The Ragged Astronauts

“My brother died yesterday.” Toller paused, taking advantage of the fresh anxiety he had glimpsed in Chakkell’s eyes. “My obligation to his widow can only be discharged by bringing her with me on this flight.”

“I’m sorry, Maraquine, but that is out of the question,” Chakkell said. “This ship is for my use only.”

“I know that, Prince, but you are a man who understands family ties, and you can appreciate that it is impossible for me to abandon my brother’s widow. If she can’t travel on this ship, then I must decline the honour of being your pilot.”

“You’re talking about treason,” Chakkell snapped, wiping perspiration from his bald brown scalp. “I… Leddravohr would have you executed on the spot if you dared disobey his orders.”

“I know that too, Prince, and it would be a great pity for all concerned.” Toller directed a thin smile at the watchful children. “If I weren’t here an inexperienced pilot would have to take you and your family through that strange region between the worlds. I’m familiar with all the terrors and dangers of the middle passage, you see, and could have prepared you for them.”

The two boys continued to gaze up at him, but the girl hid her face in her mother’s skirts. Chakkell stared at her with pain-filled eyes and shuffled his feet in an agony of frustration as, for the first time in his life, he had to consider subordinating himself to the will of an ordinary man. Toller smiled at him, falsely sympathetic, and thought, If this is power, may I never need it again.

“Your brother’s widow may travel in my ship,” Chakkell finally said. “And I won’t forget about this, Maraquine.”

“I’ll always remember you with gratitude too,” Toller said. As he was climbing into the pilot’s station of the gondola he resigned himself to having hardened the enmity that Chakkell already felt for him, but he could feel no guilt or shame this time. He had acted with deliberation and logic to achieve what was necessary, unlike the Toller Maraquine of old, and had the further consolation of knowing he was in tune with the realities of the situation. Lain — My brother is dead! — had once said that Leddravohr and his kind belonged to the past, and Chakkell had just vindicated those words. In spite of all the catastrophic changes which had overwhelmed their world, men like Leddravohr and Chakkell acted as though Kolcorron would be created anew on Overland. Only the King seemed to have intuited that everything would be different.

Lying on his back against a partition, Toller signalled to the inflation crew that he was ready to start burning. They stopped cranking and hauled the fan aside, giving him a clear view of the balloon’s interior. The envelope, partially filled with cool air, was sagging and rolling between the upraised acceleration struts.

He fired a series of blasts into it, drowning out the sound of the other burners which were being operated all along the line of enclosures, and watched it distend and lift itself clear of the ground. As it reached the vertical position the men holding the crown lines closed in and fastened them to the gondola’s load frame, and others rotated the lightweight structure until it was horizontal. The huge assemblage of balloon and gondola, now lighter than air, began to strain gently at its central anchor as though Overland was calling to it.

Toller leapt down from the gondola and nodded to Chakkell and the waiting attendants as a sign that the passengers and belongings could go aboard. He went to Gesalla and she made no objection as he unslung the bundle from her shoulder.

“We’re ready to go,” he said. “You’ll be able to lie down and rest as soon as you’re on board.”

“But that’s a royal ship,” she replied, unexpectedly hanging back. “I’m supposed to find a place on one of the others.”

“Gesalla, please forget all about what was supposed to happen. Many ships will fail to leave this place altogether, and it’s likely that blood will be shed in the fight to get on to some of those that do. You must come now.”

“Has the Prince given his consent?”

“We talked it over, and he wouldn’t even consider departing without you.” Toller took Gesalla by the arm and walked with her to the gondola. He went on board first and found that Chakkell, Daseene and the children had taken their places in one passenger compartment, tacitly assigning the other to him and Gesalla. She winced with pain as he helped her climb over the side, and as soon as he had shown her into the vacant compartment she lay down on the wool-filled quilts stored there.

