Ride the Star Winds

by A Bertram Chandler

  “I never said that it was,” Grimes told her.

  So, while the others, on their hands and knees, worked he acted as sentry, scanning the sky and the ground and the river. Right on time the procession of crabs emerged from the water, led by the crustacean whom Grimes was now referring to as The Grand Old Duke Of York.

  “Why do you call it that?” asked Sanchez curiously. (He and the girl had stopped work to make way for the procession.)

  Su Lin laughed. She recited, in a sing-song voice,

  “The Grand Old Duke Of York

  He had ten thousand men,

  He marched them up to the top of the hill

  And he marched them down again . . .”

  Meanwhile Grimes had opened fire on the stragglers. This time he got two of them. Work on the balloon envelope was suspended while these were carried into the ship and stowed in the galley for future reference.

  Eventually, leaving Sanchez to work by himself, Su Lin went to prepare the midday meal, calling the two men when it was ready. She had boiled one of the crabs, serving it with a sort of sweet-and-sour sauce. It was delicious. The only fly in the ointment was that with her method of cookery she had seriously depleted the fresh water supply. So more had to be brought up from the river, using the same technique as on the previous day.

  Nonetheless the work progressed steadily. A wrinkled, empty sausage skin was taking shape. (Grimes found it hard to believe that it, when fully inflated, would be spherical—but each segment of the envelope had been cut according to the formulae presented by the computer function of his wrist companion.) The supply of adhesive was holding out better than he had expected. When sunset came upon them the job was almost finished. All that remained was to gum into place two more panels and to fit a valve cannibalized from one of Fat Susie’s gas cells.

  Sanchez wanted to go on working under artificial light. Grimes would not permit this. It would be far too easy, he said, for something to swoop down upon them from the gathering darkness overhead, unseen until it was too late to take defensive measures. Su Lin was in complete agreement with him. So the empty, almost-finished balloon was rolled up and placed just outside the doorway cut in the airship’s metal skin. It was too bulky for them to lift it inside. It had been bad enough having to lug it from its original position.

  The sun was well down when they were finished and dusk was fast deepening into night. The lights were switched on. From inside the wreck they watched the shockers, attracted by the harsh illumination, making their slow and undulant way up the slope. Did the things have a memory? Grimes wondered. Did they recall that they had fed well the previous night? But he just somehow could not accept the idea of a sentient plant.

  Before long the castaways were partaking of their evening meal. Su Lin had found time during the day to test the flesh of the huge worm that Grimes had killed earlier. It was nonpoisonous but, even with the exotic sauce that she had concocted, not very palatable. Presumably it was nutritious and a strictly rationed one glass of red wine apiece took the curse off it.

  As before, they kept watches. But this time, by arrangement, Grimes called the others earlier. They wanted to make an early start on the balloon construction. After a very sketchy breakfast they went outside, emerging from the ship a few minutes before sunrise.

  Sanchez was first out and yelled loudly in horror and anger.

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Grimes.

  The pilot pointed.

  On top of the rolled up envelope were two of the shockers. Obviously they had eaten only very recently; their bodies bulged in the center like that of a boa constrictor immediately after a very heavy meal. And what juices would have been oozing from them, what corrosive digestive fluids and excretory matter?

  Su Lin hurried back inside for the work gloves. The three of them put these on and, with rather more haste than caution, removed the carnivorous plants from the top of the roll of balloon fabric, throwing them to the ground. They were all expecting to find a ragged hole eaten through the material—but it seemed to be undamaged. They felt the surface of the tough plastic with their fingers, prodded it and pinched it. The real test, Grimes knew, would not be until the balloon was inflated. And if all was well insofar as gas-tightness was concerned there was a way in which the aerostat could be furnished with protection from aerial attack during its flight.

  But he would not, he decided, say anything to the others until the process of inflation was initiated. A lot would depend on how much of the fast-setting, stick-anything-to-anything adhesive was left.

