The Wooden Spaceships

Chapter 11

By the time Sondeweere had been away for eighty days Bartan Drumme had developed a new pattern of living.

Each morning he went out and made some attempt to cultivate the nearer portions of his farm—that was a duty he could not ignore—but his real preoccupation was with his hoard of glass and ceramic demijohns, the source of his sustenance and comfort. The production and consumption of wine claimed most of his waking hours. He had learned to dispose of such niceties as using fresh yeast and of waiting for the wine to clear, the latter being an exercise in pointless aesthetics which had no effect on a beverage’s alcohol content.

As soon as a jar of wine had ceased working he siphoned it off the dregs and poured in a new batch of juice expressed from fruit or berries, restarting the fermentation with the sludge of the old yeast. The yeast quickly became contaminated with wild strains, yielding wines which were marred by sourness and off-flavours, but the method had the overriding virtue of being fast.

Efficiency of production was all that mattered to Bartan. He frequently became ill and was racked by diarrhoea caused by drinking his murky potions, but that seemed a small price to pay for the ability to escape his guilt and to sleep the long night through. The bargain was enhanced by the fact that he had little need of solid food, the bubble-ringed glasses providing most of the nourishment he required to get through the weary succession of days.

Now that even the Phoratere family had left the Basket he had no companionship from other farmers, but he had given up riding into New Minnett to spend time in the tavern. The journey had begun to seem tedious and lacking in purpose when he had all he could drink at home, and in any case he could detect a new lack of warmth in his reception. Reeve Karrodall had counselled him about his drinking and personal appearance, and subsequently had become a much less congenial person with whom to while away the hours.

He was returning from the fields one day, just before sunset, when he noticed a flurry of movement ahead of him in the dust of the path. Closer inspection revealed that it was a crawler, the first he had seen in a long time. The glistening brown creature was labouring along the path in the direction of the house, with occasional flashes of pallid grey from its underside as it clambered over pebbles.

Bartan stared at it for a moment, his mouth twitching in revulsion, then looked around for a large stone. He found one which required two hands to lift, and dashed it down on the crawler. With his gaze averted in case he glimpsed the sickening result of his handiwork, he stepped over the stone and continued on his way. There were many varieties of small life forms to be found in the soil of Overland, most of them repugnant to his eye, but he usually left them alone to go about their business in peace. The sole exception was the crawler, which he had a compulsion to destroy on sight.

The house and outbuildings were bathed in a mellow red-gold light as he drew near, and he felt the familiar sinking of his spirits at the prospect of spending the night there alone. This was the worst time of the day, when he was met by silence in the house in place of Sondeweere’s laughter, and the darkening dome of the sky seemed to reverberate with emptiness. The whole world felt empty at sunset. He passed the pigsty, which was also silent because he had turned the animals out into the wild to fend for themselves, and crossed the yard to the house. On opening the front door he paused, his heart beginning to pound as he realised the place felt different.

“Sondy!” he called out, giving way to an irrational impulse. He darted through the kitchen and flung open the bedroom door. The room beyond was empty, with no change in the squalor he had allowed to overwhelm it. Downcast and feeling like a fool, he nevertheless returned to the front entrance and scanned the surroundings. Everything was as usual in the sad coppery light, the only sign of movement coming from the bluehorn which was grazing near the orchard.

Bartan sighed, shaking his head over the bout of idiocy. He had a throbbing pain in his temples, legacy of the wine he had drunk in the afternoon, and he felt parched. He selected a full demijohn from the array in the corner, picked up a cup and returned outside to the bench by the door. The wine tasted less palatable than usual, but he drank the first two cupfuls greedily, pouring them down like water in order to win the blessed muzziness which dulled intellect and emotion. He had a feeling he was going to need it more than ever in the hours to come.

