“Near enough to drop the blast shield. That’s what I heard.”
“Pssh.” Lina waved her hand. “Standard precaution, that’s all.”
Nothing else was said as Lina’s mentor dusted off the deep black, solar heat exchanger, that doubled as the vessel’s roof on the center shelter, and loosed the port side air bladder from its protective storage pod. She pressed the locking end of the bladder’s aft hose to the matching collar on the heat exchanger. With a quarter twist, it was secured. The fore hose was next.
“Do you want me to do the starboard side, Mentor?”
Lina got her answer as soon as her mentor pulled forth the priming bellows.
“I’ve found that inflating the bladders is becoming increasing difficult at my advanced age.” Lina’s mentor smirked slightly as she stepped around to the starboard side and began unpacking the air bladder over there. “You, on the other hand, possess all the gifts of youth.”
Lina grinned, thinking about how Mentor had been ready to single-handedly pull the skimmer from storage when Lina showed up, but now that it came time to fill the bladders, she was suddenly old and frail. Lina sighed, and set herself to the arduous task of inflating the bladders.
Because of her smaller size, Lina placed the bellows on the ground and steadied the lower handle by standing on it with one foot. She gripped the upper handle with both hands and got to work. In her mind’s eye, Lina pictured Arabel still lounging on the couch in her apartment, and began to grumble.
“Perhaps we should sing a song,” her mentor said, “to make your toiling easier.”
Lina’s grumbling increased, two-fold.
“Something I used to sing to you when you were young. You were so fussy to get to sleep sometimes.”
Lina kept at the bellows, but her grumbling began to fade. Her mentor was absentmindedly scenting as she hummed, and the pheromones of love and compassion that she cast were enough to put Lina in a calmer mood—calm enough that she didn’t even care that the old woman was scenting in public again.
Soon the bladders were filled with enough warm air that they began to rise on their own accord. Her mentor never did start singing as threatened, but she continued her humming, and soon transitioned to a melody that Lina recognized from her younger years. It was enough to put a smile on Lina’s face, and Mentor was right, it did make the task of inflating the bladders feel like a little less of a chore.
Lina straightened up and wiped the sweat from her brow. With both bladders high in the air now, tugging at the rigging that held them fast to the skimmer’s side planks, the convection flow had become self-sufficient and no more pumping was required. The cloud skimmer would remain aloft until they brought it back in to port, or until nightfall when the sun’s rays no longer provided the heat needed to buoy the craft.
Lina had no intention of being out until sunset. What she really wanted was to snuggle back into Arabel’s warm embrace and sleep away the afternoon. Lina closed up the bellows and slid it into its proper place on the skimmer.
Lina’s mentor was already aboard and reaching for the long push pole that would guide them away from the pier and into the clouds. Once Lina had the bellows secure, and tied into her safety harness, she stood on the stern with the push pole that Mentor passed to her, and shoved the skimmer free of the rock pier.
Lina watched her mentor moving quite spryly as she ducked under the skimmer’s shelter and moved to the fore of the craft to haul out the port and starboard lugsails. Not much longer than Mentor herself, but twice as tall when unfurled, the main drive sails sat comfortably forward and well below the bulging air bladders.
“Will you raise the mizzen, dear?” Mentor said, and Lina began to haul up the smaller sail toward the rear that would help steady and steer the craft.
“Got it,” Lina said.
“Now isn’t this a lovely change from being in those dreary old tunnels all day?”
Lina said nothing. She wished Mentor would go back to humming, to bring back the carefree memories of her childhood, but she felt too embarrassed to ask.
“Humankind was meant to be free,” Mentor was saying. “In the open air. Not closed up in tunnels. If the queen had any sense—”
“Mentor, please. Don’t talk like that, you’ll get yourself in trouble.”
“Lina, dear. No one pays much attention to the talk of a senile old woman.” Mentor patted Lina’s hand, and whether intentional or not, she began scenting calm and love. “Besides, with the wind, we’re too far from shore to be heard.”
Lina looked around, marveling at how far away from the colony they were now. Lost in Mentor’s humming and calming pheromones, she had let her surroundings drift around and past her, not paying any attention.
“I suppose it is beautiful,” Lina said. She scanned the horizon, with its thick puffy clouds all around, some of the wisps even making their way over the side deck to curl around her feet before being carried away on the breeze.
Lina basked in the warm sun from high above and just behind. She was transported back to the carefree days of her youth—a time when her only task was to absorb the knowledge and history that was passed down from Mentor to her. And that, at least as far as Lina’s mentor was concerned, included the traditional art of cloud skimming.
Lina had learned the basic principles of steering, and the science at work that kept them afloat on the clouds. She understood how Mentor’s series of tacking maneuvers, alternately dipping the port and starboard mainsails, allowed them to effectively sail directly into the wind using a zigzag path. Taking this course on the
