Standing on the afterdeck, Teldin looked forward along the hull, along the slender ram, toward the crystal sphere that hung in the phlogiston like a huge pearl. In the Flow it was nearly impossible to judge the scale of anything, or its distance, with the naked eye alone. Even so, he could feel that he was close.
He looked away from the sphere as Djan joined him on the sterncastle. "Six hours from the sphere," the half-elf said with a smile, "maybe a little less. That's what the navigator says." He hesitated, and Teldin could see doubt in his friend's expression. "She also says it's very small," he went on slowly. "Unusually small. Maybe too small, I don't know. Based on our distance and its apparent size, the sphere can't be more than a single day's sail from one side to the other."
Teldin nodded slowly. "Unusual," he admitted.
Djan smiled wryly. "Very unusual," he emphasized. "If Nex is the outer planet of the system, that makes it only six hours' sail away from the sun. If it's not the outer planet…" He shrugged.
The Cloakmaster understood his point. If it's not the outer planet, Nex is even less than six hours from its primary. In contrast, Krynn was twenty-four hours' sail from the sun. Did that mean Nex would be a fire-scorched cinder? Or was its sun abnormally small, or very cold? "Well,'' he told Djan, "we'll know soon enough."
The half-elf nodded. "That we will."
*****
Unusually small or not, the crystal sphere still loomed huge before the Boundless as the ship approached. From this distance, the curvature of the mother-of-pearl outer surface was invisible, and Teldin could almost believe the squid ship was suspended, bow down, over an infinite flat plain.
Below him, within the sterncastle, Blossom was on the helm, while Dranigor readied himself to open the portal. Djan stood in his customary position by the speaking tube that communicated with the helm compartment. "Ready to open the portal," the first mate announced. Teldin simply nodded, hardly listening as the half-elf relayed the command to Dranigor. This could be it, he told himself, the end of my quest. Maybe 'the creators'-the mysterious figures the dying reigar had spoken of at the outset of all this-were on the other side of this crystal barrier.
Or maybe there was nothing there at all, and this was just another dead end. Part of him eagerly awaited the opening of the portal; another part wished for more time-more time before his hopes were dashed again.
With a firm shake of his head, he forced the negative thoughts deep into the darkness of his mind.
A point of brilliance sprung to life on the surface of the sphere, swelling quickly to become the lightning-limned disk of blackness that had become familiar to Teldin. The Boundless plunged through the portal…
Into total blackness. There were no stars, no sun; there was nothing to give any illumination. For an instant, Teldin thought he'd been struck blind.
"Make lights!" Djan called from beside him. Within a few moments, he saw small flames burst to life around the decks as crew members struck lights with their tinderboxes and ignited strategically placed oil lamps. Djan himself lit the large ship's lantern hanging from the jackstay at the aft rail.
Teldin looked around in puzzlement. Beyond the extent of the ship, there was literally nothing to see, nothing at all. Even the portal had closed behind the ship.
"No stars," he murmured. Then he turned to Djan, and asked, "Is this common?"
The first mate shook his head. "I can't remember ever hearing of a crystal sphere without stars," he admitted. He gestured forward. "Or a fire body of any type."
Teldin looked forward, too, in the direction that should lead to Nex. The half-elf was right: there was no light ahead either.
No sun? he wondered. How could life exist without light? Maybe the sun's burned out… which could explain why the crystal sphere's so small.
"Well, Captain," Djan said slowly, "what course?"
Teldin didn't answer at once. It was a good question. What course do you set in a crystal sphere that seems to be completely empty? And how do you set it anyway, with no stars or sun to navigate by? "Hold position," he ordered. "Let's think about this."
Djan relayed the order down the speaking tube, then announced, "Station-keeping, Captain."
Teldin suppressed a smile. He'd noticed that when the time came for a serious decision, the half-elf would usually become much more formal, addressing the Cloakmaster as "Captain" rather than "Teldin." Did he do it to divorce himself from the responsibility, or to remind Teldin of the weight of his burden? Or was the first mate even aware that he did it? Probably not, Teldin decided.