As darkness gathered and the heavens began to throng with their nightly display, he picked out Farland—the only green-tinted object in the firmament—and allowed his gaze to dwell on it. He still retained all his scepticism for religion, but of late had begun to understand the comforts it could offer. Assuming that Sondeweere was dead, it would be so good to believe, or even half-believe, that she had merely taken the High Path to the outer world and was beginning a new existence there. A simple reincarnation without continuance of memory or personality, which was what the Alternist religion postulated, was in many ways indistinguishable from straightforward death—but it offered something. It offered the hope that he had not totally destroyed a wonderful human life with his stubbornness and arrogance, that in the eternity which lay ahead he and Sondeweere would meet again, perhaps many times, and that he would be able to make amends to her in some way. The fact that they would not consciously recognise each other, and yet might respond as soul mates, unaccountably drawn to each other, made the whole concept romantically beautiful and poignant…

Tears flooded Bartan’s eyes, expanding the image of Farland into consecutive rings filled with radial prismatic needles. He gulped down more wine to ease the choking pain in his throat.

Let me know that you are up there, Sondy, he pleaded in his thoughts, surrendering to the fantasy. If only you could grant me a sign that you still exist, I too would begin to live again.

He continued drinking as Farland drifted down the sky. Now and again he lost consciousness through exhaustion and increasing intoxication, but when he opened his eyes the green planet was always centred in his field of vision, sometimes as a swirling luminous bubble, at others in the semblance of a circular chal-cedonic gem, slowly rotating, striking a languorous green fire from a thousand facets. It seemed to grow bigger, and bigger, finally to develop a mobile core which displayed a creamy luminance, a core which by imperceptible stages evolved into the likeness of a woman’s face.

Bartan, Sondeweere said, not in an ordinary voice, but an inversion of sound in which one kind of silence was imposed on another. Poor Bartan, I have been aware of your pain, and I am glad that I have at last succeeded in reaching you. You must desist from blaming yourself, and punishing yourself, and thus squandering your one-and-only life. You have no reason to reproach yourself on my account.

“But I brought you to this place,” Bartan mumbled, unastonished, playing the game of dreams. “I am responsible for your death.”

If I were dead I would be unable to speak to you.

Bartan replied in his fuddled obstinacy. “The crime remains. I deprived you of a life—the one we should have shared—and you were so lovely, so sweet, so good…”

You must remember me as I actually was, Bartan. Do not fuel your self-pity by imagining that I was anything but a very ordinary woman.

“So good, so pure…”

Bartan! It may help you if I make you aware that I was never faithful to you. Glave Trinchil was only one of the men from whom I took my pleasures. There were many of them—including my Uncle Jop…

“That isn’t true! I have dreamed foul lies into your mouth.” On another level of Bartan’s drugged consciousness there came the first stirrings of comprehension and wonder: This is not a dream! This is really happening!

That is so, Bartan. The non-voice, the modulations of silence, somehow conveyed wisdom and kindliness. This is really happening, but it will not happen again—so mark well what I am saying. I am not dead! You must stop torturing yourself and dissipating your one-and-only life. Put the past behind you and go on to other things. Above all, forget about me. Goodbye, Bartan…

The sound of his cup splintering on the ground brought Bartan to his feet. He stood there in the star-shot darkness, swaying and shivering, staring at Farland, which was now just above the western horizon. It registered as a point of pure green light without fringes or optical adornments—but for the first time he saw it as another planet, a world, a real place which was as large as Land or Overland, a seat of life.

“Sondy!” he called out, running a few futile paces forward. “Sondy!”

Farland continued its slow descent to the rim of the world.

Bartan went back into the house, fetched another cup and returned to his bench. He filled the cup and drank from it in small, regular, relentless sips as the enigmatic mote of brilliance gradually extinguished itself, winking on the horizon. When it had vanished from sight he found that his mind had acquired a strange and precarious clarity, an ability—which had to fade soon—to deal with unearthly concepts. Momentous judgments and decisions had to be made quickly, before a vinous tide swept him into lasting unconsciousness.

“I still repudiate all religious belief,” he announced to the darkness, calling on the act of speaking aloud to help imprint his thinking on the coming days and years.

“In doing so I am being totally logical. How do I know I’m being totally logical? Because the Alternists preach that only the soul, the spiritual essence, ventures along the High Path. It is an article of faith that there is no continuance of memory— otherwise every man, woman and child would be burdened beyond endurance with recollections of previous existences. It is obvious that Sondeweere remembers me and every circumstance of our lives—therefore she cannot be an Alternist reincarnation.

