by Jeffrey Lord
To get back to the uranium. It was Chephron who did it. I know he makes the Hunchback of Notre Dame look like a beauty contest winner, and I really can’t stand the man, but I have to be fair. He is. a good oar drummer and knows how to handle the men and get the most out of them. Everybody takes a turn at the oars. Except myself and Pelops and Ixion.
Pelops, who fancies himself as a medical man, was trying to cure Chephron’s sores with some salve he found aboard. It didn’t work, but Pelops did find out that Chephron, the idiot, was carrying around a piece of raw meta in his pocket.
“It is a luck piece,” Chephron said to me. “I carry it just to remind myself that I no longer toil in the mines. Whenever I am sick and the sores pain me and make people avoid me I look at the piece of meta and tell myself how much better off I am.”
I quote him verbatim in the above. Anyway Pelops got the idea that the raw meta had something to do with the sores. Chephron wouldn’t part with it. So Pelops, who is now the ship’s doctor and, I suppose, as good as any, had Chephron up in front of me. As long as I am writing this at all, taking the trouble, I may as well put that into quotes also.
Pelops said, “I want to throw it overboard, sire, but the fool will not part with it. He has carried it since the mine and I believe it makes him sick and keeps his sores from healing. He will not listen to me - but if you order him!”
I did not like looking at Chephron and his sores - a thing I am not proud of, but in this log I am telling the truth, since nobody will ever see it anyway - and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Chephron did not smell so good, either, though I make all the men bathe once a day in sea Water.
“Let me see the thing,” I ordered. “Take it ‘from him, Pelops, and hand it to me.”
Chephron growled a little, but he obeyed. I examined the chunk of raw meta closely.
Strange how the human brain works even when it has been distorted and reconstituted by Lord L’s computer. The chunk of meta was about half the size of a cricket ball. Heavy, with a lot of mass and density, a mixture of black-brown in color. I flipped it in my palm, not really thinking too much about it, ‘ and studied poor little Chephron. For some reason, only Bek-Tor knows why, as Pelops would say, I remembered something I had read back in H Dimension. Something about the chemical table of the human body and what it was worth in money. In dollars and cents - it must have been a reprint from a Yank paper. I could even remember the exact figures - that the value of body chemicals and minerals was up 257% since 1936. In that year they had been worth about 98 cents. Now they were valued at $3.50. Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus, all of them, even a little gold and silver, worth almost four dollars. I was looking at Chephron and thinking that on that scale he was worth about sixpence.
The important thing was that it got me to thinking about minerals. I took a better and longer look at the meta. Something started buzzing in my mind, but it wouldn’t come out in the open.
I flung the chunk of meta on my bunk and told Chephron that I would decide later after I had studied the stuff. He grumbled a little but in the end he bowed and took off. Then I had to listen to Pelops.
He glared at the meta. “If you keep it around, sire, you will get the sores and the sickness. I am convinced of it. Let me throw it over the side. I have long thought, ever since I - “
By this time I knew when he was getting ready to go into a lecture and I cut him short. I was a little curt with him.
“One night will do no harm,” I told him. “Forget it. And here is an order - find me an ingot of refined meta, or a coin of the stuff, and bring it to me at once. Hurry up.”
He thought I was bonkers. “An ingot of meta, sire? Where would I find that aboard this ship?”
I admitted the unlikelihood. “Find me a coin, then. Any coin.’ They are all made of meta, aren’t they?”
“Of course, sire. What else? But surely you know - Otto the Black controlled all coinage - even the Queen had few coins - how am I to find a coin among slaves? It is impossible. I myself have not possessed a meta coin in years. And as I was about to say, sire, when you switched the talk to coins, I - “
I leveled a finger at him - remember to clean your nails, Blade - and said, “As you are not about to say, Polonius, get the hell out of here and find me a coin. You have four hundred ex-slaves to search. Surely one of them somehow and somewhere, will have concealed a coin. Look for it. Don’t come back until you find it.”
