The Maelstrom Eye

her with navigational duties. He says the trip to Herdspace will take about thirty days after we enter the phlogiston. I think we should use the time to drill the gnomes and set up a chain of command. I would be the logical choice to lead them in a fight, but I would not like to command the ship. Aelfred would be the best one for that. Having no one in charge is troublesome, and it could hurt us if the orcs catch up to us.'

Teldin nodded briefly. 'I have no problem with that. I've been thinking the same thing. But this is the gnomes' ship. Maybe they'd want a say in who ran things here.'

'Yes, sir, but I suspect they'll go along with whomever we designate as leader. None of the gnomes on this ship have any military experience. They're just technicians that I rounded up as soon as I heard the initial alert sirens. They're used to being given orders, not to giving them. It's worse than the situation at Mount Nevermind.'

Teldin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. 'If they and everyone else agree to it, it sounds fine to me. I only wish this ship was bigger. It helps to go out on deck, but then I hate to come back inside.'

Gomja nodded sympathetically. Teldin knew his big friend was forced to sleep on the ship's upper deck, as there was no place to put him without blocking hall traffic; the giff fit no bed aboard. Gomja also snored like a lion roaring.

'It's uncomfortable, I know,' said Gomja, 'but we were lucky just to have gotten this far, sir. Once Aelfred and I get the gnomes organized and teach them some basic tactics and drills, we should have a chance in case the orcs attack us again and try to grapple and board us.'

'It's your fate to command gnomes all the rest of your life,' Teldin said, managing a grin. 'I hardly envy you that.'

Gomja smiled, too, his little ears perking up. 'There are worse troops, sir,' he said. 'I would be afraid to command a force of kender, for instance.'

Teldin nodded in agreement. 'Speaking of which, I've just heard that she's gone and-'

'She's still there, sir,' Gomja finished. 'I was going to ask if you can talk her out. This ship has plenty of supplies hidden in the galley. I found them not five minutes ago. Even with the creamed soaked grains gone, we have lots of food left before we'd ever have to eat a hamster.' The giff made a sour face. 'I'm afraid I'm in agreement with Gaye on that, sir.'

Teldin frowned. 'That's odd. Dyffed told us earlier that no one had gotten around to loading up the ship with food supplies, much less putting in the helm and weaponry.'

Gomja looked at him blankly. 'I hadn't heard that, sir. I suppose that Dyffed wasn't aware whether things had been loaded on or not. Perhaps they supplied the ship and forgot about it.' He shrugged his gigantic shoulders. 'Who knows?'

The giff got to his feet, stooping to avoid striking the ceiling. 'Carry on, sir,' he said, giving a quick salute. 'We've nothing left to do until we get to Herdspace. I'm looking forward to finding out why it's called that. None of the gnomes know but Dyffed, and he laughs when I mention it. Oh, and don't forget about Gaye, sir.'

'I'll tell her,' Teldin said, returning the salute with feeling. 'I'll see you later.'

When the giff was gone, Teldin considered lying down again for a few moments more, but decided not to bother. His back was killing him, and he couldn't rest with Gaye all stirred up. He straightened his clothes and prepared to leave for the besieged kender.

It wasn't until he was going to see Gaye that Teldin though about Gomja's comment about the alert on Ironpiece. Hadn't the first siren been one that only the gnomes could hear? Yet Gomja had said he'd begun rounding up gnomes at that time. The giff had never displayed any ability to hear the high-pitched sounds gnomes could detect, but maybe he could anyway. Maybe the gnomes had heard the first siren and had told him about it. It was only a mildly interesting thought, and Teldin decided he would ask Gomja about it the following day. He promptly forgot all about it.

Thirty-four days passed. Gaye cooked. The gnomes trained. Everyone waited.

And the scro caught up with them.

Chapter Eleven

'The portal! It's opening!' Gaye shouted, clutching the bow railing on the top deck of the Perilous Halibut. Ahead of her, impossibly far away but drawing nearer, was a dark gray wall that stretched from one end of the universe to the other. In the center of the wall was a burning yellow whirlpool of light whose arms rotated with agonizing slowness. At the hub of the yellow whirlpool was a sky-blue dot that grew steadily larger as the arms turned.