“As well as that, there are no known instances of those who have passed on communicating with those who remain. And Sondeweere herself referred to my one-and-only life, which…

which does not really prove anything… but if we all have only one life, and she spoke to me, that proves her life has not ended…

“Sondeweere is physically alive somewhere!”

Bartan shivered and took a longer drink, blurrily elated and overwhelmed at the same time. His momentous discovery had brought many questions in its wake, questions of a kind he was not accustomed to dealing with. Why was he persuaded that Sondeweere was on Farland and not, as was much more likely, in another part of his own world? Was it that the apparition had been so intimately associated with the image of the green planet, or had the strange voiceless message from her been layered with meanings not contained in the bare words? And if she were on Farland—how had she been transported? And why? Was it something to do with the inexplicable lights he had seen on the night of her disappearance? And, granting the other suppositions, what had given her the miraculous ability to speak to him across thousands of miles of space?

And—most pressing of all—now that he had been vouchsafed the new knowledge, what was he going to do with it? What action was he going to take?

Bartan grinned, staring glassily into the darkness. The last question had been the only one to which he could easily supply an answer.

It was obvious that he had to go to Farland and bring Sondeweere home!

“Your wife was abducted!” Reeve Majin Karrodall’s cry of astonishment was followed by an attentive silence among the tavern’s other customers. Bartan nodded. “That’s what I said.”

Karrodall moved closer to him, hand dropping to the hilt of his smallsword. “Do you know who did it? Do you know where she is?”

“I don’t know who was responsible, but I know where she is,” Bartan said. “My wife is living on Farland.”

Some of those nearby emitted gleeful sniggers and the group around him began to increase in size. Karrodall gave them an impatient glance, his red face deepening in colour, before he narrowed his eyes at Bartan.

“Did you say Farland? Are you talking about Farland… in the sky?”

“I am indeed talking about the planet Farland,” Bartan said solemnly. He reached for the alepot which had been set out for him, overbalanced and had to grasp the table for a moment of support.

“You’d better sit down before you fall down.” Karrodall waited until Bartan lowered himself on to a bench. “Bartan, is this more of Trinchil’s teachings? Are you trying to say your wife has died and travelled the High Path?”

“I’m saying she is^alive. On Farland.” Bartan drank deeply from the alepot. “Is that so hard to understand?”

Karrodall straddled the bench. “What’s hard to understand is why you let yourself into a condition which so ill becomes you. You look terrible, you stink—and not only of bad wine—and now you are so soused that your talk is that of a madman. I have told you this before, Bartan, but you must quit the Haunt before it is too late.”

“I have already done so,” Bartan said, wiping froth from his lips with the back of a hand. “I’ll never set foot there again.”

“At least that is one sensible decision on your part. Where will you go?”

“Have I not said?” Bartan surveyed the ring of gleefully incredulous faces. “Why, I’m going to Farland to rescue my wife.”

There was an outbreak of laughter which the reeve’s authority could no longer hold in check. More men crowded around Bartan, while others hurried away to spread the word of the unexpected sport which was to be had at the tavern. Somebody slid a fresh tankard into place in front of Bartan.

The plump, limping figure of Otler approached the group, shouldered his way in and said, “But, my friend, how do you know that your wife has taken up residence on Farland?”

“She told me three nights ago. She spoke to me.”

Otler nudged the man beside him. “The woman looked as though she had a healthy set of bellows, but they must have been better than we knew. What do you say, Alsorn?”

The remark disturbed Bartan’s alcoholic composure. He grabbed Otler’s shirt and tried to pull him down on to the bench, but the reeve thrust them apart and swung a warning finger between the two men.

“All I meant,” Otler complained, tucking his shirt back into his breeches, “was that Farland is a long way off.” He brightened up as a witticism occurred to him. “I mean, that’s what Farland means, isn’t it? Far-land!”

