew holding the balloon’s crown lines came walking in and attached them to the gondola’s load frame, while others rotated the gondola until it was in the normal attitude. All at once the skyship was ready to fly, only held down by its central anchor.

Mindful of Armduran’s warning about false lift, Toller continued burning for another full minute, and as the hot gas displaced more and more unheated air through the balloon mouth the entire assemblage began to strain upwards. Finally, too intent on his work to feel any sense of occasion, he pulled the anchor link and the skyship left the ground.

It rose quickly at first, then the curved crown of the balloon entered the wind above the enclosure walls, generating such a fierce extra lift that Rillomyner gasped aloud as the ship accelerated skywards. Toller, undeceived by the phenomenon, fired a long blast from the burner. In a few seconds the balloon had fully entered the airstream and was travelling with it, and as the relative airflow across the top dropped to zero the extra lift also disappeared.

At the same time, a rippling distortion caused by the initial impact of the wind expelled some gas back out through the mouth of the balloon, and now the ship was actually losing height as it was borne away to the east at some ten miles an hour. The speed was not great compared to what other forms of transport could achieve, but the airship was designed for vertical travel only and any contact with the ground at that stage was likely to be disastrous.

Toller fought the unintentional descent with prolonged burns. For a tense minute the gondola headed straight for the line of elvart trees at the eastern edge of the airfield as though attached to an invisible rail, then the balloon’s buoyancy began to reassert itself. The ground slowly sank away and Toller was able to rest the burner. Looking back towards the line of enclosures, some of which were still under construction, he was able to pick out the white gleam of Leddravohr’s cuirass among the hundreds of spectators, but — already — the prince seemed to be part of his past, his psychological importance diminishing with perspective.

“Would you like to make a note?” Toller said to Ilven Zavotle. “It appears that the maximum wind speed for take off with full load is in the region of ten miles an hour. Also, those trees should go.”

Zavotle glanced up briefly from the wicker table at his station. “I’m already doing it, captain.” He was a narrow-headed youngster with tiny clenched ears and a permanent frown, as fussy and fastidious in his ways as a very old man, but already a veteran of several test flights.

Toller glanced around the square gondola, checking that all was well. Mechanic Rillomyner had slumped down on the sandbags in one of the passenger compartments, looking pale of face and distinctly sorry for himself. Ree Flenn, the rigger, was perched like some arboreal animal on the gondola’s rail, busily shortening the tether on one of the free-hanging acceleration struts. Toller’s stomach produced a chill spasm as he saw that Flenn had not secured his personal line to the rail.

“What do you think you’re doing, Flenn?” he said. “Get your line attached.”

“I can work better without it, captain.” A grin split the rigger’s bead-eyed, button-nosed face. “I’m not afraid of heights.”

“Would you like something to be afraid of?” Toller spoke mildly, almost courteously, but Flenn’s grin faded at once and he snapped his karabiner on to the brakka rail. Toller turned away to hide his amusement. Capitalising on his dwarfish stature and comic appearance, Flenn habitually breached discipline in ways which would have earned the lash for other men, but he was highly expert at his work and Toller had been glad to accept him for the flight. His own background inclined him to be sympathetic towards rebels and misfits.

By now the ship was climbing steadily above the western suburbs of Ro-Atabri. The city’s familiar configurations were blurred and dulled by the blanket of anti-ptertha screens which had spread over it like some threaded mould, but the vistas of Arle Bay and the Gulf were as Toller remembered them from childhood aerial excursions. Their nostalgic blue faded into a purple haze near the horizon above which, subdued by sunlight, shone the nine stars of the Tree.

Looking down, Toller was able to see the Great Palace, on the south bank of the Borann, and he wondered if King Prad could be at a window at that very moment, gazing up at the fragile assemblage of fabric and wood which represented his stake in posterity. Since appointing his son to the position of absolute power the King had become a virtual recluse. Some said that his health had deteriorated, others that he had no heart for skulking like a furtive animal in the shrouded streets of his own capital city.

Surveying the complex and variegated scene beneath him, Toller was surprised to discover that he felt little emotion. He seemed to have severed his bonds with the past by taking the first step along the five-thousand-mile high road to Overland. Whether he would in fact reach the sister planet on a later flight and begin a new life there was a matter for the future — and his present was bounded by the tiny world of the skyship. The microcosm of the gondola, only four good paces on a side, was destined to be his whole universe for more than twenty days, and he could have no other commitments.…

Toller’s meditation came to an abrupt end when he noticed a purplish mote drifting against the white-feathered sky some distance to the north-west.

“On your feet, Rillomyner,” he called out. “It’s time you started earning your pay on this trip.”

The mechanic stood up and came out of the passenger compartment. “I’m sorry, captain — the way we took off did something to my gut.”

“Get on to the cannon if you don’t want to be really sick,” Toller said. “We might be having a visitor soon.”

Rillomyner swore and lurched towards the nearest cannon. Zavotle and Flenn followed suit without needing to be ordered. There were two of the anti-ptertha guns mounted on each side of the