“What is it?” I asked, withdrawing my head.
Peter began to speak but Newton hushed him.
“Come, Ransom,” he said, leading me away to a corner of the theater where very loud work was going on. It looked like the large sleek craft I had seen had been split into sections, and workers were welding canisters into one of them.
“Some sort of airship?” I guessed.
“Yes. And not a dirigible,” he replied, correctly gauging my astonishment.
“A flying ship?”
“Yes. The fuel is still the greatest problem, but we are working on it. That book you brought us is already helping greatly.”
I was still staring at the black shape, a huge body with wings like a bird, in wonder.
“We know it was done in the past, by the Old Ones,” Newton explained. “Certain expeditions have uncovered artifacts of some of those ships, and we’ve extrapolated from that. We have some very good minds here, as you know...”
“A flying ship...”
“Yes.” He almost laughed. “I wanted you to see this. Who knows? Perhaps one day we’ll fly to the stars!”
He stopped himself, and his demeanor became serious.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “you will accompany me and a few others on a large expedition to the oxygenation station near Arabia Terra. I mentioned it to you weeks ago. The trip will take almost two days. It will be dangerous. The F’rar are fighting rebels near the mountains at the moment, and we will have to be careful. A writ of free passage, which I will obtain from Carson tonight, will only get us so far. We will be passing into other jurisdictions. But I want you to come with us.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Good,” he said. “Now let me show you the rest of this facility...”
That evening Newton stayed up very late oiling Carson and obtaining the needed writ. To my surprise he called me out of his study late in the evening and introduced me to the fat F’rar, who was very drunk.
“My, my!” Carson said, taking my paw in his rough own and bowing. He held my paw a little too long. “Where, my dear Newton, have you been hiding her?”
“She has been away. But she will be traveling with me to Arabia Terra tomorrow.”
“Ah, Arabia Terra. A terrible place. But it will be brightened by such beauty.” He was still holding my paw. Newton stepped forward and extricated it from Carson, and, with a deft smile, turned me toward the hallway.
“You should get a good night’s rest, my dear. We’ll be starting early.”
As I walked away he turned quickly to Carson, who was still watching me.
“We really should get that safe passage document out of the way...”
The fat F’rar nodded, and when Newton produced a newly filled glass of brandy for him he said, “Ah! Yes!” and took it.
As I walked down the hallway to Penelope’s room I heard Carson say, “You really should not hide your mistress like that, Newton...”
I was roused earlier than Newton had promised the next morning.
“We should leave before dawn,” he explained. “Once we get away from Sagan we will be relatively safe from Carson’s eyes. I wouldn’t want him to get any second thoughts when he wakes up with a hangover later this morning.”
“Why did you introduce me as your mistress to Carson last night?” I asked.
He smiled. “It is all very chaste, I can assure you, Haydn. Your presence with me had to be explained. So, for the next few days, you will be my mistress. There is another reason, which I will not tell you about now.”
I looked at his enigmatic face, knowing that if I asked he would not tell me.
To my surprise, this expedition was mounted almost like one of the Mighty’s caravans. There were three steam motor vehicles, one of them larger than anything I had yet seen, as well as two horse drawn carts bearing supplies and numerous guards on horseback. I counted twelve members of the party altogether, including Merlin and two of his assistants. Old Soler was there to bid me farewell, though she wasn’t going with us.
She took both of my paws in her own. “Have a safe journey, my dear!” she said. “And I must say, that book you brought us has provided us with invaluable knowledge.” She turned to Newton, already sitting in the lead vehicle, a monstrous motor cart on huge wheels. “Do take care, Newton.”
“We will.”
I climbed in beside Newton, and Soler waved as we pulled away.
“Why did she come to see us off? It was as if we are not coming back.”
“It’s a dangerous trip,” Newton replied, cryptically.
His words were prophetic in the short term. We had not gone a half hour out of Sagan when two F’rar airships swooped down at us like fat vultures and landed with a bump, halting our caravan. I expected Carson to emerge from the gondola of the lead ship, but when the door opened and the ramp was thrown down it was a cruel-looking F’rar that emerged. He was tall and thin, looking like a vulture himself, and he wasted no time. I felt Newton stiffen beside me.
“Say nothing,” he whispered, and then he reached into his tunic and produced a sheaf of papers as the unsmiling F’rar stopped by the vehicle’s door.
“Get everyone out,” he ordered both to Newton and to three of his cohorts who had also emerged from the gondolas. Instantly the France began to pull things out of the back of our truck and the other vehicles, and lined up our guards and Merlin’s people.
Newton said, “Hello, Ceres,” trying to keep his voice light, but even I could hear the tension in it.
Ceres glanced up from the papers and gave Newton a look as if he were on a glass slide under a microscope. “You might be able to pour honey down Carson’s throat, but not mine,” he said. His voice was devoid of inflection. He turned his attention back to the papers, adding, “Carson was feeling rather poorly this morning, so I thought I should check into what exactly he signed last night.”
“You’ll find everything in order,” Newton replied.