  There was an assault by the fliers while the last panel was being glued into place. Grimes beat this off—but when the last attacker had been disabled (those bulging eyes were very vulnerable) he noticed that the lance of flame from the lighter was neither as bright nor as long as it had been.

  He said as much to Su Lin.

  She replied, “I warned you that the charge wouldn’t last forever. When it’s exhausted all we shall have is that almost useless laser and the knives.” She added, “This balloon of yours had better work,Commodore.”

  Then the envelope was finished and the equatorial band, made from strips of gas cell fabric, carefully positioned, held in place by sparing dabs, little more than specks, of the adhesive. Above it was a criss-crossing of webbing. Other strips of material would descend from the band when the balloon was ready for flight. These were attached to one of the light, wickerwork chairs from the wardroom. The aeronaut would travel in something approaching comfort.

  The two ends of the filling pipe were connected to their respective valves.

  “All systems go!” said Sanchez, squatting by the gas cylinder.

  “Not yet,” said Grimes.

  “But we have to fill this thing, sir.” said the pilot.

  “All in good time. But, first of all, Little Susie must be fitted with her defensive armament.”

  “Little Susie?” asked Sanchez.

  “She has to have a name, hasn’t she?”

  “Defensive armament?” asked Su Lin.

  “Yes. Shockers. We’ve found out that they can’t harm the fabric. We’ve seen a flier killed by one of them.”

  “But with their bright coloring they’ll attract the fliers, sir,” the pilot said.

  “The fliers, Captain Sanchez, are going to be attracted to anybody or anything invading their airspace. I don’t fancy trying to fight them off with a galley knife. Come to that—even if I had a decent pistol I couldn’t deal with anything up on top of the envelope. Not without shooting holes through my own means of support.”

  “Get your gloves on again, Raoul,” said the girl. “We’ll do as the man says and collect a few shockers.” She asked Grimes, “Will the adhesive hold them in place?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s only one way to find out. If the glue won’t work we’ll just have to lash them on to the envelope somehow.”

  Chapter 36

  The inflation of Little Susie was still further delayed. Grimes didn’t like the way that the fliers were hovering not overly far overhead, circling watchfully, gliding and soaring against the rising wind, maintaining their position relative to the island. It seemed to him that the airborne predators were far too interested in what was going on.

  He said, “It will take three of us to handle this operation. It should be more—but three bodies is all we have. Somebody will have to stand by the valve on the helium cylinder, ready to shut off immediately. The other two will be kept busy handling the lines. Nobody will be able to keep a proper lookout.”

  “We’ll just have to carry on and take a chance, Commodore,” said Sanchez.

  Grimes looked at the young man severely.

  “As a spaceman, Raoul, you should know that chances aren’t taken, except when the circumstances are such that there’s absolutely no option.”

  “As now, sir.”

  “No. I admit that we have not had time to explore this island thoroughly—but you must have noticed, as I did, that
at the northern end there is quite a miniature jungle of low bushes. In spite of their proximity to the water they are dry-looking bushes. But not too dry. . . .”

  Get on with it! said the young man’s expression although he remained silent.

  “All animals,” went on Grimes pedantically, “fear fire. That holds good on every world that I have visited. I am sure that this one is no exception. My proposal is this—that we start a fire among those bushes, hopefully not too fast-burning but one with plenty of smoke. The wind will blow the smoke right over us. As we work we shall require goggles and handkerchiefs, well-wetted, to tie over our noses and mouths. The fliers—unless they are related to the legendary phoenix—will not be at all inclined to dive into the heart of an apparent conflagration. . . .”

  “Not so apparent, Commodore,” said Sanchez. “But it’s a good idea. As long as we don’t get barbecued.”

  “We’ll try just a small sample of shrubbery first,” Grimes told him. “And, at the same time, we’ll make sure that this mosslike growth is not flammable. We don’t want to have to work with flames licking around our ankles.”

  “Especially,” said Su Lin, “since our getaway craft will carry only one person . . .”

  Grimes’s plan worked.