Regardless, the responsibility was Teldin's. He and only he could decide what to do next.
Well, what he needed at the moment was information- any information-on which to base that decision. But where would he get it'
Possibly from the cloak. He knew that he hadn't explored all of the ultimate helm's powers. Maybe one of those abilities would help him.
"Continue station-keeping," he told Djan. "I'll be below if you need me."
He descended the ladder to the main deck and walked forward into the forecastle. As he did, he noticed that the on-duty crewmen were lining the rails, staring silently into nothingness. Nobody was speaking, but they didn't have to for Teidin to understand their anxiety. Paladine's blood, he felt it himself. Originally, when he'd first taken to space, the star-flecked void had terrified him. Now, however, it was familiar, reassuring, and the absence of stars was cause for concern. He continued forward into his cabin and seated himself on the edge of his bunk.
Now, how do I go about this? he wondered. He'd never consciously used the cloak for information-gathering before. He took several deep breaths, letting the tension flow from his muscles. As he felt his mind grow calm, he let his awareness of the cloak grow. Warmth on his shoulders told him that the artifact was responding. Mentally, he posed a question: What is the nature of this crystal sphere? As he let the warmth wax against his back, he concentrated on that question.
Without warning he felt a new sensation: warmth on his chest as well, where the bronze amulet hung on its chain. Apparently something had triggered the power of that artifact as well. For a moment he felt as though he stood between twin suns, their light shining bone-deep into his body.
Then he gasped as information flooded into his mind….
*****
Djan, Julia, Lucinus, the navigator, and the Cloakmaster stood in the helm compartment around the Boundless's chart table. To the aft of the large compartment, Blossom sat on the helm, a look of calm patience on her face.
Teldin had spread a blank sheet of mapping parchment on the table. He picked up a broad-nibbed pen and dipped it in the table's inkwell. He leaned across the sheet and drew a large circle. "That's the crystal sphere," he said. "As you said, Djan, about a full day's sail in diameter." He drew a black blob halfway between the center of the circle and its periphery "This is a outer planet of the system," he said. "An air world, a small one, about six hours inside the crystal sphere. Frigid-cold, apparently-cold enough that some of the gases in its atmosphere are probably frozen solid."
"Can that be Nex?" Julia asked.
It was Djan who answered with a shake of his head. "I don't think so. And if it is, we may as well leave now and save time and effort. There's no way anything could live there-not anything like life as we know it, that is."
The Cloakmaster nodded agreement. From what he'd read about the Juna, the worlds they chose to colonize and alter were similar in climate to Krynn and Toril, hinting that the mysterious creatures shared at least some characteristics of humans and demihumans.
"Are there any other planets?" Lucinus, the ginger-haired halfling navigator, wanted to know.
"One," Teldin announced. "Here, right at the center." He drew another blob in the middle of the circle. "It's an earth world…." His voice trailed off.
"But… ?" Djan prompted.
"But I didn't find any fire bodies," the Cloakmaster continued. "No sun, or suns. Now," he went on quickly, "I didn't
actually see the system. I… "-he paused, trying to find the right word-"I felt it. And I don't know whether I learned everything about it."
Djan nodded slowly, looking at Teldin's rough drawing. "An earth-centric system without a sun," he mused. "Unusual. Very unusual." He looked up. "You're sure about this?"
"As sure as I can be, considering."
Lucinus piped up again. "Maybe your… your perception has a size limitation," he suggested. "Maybe you can't… experience anything smaller than a certain size. Class B, for example, thirty leagues or so in diameter. Much too small for a sun."
"Couldn't you have a tiny, very bright sun?" Teldin asked.
The halfling didn't answer, just gave the Cloakmaster a patronizing smile.
"Is there anything else?" Djan asked after a few moments.
"Yes," Teldin said slowly. "There's something, but I'm not sure I know exactly what it is." With the pen, he scribbled in an amorphous band encircling the central blob, a fraction of the way out.