“I’m sure I will. If I thought otherwise I would have burned your caravan to cinders from the air. This says you’re going on a scientific trip to Arabia Terra?”
“That’s correct.”
“Arabia Terra is outside of our...control at the moment. You are aware of that?”
“Carson mentioned it. We are well armed.”
Ceres said nothing.
One of his men ran up with something in his arms. “We’ve searched the vehicles and subjects, sir. Mostly scientific junk and the men have standard weapons. Two rifles and swords and arrows. But I found this.”
He held it up proudly, like a trophy. It certainly did look like a weapon, with a long thin silver muzzle and a block of switches on the stock end.
Ceres looked it over idly. “What is it, Newton?” he asked idly.
“A ground analyzer. It bounces sonic–”
“I didn’t ask for a lecture. What does it do?”
“It measures the depth of various rock layers–”
“Why?” Ceres had ceased scanning the papers and had his cold, level stare on Newton.
Newton looked almost flustered. “To see how deep they are!”
“Why?”
Newton made to get out of the vehicle. “Let me show you–”
“Never mind,” Ceres said, cutting him off. He turned to his underling. “Put it back. It’s nothing.”
The disappointed F’rar turned and trotted off with the instrument.
Ceres continued to look at the papers, and then he suddenly tossed them back into the vehicle onto Newton’s lap. “You may go on. Get yourselves killed if you like. If I were you I would wait until the Arabia Terra area is under our wing. It won’t be long. It is inevitable.”
Without another words he turned and walked back toward his airship, shouting to his men, “Let them go!”
In another few moments they had climbed aboard and were back in the air.
As we started up again, Newton said to me, his voice holding some of the worry he must have
held in with great effort during the interrogation, “You don’t know how close that was.”
Pitching camp with the Science Guild was easier and more luxurious than it had ever been with the Mighty. When it came time Newton merely found a suitable spot, gave the signal to stop, and five minutes later we were surrounded by a little town. Four boxes were hauled out of our truck, each with a button on one end which, when pushed, produced a huge tent. Heaters were installed, food prepared on portable stoves. Battery driven electric light provided illumination. The only thing I didn’t understand was the system of four blue stakes which were driven into the ground just outside camp, forming a square at their corners.
“I’m surprised Ceres didn’t confiscate these,” Newton explained, when I asked about them. “Likely, one of his morons thought they were survey markers. In a way they are.”
“What do they do?”
He brought me to one of the tents, where a table had been erected against one long wall with much equipment on it. I recognized some of it, but not the blocky machine with a round green face in front of which sat an intent young fellow.
“Activate it,” Newton said, and the young man nodded and threw a switch. The round green face began to glow, and strange flowing shapes moved across it.
“Just birds, and a small animal or so,” the man reported.
“Let me know if we’re bothered by anything more substantial.”
At that moment I heard the squawk of a flock of birds traveling overhead.
“A kind of sentry,” Newton explained to me. “We’ve been working on it for a long time. Those four blue stakes send out a signal which is shown on the screen. It works up to a distance of nearly a kilo. If anything – or anyone – enters, we’ll know it.”
“The rebels could make great use of something like this,” I said.
Newton replied, “Yes, I’m sure they could. I’m sure the F’rar could, also. We can be thankful that Talon wasn’t working on it.” His face darkened. “But he was working on other, deadlier things...”
The young man turned suddenly to Newton. “Something large to the northwest.”
Newton bent to study the screen, which now showed a fuzzy wide blip, deeper in color than the surrounding green, along one edge.
“It’s not manmade. It looks like...”
“A harlow,” the operator finished for him. There was just a touch of fear in his voice.
“A harlow...” I said in wonder. A near-mythical beast, big as the truck we had driven in, and tenacious beyond reason.
“A little south for one of them, but it could be,” Newton said. “I imagine the F’rar’s doings have uprooted all kinds of natural order.” To me he said, “Come with me.”
I took a final glance at the green screen, which showed the beast well within the one kilometer now.
“Merlin!” Newton called as we went outside. The diminutive geologist, seated at a nearby table and eating with her assistants, hurried toward us.
“Yes?”
“Get the ‘ground analyzer’ immediately. And find Postelain. He’s a biologist, and will enjoy this. I think we’re about to be visited by a harlow.”
Merlin’s eyes widened.
“Hurry,” Newton added. “We’ll be at the northwest corner.”
The geologist scuttled off.
Five minutes later a crowd had formed between the northern and western blue stakes. A distant rumbling was just audible, but growing stronger by the moment. The sun had gone down, purpling the distant mountains, but one of the peaks looked to be moving.
“Maker in the sky, look at the size of that thing!” one of Merlin’s assistants said, in awe.
The fellow who had been manning the screen ran up and said to Newton, “Less than a half kilo – and he’s coming straight at us!”
“I’m sure he is.”
Just then two workers arrived with the ground analyzer and set it on a tripod. It still looked like a weapon to me. Even more so now.
One of the workers fiddled with the stock end, throwing switches and looking suddenly nervous.