“Being in your company is an education in itself,” Bartan said. “Sondeweere appeared to me in a vision. She spoke to me in a vision.”

Again there was a burst of merriment, and Bartan—stupefied though he was—recognised that he had only succeeded in making himself a figure of fun.

“Gentlemen,” he said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “I have tarried here too long, and soon I must depart for the noble city of Prad. I have spent the past two days repairing and refurbishing my wagon—therefore the journey should not be overly prolonged—but nevertheless I will have need of money along the way for the purchase of food and perhaps just a little wine or brandy.” He nodded in acknowledgment of an ironic cheer.

“My airboat is on the wagon outside—it needs only a new gasbag—and in addition I have brought some good furniture and tools. Who will give me a hundred royals for the lot?”

Some of the listeners moved away to inspect what was undoubtedly a bargain, but others were more interested in prolonging the entertainment. “You haven’t told us how you propose to reach Farland,” a hollow-cheeked merchant said. “Will you shoot yourself out of a cannon?”

“I have as yet little idea how to make the flight, and that is why I must begin my journey by going to Prad. There is one man there who knows more about journeying through the sky than any other, and I shall seek him out.”

“What is his name?”

“Maraquine,” Bartan said. “Sky Marshal Lord Toller Maraquine.”

“I’m sure he’ll be very glad to see you,” Otler said, nodding in mock-approval. “His lordship and you will make a fine pair.”

“Enough of this!” Karrodall gripped Bartan’s arm and forcibly drew him away from the group. “Bartan, it grieves me to see you thus, with all your drunken babbling about Farland and visions… and now this talk of trying to approach the King-slayer. You can’t be serious about that.”

“Why not?” Striving to look dignified, Bartan prised the reeve’s fingers off his arm. “Now that the war is ending Lord Toller will have no further use for his fortresses in the sky. When he hears my proposal to fly one of them to Farland—bearing the flag of Kolcorron, mark you—he will doubtless be pleased to give me his patronage.”

“I am sorry for you,” Karrodall remarked sadly. “I am truly sorry for you.”

As he travelled to the east Bartan kept an eye on the horizon ahead, and eventually was rewarded with his first sight of Land in along time.

In the beginning the sister world appeared as a curving sliver of pale light atop the distant mountains, then as the journey progressed it gradually rose higher to become a glowing dome. The nights grew noticeably longer as Land encroached upon more and more of the sun’s path. As the planet continued its upward drift, to show a semi-circle and more, the outlines of the continents and oceans became clearly visible, evocations of lost histories.

Eventually there came the time when Land’s lower edge lifted clear of the horizon, creating a narrow gap through which the rising sun could pour mingling rays of multi-coloured fire. The diurnal pattern of light and darkness, familiar to born Kolcorro-nians, was beginning to re-establish itself, although at this stage foreday was extremely brief. For Bartan—journeying alone in dusty landscapes—the occasion was a significant one, worth commemorating with extra measures of brandy.

He knew that when foreday and aftday reached a balance he would be close to the city of Prad, and from that moment onwards his future would be in the hands of a stranger.

Chapter 12

A great deal of thought and effort had been put into making the garden look as though it had been established for centuries. Some of the statues had been deliberately chipped to give them semblance of antiquity, and the walls and stone benches were artificially weathered with corrosive fluids. The flowers and shrubs had either been grown from seeds brought from Land, or were native varieties which closely resembled those of the Old World.

In a way Toller Maraquine sympathised with the intent—he could imagine that being in the garden would help counterbalance the aching emptiness of the sunset hour—but he had to wonder at the psychology involved. King Chakkell’s personal achievements since arriving on Overland would guarantee him a place in history, but somehow that was not enough to satisfy him. He obviously craved all that his predecessors had enjoyed—not only power itself, but the trappings and emblems of power. Identical motivation had just brought about the death of the King of the New Men, reinforcing Toller’s belief that he would never be able to comprehend the mentality of those who needed to rule others.

“I am well pleased with the outcome,” King Chakkell said, stroking his paunch as he walked, as though having enjoyed a banquet. “The expense of it all was proving a great drain on our resources, but now—with Rassamarden dead—I can rid myself of all those floating fortresses. We will drop them on Land and, with any luck, kill a few more of the diseased upstarts.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Toller said impulsively.

