The Ragged Astronauts lao-1

by Bob Shaw

  In the present case the globe was about four-hundred yards from the ship and was likely to stay at that distance because the positions of both were governed by the same air-flow. Toller knew, however, that the one component of their motion over which the ptertha had good control was in the vertical dimension. Observation through calibrated telescopes showed that a ptertha could govern its attitude by increasing or decreasing its size, thus altering its density, and Toller was interested in carrying out a double experiment which might be of value to the migration fleet.

  “Keep your eye on the globe,” he said to Zavotle. “It seems to be keeping on a level with us, and if it is that proves it can sense our presence over that distance. I also want to find out how high it will go before giving up.”

  “Very good, captain.” Zavotle raised his binoculars and settled down to studying the ptertha.

  Toller glanced around his circumscribed domain, trying to imagine how much more cramped its dimensions would seem with a full complement of twenty people on board. The passenger accommodation consisted of two narrow compartments, at opposite sides of the gondola for balance, bounded by chest-high partitions. Nine or so people would be crammed into each, unable either to lie down properly or move around, and by the end of the long voyage their physical condition was likely to be poor.

  One corner of the gondola was taken up by the galley, and the diagonally opposite one by the primitive toilet, which was basically a hole in the floor plus some sanitation aids. The centre of the floor was occupied by the four crew stations surrounding the burner unit and the downward facing drive jet. Most of the remaining space was filled by the pikon and halvell magazines, which were also at opposite sides of the gondola, with the food and drink stores and various equipment lockers.

  Toller could foresee the interplanetary crossing, like so many other historic and glorious adventures, being conducted in squalor and degradation, becoming a test of physical and mental endurance which not all would survive.

  In contrast to the meanness and compression of the gondola, the upper element of the skyship was awesomely spacious, rarified, a giant form almost without substance. The linen panels of the envelope had been dyed dark brown to absorb the sun’s heat and thereby gain extra lift, but when Toller looked up into it through the open mouth he could see light glowing through the material. The seams and horizontal and vertical load tapes appeared as a geometric web of black lines, emphasising the vastness of the balloon’s curvatures. Up there was the gossamer dome of a cloud-borne cathedral, impossible to associate with the handiwork of mere weavers and stitchers.

  Satisfied that the ship was stable and ascending steadily, Toller gave the order for the four acceleration struts to be drawn in and attached by their lower ends to the corners of the gondola. Renn completed the task within a few minutes, imparting to the balloon/gondola assemblage the slight degree of structural stiffness needed to cope with the modest forces which would act on it when the drive or attitude jets were in use.

  Attached to a lashing hook at the pilot’s station was the rip line, dyed red, which ran up through the balloon to a crown panel which could be torn out for rapid deflation. As well as being a safety device it served as a rudimentary climb speed indicator, becoming slack when the crown was depressed by a strong vertical air flow. Toller fingered the line and estimated that they were ascending at about twelve miles an hour, aided by the fact that the miglign gas was slightly lighter than air even when unheated. Later he would almost double that speed by using the drive jet when the ship entered the regions of low gravity and attenuated air.

  Thirty minutes into the flight the ship was high above the summit of Mount Opelmer and had ceased its eastward drift. The garden province of Kail stretched to the southern horizon, its strip farms registering as a shimmering mosaic, with each tessera striated in six different shades varying from yellow to green. To the west was the Otollan Sea and to the east was the Mirlgiver Ocean, their curving blue reaches flecked here and there by sailing ships. The ochraceous mountains of Upper Kolcorron filled the view to the north, their ranges and folds compacted by perspective. A few airships gleamed like tiny elliptical jewels as they plied the trade lanes far below.

  From an altitude of some six miles the face of Land looked placid and achingly beautiful. Only the relative scarcity of airships and sailing craft indicated that the entire prospect, apparently drowsing in benign sunlight, was actually a battle-ground, an arena in which mankind had fought and lost a deadly duel.