“The power seems to be down,” he reported to Newton.
“Oh, dear.”
The distant sound was growing, a rhythmic chug-boom chug-boom.
Another worker ran off, and appeared a minute later with a heavy-looking box with a strap handle attached. He set it down under the tripod and ran a wire with a plug on the end up to the ground analyzer’s control panel.
He plugged it in, and there was a reassuring hum and two dials lighted on the instrument panel.
“I would aim it a bit high,” Newton suggested.
The two men, busy as they were, immediately adjusted the angle of the muzzle, pointing it higher.
“Any time you like.”
There was a visible gasp as the chug-boom chug-boom sound grew very loud. Now there was a silhouette growing to the northwest, starting to fill the sky in front of us.
“I would fire now,” Newton said, his voice taking on a bit of urgency.
The two workers were still fiddling, but then one of them cried, “Go!” and threw a switch.
Nothing happened.
My ears were filled with a thunderous roar: CHUG-BOOM CHUG-BOOM.
“Again!” Newton ordered.
The silhouette in front of us became a shadow and then suddenly a real thing: a huge roaring monster bearing down on us, big and angry enough to crush the entire camp–
“Now!”
The switch was thrown.
I involuntarily shouted as a blast of light brighter than the sun erupted with a high hissing sound from the muzzle of the instrument. There was a second blinding lighter greater than the first, and the monstrous beast, caught in the act of leaping, gave a mournful keening scream and fell with a thudding crash to the ground just in front of us. It gave a single long defeated breath, which I felt hot and beast-sour on my face, it was so close, and then was utterly still.
The night returned to quiet, and the stars were once again the brightest points of light above the silent distant mountains.
A collective breath was let out. Merlin was already scrambling out of the camp to examine the beast. She turned a bright electric torch on which Newton, fearing it would broadcast our location, immediately made her extinguish in favor of a hand lantern. Unable to dampen my curiosity, I joined her.
“They say that, hundreds of thousands of years ago, these beasts roamed in packs that could destroy a town,” Merlin said, playing the weak light over the rough brown hide of the beast. It was mottled and pitted, and still warm to the touch. We slowly circled, examining first the tail, long and thick and whip-like with a flare of black fur on the tip as wide as a feline’s head, and then the tufted ridges along the spine and crown and finally the massive head, tufted and ridged, the black empty eyes big as eating bowls and the mouth lined, top and bottom, with massive teeth, the underjaw anchored with two tusks, not white as in pictures but stained and streaked with dried blood and the leavings of many killed beasts. The snout was long, the same color as the tail, a hose-like object known to crush victims with its encirclement.
“Amazing,” Merlin said, again and again. She bent her head close to look into the mouth, where the dark red tongue lolled. She backed away quickly at the stench, as did I.
“This fellow ate not long ago, and did not believe in brushing his teeth.”
“He is magnificent, in a way,” I commented.
“Oh, yes. The King of Mars, in his time. But that is long past. These tusks still bring a queen’s ransom in some quarters. There are old folk tales...” She blushed, evident even in the weak light.
I laughed. “You mean their supposed amorous properties when ground into powder?”
“Well, yes.”
“Old wives’ tales?”
“We will take them with us, regardless.” She shrugged, her blush receding as another point of interest caught her eye.
My curiosity sated, I went back to the camp.
&nb
sp; Newton was standing, arms folded, looking thoughtful.
“We will have to move on tonight, I’m afraid,” he said.
“Why?”
He nodded his head toward the downed beast. “That prize will bring visitors of all sorts.”
“Such as...?”
“Other predators, smelling meat. Or worse. Baldies, perhaps.”
I told him that Merlin had noted that the beast had eaten recently.
“Then there’s no time to waste.”
He gave orders. Soon we had broken camp, leaving the tuskless carcass of the killed beast behind. Already, while we had done our work, scavengers, birds and scuttering things had darted in to take a taste of the fallen monster. As we drove away I heard something larger and breathing heavily, hit the body with a thud. I shivered, thinking of what it might be, wondering if these gargantuan animals ate their own kind. For the first time I was thankful for the motor vehicle, imaging what would happen if one of the creatures overtook a horse and rider.
I thought Newton would make camp again. But instead we drove all night, stopping just before dawn to sleep in what I was told was a secure spot close to our goal. Once again the perimeter was set up, but I was asleep before it was finished, having done my own chores and, secure with the protection we had and exhausted, set up my own blanket to curl up on under the stars. I was reminded as I closed my eyes of all the nights I had slept this way while traveling with the Mighty.
The ground felt suddenly soft, and I slept like a kit.
Fifteen
The dawn was well past when I arose. Or was roused from sleep by Merlin, rather, who was tapping me all too gently on the shoulder.
“You couldn’t wake a mouse like that, Merlin,” I commented, yawning myself out of a wonderful dream, something to do with floating on a cloud over the massive volcano Olympus Mons.
She was looking at me curiously, and skittered back, pulling her hand away.
“You have the oddest look on your face, Merlin,” I said.
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