a very relaxing way of life.”
“Oh, no, Purple,” I reassured him. “You would not be happy living with us. You had best return —”
“Fear not, Lant. That’s what I intend to do. But I tell you, I have truly enjoyed myself here.” He pounded himself on his stomach. “Look, I think I may have even lost a few pounds.”
“Have you looked behind you?” muttered Shoogar.
“Sh,” I hissed. “We are all going to be together for a very long time. At least try to get along.”
“With him?!!”
“You didn’t have to come, Shoogar!”
“I did too! How else can I ever —”
“Never mind! If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. At least so long as we’re in the air!”
Shoogar snarled at me and went forward to the front of the boat. I sank down tiredly on a pile of supplies and blankets.
For a while I watched my sons as they pedaled. It was a funny sight, a bicycle so high in the air — with no wheels at all, yet they were pedaling so steadily, I had to laugh. They glared at me, but kept chanting and pumping.
Above us the clustered windbags were like a distant roof. Large enough to be covering, but high enough so that they were not oppressive. It was a feeling like being sheltered, but also one of being strangely free.
Occasionally the boys rested — and then all was silent. That was the most peculiar thing about the airship. Once in the sky, it neither creaked nor shuddered. There were no sounds at all, except perhaps that of our own heartbeats.
We had stopped rising now. And a good thing too. The air was cold — almost biting. Purple pulled out some blankets and passed them around. Wilville and Orbur were wearing extra layers of clothing. It had been tied to their outriggers so they could pull it on as they wished. They also had water bottles and packs of hardbread. There was no need for them to come into the boat itself at all, if they did not wish to.
The last of the red sun finally seeped below the horizon.
“Are they going to pedal through the dark?” I asked Purple.
“Uh huh. As long as the wind keeps up, someone has to keep pedaling. You see, Lant, the wind is blowing us north-east. If we pedal west, then we cancel out the east and go only north. But the wind doesn’t stop at night, so neither can we. The only other choice is to land — and that means letting air out of the bags.”
“And you don’t want to do that, do you?”
“Right. We know the boat will float in water, but I’d rather not have to depend on it. Besides, even if we did come down on the sea, the wind might still push us. So we might as well stay in the air and keep pedaling all night. The boys know how to pace themselves. As long as we stay near that spine of land under the water, I won’t worry.”
In the dark the steady chanting and pumping was an eerie thing — coming, as it did, from outside the boat. Fortunately, the time till blue dawn was little more than an hour away — we would have naught but a brief flash of darkness at this time of year. Followed by seventeen hours of pure blue sunlight, an hour of double sunlight, and another seventeen hours of red sunlight. Then darkness again. Later in the year the darknesses would stretch, as would the times of double sunlight. The single-sun hours would shrink as the suns moved closer and closer in the sky — toward the inevitable red conjunction.
We pedaled on through the darkened sky.
Far to the east the horizon’s edge was limned by a faint blue glow. Blue Ouells was sneaking up behind it, soon to shout and leap and flash brightly over the edge.
Below, the sea was a dark platter, greasy and wrinkled. A cold wind whipped around us. I pulled my blanket tighter against it. The boat rocked gently. The swollen balloons seemed motionless above; the sea motionless and flat so far below.
My sons pedaled steadily. I fancied I could see the churned air stretching out in a line behind us, but that way was as dark as the way ahead. Their pumping was a steady sound, sensed rather than heard — constant vibration filled the boat.
And then it was morning, sharp and blue — bright Ouells was a pinpoint at the edge of the world, sleeting light sideways across our eyes.
Wilville and Orbur rested then, while Purple sighted for the spine of land under the water. It was a barren range of hills, barely higher than the land around it. Beneath the risen ocean it would appear with a lighter color.
At first he thought we had lost it, then sighted it off to our right. Apparently, during the dark, the wind had slackened somewhat. The boys, having no way of knowing this, had kept pedaling, and so had carried us farther west than Purple had wanted us to go.
Fortunately the wind was still blowing northeast, so Purple told Wilville and Orbur that they could rest until such time as we were again over our guide. The boys climbed into the boat, but did not remove their waist ropes until they were safely inside.
They sucked eagerly at a skin of Quaff, passing it back and forth between them, then each stretched out on a cloth-lined framework, the
I picked my way forward, past bundles of supplies. Shoogar was just stretching and yawning. He greeted me with a surly grunt.
“Haven’t you slept,” I asked.
“Of course not, Lant. We only had an hour of darkness. I was watching for the moons. The moons,” he yawned grumpily, “I need the moons.”
“Shoogar,” I said, “you do not need the moons —”
“Yes, I do — do you want me to lose my duel?”
I could see that he was unapproachable. “Go aft,” I said. “Go aft and get some sleep.”
He was fumbling in his sleeve, but all he found was a damp husk-ball. “Curse it,” he said, “they ruined it, your sons ruined it. I had hoped it would dry out, but —” he shrugged and tossed the sodden mass over the side. “I’m going to sleep, Lant,” he mumbled and tottered off.
I moved to the front of the boat and peered out. Here was a view, unobstructed by either balloons or rigging. I was suspended above a silvery-blue sea, miles above it. I seemed to be floating in silence. The stillness was overpowering. Deafening.
The air was crisp and, at the same time, hot. Blue Ouells was already heating up the day.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I looked around. Purple had come up beside me. He placed his hands on the rail and looked out at the ocean blueness on all sides. “I love the way it changes,” he said. “The changing light of the suns keeps changing the look of the water.”
I nodded. I did not particularly feel like talking yet. My bones still ached from the cold of the night, and the sun had not yet begun to bake that out.
“Lant,” he said, “tell me about your journey again. I am trying to figure out how far you traveled, and how long it will take us to cover that distance in the flying machine.”
I sighed. We had been over this many times already. It was on the basis of our migration that Purple had calculated the number of balloons and amount of supplies he would need. “We journeyed for a hundred and fifty days, Purple. We followed that range of hills because the seas were rising so fast. We needed every advantage we could get.”
He nodded, “Good, good,” then fell silent and became lost in thought, as if he were making figures in his head. After a while he brought out his measuring skin again and began sighting the sun. “We will be drifting over our course line again,” he said. “I had better go and wake up the boys.”
Afterward, when we were again vibrating to the tune of the whining bicycles, I tottered aft and joined Purple for a bite of breakfast, my first meal since coming aboard the aircraft. Shoogar was snoring loudly on a cot.
Purple bit into a sour melon. He said, “For some time I have wondered, Lant. Why do you call me