  Toller, as had become his habit when deep in thought, located the curiously massive object given to him by his father and rubbed his thumb over its gleaming surface. In the normal course of history, he wondered, how many centuries would men have waited before essaying the voyage to Overland? Indeed, would they ever have done so had they not been fleeing from the ptertha?

  The thought of the ancient and implacable enemy prompted him to cast around and check on the position of the solitary globe he had detected earlier. Its lateral separation from the ship had not changed and, more significantly, it was still matching the rate of climb. Was that proof of sentience and purpose? If so, why had the ptertha as a species singled out man as the focus of its hostility? Why was it that every other creature on Land, with the exception of the Sorka gibbon, was immune to pterthacosis?

  As though sensing Toller’s renewed interest in the globe, Zavotle lowered his binoculars and said, “Does it look bigger to you, captain?”

  Toller picked up his own glasses and studied the purple-black smudge, finding that its transparency defied his attempts to define its boundaries. “Hard to say.”

  “Littlenight will be here soon,” Zavotle commented. “I don’t relish the idea of having that thing hanging around us in the dark.”

  “I don’t think it can close in — the ship is almost the same shape as a ptertha, and our response to a crosswind will be roughly similar.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Zavotle said gloomily.

  Rillomyner looked round from his post at a cannon and said, “We haven’t eated since dawn, captain.” He was a pale and pudgy young man with an enormous appetite for even the vilest food, and it was said that he had actually gained weight since the beginning of the shortages by scavenging all the substandard food rejected by his workmates. In spite of a show of diffidence, he was a good mechanic and intensely proud of his skills.

  “I’m glad to hear your gut is back to its normal condition,” Toller said. “I would hate to think I had done it some permanent mischief with my handling of the ship.”

  “I didn’t mean to criticise the take-off, captain — it’s just that I have always been cursed with this weak stomach.”

  Toller clicked his tongue in mock sympathy and glanced at Flenn. “You’d better feed this man before he becomes faint.”

  “Right away, captain.” As Flenn was getting to his feet his shirt parted at the chest and the green-striped head of a carble peered out. •Flenn hastily covered the furry creature with his hand and pushed it back into concealment.

  “What have you got there?” Toller snapped.

  “Her name is Tinny, captain.” Flenn brought the carble out and cradled it in his arms. “There was nobody I could leave her with.”

  Toller sighed his exasperation. “This is a scientific mission, not a… Do you realise that most commanders would put that animal over the side?”

  “I swear she won’t be any trouble, captain.”

  “She’d better not. Now get the food.”

  Flenn grinned and, agile as a monkey, disappeared into the galley to prepare the first meal of the voyage. He was small enough to be completely hidden by the woven partition which was chest high to the rest of the crew. Toller settled down to refining his control over the ship’s ascent.

  Deciding to increase speed, he lengthened the burns from three to four seconds and watched for the time-lagged response of the balloon overhead. Several minutes went by before the extra lift he was generating overcame the inerti
a of the many tons of gas inside the envelope and the rip line became noticeably slacker. Satisfied with a new rate of climb of around eighteen miles an hour, he concentrated on making the burner rhythm — four seconds on and twenty off — part of his awareness, something to be paced by the internal clocks of his heart and lungs. He needed to be able to detect the slightest variation in it even when he was asleep and being spelled at the controls by Zavotle.

  The food served up by Flenn was from the limited fresh supplies and was better than Toller had expected — strips of reasonably lean beef in gravy, pulse, fried grain-cakes and beakers of hot green tea. Toller stopped operating the burner while he ate, allowing the ship to coast upwards in silence on stored lift. The heat emanating from the black combustion chamber mingled with the aromatic vapours issuing from the galley, turning the gondola into a homely oasis in a universe of azure emptiness.