When I get that tone in my voice Pelops knows I mean it, But he stopped at the cabin door and looked at me. “Polonius? I am Pelops, as you well know. Why did you call me by another name? Who is Polonius?”
It was hard to keep from laughing, but I managed. “A very great man in the literature of my own land,” I told him. “Very wise. Of the finest character. A fount of good advice and much looked up to. He only had one failing.”
Pelops, all smiles now, mollified, was bowing and smirking at me. “His failing, sire? What was it?”
“HE TALKED TOO DAMNED MUCH. OUT - OUT! FIND ME A COIN!”
When he was gone I examined the chunk of raw meta again. I forced my memory back to a class I had attended at the Naval School in Greenwich. J had made me go.
Just suppose, I thought to myself. Symbol U or UR. AT. no., 92 AT. wt., 238.07.
It all came slipping back into my mind. Possible? Hell - I was in Sarma! Who would have thought that possible before Lord L came up with his master computer?
Just before dark Pelops came back with a small square coin. He had washed it well, he explained, because one of the former slaves had had it concealed up his anus. I did not ask how Pelops had come by it.
I examined the coin with the crude telescope I had inherited. Not very satisfactory, but good enough. I scratched it with a knife. Heavy, dense, nickellike. Very hard. It could just be.
That night, before the cabin lamp was lit, I lay on the bunk and studied the chunk of raw meta. After staring at it for a long time I had to call in Pelops and Ixion for their opinions. I was beginning to doubt my own eyes.
They saw it, too. A faint glow in the dark, just a hint of fluorescence, a barely seen nimbus around the chunk of meta.
Pitchblende.
For the first time in four trips out into Dimension X I had found a treasure that could really be called a treasure. In Sarma there were whole mountain ranges of pitchblende. Chephron had radiation sores.
I have decided to have a special pocket made in my clothes for the piece of meta and the coin. Recompense the man for his coin.
All the above is written in retrospect, long after the fact, for the simple reason that I have just gotten back to this log. A hell of a lot has happened since I identified that chunk of meta ay pitchblende. Most all of it bad. Some good, though. I have found Zeena again!
Not that finding her turned out to be such a good thing. It really wasn’t. But none of that, because I can’t bring myself to write about it. The biggest trouble is that I now have another woman on my hands. The two of them are driving me crazy.
Let me see. It is hard to pick up a log like this after so much time and so many events - so I will just say that I was lying there thinking about the pitchblende and wondering if Lord L could ever invent teleportation so we could get the stuff back to H Dimension, when Ixion came in with bad news. I am trying to remember just how he put it. I do remember that he still had a bandage around his neck and was very pale. Ixion was a good man and a fine seaman. If it were not for Ixion I wouldn’t be writing in this log again.
Ixion said, “There is weather making, Captain Blade. Looks like one of the Purple storms that come this time of year. We had best get off the land as far as we can.”
We had been coasting south.
I wasn’t particularly worried, I remember. I did my time in the Navy and I’ve been around boats most of my life. And he was right, of course. I didn’t want to fool around with a lee shore.
I can remember distinctly that I was sleepy. I
must have yawned. And said, “So take her out, Ixion. We’ll heave to, rig a sea anchor, and ride out the weather. No problem.”
Ixion frowned. He wasn’t having any of my cheerfulness. I did not, it seemed, understand much about the purple Sea. He took a leather chart out of a case and showed me.
The thing about the Purple Sea was that it was so narrow. I hadn’t actually realized. Ixion put his finger on the chart and showed me - the Purple Sea was only about fifty miles across at the widest point. Most of it was much narrower than that. Directly across from us now was Tyranna. I sure as hell didn’t want to go there. Neither did I want to hang around Sarma.
To the north were uncharted waters - as far as Ixion knew the sea stretched out to infinity. No sailor had ever reached the end of it. I wasn’t about to try.