Gaye thought of the pupil and iris of an unspeakably mighty god, and she shivered with excitement even as she puzzled over the color beyond the portal. She was looking into the crystal sphere of Herdspace, of course-but wasn't it always black beyond a portal, in the wildspace beyond?

'Prepare to fire!' thundered Gomja's voice from aft. Gaye turned and saw the giff, wearing a freshly cleaned white uniform and clutching a crossbow as long as a man's arm. Gomja had demanded the chance to fight the enemy, and Aelfred had finally agreed to stay below and handle shipboard activities there in case of boarding. The gnomes were already filling the ship with boobytraps.

With his free hand, Gomja was directing the array of crossbow-bearing gnomes who knelt along the ship's railing or crewed the newly installed deck ballista. The gnomes wore a chaotic assortment of armor manufactured from cooking utensils, metal scraps, and ship's supplies. The giff stood by the trailing edge of the ship's huge vertical fin, lit all around by the infinite depths of the rainbow-hued phlogiston. The 'flow' was a sky painted by a mad deity with every color a god's palette could hold. The colors ran and blurred together in evershifting swirls larger than worlds.

Gaye never got tired of looking at the flow, even if it now held the shape of a trailing enemy ship. It was only about a mile behind now, a greenish scorpion ship with its great claws extended and open as it came on for the Perilous Halibut's tail.

A tiny, dark shape detached itself from the upraised tail of the scorpion ship, gaining rapidly on the gnomes' ship. 'Incoming fire!' Gomja roared. 'Flatten and hold fast!'

The two dozen gnomes on deck threw themselves flat as they watched the catapult shot close in-and take an increasingly obvious path to their right. As the yard-wide rock flew by at a distance of only a few hundred feet, Gaye sighed with relief, only now remembering that she hadn't ducked, too. She heard a ragged cheer erupt from the gnomes. Several sent their crossbow bolts chasing after the stone, and a few others fired at the scorpion.

'Company, hold your fire until I give the command!' Gomja ordered. 'Those dogs will get a taste of our bolts yet, but we're going to make each shot count!'

Gaye looked ahead again. The flaming yellow whirlpool was much closer, but she couldn't begin to estimate its distance or size even now. It was vast and painfully beautiful. The blue pupil continued to grow. No stars were visible beyond. How bizarre, she thought. Dyffed had said that Herdspace was different from other crystal spheres, and he'd tried to explain how, but she'd never caught on to the specifics of his unbearably detailed lecture. Herdspace was a sphere with no planets-she had caught that part, and Dyffed's reference to everything living on the inside of a gigantic bubble, but the concept hadn't quite jelled yet in her mind as to what he had meant by that. The gnome also kept talking about a something-something 'mega-fawn' on which the fal, One Six Nine, was said to live. Gaye pushed it out of her mind as she watched the yellow whirlpool's blue center open. She'd have to see it to understand it.

'Begin the climb!' the giff shouted. Gaye looked back even though she knew he wasn't yelling for her. He was calling through the voice tube to the helm, where Sylvie had been sitting for the last two days since the ores in the lone scorpion had begun to gain on them. In moments, the Perilous Halibut's long black bow rose, lifting up and away from the vast portal ahead. The gnomes, looking sternward, took aim at the scorpion with their light crossbows over the heads of their fellows-exactly the result Gomja had wanted, to allow all the gnomes to fire at once.

'Sir!' came the shrill cry of a gnome somewhere aft. 'Potentially hostile spelljamming vessel apparently crewed by unidentified humanoids is now trailing at fifteen hundred yards, with an estimated error of one hun-'

'Fire!' Gomja bawled, drowning out the gnome.

'Immediately activate the mechanism according to the preset trajectory!' Gaye heard a gnome shout rapidly. The command was interrupted after the first word by the heavy thump of a ballista and the crack of two dozen crossbow bolts being released. Then came the creaking sounds of the ballista mechanism being cranked back for a second shot. A small cloud of bolts could be seen for a second, flashing toward the scorpion. The gnomes