"What's that'" Lucinus wanted to know, standing on tiptoe for a better view.
"A dust cloud of some kind, I think," Teldin said. "It forms a complete shell around the world at the center, about an hour out."
"Maybe it glows on the inner surface," Julia suggested. "Maybe it gives heat and light to the planet…"
Teldin cut her off gently. "According to what I felt, it's almost as cold as the outer planet." He frowned grimly. "But there's got to be something I'm missing. The book said ships that came here never returned. There's nothing I've seen that could do that."
"Maybe," Djan said with a shrug. "But maybe not. There's no light, no stars to navigate by. Ships would be flying totally blind. Maybe they rammed the frozen air world. They couldn't even detect the boundary of the crystal sphere," he went on. "They could have rammed right into it." He shrugged again. "It's possible."
Teldin wouldn't be swayed. "Then what about the ships that did make it back?" he demanded. "The ones that told of being attacked by immense forces of magic?"
"Spacefarers' tales, perhaps?" the half-elf suggested. Then he smiled. "But you're right, of course, it is a mystery, isn't it'? I hate leaving a mystery unsolved. And anyway, it's not as if it'll take long to find out. If this is Nex"-he tapped the central dot-"we can be there in twelve hours at full speed."
*****
They didn't travel all the way at full speed, of course. The Boundless plunged through the blackness of wildspace, only to slow just outside where the dust cloud began. At tactical speed, the squid ship edged inward.
Teldin and his two mates were on the foredeck as the vessel began to penetrate the cloud. To the Cloakmaster's naked eyes, there was nothing different about this part of space. Outside the radius of illumination cast by the Boundless's running lights, there was just impenetrable darkness, with no details or texture visible. At first, Teldin had wondered whether the information the cloak and amulet had given him had been wrong, whether there wasn't anything in this region of space at all. But then word had been relayed up from the helm that the ship was encountering some kind of resistance and traveling slower than projected.
Both Julia and Djan had expressed worry about the dust or gas or whatever diffusing into the squid ship's atmosphere envelope, possibly fouling or even poisoning it. Yet that didn't seem to be happening. Teldin took a deep breath, scenting the air. If there was anything filtering into the ship's air, he couldn't detect it with any of his senses.
"What's that?" Julia was leaning on the forward rail, pointing.
Teldin looked in the direction she was indicating, straight out along the squid ship's ram.
He saw light! It was a faint, unfocused glow, so weak that he could almost believe it was his imagination.
But Djan was staring in the same direction, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
At first too faint to be said to have color, the light was taking on a red-orange hue, rather like the glow of a sunrise seen through a pre-dawn fog. With each passing second, the illumination grew in intensity. The Boundless was emerging from the inner edge of the dust cloud, Teldin realized.
The three comrades watched in silence as the light continued to intensify. Then, with shocking suddenness, the squid ship emerged into clear space once more.
After a long moment, Djan turned from his gaping stare at the vista to ask Teldin, "Just what in all the hells is that?"
Teldin felt a broad smile spreading across his face. "Nex," said the Cloakmaster.
*****
The Boundless hung in a high orbit, three thousand leagues above the surface of the planet. On the afterdeck, Teldin stared down with a sense of awestruck amazement at the world below him.
It was a vibrant, living world-the brilliant blues of oceans contrasting with the verdant greens of forest-covered continents-streaked and swathed with the gleaming white of clouds. From this altitude it looked so much like his last glimpses of Krynn as to bring a lump into the Cloakmaster's throat and sting his eyes with tears.
With a sudden laugh, he threw the cloak back from his shoulders. Even this high above the planet, space was comfortably warm. From the vegetation he could pick out below him, he guessed the climate of the world would probably be much like that of Ansalon.
We should have thought of this, he told himself. One of us should have guessed. But no-we're all so used to the standard pattern, where a planet orbits around a much larger sun, or perhaps where the sun orbits the planet. Our preconceptions prevent us from anticipating the wonders the universe puts before us.