Ixion said the Purple storms blew for days, even weeks. Even with sea anchors and bare poles we were sure to be driven. To east or west we would be driven aground. To the north were uncharted waters. That left the south, where lay the Burning Land, where I wanted to go anyway. I thought it solved the problem. Run before the storm, always to the south. Ixion left the cabin shaking his head - the Captain Blade had never been in a Purple storm. I would see.
I saw, all right. As I write this I can still see those waves. Mast high. Higher. It was like being in a valley surrounded by purple-black mountains. The wind was at least typhoon strength - by H Dimension standards - and it never let up. Kept shifting from quarter to quarter, shrilling and screaming and blowing the tops off the huge waves.
We lost four rudders in two days. I lost a dozen men overboard in the first hour before we got life lines rigged. I had myself lashed to the tiller and took the worst beating of my life, but I managed to keep her from broaching too badly. We bailed all the time. They were working for their lives and they knew it and they bailed. How they bailed! It wasn’t enough. The Pphira was tight enough but we kept shipping tons of water with every wave. And the waves never stopped.
By the end of the third day I knew we were licked. Pphira was low in the water and getting ready to sink any minute. Then we got a miracle. The storm passed.
I will put this in quotes, too, in an effort to get it down just as it happened. The storm let up suddenly and I grabbed Ixion’s speaking grumpet and let them hear me good.
“Bail, you misbegotten bastards! Get this ship dry. You cooks start your fires again - we’ll all be better with hot food in our bellies. You bo’suns” - for I had Pphira organized down to the lowest rating - “you bo’suns get your crews to clearing up the wreckage. Everything we can’t use goes over the side. Check the drinking water. And remember that it’s rationed! Any man caught stealing water goes over the side. Empty and clean the latrines. All sick or injured men report to Pelops immediately.”
I kept bellowing, sounding as tough and cheerful as I could to put some heart in them. They needed it. So did I. I hadn’t been off my feet in two days and the ropes that bound me to the tiller had rubbed me raw. I was about at the end of my tether but I couldn’t let them see it.
Pelops was in worse shape. Along with everything else he had been sea sick - I’ve never seen a worse case - and he spent most of the time in my cabin, hiding under the bunk and throwing up. Those mountainous waves had taken all the strut out of him. I didn’t blame him much, but now I had to roust him a little.
“You’ve got sick call to look to,” I told him. “Get down there and get those men patched up and dosed.”
His complexion was like green slime. He held his belly and groaned at me. “I am still ill, sire. I cannot. My belly is in my throat. Anyway I have few medicines and my splints and bandages are in short supply. I - “
I scowled at him and shoved him off the poop deck. “Do the best you can, then. Set a good example, at least. The worst is over.”
When Pelops had gone Ixion looked at me from the tiller, where he had taken over, and said, “You are wrong, Captain. The worst is not over. It is yet to come.”
Remember that I was as sick, tired, hungry and thirsty and beatup as any of them. I gave him a nasty look. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Ixion pointed to the sea around us. It was calm as far as the eye could see, as calm as though oil had been spread on it.
“You do not know the way of the Purple storms,” Ixion reminded me again. “It will return. In an hour, or a day, or even several days, but it will return. There are always two parts to a Purple storm, and there is always a calm between. You will see.”
I had to believe him. Ixion had never been wrong yet about seafaring matters. I cursed for a time - a lot of good that did - then asked Ixion if he had any idea where we were. He didn’t, much, except that we had been driven south all this while and there was no land in sight. Not much help. But I knew what I had to do.
“Get the men to rowing as soon as possible.” There wasn’t a breath of wind. There wouldn’t be, Ixion said, until the storm came blasting back.
“We’ll make all the southing we can,” I decided. “We’ve got to sight the Burning Land sometime. Maybe we can find a harbor to protect us. What would you know of this?”