  Partway through the meal littlenight came sweeping from the west, a brief flash of rainbow colours preceding a sudden darkness, and as the crew’s eyes adjusted the heavens blazed into life all around them. They reacted to the unearthliness of their situation by generating an intense camaraderie. There was an unspoken conviction that lifelong friendships were being formed, and in that atmosphere every anecdote was interesting, every boast believable, every joke profoundly funny. And even when the talk eventually died away, stilled by strangeness, communication continued on another plane.

  Toller was set apart to some extent by the responsibilities of command, but he was warmed nonetheless. From his seated position the rim of the gondola was at eye level, which meant there was nothing to be seen beyond it but enigmatic whirlpools of radiance, the splayed mist-fans of comets, and stars and stars and ever more stars. The only sound was the occasional creak of a rope, and the only sensible movement was where the meteors scribed their swift-fading messages on the blackboard of night.

  Toller could easily imagine himself adrift in the beaconed depths of the universe, and all at once, unexpectedly, there came the longing to have a woman at his side, a female presence which would somehow make the voyage meaningful. It would have been good to be with Fera at that moment, but her essential carnality would scarcely have been hi accord with his mood. The right woman would have been one who was capable of enhancing the mystical qualities of the experience. Somebody like.…

  Toller reached out with his imagination, blindly, wistfully. For an instant the feel of Gesalla Maraquine’s slim body against his own was shockingly real. He leapt to his feet, guilty and confused, disturbing the equilibrium of the gondola.

  “Is anything wrong, captain?” Zavotle said, barely visible in the darkness.

  “Nothing. A touch of cramp, that’s all. You take over the burner for a while. Four-twenty is what we want.”

  Toller went to the side of the gondola and leaned on the rail. What is happening to me now? he thought. Lain said I was playing a role — but how did he know? The new cool and imperturbable Toller Maraquine…the man who has drunk too deeply from the cup of experience… who looks down on princes… who is undaunted by the chasm between the worlds…and who, because his brother’s solewife does no more than touch his arm, is immediately smitten with adolescent fantasies about her! Was Lain, with that frightening perception of his, able to see me for the betrayer that I am? Is that why he seemed to turn against me?

  The darkness below the skyship was absolute, as though Land had already been deserted by all of humanity, but as Toller gazed down into it a thin line of red, green and violet fire appeared on the western horizon. It widened, growing increasingly brilliant, and suddenly a tide of pure light was sweeping across the world at heart-stopping speed, recreating oceans and land masses in all their colour and intricate detail. Toller almost flinched in expectation of a palpable blow as the speeding terminator reached the ship, engulfing it in fierce sunlight, and rushed on to the eastern horizon. The columnar shadow of Overland had completed its daily transit of Kolcorron, and Toller felt that he had emerged from yet another occultation, a littlenight of the mind.

  Don’t worry, beloved brother, he thought. Even in my thoughts I’ll never betray you. Not ever!

  Ilven Zavotle stood up at the burner and looked out to the north-west. “What do you think of the globe now, captain? Is it bigger or closer? Or both?”

  “It might be a little closer,” Toller said, glad to have an external focus for this thoughts, as he trained his binoculars on the ptertha. “Can you feel the ship dancing a little? There could be some churning of warmer and cooler air as littlenight passes, and it might have worked out to the globe’s advantage.”

  “It’s still on a level with us — even though we changed our speed.”

  “Yes. I think it wants us.”

  “I know what I want,” Flenn announced as he slipped by Toller on his way to the toilet. “I’m going to have the honour of being the first to try out the long drop — and I hope it all lands right on old Puehilter.” He had nominated an overseer whose petty tyrannies had made him unpopular with the S.E.S. flight technicians.

  Rillomyner snorted in approval. “That’ll give him something worth complaining about, for once.”

  “It’ll be worse when you go — they’re going to have to evacuate the whole of Ro-Atabri when you start bombing them.”

  “Just take care you don’t fall down the hole,” Rillomyner growled, not appreciating the reference to his dietary foibles. “It wasn’t designed for midgets.”

