Darkness and Light p-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  Ten pairs of gnome eyes looked at him and blinked. They do it in unison, he thought, just to unnerve me.

  "Well?"

  "We land?" said Wingover.

  "How? The engines won't shut off."

  The room fairly buzzed with the brains of gnomes furiously thinking. Roperig began to shake.

  "What does a ship in distress do when it's driven toward the shoals?" asked Roperig feverishly.

  "Crash and sink," said Bellcrank.

  "No, no! It throws out an anchor!"

  Sturm and Kitiara smiled. Here was something they could understand. Never mind lightning bottles and ethereal air — throw out an anchor!

  "Do we have an anchor?" asked Fitter.

  "We have a few grappling hooks about this big," Wingover replied, holding his hands out, about a foot apart.

  "They won't stop Cloudmaster."

  "I'll make a big one," Bellcrank vowed. "If we scrap a few ladders and iron fittings…"

  "But what if we don't get the engine shut down?" Sturm said. "No anchor in the world will stop us."

  Kitiara cocked her head and regarded Stutts severely.

  "What about it?" she asked.

  "How 1-long will it take you to m-make an anchor7" asked Stutts.

  "With help, maybe three hours," said Bellcrank.

  "When will we h-hit Lunitari?" Stutts asked Sighter. Sighter scribbled across the table, around one corner, and up the other side. "As it stands now, we will hit Lunitari in five hours and sixteen minutes."

  "Flash and B-Birdcall will keep working on the engine. If n-no other course is open, we m-may have to smash the engine b-before we can set down." The gnomes erupted with cries of consternation. The humans objected, too.

  "How will we ever get home if you wreck the engine?" demanded Kitiara. "We'll be marooned on Lunitari forever."

  "If we c-crash, we'll be on L–Lunitari a lot longer than that, and enjoy it a lot less," Stutts said. "W-we'll be dead." '

  "Fitter and I will make a cable for the anchor," said Roperig, heading below.

  "I'll fill the deckhouse with our blankets and pillows," Cutwood offered. "That way, we'll have something to cushion us when we crash, er, land."

  The gnomes dispersed to their tasks, while Sturm and Kitiara remained in the dining room. The scarlet expanse of the moon was visible through the skylight. Together they looked up at Lunitari. Sturm said, "Another world. I wonder what it's like."

  "Who can say? The gnomes could give you theories; I'm just a warrior," said Kitiara. She sighed. "If we end up marooned there, I hope there will be battles to be fought."

  "There are always battles. Every place has its own version of good and evil."

  "Oh, it doesn't matter to me who I fight for. Battle is my virtue. You can't go wrong with a sword in your hand and a good comrade at your side." She slipped a thickly gloved hand into Sturm's. He returned her grip, but could not dispel the anxiety that her words caused.

  The gnomes, when aroused, had formidable amounts of energy. In less time than it takes to tell, Bellcrank had forged a monstrous anchor with four flukes and a huge weight made of miscellaneous metal parts from all over the ship. In his zeal to add weight to his creation, Bellcrank took ladder rungs, doorknobs, spoons from the dining room, door hinges, and only by threat of force could he be discouraged from removing half of Wingover's control knobs. Roperig and Fitter wove an appropriately stout cable; indeed, their first offering was too thick to thread through the eyelet that Bellcrank had fashioned in the anchor. Cutwood filled the dining room so full of pillows and blankets that it was hard to walk across to the wheelhouse. Lunitari grew visibly larger with each passing hour. From a featureless red globe, it had developed dark red mountain peaks, purple valleys, and wide scarlet plains. Stutts and Wingover debated endlessly as to why the moon was so dominated by red hues. As usual, they resolved nothing, Kitiara made the mistake of asking how it was that they seemed to be flying straight down at Lunitari when they had been going up since leaving Krynn.

  "It's all a matter of relative reference," Wingover said. "Our 'up' is down on Lunitari, and the 'down' on Lunitari will be up."

  She set aside her sword, which she'd taken out to polish and sharpen. "You mean, if I drop a stone from my hand on Lunitari, it will fly up in the air and eventually fall on Krynn?"

  Wingover opened and closed his mouth silently three times. His expression grew more and more puzzled. Finally, Kitiara asked, "What will keep our feet on the moon? Won't we fall back home?"

  Wingover looked stricken. Stutts chuckled.