Ixion shrugged. “I have never been to the Burning Land, Captain. Few Sarmaians have. I know only what I have heard of it - that it is a terrible place and is a great distance from Sarmacid. It is said that none may cross the Burning Land but the Moghs, who live beyond it.”
I was not interested in Moghs at the moment. I glanced at the sky. It was yellow and shot with red. Patches of the familiar yellow fog were dotting the tranquil sea like mushrooms. Looking at that glassy smooth surface now it was hard to conceive its recent fury.
I stared at Ixion. “You are sure the storm will return?”
He made the sign of the T. “As. sure, my Captain, as I stand on this deck a free man.”
“Get them rowing,” I snapped. “Tell Chephron to get all he can out of them. I know they’re sick and tired, and a lot of them crippled, but we have to try it. Pphira won’t last out another blow like that last one.”
“The second storm,” said Ixion, “is always the worst.”
I gave him a sour look. “You’re just a little ray of sunshine, mate. That is what I love about you.”
He didn’t get it and I didn’t bother to explain. I dragged my weary carcass down among the men and did the best I could to cheer them. They were a pretty bedraggled lot but in half an hour I had them on the benches, putting their backs into it, and starting a sea chantey. I went back to the poop.
We had lost our single mast, snapped halfway down, and I couldn’t step a new one at sea. There was a spare - marvel in itself - but I couldn’t risk lying to and stepping it when the new storm might catch me. I sent a man up to the splintered stub to lash himself there and let me know the instant he saw land.
That damned desert shore - which of course I took the Burning Land to be, desert - couldn’t be much farther on. If we could make it and beach Pphira. I had enough men to drag her high above the tide line and dig a shallow hole for her bottom. She would be safe then and I would have a base of sorts. I knew I was going to have to cross that desert and I was not looking forward to it.
Burns said something about the best laid plans, etc. The old drunk knew what he was talking about. We had been rowing about five hours, making good speed, when the lookout on the shattered mast let out a yell and pointed off the port bow.
“A ship, Captain! A ship - sinking.”
A ship in distress. With all my trouble it was the last thing I needed. I cupped my hands, and yelled at the lookout.
“What do you make of her, man?”
“I make her a pirate, Captain. There is a skull nailed to her prow. Her mast is gone and she is down by the head. Women aboard her, sir! Women!”
I could hear the muttering all through Pphira at the word. Women! More trouble.
I shot a glance at Ixion. “What do you make of it? Could it be one of the Queen’s punishment ships?”
Zeena!
Ixion took the glass from me and studied the ship. With my naked eye I could see women leaping and shouting aboard her, waving their hands, and bits of colored cloth. Most of them were bare breasted. No sign of a man.
“Those are women right enough,” said Ixion. He licked his lips.
“I know that,” I told him coldly. “Keep your mind on the matter at hand. What of the ship?”
He nodded slowly. “She’s a pirate, Captain. In bad shape, too, but I don’t think she’s sinking. Certainly she is not a galless, no crime ship. She’s only a unireme and all gallesses are biremes at least, usually triremes. And there is the skull nailed to her prow - none but a pirate would carry that.”
I tugged my beard and wondered aloud. “Then where are the damned pirates? Not women pirates, certainly?”
Ixion handed me back the glass with a cool look. “No, Captain. My guess is that the pirates attacked a galless and sank her. They took some of the women aboard their own craft.”
I knew a way to find out. “Stand by to lie close to her,” I said. “Battle stations. This could be a trick to lull us with women. She is probably crammed with pirates below decks.”
I was wrong. It turned out that the pirates had taken a galless, one of the Queen’s punishment ships. They killed the Captain, one Marius and the only man aboard - did not Queen Pphira mention that name to me? - and they had a lot of fun with the ugly women before they tossed them overboard or slit their throats. The cream of the crop, of the women crew, criminals under Sarmaian law and set to the oars, the pirates took aboard their own ship. All women, as I found out later, were communal property.