“What is wrong with it? They have to fall somewhere—and surely better on them than on us.”

“I say the defences should be maintained.” Toller knew he would be called upon to marshal logical arguments, but was having difficulty in concentrating his thoughts on impersonal matters such as the strategies of war. He and Berise had landed their skyship only hours earlier—and now it was necessary for him to speak to his wife.

Chakkell spread his arms, halting their progress through the garden. “What do you say, Zavotle?”

liven Zavotle, who had a hand pressed into his stomach, looked blank. “I beg your pardon, Majesty—what was the question?”

Chakkell scowled at him. “What’s the matter with you these days? You seem more preoccupied with your gut than with anything I have to say. Are you ill?”

“It’s just a touch of the bile, Majesty,” Zavotle said. “It may be that the food from the royal kitchen is too rich for my blood.”

“In that case your stomach has reason to be grateful to me—I propose to dismantle the aerial defence screen and drop the fortresses on Land. What do you say to that?”

“It would advertise our lack of defences to the enemy.”

“What does it matter if they lack the means or the will to attack?”

“Rassamarden’s successor could be just as ambitious,” Toller said. “The Landers may yet send another fleet.”

“After the total destruction of the last one?”

Toller could see that the King was becoming impatient, but he did not want to yield. “In my opinion we should retain all the fighters, plus enough stations to support them and their pilots.” To his surprise Chakkell gave a hearty laugh.

“I see your game!” Chakkell said jovially, slapping him on the shoulder. “You still haven’t grown up, Maraquine. You always have to have a new plaything. The fighters are your toys and the weightless zone is your playground, and you want me to go on footing the bill. Isn’t that it?”

“Certainly not, Majesty.” Toller made no attempt to hide the fact that he was offended. Gesalla had often spoken to him in a similar vein, and he… Gesalla! I have betrayed our love, and now I must confess to you. If only I can win your forgiveness I swear to you that I will never again…

“Mind you,” Chakkell went on, “I have a certain sympathy with your viewpoint now that I have met your little playmate.”

“Majesty, if you are referring to Skycaptain Narrinder I…”

“Come now, Maraquine! Don’t try to tell me you haven’t bedded that little beauty.” Chakkell was enjoying himself, eagerly resuming the private game now that he had discovered an unexpected area of vulnerability in his opponent. “It’s obvious, man! It’s written all over your face! What do you say, Zavotle?”

Thoughtfully massaging his stomach, Zavotle said, “It seems to me that if we burned the command stations and fortresses, the ashes could fall anywhere without harming us or betraying information to the enemy.”

“That’s an excellent thought, Zavotle—and I thank you for it—but you have not addressed the subject.”

“I dare not, Majesty,” Zavotle said humorously. “To do so I would either have to disagree with a King or insult a nobleman who has a reputation for reacting violently in such instances.”

Toller gave him an amiable nod. “What you’re saying is that a man’s private life should be his own.”

“Private life?” Chakkell shook his brown-domed head in amusement. “Toller Maraquine, my old adversary, my old friend, my old court jester—you cannot row upstream and downstream at the same time. Messengers in fallbags preceded your arrival in Prad by days, and the news of your honeymoon flight with the delectable Skycaptain Narrinder has travelled far and wide.

“She has become a national heroine, and you—once again —have become a national hero. In the taverns your union has already been blessed with a million beery libations. My subjects, most of whom appear to be romantic dolts, seem to see you as a couple chosen for each other by destiny, but none of them is faced with the unenviable task of explaining that to the Lady Gesalla. As for myself, I almost think I would rather go against Karkarand.”

Toller gave the King a formal bow, preparatory to taking his leave. “As I said, Majesty, a man’s private life should be his own.”

Riding south on the highway which connected Prad to the town of Heevern, Toller reached a crest and—for the first time in well over a year—saw his own home.