  "The same p-pressure that held you to the fertile soil of K-Krynn will allow us to walk normally on L–Lunitari," he said.

  "Pressure?" asked Sturm.

  "Yes, the p-pressure of the air. Air has weight, you know."

  "I see," said Kitiara. "But what keeps the air in place?"

  Now it was Stutts's turn to look stricken. Sturm rescued them from their scientific quandary.

  "I want to know if there will be people there," he said.

  "Why not?" Wingover said. "If the air thickens and gets warmer, we might find quite ordinary folk living on Lunitari."

  Kitiara drew the whetstone down the length of her blade.

  "Strange," she mused, "to think that people like us live on the moon. I wonder what they see when they look up — down? — at our world."

  Birdcall whistled for attention from the deck below. Bellcrank had removed the ladder halfway down, so the chirping gnome couldn't reach a rung to pull himself up. Stutts and Sturm reached through the open hatch and hauled him out. Birdcall twittered a lengthy exposition, and Stutts translated.

  "He says he and F-Flash have figured out a way to disengage the engine before we land. They will c-cut the main power cable a hundred feet up, and t-time the wing beats so that the wings will 1-lock in their extended position. That way, we can glide in to a landing."

  "And if they don't?"

  Birdcall held up one hand with the fingers flat together. His hand dived into the open palm of his other, making a crunching noise when they smacked together.

  "We have l-little ch-choice but to try."

  The others agreed. Birdcall dropped to the deck below and hurried down to his engine. Roperig and Fitter pooled the anchor and cable on the deck by the ship's tail. Cutwood, Sighter, and Rainspot boxed up their most valuable possessions — tools, instruments, and the big ledger with all the entries on raisin density in muffins — and buried them amidst the pillows in the dining room.

  "What can I do?" Sturm said to Wingover.

  "You could throw out the anchor when we say."

  "I can do something, too," Kitiara said.

  "Why don't you go to the engine room and help Flash and Birdcall? They can't tend the engine and cut the power cable at the same time," said the gnome. She raised her sword until the hilt was level with her chin. "Cut it with this?" she said.

  "Certainly."

  "Right." Kitiara slipped the sheath over the blade and started down the abbreviated ladder. "When you want the cable cut, hit that crazy horn," she said. "That will be my signal."

  "Kit," Sturm said quietly, making her pause. "May Paladine guide your hand."

  "I doubt that I'll need divine aid. I've chopped through thicker things than cable!" She smiled crookedly.

  There was nothing in view now but Lunitari. Though Wingover didn't change course, the moon seemed to sink from overhead to bows-on. As the minutes sped by, the red landscape spread to every horizon. Soon the airship was flying with the purple sky above and the red soil below. The altitude gauge was working again.

  "Seventy-two hundred feet. Four minutes to contact," said Wingover. A line of jagged peaks flashed by. Wingover spun the wheel hard to port. The wings on the starboard side flicked past the sharp spires with scant feet to spare. The Cloudmaster careened farther, almost onto its side. Soft thumps and muffled yells came from the dining room.

  "Whoa-oh-oh-oh!" Wingover cried. "More bumps coming up!"<
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  The prow smashed into a lofty pinnacle and carried it away. A cloud of red grit and dust hit the wheelhouse windows. Wingover frantically pushed levers and turned the wheel. The flying ship went nose up, then tail up. Sturm staggered back and forth. He felt like a pea being rattled in a cup. The cliffs fell away to reveal a landscape of flat mesas divided by deep ravines. The ship was down to a thousand feet. Sturm opened the door. Melted ice ran along the deck outside.

  "I'm going aft!" he said.

