muscle ends of the two motors together. The result was that the energy output was tripled, not just doubled. Four such gondolas, containing eight motors, could turn propellers to drive a blimp at twenty-five miles an hour in still air.
Fabum's boss then went directly to Ulysses (an act which got him several reprimands later on), and he told Ulysses what Fabum had done. Fabum was lucky in that his boss did not try to take all the credit, but therewere honest and honourable Neshgai.
Of course, the addition of more motors, and thus more fuel, added to the weight. But the trip to the base-city of the Dhulhulikh, Ulysses estimated, would be helped by a tail wind all the way. Getting back was a different matter. If the blimps had to be abandoned and the return made on foot, so be it.
Shegnif, hearing the latest reports, was pleased. He gave Fabum his freedom, which meant that he still, in practice, was a slave. But he could live in better quarters and could make more money, if his employer cared to pay him more. And he did not have to ask permission to leave the immediate area.
The Grand Vizier was not at all worried about the limited range or the speed of the blimps. He had no plans for using them except on the perimeter of The Tree close to the Neshgai borders.
Three weeks later, the first blimp took its maiden voyage. The day was bright, and the wind was only six miles an hour. The flight took an hour with several circles over the palace so that the populace could see it. Then, on the way back to the hangar, the blimp dropped twenty thirty-pound bombs over a target, an old house. Only one bomb made a direct hit, but that was enough to blow it apart. And Ulysses told Shegnif that practice would improve their aim.
Nine more blimps were built while the crews were given their ground training. Ulysses complained again about the excess number of Neshgai officers and the consequent reduction in range and bomb capacity. Shegnif said that that did not matter.
There were more reports from scouts about the massing of giant ursoids and leopardoids, and the clashes between border patrols and small groups of enemy became more frequent. Ulysses did not understand why they had not made a large-scale raid before now. They certainly had enough personnel to penetrate some distance into the Neshgai territory if they made a surprise attack. Moreover, keeping peace among those naturally hostile groups and feeding them was a job requiring much organisation. Since none of the groups seemed capable of the sophistication necessary for this, he suspected the bat-people. There were more of them around, according to the scouts, but not in numbers to alarm.
Three times, a lone winged man appeared over the airfield, just out of arrow range, and observed them. Four times, a bat-man flapped alongside a blimp in flight. Other than a few insulting gestures, they offered no harm.
By then, Ulysses had moved his headquarters from the palace — with Shegnifs permission — to the airfield. This was ten miles outside the city, and he could not afford the travel time back and forth. He used the radio plants to report to Shegnif twice daily, however.
Lusha was gone. Although detailed to Ulysses, she had been promised in marriage to a soldier stationed on the border. Weeping — although she was glad to be married to the man — she took her leave. Even Thebi, who could not have been blamed for being jealous of her, wept and kissed her and said she hoped they would see each other soon. Awina seemed glad that she was getting rid of one woman but she took up her sullen attitude toward Thebi as soon as Lusha was out of sight. Thebi, by now sure of her position, had begun treating Awina as if she were a slave girl. Awina took the indirect insults and offhanded treatment without replying in kind. Apparently, she did not want to endanger her relationship with Ulysses by displaying the violence she normally would have used against an insulter. But she was seething. Ulysses could tell that. So he had reprimanded Thebi, causing her to burst into tears and Awina to smile like a cat that had just eaten a stolen salmon.
Ulysses was working so late into the night and getting up so early, he wanted only to fall into bed when his day's work was done. He permitted no one into his bedroom, and so Awina gloated over this. Thebi did not protest that she was allowed little chance to serve him. She was still a slave, and, moreover, she was not that sure of him. He was an alien, despite his similarity to her people, and he had very strange ways of thinking and acting. But she let Ulysses know in several ways, some subtle and some not so subtle, that she was hurt.
He was getting tired of balancing the one female against the other. He just did not have the time for delicate relationships, and he wished, sometimes, that both would leave him alone. Though he could have sent both packing with a few words, he did not want to hurt them that much. Besides, he liked both of them, though in different ways. Awina was very quick and very intelligent. She was from a preliterate society, but she learned swiftly, and she was able to act as a very efficient secretary. Such duties were beyond Thebi. She was proficient in domestic activities, but anything outside taking care of a man or children did not interest her.
One day he took out all ten of the blimps and put them through some very demanding manoeuvres. The wind was a stiff fifteen miles an hour from the seacoast, and the big gasbags moved sluggishly when pushing against the wind. Once, two collided, and they tore the motor gondolas off each other. Immediately, they swung away from each other and were carried away by the wind. Ulysses gave the order over the radio for the gas to be let out to bring the craft to the ground. The crews should then walk to the field, which was about twenty miles away. He would radio orders for cars to be sent out to pick them up.
The blimps turned home then, and they reached the field shortly before sunset. Just before his vessel was hauled into the hangar, he looked out the rear port of the gondola. There, outlined against the red rays near the horizon, was a number of tiny figures. They could have been birds, but their silhouettes made him believe they were bat-men. He put in an alert notice and went to his office.
That night, he was awakened by a screaming outside his door. He leaped out of bed (it was built for a human), and opened the door. Outside, the sentry was trying to separate two struggling screeching forms. They were hand to hand, face to face, with Awina holding a flint knife and Thebi's hand locked around the wrist that held the knife. Awina was shorter and lighter, but she was also much stronger, and only the desperation of Thebi and the sentry's efforts had kept the knife from going into Thebi's belly.
Ulysses shouted for her to drop the knife.
At the same time, there was an explosion outside the building, and the windows blew in, cutting all of them in dozens of places.
Ulysses and the sentry flopped on the ground.
Thebi released her hold and, staring, turned away from Awina.
Awina, ignoring the explosion, and the three that followed it, thrust at the woman.
But Thebi had raised her arm, and the knife sliced across it, gashing it and sending a spurt of blood across Awina's face. The knife continued on an upward direction and stabbed into Thebi's jaw. Its force, however, was much reduced
Thebi screamed. Ulysses leaped up and chopped across Awina's wrist, knocking the knife to the floor.
Another explosion, much closer, blew in the door at the end of the hall and sent a cloud of smoke into the hall.
Awina had gone to her knees, but she sprang up again as soon as the smoke reached her. Ulysses took the knife, but she shouted at him, 'No! Give it back! I won't use it on Thebi! Don't you understand? We're being attacked! I might need that knife!'
Although he was half-deafened by the explosion, he could hear her. Silently, he held out the bloody blade, and she took it by the hilt. A figure dashed through the smoke, crying, 'Lord, it's the bat-men!'
It was Wulka, the Wagarondit, covered with black gunpowder smoke and bleeding from a wound on his shoulder.
Ulysses ran out past him into the hangar, which housed his office and living quarters. Two blimps were anchored to the ground by thick plastic cables. A great-winged pygmy swooped out of the darkness in the upper part and a streak shot toward Ulysses. He had dived back, and it may have been this, or bad marksmanship, that caused the tiny poisoned arrow to plunge into the dirt a few inches before his feet. An Alkunquib archer raised his bow, coolly tracked the winged man, and loosed an arrow that went upward through the flier's leg and into his belly. The bat-man plunged into the ground a few feet from Ulysses.
There were several other Dhulhulikh flying around in the upper part of the hangar and a number who had settled down on top of the blimps. These were shooting their poisoned arrows. Apparently, all those inside the hangar had dropped their bombs. Outside, lit intermittently by the electric bulbs and torches, was a swarm of the winged men. They swooped in and out of the illumination, dropping little stone-weighted wooden darts, shooting tiny arrows or dropping small round bombs with lit fuses.