The planet-it had to be Nex, didn't it?-had not one sun, but many. Orbiting at an altitude of about two thousand leagues were two dozen tiny spheres, burning so brightly with red-orange light that to look directly at them set tears streaming. The "mini-suns," as he'd taken to calling them, moved rapidly, each following its own orbit, yet somehow never coming near any of the others. Teldin guessed that, at any given time, any point on the planet would have at least two mini-suns in the sky. Hence, there'd be no night, and a new "mini-dawn" every couple of minutes.
He chuckled again. No wonder the cloak had shown him no sun. When he'd brought Lucinus up on deck to show him the spectacle, the halfling navigator had abashedly admitted that each mini-sun was no more than a league in diameter. "Class A suns," he'd muttered. "Who'd have thought it?"
Not you, Teldin thought.
I should be excited, he told himself, on edge to get down there and see what there was to be seen. But he found himself calmer than he'd been in a while-a long while. The phlogiston river, the crystal sphere, and the world of Nex- all had been just where the old book had said they were. As to the Juna themselves… Well, there was no reason to go charging down to the planet's surface right away. Everything would come in its own good time.
Anyway, it simply wouldn't be safe to move yet. Djan, Lucinus, and Julia were up on the foredeck now, using astrolabes, sextants, and other instruments to track the movements of the mini-suns, analyze their orbits, and figure out how to project their future positions. The burning spheres moved fast, faster than a spelljammer at tactical speed. Until the experts worked out their paths and found a "window," any attempt to land would be a crazy risk. An impact from a mini-sun would smash the squid ship into burning splinters, while even a near hit might set the vessel on fire.
The view from up here was so beautiful; Teldin was in no hurry to give up this perfect vantage point. As he watched, a spot on the upper left limb of the planet seemed to glow yellow, then red. Then another mini-sun soared clear, looking for all the world like a flaming spelljammer climbing from the land into space.
He forced his eyes away from the vista as Djan clambered up the ladder to the afterdeck. Teldin could see the anticipation in the half-elf s face. "Have you found your window?" he asked.
"We've found it," the first mate confirmed, it's narrow, but safe enough. It'll take us down about there"-he pointed to the lower right quadrant of the planet-"on that large continent. If that's what you want,
of course, Captain," he corrected. "Once we're past the mini-suns, we can cruise anywhere you want to go."
"One place is as good as another." Teldin shrugged.
"Do you want to take the window?"
"Let's do it," the Cloakmaster confirmed.
*****
The afterdeck was crowded as the Boundless began its descent. Lucinus and Julia continued to take bearings on the speeding mini-suns, every few seconds wiping streaming eyes. Djan had a sextant, too, and used it occasionally; however, most of his attention was taken up with relaying course corrections to Blossom on the helm. Teldin considered clearing the deck to give them more room. But they seemed to be managing fine, and the afterdeck was his favorite vantage point.
"Steady as she goes," Djan instructed down the speaking tube.
Nex was swelling steadily below them now, as they descended to the altitude at which the mini-suns orbited. He could see now how frighteningly fast the fiery bodies actually moved, and how large they were. When Lucinus had told him they were "only" a league in diameter, he'd been thinking in planetary terms. Now he realized that the smallest had a diameter more than two hundred times the length of the squid ship. If Julia and the navigator made a mistake with their bearings, the chances of anyone surviving were zero.
But Teldin had little fear that they would make a mistake. They'd taken enough time analyzing the mini-suns' orbits, and even now they were cross-checking each other's results to eliminate any chance of error. The "window" was still open, and would remain so for almost a dozen more minutes-plenty long enough to get the Boundless to a safe altitude.
He craned his neck to look all around. The mini-suns orbited at different altitudes-which was why they never collided, he guessed-spread out over a range of more than a hundred leagues. The squid ship was already in the midst of that "danger band," closer to the planet than some of the fire bodies, but higher than others. For the next couple of minutes, they'd theoretically still be at risk.
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