  Wingover bobbed his head rapidly in reply. He stepped out the door just as Wingover banked the Cloudmaster in that direction. Sturm almost pitched headfirst over the rail. The scarlet world roared past at terrifying speed, much faster, it seemed, than when they were cruising through the high clouds. He felt a rush of vertigo, but it quickly succumbed to his will. Sturm staggered aft, bouncing from the rail to the wall of the deckhouse. He glimpsed a queerly distorted face at one of the dining room portholes. It was Fitter, his bulbous nose and ruddy lips smashed flat against the pane. The wind whipped at Sturm as he neared the anchor. The hinged tail bowed and flexed under Wingover's control. Sturm wrapped an arm around the tail's hinge post and held on. The tableland was replaced by a featureless plain. The dark red soil was smooth and unrippled. At least Paladine had favored them with an uncluttered place to land the flying ship! Sturm let go of the rudder post and cradled the anchor in his arms. Bellcrank had done a good job; the big hook weighed nearly as much as Sturm. He wrestled it to the rail. They were very low now. The ground resembled a sheet of marble, painted the color of blood. Do it, Wingover. Blow the horn now, thought Sturm. They seemed too low. He's forgotten, he thought. We're too low. He forgot to sound the horn! Or had he himself failed to hear it in the rush of wind and the pounding of his heart? After a second of indecision, Sturm heaved the anchor over. The multicolored rope, woven from everything Roperig could find — cord, curtains, shirts, and gnomish underwear — spilled after the hook, loop after loop. Roperig said he'd made 110 feet of cable. More than enough. The skein rapidly shrank. With a snap, it ran out, and the heavy scrap metal anchor streamed out behind the flying ship. Sturm had dropped it too soon. He moved forward, watching the hook drop closer and closer to the red soil. By the door to the wheelhouse, Sturm paused, expecting the anchor to bounce and shatter as it hit, but it did neither. The anchor sank into the surface of the moon, plowing a wide, deep furrow. He threw open the door. Wingover had his hand on the horn cord.

  "Don't do it!" Sturm yelled. "The ground below — it's not solid!"

  Wingover snatched his hand away from the cord as if it had burned him. "Not solid?"

  "I dropped the anchor, and it's flowing through the plain as though it were in water. If we land, we'll sink!"

  "We don't have any time left. We're less than a hundred feet up now!" Sturm went to the rail, staring desperately at the soft ground. What to do? What to do! He saw rocks.

  "Hard to starboard!" he sang out. "Solid ground to starboard!"

  Wingover spun the wheel. The right rear wing touched Lunitari. It dipped into the dust and came out unharmed. Sturm could smell the dirt in the air. The rocks thickened, and the smooth, scarlet dust gave way to a stony plain.

  Aa-oo-gah!

  The Cloudmaster quivered like a living thing. The leather bat-wings lifted in a graceful arc and froze there. Sturm threw himself through the door and landed on his belly. He covered his head tightly with his hands. The wheels touched, spun, and snapped off with brittle, wrenching sounds. When the hull of the flying ship plowed into Lunitari, the bow bucked, rose, and jerked to port. Sturm careened across the deck. The Cloudmaster tore along, trailing a wake of dirt and stones. Finally, as if too tired to continue, the flying ship settled to a creaking, grinding stop.

  Chapter 9

  Foty Pounds of Iron

  "Ane we dead?" Sturm uncovered his head and lifted it. Wingover was jammed through the spokes of the steering wheel, his short arms squeezed tightly against his chest. His eyes were just as tightly closed.

  "Open your eyes, Wingover; we're all right," said Sturm.

  "Oh, Reorx, I'm stuck!"

  "Hold on." Sturm grabbed the gnome's feet and pulled. Wingover protested all the way, but when he was finally free, he forgot his discomfort and said, "Ah! Lunitari!" The gnome and the man went out on deck. The rear door of the dining room banged open, and the other gnomes piled out. Wordlessly, they surveyed the barren landscape. Aside from a distant hump of hills, Lunitari was flat all the way to the horizon. One gnome gave a high chortle of delight, and they all scampered inside. Sturm heard things flying as they sorted through the pillows for their tools, instruments, and notebooks. Kitiara appeared on deck with Flash and Birdcall. They hadn't been able to see from the engine room, being too busy to stare out the porthole. Kitiara had a fine goose-egg bruise over her right eye.

  "Hello," said Sturm. "What happened to you?"

  "Oh, I knocked my head against an engine fitting when we crashed."

  "Landed," he corrected. "Did you break the fitting?"

  His rare attempt at humor left Kitiara silent for a moment. Then they threw their arms around each other, grateful for their lives. The ramp in the starboard side of the hull dropped down, and the whole gang of gnomes boiled out onto the red turf.

  Kitiara said, "I guess we'd better go down and look after them, before they hurt themselves."