He unbuckled his sword, placed it beside her and returned to the pilot’s station. A heavy cannon again sounded in the distance as he reactivated the burner. The ship was lightly loaded compared to the one he had taken on the proving flight, and he waited less than a minute before pulling the anchor link. There was a gentle lurch and the walls of the enclosure began to slide vertically past him. The climb continued well even when the balloon had fully entered the open air, and in a few seconds Toller had a full-circle view of the Quarter. The three other ships of the royal flight — distinguished by white lateral stripes on their gondolas — had already cleared their enclosures and were slightly above him. All other launches had been temporarily halted, but he still felt the air to be uncomfortably crowded, and he kept a careful watch on the companion ships until the beginnings of a westerly breeze had brought about some dispersion.

In a mass flight there was always the risk of collision between two ships ascending or descending at different speeds. As it was impossible for a pilot to see anything directly above him, because of the balloon, the rule was that the uppermost of a pair had the responsibility of taking action to avoid the lower. The theory was sound as far as it went, but Toller had misgivings about it because almost the only option available in the climb phase was to climb faster and thus increase the risk of overtaking a third ship. That risk would have been minimal had the fleet been able to depart according to plan, but now he was uneasily aware of being part of a straggling vertical swarm.

As the ship gained height the scene on the ground below was revealed in all its astonishing complexity.

Balloons, inflated or laid out flat on the grass, were the dominant features in a matrix of paths and wagon tracks, supply dumps, carts, animals and thousands of people milling about in seemingly aimless activities. Toller could almost see them as communal insects labouring to save bloated queens from some imminent catastrophe. Off to the south, crowds formed a variegated mass at the main entrance to the base, but the foreshortened perspective made it impossible to tell if fighting was already breaking out between newly sundered military units.

Sketchy lines of people, presumably determined emigrants, were converging on the launch area from several points on the field’s perimeter. And beyond them the fires were now spreading more quickly in Ro-Atabri, aided by the freshening breeze, stripping the city of its ptertha defences. In contrast to the seething turmoil engendered by human beings and their appurtenances, Arle Bay and the Gulf of Tronom formed a placid backdrop of turquoise and blue. A two-dimensional Mount Opelmer floated in the hazy distance, serene and undisturbed.

Toller, operating the burner by means of the extension lever, stood at the side of the gondola and tried to assimilate the fact that he was departing the scene for ever, but within him there was only a tremulous void, a near-subliminal agitation which told of suppressed emotions. Too much had happened in the space of a single foreday — My brother is dead!

— and pain and regret had been laid in store for him, to be drawn upon when the first quiet hours came.

Chakkell was also looking outwards from his compartment, arms around Daseene and his daughter, who appeared to be aged about twelve. Toller, who had previously regarded him as a man motivated by nothing but ambition, wondered if he should revise his opinion. The ease with which he had been coerced in the matter of Gesalla indicated an overriding concern for his family.

Spectators could be seen at the rails of two other royal ships — King Prad and his personal attendants in one, the withdrawn Prince Pouche and retainers in another. Only Leddravohr, who seemed to have decided to travel unaccompanied, was not visible. Zavotle, a lonely figure at the controls of Leddravohr’s ship, gave Toller a wave, then began drawing in and fastening his acceleration struts. As his ship was the least burdened of the four he could leave the burner for quite long periods and still match the others’ rate of climb.

Toller, who had settled on a two-and-twenty rhythm, did not have the same latitude. As a result of what had been learned from the proving flight it had been decided that the migration ships could safely be operated by unaided pilots, thus freeing more lifting ability for passengers and cargo. During a pilot’s rest periods he would entrust the burner or jet to a passenger, though always continuing to monitor the rhythm.

“Littlenight is almost here, Prince,” Toller said, speaking courteously to make amends for his earlier insubordination. “I want to secure our struts before then, so I must request you to relieve me at the burner.”

“Very well.” Chakkell seemed almost pleased at having something useful to do as he took over the extension lever. His dark-haired boys, still shooting timid glances at Toller, came to his side and listened attentively while he explained the workings of the machinery to them. By the time Toller had hauled in and lashed the struts to the corners of the gondola, Chakkell had taught the boys to count the burner rhythm by making a chanting game of it.

Seeing that all three were engrossed for the time being, Toller went into the compartment where Gesalla was lying. Her eyes were alert and the strained expression had left her face. She extended a hand and offered him a rolled-up bandage which must have come from her bundle of possessions.