  The undergrowth at the northern end of the island was flammable but not explosively so; in fact, even with the laser in use, it was not all that easy to start the brush fire. Once Grimes got it going, however, it kept on going. A column of black, almost intoxicatingly aromatic smoke arose, drifting up the slope to cover the activities of the balloon crew, rising into the cloudless sky at an acute angle. Overhead, the fliers departed downwind. Were they really frightened? wondered Grimes, or were they hopeful that land animals fleeing the conflagration could be swooped upon as they ran in panic? The other local predators were doing well for themselves. The shockers, incapable themselves of swift motion, trapped the little, many-legged things that ran over them; in the river the water centipedes were feeding well.

  Luckily there were very few sparks. Even though helium, unlike hydrogen, is an inert gas, any large burning fragment could have melted a hole in the envelope fabric. But the slowly swelling balloon was unscathed.

  Grimes and Su Lin tended the guy lines, straightened out folds in the slowly distending fabric. They had to work, he said later, like one-armed paperhangers. Little Susie slowly took shape, lifting from the ground as she acquired buoyancy. And, although dwarfed by the bulk of the wrecked airship, she was not so little. She was not beautiful either. Despite the careful calculations and the painstaking implementation of these during the cutting and gluing of the segments she was a sadly lopsided bitch. But she was, thought (and hoped!) Grimes, airworthy. She strained at her mooring lines, anchored to the ground by grapnels from Fat Susie’s stores. She was eager to be off.

  “Shut off and disconnect,” ordered Grimes, his voice muffled by the wet handkerchief covering his mouth. “After all this trouble we don’t want to burst her. And now, Su Lin, if you’ll be so good as to pack me a tucker box I’ll be off. Expect me back when you see me. I’ll be as quick as I can mustering help.”

  “But you’re not going, Commodore,” said Sanchez. “I’m not going?” (All the time Grimes had assumed that he would be piloting the balloon.) “I’m not going? Damn it all, it’s my job.”

  “It is not, Governor Grimes,” Su Lin told him. “Raoul and I have talked this over. You are the Governor. You are the best hope we have, such as it is, of cleaning up the mess on this planet. You’re too precious to risk.”

  “Me, precious!” Grimes exploded. “Come off it, girl!” He turned to Sanchez. “You know, Raoul, that I’m a quite fair balloonist. Didn’t I teach you quite a bit about the art of free ballooning?”

  “Yes, Commodore, and I learned from you. And I am, after all, a qualified airshipman.”

  “Even so . . .”

  “There’s another point,” said the girl. “We don’t know, we have no way of knowing, where the balloon is going to come down. With a little bit of luck it might be somewhere that’s just lousy with OAP members and supporters. On the other hand, it might be somewhere crawling with police, police informers and staunch supporters of Bardon and O’Higgins. Even if the descent is made unobserved, by night, the balloon pilot will still have to feel his way around cautiously, to find people whom he can trust. What chance would you have of doing that, Commodore? For a start, you’re an obvious outworlder with an Orstrylian accent that you could cut with a knife. Raoul’s a native. He knows people. He knows his way around . . .” It made sense, Grimes had to admit.

  But he didn’t like it.

  He and Sanchez stood in the billowing, eddying smoke through which the afternoon sun gleamed fitfully. They looked up at the misshapen Little Susie, bobbing fretfully at her moorings.

  “A poor thing, but mine own,” murmured Grimes. “Look after her, Raoul.”

  “I hope she looks after me,” said the pilot.

  “You know,” went on Grimes, “this is the first time in my life that I’ve actually designed a ship. I really should be risking my own neck on her maiden flight, not yours . . .”

  “You and Su Lin,” consoled Sanchez, “will be running plenty of risks staying here.”

  “Mphm. Why remind me?”

  “Sorry, Commodore. What will you do if I’m not back with help within, say, ten days?”

  “Then we make a raft or a canoe and try to make our escape downriver. In fact, I think we’ll make a start on the project tomorrow.”