  The gnomes were lost in their specialties by the time Kitiara and Sturm joined them. Sighter scanned the horizon with his spyglass. Bellcrank and Cutwood were filling jars with scoopfuls of red dirt. Rainspot stood apart from the rest, his nose and ears tuned to the weather. He reminded Kitiara of a hunting dog. Stutts was rapidly filling pages in his pocket notebook. Wingover walked around the hull of the Cloudmaster, kicking the tight wooden planks now and then. Roperig and Fitter examined their anchor line and measured the amount that it had stretched when pulled taut. Birdcall and Flash were in a heated discussion. Sturm overheard something about 'wing camber variance' and listened no further. He scooped up a handful of Lunitarian dirt. It was flaky, not granular like sand. As it fell from his fingers, it made a tinkling sound.

  "Do you smell what I smell?" asked Kitiara.

  He sniffed. "Dust. It'll settle," he said.

  "No, not that. It's a feeling more than a smell, really. The air has a tingle to it, like a draft of Otik's best ale."

  Sturm concentrated for a moment. "I don't feel anything."

  Stutts bustled over. "Here are m-my preliminary findings," he said. "Air: normal. Temperature: c-cool but not cold. No sign of w-water, vegetation, or animal life."

  "Kit says she feels a tingle in the air."

  "Really? I h-hadn't noticed anything."

  "I'm not imagining it," she said tersely. "Ask Rainspot, maybe he's noticed."

  The weather-wise gnome came running when called, and Stutts asked for his impressions.

  "The high clouds will dissipate soon," said Rainspot. "Humidity is very low. I don't think it has rained here in a very long time, if ever."

  "Bad news," Kitiara said. "We haven't much water left on the ship."

  "Do you sense anything else?" Sturm queried.

  "Yes, actually, but it's not a weather phenomenon. The air is somehow charged with energy."

  "Like l-lightning?"

  "No." Rainspot pivoted slowly. "It's constant, but very low in intensity. It doesn't feel harmful, just… there." He shrugged.

  "Why don't we feel it?" Sturm asked.

  "You're not the sensitive type," Kitiara said. "Like old Rainspot and me."

  She clapped her hands. "So, Stutts, now that we're here, what do we do?"

  "Explore. Make m-maps and study local conditions."

  "There's nothing here," said Sturm.

  "This is only one small 1-location. S-suppose we had landed on the Plains of Dust on Krynn. W-would you then say that there is nothing on Krynn but s-sand?" Stutts asked.

  Sturm admitted that he would not. Stutts called his en
gineers, and Flash and Birdcall trotted up. "St-status report."

  "The lightning bottles are two-thirds empty. If we don't find some way to refill them, we won't have enough power to fly home," Flash said. Birdcall sang his report, and Flash translated for the humans.

  "He says the engine was shaken loose from its mountings by the hard landing. But the cut power cable can be patched."

  "I have an idea about that," said Wingover, who'd joined them. "If we install a switch at that juncture, we can bypass the fused setting damaged by Rainspot's lightning."

  "My lightning!" the weather gnome protested. "Since when do I make lightning?"

  "Switch? What kind of switch?" Cutwood asked. The sound of disputation had drawn him and Bellcrank.

  "A single throw-knife switch," said Wingover.

  "Ha! Listen to the amateur! Single-throw! What's needed is a rotary pole switch with isolated leads — "

  Kitiara let out a blood-curdling battle cry and swung her sword around her head. The silence that followed was instant and total. "You gnomes are driving me mad! Why don't you just appoint someone to each task and be done with it?"

  "Only one mind on each task?" Sighter was scandalized. "It would never get done right."

  "Perhaps Bellcrank could make the switch," Fitter suggested timidly. "It will be made of metal, won't it?"

  Everyone stared at him, mouths open. He edged nervously behind Roperig.

  "Wonderful idea!" Kitiara said. "Brilliant idea!"

  "There isn't much spare metal left," Wingover said.

  "We could salvage some from the anchor," Rainspot said.

  The other gnomes looked at him and smiled.

  "That's a good idea," said Cutwood.

  "Fitter and me'll pull in the anchor," Roperig said. They picked up the thick cable hanging down from the tail and hauled away. Fifty feet away, where the field of stones gave way to the deep dust, the buried anchor leaped ahead in dusty spurts. Then the hook caught on something. The gnomes strained and pulled.

  "Want some help?" called Sturm.

  "No — uh — we can do it," Roperig replied. Roperig slapped Fitter on the back and they turned around, laying the rope over their shoulders. The gnomes dug in their toes and pulled.