Still several miles away to the south-west, the grey stone building was rendered white by the aftday sun, making it sharply visible among the green horizontals of the landscape. Within himself Toller tried to manufacture a surge of gladness and of affection for the place, and when it failed to materialise his feelings of self-reproach grew more intense.

I’m a lucky man, he told himself, determined to impose will on emotion. My beautiful solewife is enshrined in that house, and—if she forgives the sin I have committed against her—it will be my privilege to be her loving companion for the rest of our days. Even if she cannot absolve me at once, I will eventually win her over by being what she wants me to be, by being the Toller Maraquine I know I ought to be, and which I genuinely crave to be—and we will enjoy the twilight years together. That is what I want. That is what I WANT!

From Toller’s elevated viewpoint he could see intermittent traces of the road which joined his house to the north-south highway, and his attention was caught by a blurry white speck which betokened a single rider heading towards the main road. The stubby telescope which had served him since boyhood hinted at a bluehorn with distinctive creamy forelegs, and Toller knew at once that the rider was his son. This time there was no need to contrive gladness. He had missed Cassyll a great deal, primarily because of the ties of blood, but also because of the satisfaction he had found when they were working together.

In the unnatural circumstances of the aerial war he had somehow almost managed to forget about the projects he and Cassyll had been engaged on, but much remained for them to do—more than enough to occupy any man’s days. It was absolutely vital that the felling of brakka trees should be brought to a halt for ever—otherwise the ptertha would again become invincible enemies—and the key to the future lay in the development of metals. King Chakkell’s reluctance to face up to the problem made it all the more imperative for Toller to rejoin his son and resume their work together.

Toller increased his speed towards the juncture of the two roads, anticipating the moment in which Cassyll would notice and recognise him. The intersection was the one where the unhappy incident with Oaslit Spennel had begun, but he pushed the memories aside as he and Cassyll steadily grew closer together on their converging paths. When they were less than a furlong apart and nothing had happened Toller began to suspect that his son was riding with his eyes closed, trusting the bluehorn to find its own way, probably to the ironworks.

“Rouse yourself, sleepyhead!” he shouted. “What manner of welcome is this?”

Cassyll looked towards him, with no sign of surprise, turned his head away and continued riding at unchanged speed. He reached the road junction first and, to Toller’s bewilderment, turned south. Toller called out Cassyll’s name and galloped after him. He overtook his son’s bluehorn and brought it to a halt by grasping the reins.

“What’s the matter with you, son?” he said. “Were you asleep?”

Cassyll’s grey eyes were cool. “I was wide awake, father.”

“Then what…?” Toller studied the fine-featured oval face—previewing the forthcoming meeting with Gesalla— and any joy that was within him died. “So that’s the way of it.”

“So that’s the way of what?”

“Don’t fence with words, Cassyll—no matter what you think of me you should at least speak forthrightly, as I am doing with you. Now, what troubles you? Is it to do with the woman?”

“I…” Cassyll pressed the knuckles of his fist to his lips. “Where is she, anyway? Has she, perhaps, transferred her attentions to the King?”

Toller repressed a surge of anger. “I don’t know what you have heard—but Berise Narrinder is a fine woman.”

“As harlots go, that is,” Cassyll sneered.

Toller had actually begun the back-handed slap when he realised what was happening and checked the movement. Appalled, he lowered his gaze and stared at his hand as though it were a third party which had attempted to intrude on a private discussion. His bluehorn nuzzled against Cassyll’s, making soft snuffling sounds.

“I’m sorry,” Toller said. “My temper is… Are you on your way to the works?”

“Yes. I go there most days.”

“I’ll join you later, but first I must speak to your mother.”

“As you wish, father.” Cassyll’s face was carefully expressionless. “May I go now?”

“I won’t detain you any further,” Toller said, struggling against a sense of despair. He watched his son ride off to the south, then resumed his own journey. Somehow it had not occurred to him to take Cassyll’s feelings into account, and now he feared that their relationship had been damaged beyond repair. Perhaps the boy would relent with the passage of time, but for the present Toller’s main hope lay with Gesalla. If he could win her forgiveness quickly his son might be favourably influenced.

