The Ragged Astronauts

“I’m getting scared, captain.” Although Flenn was shouting his voice seemed faint, its energies leaching away into the surrounding immensities. “You’ve got to bring me home.”

“We’ll bring you in. There’s.…” Toller allowed the sentence to tail off. He had been going to assure Flenn there was plenty of time, but his voice would have lacked conviction. It was becoming apparent that not only was Flenn falling past the gondola, but that — in keeping with the immutable laws of physics — he was gaining speed. The acceleration was almost imperceptible, but its effects were cumulative. Cumulative and lethal.…

Rillomyner touched Toller’s arm. “There’s nothing that will fit in the cannon, captain, but I joined two bits of glasscord and tied it to this.” He proffered a hammer with a large brakka head. “I think it will reach him.”

“Good man,” Toller said, appreciative of the way the mechanic was overcoming his acrophobia in the emergency. He moved aside to let Rillomyner make the throw. The mechanic tied the free end of the glasscord to the rail, judged the distances and hurled the hammer out into space.

Toller saw at once that he had made the mistake of aiming high, compensating for a full-gravity drop that was not going to occur. The hammer dragged the cord out behind it and came to a halt in the air a tantalising few yards above Flenn, who was galvanised into windmilling his arms in a futile attempt to reach it. Rillomyner jiggled the cord in an effort to move the hammer downwards, but only succeeded in drawing it a short distance back towards the ship.

“That’s no good,” Toller snapped. “Pull it in fast and throw straight at him next time.” He was trying to suppress a growing sense of panic and despair. Flenn was now visibly sinking below the level of the gondola, and the hammer was less likely to reach him as the range increased and the angles became less conducive to accurate throwing. What Flenn desperately needed was a means of reducing the distance separating him from the gondola, and that was impossible unless… unless.…

A familiar voice spoke inside Toller’s head. Action and reaction, Lain was saying. That’s the universal principle…

“Flenn, you can bring yourself closer,” Toller shouted. “Use the carble! Throw it straight away from the ship, as hard as you can. That will drift you in this direction.”

There was a pause before Flenn responded. “I couldn’t do that, captain.”

“This is an order,” Toller bellowed. “Throw the carble, and throw it right now! We’re running out of time.”

There was a further pounding delay, then Flenn was seen to be fumbling with the coverings on his chest. Sunlight flared on the lower surfaces of his body as he slowly produced the green- striped animal.

Toller swore in frustration. “Hurry, hurry! We’re going to lose you.”

“You’ve already lost me, captain.” Flenn’s voice was resigned. “But I want you to take Tinny home with you.”

There was a sudden sweeping movement of his arm and he went tumbling backwards as the carble sailed towards the ship. It was travelling too low. Toller watched numbly as the terrified animal, mewing and clawing at the air, passed out of sight below the gondola. Its yellow eyes had seemed to be boring into his own. Flenn receded a short distance before he stabilised himself by spreading his arms and legs. He came to rest in the attitude of a drowned man, floating face-down on an invisible ocean, his gaze directed towards Overland — thousands of miles below — which had taken him in its gravitational arms.

“You stupid little midget,” Rillomyner sobbed as~he again sent the hammer snaking towards Flenn. It stopped short and a little to one side of its target. Flenn, body and limbs rigid, continued to sink with gathering speed.

“He’ll be falling for maybe a day,” Zavotle whispered. “Just think of it… a whole day… falling… I wonder if he’ll still be alive when he hits the ground.”

“I’ve got other things to think about,” Toller said harshly, turning away from the gondola wall, unable to watch Flenn dwindling out of sight.

His brief required him to abort the flight in the event of losing a crew member or sustaining some serious structural damage to the ship. Nobody could have foreseen both circumstances arising as a result of one trivial-seeming accident with the galley stove, but he felt no less responsible — and it remained to be seen if the S.E.S. administrators would also regard him as culpable.

“Switch us back to jet power,” he said to Rillomyner. “We’re going home.”

PART III Region of Strangeness

Chapter 16

The cave was in the side of a ragged hill, in an area of broken terrain where numerous gullies, rocky projections and a profusion of spiky scrub made the going difficult for man or beast.

Lain Maraquine was content to let the bluehorn pick its own way around the various obstacles, giving it only an occasional nudge to keep it heading for the orange flag which marked the cave’s position. The four mounted soldiers of his personal guard, obligatory for any senior official of the S.E.S., followed a short distance behind, the murmur of their conversation blending with the heavy drone of insects. Littlenight was not long past and the high sun was baking the ground, clothing the horizon in tremulous purple-tinted blankets of hot air.

Lain felt unusually relaxed, appreciating the opportunity to get away from the skyship base and turn his mind to matters which had nothing to do with world crises and interplanetary travel. Toller’s premature return from the proving flight, ten days earlier, had involved Lain in a harrowing round of meetings, consultations and protracted studies of the new scientific data obtained. One faction in the S.E.S. administration had wanted a second proving flight with a full descent to Overland and detailed mapping of the central continent. In normal circumstances Lain would have been in agreement, but the rapidly worsening situation in Kolcorron overrode all other consideration.…

The production target of one thousand skyships had been achieved with some to spare, thanks to the driving ruthlessness and Leddravohr and Chakkell.