  “And that will be a ship, designed and built by yourself, that you will have the pleasure of commanding. But I hope, sir, that it never comes to that.” The pilot laughed. “You seem to have a thing about the name Susan. Your spaceship, the one in which you went privateering, is Sister Sue. The airship is Fat Susie. The balloon—Little Susie. What will you call the canoe or raft?”

  “Wet Sue,” said Grimes after a moment’s thought.

  “That sounds Chinese. It should please Su Lin . . .”

  “Were you talking about me?” asked the girl, coming out of the ship with a plastic bag of foodstuffs and a flagon of water.

  “Not exactly,” said Grimes.

  “Oh. Well, here’re your provisions for the voyage, Raoul. As long as this wind holds they should last you as far as the nearest cantina.”

  If you get there, thought Grimes.

  “Bon voyage, Raoul,” said Su Lin. She put the food and drink into the chair suspended below the balloon (the added weight didn’t seem to worry it) and then threw her arms about the pilot and kissed him soundly. Grimes felt a stab of jealousy. “Bon voyage, and look after yourself.” Grimes made a show of checking everything before liftoff. “Food . . . Water . . . Ballast . . . Now all we need is the crew. . . .”

  “All present and correct, sir!” reported Sanchez briskly, saluting.

  “Good. You know the drill, Raoul. That bag of assorted stones is your ballast. Don’t throw it all away in one grand gesture. You’ll probably have to jettison some weight after sunset when the helium cools and loses buoyancy. But don’t be a spendthrift. Once weight has been dumped you’ll not be able to get it back. Conversely, gas valved is lost forever . . .”

  “Understood, Commodore.”

  “Then, good luck, Raoul.” He extended his hand. Sanchez took it. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

  “We all need it, sir.”

  Sanchez hung the flagon of water from one arm of the chair, the bag of food—bread, cold meats and fruit—from the other. He took his seat, buckled on and adjusted the safety belt.

  “Ready?” asked Grimes.

  “Ready.”

  “Trip for’ard grapnel.”

  Sanchez yanked sharply on one of the three mooring lines. The grapnel flukes swiveled, came free of the soil. “Trip port and starboard grapnels!” This time it was Grimes and Su Lin who jerked upwards on the lines. The grapnels lost their grip. The balloon lifted. Su Lin did not jump back and clear smartl
y enough and a fluke fouled her clothing, catching in the loosely buttoned front of her tunic. She was lifted from the ground. Grimes caught her dangling legs, held her. Cloth ripped. Little Susie continued her ascent, taking with her Su Lin’s upper garment.

  Grimes actually ignored the half-naked girl whom he was holding tightly in his arms, stared up and after the rising balloon. She was rising steadily, carried along in the stream of smoke that was still coming from the brush fire. The fliers, well downwind, were staying clear of the reek of the burning. But would they continue to do so? The diminishing balloon was drifting into clear air. Su Lin disengaged herself from Grimes’s arms—he was hardly aware that she had done so—and was absent from his immediate presence very briefly. Then she was pressing something into his hands. It was a pair of binoculars that she had brought from the ship.

  Grimes thanked her briefly, then put the powerful glasses to his eyes. The hemisphere of the balloon that he could see was holding its shape. There were (as yet, anyhow) no leaks, no ripped seams. Sanchez was sitting stolidly in his chair. But, Grimes saw as he adjusted the binoculars to obtain a wider field at the expense of magnification, the fliers, the circling, soaring and swooping carnivores, were closing in. The only weapon that Sanchez had with him was a long knife—and that was supposed to be used in lieu of a ripcord rather than to ward off attack. Too, his view obscured by the bulging gasbag, the pilot quite possibly was not even aware of his danger.

  And what use would the shockers be as defensive weaponry? Grimes could see them plainly enough, gaudy patches on the silvery gray envelope. He had applauded his own cleverness in having them attached to Little Susie’s skin but now was having his doubts. Contact with them might well be lethal but their bodies would never be tough enough to stop a direct, stabbing assault by one of those long, murderous beaks.

  So far there was no direct assault.