move.
'What are you two hatching up?' said Thodric Jarl suspiciously.
'An airship,' said Zozimus crisply. 'A ship with which to conquer the air. My good cousin Sken-Pitilkin had done all the experimental work and is ready to proceed with a full-scale model.'
'Cousin,' said Sken-Pitilkin, who had the gravest of reservations about making the leap which Zozimus proposed, 'this is no time for joking.'
'I'm serious,' said Zozimus.
Then Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin lapsed into the High Speech of wizards, and in that tongue he berated Zozimus, telling him that any attempt to fly a full-sized ship through the air would result in their certain deaths.
'Because,' said Sken-Pitilkin, still speaking in the High Speech of wizards, 'I have been unable to control the sustained destruction which is necessary for such flight. Any ship which I make will explode, or burn, or shake itself to death, or rupture in outright whirlwind. I cannot control the destruction!'
'Ah,' said Zozimus, 'but I can guess why, already. You have not provided your sustained destruction with a safety valve.'
'A safety valve?' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'What are you talking about?'
'A safety valve,' said Zozimus, 'is a valve built into a pressure cooker. Now pressure cookers – '
'Oh, pressure cookers!' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'Now I remember!'Sken-Pitilkin remembered very well, even though his cousin's experiments with pressure cookers had taken place a good three generations earlier. In the course of his experimenting, Zozimus had blown up three kitchens, and had almost blown up himself. On one notable occasion -
But enough of this! Life is far too short for us to be giving a full account of the derelictions of Pelagius Zozimus, that over- rated and over-paid slug-chef who ever won greater resources for his kitchens than all the irregular verbs in the world could command in nine times ninety generations. Sufficient to say that Zozimus's experiments with pressure cookers had been exhaustive, not to say exhausting, and Sken-Pitilkin remembered as much, and the truth of the memory was clearly written on Sken-Pitilkin's face.
'Yes,' said Zozimus, reading his cousin's expression. 'You remember well. Well, then. I ventured. I experimented. And I learnt! What I learnt through the design of pressure cookers is that great forces must be given a means of escape. If the force grows too great, then it must blow its way clear through a weak point in the device, thus preserving the integrity of the device.'
Then Zozimus explained that, in his judgment, the flame trench known as Drangsturm was a perfect example of the control of great destructive forces. If the destruction temporarily got out of hand, then great gouts of flame would be thrown high in the air, thus bleeding off the surplus force with no harm to the fabric of the device which generated that force.
'I see,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'So you think I should govern the forces unleashed in my airship by – by what? By arranging for bits of the ship to be selectively smashed to smithereens by an excess of such force?'
'No,' said Zozimus. 'I believe you should arrange for excess force to be bled off in the form of rotational energy.' Sken-Pitilkin thought about this, trying to work through the logical implications of Zozimus's suggestion.
'But,' said Sken-Pitilkin, once he understood the import of his cousin's proposal, 'that would mean my ship would spin round and round like a – a – like something that spins round and round, what do you call those things, a – '
'A windmill,' said Zozimus.
'Yes, a windmill, or one of those, those, you know, those octopus things, those things that whirl round and round on a stick, round and round – '
'A species of firework,' said Zozimus.
'Yes, yes,' said Sken-Pitilkin, 'fireworks, that time in Tang, you remember, round and round, round and round, sparks and smoke in all directions, and then, then – bang!'
'There would be no bang,' said Zozimus positively. 'There would merely be a trifle amount of… rotation.'
'Whirlygigging,' said Sken-Pitilkin, direly suspecting that 'rotation' was at best but a weak euphemism for the consequences of the arrangement which Zozimus was proposing. 'Whirlygigging, round and round like an octopus. The ship would burst. Or at the least – I'm sure at the very least we'd all be hideously sick. I won't have anything to do with the idea.'
Yet in time – and a remarkably short time it was – Sken-Pitilkin was persuaded. The precise time of his persuasion was noon, for by noon the master chef Zozimus had prepared a delicious meal, working with slugs and watercress, with sheep bones and freshwater crabs, with puffballs and mushrooms, with chopped worms and tadpoles, all brisked and enlivened with touches of this and that from his secret emergency herb hoard and spice stock. And with this meal complete, Zozimus gave Sken-Pitilkin an ultimatum:
'Design an airship or starve.'
Thus a decision was reached in favor of flight, and after lunch the brave Sken-Pitilkin went to work, converting the ruinous hulk of a watership into an airship. He exercised his power in the manner of wizards, converting certain timbers of this ship into artefacts possessed of magical power – artefacts which the universe itself would seek to destroy if it got but half a chance. Sken-Pitilkin wrought these devices in such a way that their magical nature could be shielded or unshielded at his command.
When each device was unshielded, the universe would seek to destroy it, and the destructive forces thus unleashed would be used for controlled flight, with any uncontrollable excess being bled off into the 'rotational energy' which Zozimus had suggested.
At last the thing was finished – but the great Lord Alagrace flatly refused to get into it. The parcel of soldiers who had bodyguarded the great Thodric Jarl all the way to Alozay likewise refused to dare Sken-Pitilkin's device.
Thus, in the end, on its maiden flight the airship was crewed by the wizard of Skatzabratzumon known as Hostaja Sken-Pitilkin, by the wizard of Xluzu known as Pelagius Zozimus, by the witch Zelafona and her dwarf-son Glambrax, by the mighty Rovac warrior Rolf Thelemite, by the cow-tattooed Thodric Jarl, and by Guest Gulkan, youngest and most undisciplined of the sons of the lord of the Collosnon Empire.
Name them and know them!
For they were heroes, one and all!
Pioneers of flight!
Linked in a daring enterprise unparalleled in the history of experimental wizardry!
And possibly linked – Sken-Pitilkin could not help from thinking as much – in being destined to share a common grave.
A full day and a bit before they were to depart, Sken-Pitilkin gathered the would be air-adventurers together and indulged himself in a speech.
'Man has never ventured to the heavens in a ship such as this before,' said Sken-Pitilkin. Then, glancing at Zelafona: 'Nor woman neither. We can but guess what shocks the buffets of the heavens will impose on human physiology.'
'A guess is as good as a goose on a blind night,' said Guest, venturing one of the proverbs of Rovac which Rolf Thelemite had taught him.
'Pardon?' said Sken-Pitilkin.
'Nothing,' said Guest.
'You said something,' said Sken-Pitilkin. 'I distinctly heard you, and though what you said was less than distinct I'm perfectly sure you didn't say nothing.'
'I said,' said Guest, 'that maybe if it's so dangerous we shouldn't risk it.'
'I wouldn't say it's as dangerous as all that,' said Sken-Pitilkin, who thought it unwise to share the full strength of his forebodings with the young Yarglat barbarian. 'But I suspect it's better undertaken on an empty stomach.'
'You mean,' said Guest, 'we shouldn't eat?'
'Precisely,' said Sken-Pitilkin briskly. 'That's the main point I want to get across today. We can't know anything of the physiology of flight unless we look by analogy to the physiology of seafaring. As travel by sea is apt to induce a sickness of stomach, so may the air by analogy produce a like-belly illness.
Hence starvation is the order of the day. Or of three days, ideally – however, we've not time for such a fast,