Fifty of the ships had been set aside for the transportation of the country’s royalty and aristocrats in small family groups who would travel in comparative luxury, though by no means all of the nobility had decided to take part in the migration. Another two-hundred were designated as cargo vessels which would carry food, livestock, seeds, weapons and essential machinery and materials; and a further hundred were for the use of military personnel. That left six-hundred-and-fifty ships which, with reduced two-man crews, had the capability of transporting almost twelve thousand of the general population to Overland.

At an early stage of the great undertaking King Prad had decreed that emigration would be on a purely voluntary basis, with equal numbers of males and females, and that fixed proportions of the available places would be allocated to men with key skills.

For a long time the hard-headed citizenry had declined to take the proposal seriously, regarding it as a diversion, a regal folly to be chuckled over in taverns. The small numbers who put their names forward were treated with derision, and it seemed that if the skyship fleet were ever to befitted it would only be at swordpoint.

Prad had chosen to bide his time, knowing in advance that greater forces than he could ever muster were on the move. The ptertha plague, famine and the abrupt crumbling of social order had exerted their powerful persuasions, and — in spite of condemnation from the Church — the roster of willing emigrants had swollen. But such was the conservatism of the Kolcorronians and so radical the solution to their problems that a certain degree of reserve still had to be overcome, a lingering feeling that any amount of deprivation and danger on Land was preferable to the near-inevitability of a highly unnatural death in the alien blue reaches of the sky.

Then had come the news that an S.E.S. ship had voyaged more than halfway to Overland and had returned intact.

Within hours every remaining place on the emigration flight had been allocated, and suddenly those who held the necessary warrants were objects of envy and resentment. There was a reversal of public opinion, swift and irrational, and many who had scorned the very notion of fly ing to the sister world began to see themselves as victims of discrimination.

Even the majority who were too apathetic to care much either way about the broad historical issues were disgruntled by stories of wagons loaded with scarce provisions disappearing through the gates of Skyship Quarter…

Against that background Lain had argued that the proving flight had achieved all its major objectives by successfully turning over and passing the midpoint. The descent to the surface of Overland would have been a passive and predictable business; and Zavotle’s sketches of the central continent, viewed through binoculars, were good enough to show that it was remarkably free of mountains and other features which would have jeopardised safe landings.

Even the loss of a crew member had occurred in such a way as to provide a valuable lesson about the inadvisability of cooking in weightless conditions. The commander of the ship was to be congratulated on his conduct of a uniquely demanding mission, Lain had concluded, and the migration itself should begin in the very near future.

His arguments had been accepted.

The first squadron of forty skyships, mainly carrying soldiers and construction workers, was scheduled to depart on Day 80 of the year 2630.

That date was only six days in the future, and as Lain’s steed picked its way up the hill to the cave it came to him that he was curiously unexcited by the prospect of flying to Overland. If all went according to plan he and Gesalla would be on a ship of the tenth squadron, which — allowing for delays caused by unsuitable weather or ptertha activity — was due to leave the home world in perhaps only twenty days’ time. Why was he so little moved by the imminence of what would be the greatest personal adventure of his life, the finest scientific opportunity he could ever conceive, the boldest undertaking in the entire history of mankind?

Was it that he was too timorous even to allow himself to think about the event? Was it that the growing rift with Gesalla — unacknowledged but ever present in his awareness — had severed a spiritual taproot, rendering him emotionally sere and sterile? Or was it a simple failure of the imagination on the part of one who prided himself on his superior qualities of mind?

The torrent of questions and doubts subsided as the bluehorn reached a rock-strewn shelf and Lain saw the entrance to the cave a short distance ahead. Grateful for the internal respite, he dismounted and waited for the soldiers to catch up on him. The four men’s faces were beaded with sweat below their leather helmets, and they were obviously puzzled at having been brought to such a desolate spot.

“You will wait for me here,” Lain said to the burly sergeant. “Where will you post your look-outs?”

The sergeant shaded his eyes from the near-vertical rays of the sun which were stabbing past the fire-limned disk of Overland. “On top of the hill, sir. They should be able to see five or six observation posts from there.”

“Good! I’m going into this cave and I don’t want to be disturbed. Only call me if there is a ptertha warning.”

“Yes, sir.”

While the sergeant dismounted and deployed his men Lain opened the panniers strapped to his bluehorn and took out four oil lanterns. He ignited the wicks with a lens, picked the lanterns up by their glasscord slings and carried them into the cave. The entrance was quite low and as narrow as a single door. For a moment the air was even warmer than in the open, then he was in a region of dim coolness where the walls receded to form a spacious chamber. He set the lanterns on the dirt floor and waited for his eyes to adjust to the poor light.

The cave had been discovered earlier in the year by a surveyor investigating the hill as a possible site for an observation post. Perhaps through genuine enthusiasm, perhaps out of a desire to sample Lord Glo’s noted hospitality, the surveyor had made his way to Greenmount and lodged a description of the cave’s startling contents. The report had reached Lain a short time later and he had decided to view the find for himself as soon as he had time to spare from his work. Now, surrounded by a fading screen of after-images, he understood that his coming to the dark place was symbolic. He was turning towards Land’s past and away from Overland’s future, confessing that he wanted no part of the migration flight or what lay beyond it.…

The pictures on the cave walls were becoming visible.