The crescent of sunlight was broadening on the great disk of Land, poised overhead, reminding Toller that aftday was well advanced. He increased the bluehorn’s pace. Here and there in the surrounding fields farmers were at work, and they paused to salute him as he rode by. He was popular with the tenants, largely because he charged rents that were little more than nominal, and he found himself wishing that all human relationships could be so easily regulated. The King had joked about facing up to Gesalla, but Toller could remember times when he had genuinely been more apprehensive on the eve of a battle than he was at this moment, preparing to run the gauntlet of his wife’s reproach, scorn and anger. Loved ones had an intangible armoury—words, silences, expressions, gestures— which could inflict deeper wounds than swords or spears.

By the time Toller reached the walled precinct at the front of the house his mouth was dry, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from trembling.

The bluehorn was one borrowed from the royal stables, and therefore Toller had to dismount and open the gate by hand. He led the animal inside and while it was ambling to the stone drinking trough he surveyed the familiar enclosure, with its ornamental shrubs and well-tended flower beds. Gesalla liked to look after it personally, and her skilled touch was evident everywhere he looked—a reminder that he would be with her in a matter of seconds.

He heard the front door opening and turned to see his wife standing in the archway. She was wearing an ankle-length gown of dark blue and had bound her hair up in such a manner that its stripe of silver made a natural coronet. Her beauty was as complete and as daunting as Toller had ever known it to be, and when he saw that she was smiling the weight of his guilt became insupportable, turning his own smile into a nerveless grimace, rooting him to the spot. She came to him and kissed him on the lips, briefly but warmly, then stepped back to examine him from head to foot.

“You’re not hurt,” she said. “I was so afraid for you, Toller… it all sounded so impossibly dangerous… but now I see you’re not hurt and I can breathe again.”

“Gesalla…” He took both her hands. “I must talk to you.”

“Of course you must—and you’re probably hungry and thirsty. Come into the house and I’ll prepare a meal.” She tugged at his hands, but he refused to move.

“It might be best if I stayed out here,” he said.

“Why?”

“After you hear what I have to say I may not be welcome in the house.”

Gesalla eyed him speculatively, then led the way to a stone bench. When he had sat down she straddled the bench and moved close to him so that he was partly within the triangle formed by her thighs. The intimacy both thrilled and embarrassed him.

“And now, my lord,” she said lightly, “what terrible confessions have you to make?”

“I…” Toller lowered his head. “I’ve been with another woman.”

“What of it?” Gesalla said in a calm voice, expression unchanged.

Toller was taken aback. “I don’t think you under… When I said I’d been with another woman I meant I’d been in bed with her.”

Gesalla laughed. “I know what you meant, Toller—I’m not stupid.”

“But…"Toller, knowing he had never been able to predict his wife’s reactions, became wary. “Aren’t you angry?”

“Are you planning to bring the woman here and put her in my place?”

“You know I’d never do a thing like that.”

“Yes, I do know that, Toller. You are a good-hearted man, and nobody is more aware of that than I, after the years we have had together.” Gesalla smiled and gently placed one of her hands on his. “So I have no reason to be angry with you, or to reproach you in any way.”

“But this is wrong!” Toller burst out, his bafflement increasing. “You were never like this before. How can you remain so placid, knowing the way I have wronged you?”

“I repeat—you have not wronged me.”

“Has the world suddenly been stood on its head?” Toller demanded. “Are you saying that it is perfectly acceptable and seemly for a man to betray his solewife, the woman he loves?”

Gesalla smiled again and her eyes deepened with compassion. “Poor Toller! You still don’t understand any of this, do you? You still don’t know why for years you have been like an eagle pent up in a cage; why you seize every possible opportunity to put your life at risk. It’s all an impenetrable mystery to you, isn’t it?”

“You make me angry, Gesalla. Please do not address me as though I were a child.”

“But that’s the entire point—you are a child. You have never ceased to be a child.”

“I grow weary of people telling me that. Perhaps I should come back on another day when, if fortune smiles, I will find you less disposed towards talking in riddles.” Toller half-rose to his feet, but Gesalla drew him back on to the bench.