  Toller made no comment about the exchange. He knew the two were testing him to see what style of command he was going to favour on the voyage. A strict interpretation of flight regulations would have precluded any badinage at all among his crew, let alone grossness, but he was solely concerned with their qualities of efficiency, loyalty and courage. In a couple of hours the ship would be higher than any had gone before — if one discounted the semi-mythical Usader of five centuries earlier — entering a region of strangeness, and he could foresee the little group of adventurers needing every human support available to them.

  Besides, the same subject had given rise to a thousand equally coarse jokes in the officers’ quarters, ever since the utilitarian design of the skyship gondola had become common knowledge. He himself had derived a certain amusement from the frequency with which ground-based personnel had reminded him that the toilet was not to be used until the prevailing westerlies had carried the ship well clear of the base.…

  The bursting of the ptertha took Toller by surprise.

  He was gazing at the globe’s magnified image when it simply ceased to exist, and in the absence of a contrasting background there was not even a dissipating smudge of dust to mark its location. In spite of his confidence in their ability to deal with the threat, he nodded in satisfaction. Sleep was going to be difficult enough during the first night aloft without having to worry about capricious air currents bringing the silent enemy to within its killing radius.

  “Make a note that the ptertha has just popped itself out of existence,” he said to Zavotle, and — expressing his relief — added a personal comment. “Put down that it happened about four hours into the flight… just as Flenn was using the toilet… but that there is probably no connection between the two events.” Toller awoke shortly after dawn to the sound of an animated discussion taking place at the centre of the gondola. He raised himself to a kneeling position on the sandbags and rubbed his arms, uncertain as to whether the coolness he could feel was external or an aftermath of sleep. The intermittent roar of the burner had been so intrusive that he had achieved only light dozes, and now he felt little more refreshed than if he had been on duty all night. He walked on his knees to the opening in the passenger compartment’s partition and looked out at the rest of the crew.

  “You should have a look at this, captain,” Zavotle said, raising his narrow head. “The height gauge actually does work!”

  Toller insinuated his legs into the cramped central floorspace and went to the pilot’s station, where Flenn and Ril
lomyner were standing beside Zavotle. At the station was a lightweight table, attached to which was the height gauge. The latter consisted of nothing more than a vertical scale, from the top of which a small weight was suspended by a delicate coiled spring made from a hair-like shaving of brakka. On the previous morning, at the beginning of the flight, the weight had been opposite to the lowest mark on the scale — but now it was several divisions higher.

  Toller stared hard at the gauge. “Has anybody interfered with it?”

  “Nobody has touched it,” Zavotle assured him. “It means that everything they told us must be true. Everything is getting lighter as we go higher! We’re getting lighter!”

  “That’s to be expected,” Toller said, unwilling to admit that in his heart he had never quite accepted the notion, even when Lain had taken time to impress the theory on him in private tutorials.

  “Yes, but it means that in three or four days from now we won’t weigh anything at all. We’ll be able to float around in the air like… like… ptertha! It’s all true, captain!”

  “How high does it say we are?”

  “About three-hundred-and-fifty miles — and that agrees well with our computations.”

  “I don’t feel any different,” Rillomyner put in. “I say the spring has tightened up.”

  Flenn nodded. “Me too.”

  Toller wished for time in which to arrange his thoughts. He went to the side of the gondola and experienced a whirling moment of vertigo as he saw Land as he had never seen it before — an immense circular convexity, one half in near-darkness, the other a brilliant sparkling of blue ocean and subtly shaded continents and islands.

  Things would be quite different if you were lifting off from the centre ofChamteth and heading out into open space, Lain’s voice echoed in his mind. But when travelling between the two worlds you will soon reach a middle zone — slightly closer to Overland than to Land, in fact — where the gravitational pull of each planet cancels out the other. In normal conditions, with the gondola being heavier than the balloon, the ship has pendulum stability — but where neither has any weight the ship will be unstable and you will have to use the lateral jets to control its attitude.