He knelt beside her on the bed of soft quilts, reviling himself for the flicker of sexual excitement the action brought, and took the bandage. “How are you?” he said quietly.

“I don’t think any of my ribs are actually broken, but they’ll have to be bound if I’m to do my share of the work. Help me up.” With Toller’s assistance she gingerly raised herself to a kneeling position, half-turned away from him and pulled up her grey shirt to expose a massive bruise at one side of her lower ribs. “What do you think?”

“You should be bandaged,” he said, unsure of what was expected of him.

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“Nothing.” He passed the bandage around her and began to lap it tight, but his actions were made awkward by the constrictions of her waistcoat and gathered shirt. Time after time, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, his knuckles brushed against her breasts and the sensation darted through him like ambersparks, adding to his clumsiness.

Gesalla gave an audible sigh. “You’re useless, Toller. Wait!” She pulled open her shirt and removed both it and the waistcoat in a single movement, and now the slimness of her was naked from the waist up. “Try it now.”

A vision of Lain’s yellow-hooded body turned him into a senseless machine. He completed the bandage with the efficiency and briskness of a battlefield surgeon, and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. Gesalla remained as she was for a few protracted seconds, her gaze warm and solemn, before she picked up the shirt and put it on.

“Thank you,” she said, then put out her hand and lightly touched him on the lips.

There was a blaze of rainbow colours and suddenly the ship was in darkness. In the other passenger compartment Daseene or her daughter whimpered with alarm. Toller stood up and looked over the side. The fringed, curved shadow of Overland was speeding towards the eastern horizon, and almost directly below the ship Ro-Atabri was a tangle of orange-burning threads caught in a spreading pool of pitch. When daylight returned the four ships of the royal flight had attained a height of some twenty miles — and were accompanied by a loose cluster of ptertha.

Toller scanned the sky all around and saw that one globe was only thirty yards away to the north. He went immediately to one of the two rail-mounted cannon on that side, took aim and released the pin which shattered the bilobed glass container in the gun’s breech. There was a brief delay while the charges of pikon and halvell mixed, reacted and exploded. The projectile blurred along its trajectory, followed by a glitter of glass fragments, spreading its radial arms as it flew. It curved down through the ptertha and annihilated it, releasing a fast-fading smudge of purple dust.

“That was a good shot,” Chakkell said from behind Toller. “Would you say we’re safe from the poison at this range?”

Toller nodded. “The ship goes with any wind there is, so the dust can’t reach us. The ptertha are not much of a threat, really, but I destroyed that one because there can be some air turbulence at the edge of littlenight. I didn’t want to risk the globe picking up a stray eddy and moving in on us.”

Chakkell’s swarthy face bore an expression of concern as he stared at the remaining globes. “How did they get so close?”

“Pure chance, it seems. If they are spread out over an area of sky and a ship happens to rise up through them, they match its rate of climb. The same thing happened on the.…” Toller broke off on hearing two more cannon shots, some distance away, followed by faint screaming which seemed to come from below.

He leaned over the gondola wall and looked straight down. The convex immensity of Land provided an intricate blue-green background for a seemingly endless series of balloons, the nearest of which were only a few hundred yards away and looking very large. Many others were ranged out below them in irregular steps and random groupings, progressively shrinking in apparent size until they reached near-invisibility.

Ptertha could be seen mingling with the uppermost ships and, as Toller watched, another cannon fired and picked off a globe. The projectile quickly lost momentum and faded from sight in a dizzy plunge, losing itself in the cloud patterns far below. The screaming continued, regular as breathing, for some time before gradually fading away.

Toller moved back from the rail, wondering if the screams had been inspired by groundless panic, or if someone had actually seen one of the globes hovering close to a gondola wall — blind, malignant and utterly invincible — just before it darted in for the kill. He was experiencing relief tinged with guilt over having been spared such a fate when a new thought occurred to him. The ptertha had no need to wait for daylight before closing in. There was no guarantee that one or more of the globes had not driven itself against his own ship during the spell of darkness — and if that were the