“A moment ago you spoke of betraying the woman you love,” she said in the softest, kindest tones he had ever heard, “and there lies the source of all your heartache. You see, Toller…” Gesalla paused, and for the first time since their meeting her composure seemed less than perfect. “Go on.”

“You see, Toller—you no longer love me.”

“That’s a lie!”

“It’s the truth, Toller. I have always understood that the long-lasting embers of love are of more importance than the brief bright flame which marks the beginning. If you also understood that, and accepted it, you might go on being happy with me—but that was never the way with you. Not in anything. Look at all your other love affairs—with the army, with skyships, with metals. You always have some impossible idealistic goal in mind, and when it proves illusory you have to find another to put in its place.”

Toller was hearing things he had no wish to hear, and the hated worm of disenchantment at the centre of his being was beginning to stir. “Gesalla,” he said, making himself sound reasonable, “aren’t you allowing yourself to be carried away with words? How could I have a love affair with metals?”

“For you it was easy! You couldn’t simply discover a new material and plan to experiment with it—you had to lead a crusade. You were going to end the felling of brakka for ever; you were going to initiate a glorious new era in history; you were going to be the saviour of humanity. It was just beginning to dawn on you that Chakkell and his like would never change their ways when the Lander ship arrived.

“That saved you, Toller—provided you with yet another shining goal—but only for a short while. The war ended too soon for you. And now you are back in the ordinary, humdrum world… and you are getting old… and, worst of all, there is no great new challenge ahead of you. The only prospect is of living quietly, on this estate or somewhere else, until you die a commonplace death—just as every commonplace mortal has done since time began.

“Can you face that prospect, Toller?” Gesalla locked solemn eyes with his. “Because if you cannot, I would prefer that we lived separately. I want to spend my remaining years in peace—and there was precious little of that for me in watching you search for ways to end your life.”

The worm was eating hungrily now, and within Toller a dark void was spreading. “There must be some comfort for you in possessing so much knowledge and wisdom, in having such mastery over your feelings.”

“The old sarcasm, Toller?” Gesalla tightened her warm grip on his hand. “You do me an injustice if you think I have not wept bitterly over you. It was on the night I stayed with you at the palace that I finally saw through to the heart of this matter. I became angry with you for being what you could not help being, and for a time I hated you—and I shed my tears. But that was in the past. Now my concern is with the future.”

“Have we a future?”

“I have a future—I have decided that much—and the time has come when you must make your own choice. I know I have caused you great pain this day, but it was unavoidable. I am going back into the house now. I want you to remain out here until you have reached that decision, and when you have done so you must either join me or ride away. I make only one stipulation—that the decision be final and irrevocable. Do not come into the house unless you know in your heart that I can make you content until your last days, and that you can do the same for me. There can be no compromise, Toller—nothing less will suffice.”

Gesalla rose weightlessly to her feet and looked down at him. “Will you give me your word?”

“You have my word,” Toller said numbly, racked by fears that this was the last time he would ever see his solewife’s face. He watched her go into the house. She closed the door without glancing back at him, and when she was lost to his view he stood up and began aimlessly pacing the precinct. The shadow of the west wall was spreading its domain, deepening the colours of the flowers it engulfed, bringing a hint of coolness to the air.

Toller looked up at Land, which was steadily growing brighter, and in an instant traced the course of his life, from his birthplace on that distant world to the quiet enclosure where he now stood. Everything that had ever happened to him seemed to have led directly to this moment. In retrospect his life appeared as a single, clear-cut highway which he had followed without conscious effort—but now, abruptly, the road had divided. A momentous decision had to be made, and he had just learned that he was ill-equipped for the making of real decisions.

Toller half-smiled as he recalled that only minutes earlier he had regarded his dalliance with Berise Narrinder as something of importance. Gesalla—far ahead of him, as usual—had known better. He had reached the fork in the road, and had to go one way or the other. One way or the other!

As he wandered the precinct the sun continued its descent to the horizon and the daytime stars became more numerous. Once the transparent globe of a ptertha sailed overhead on a breeze which could not be detected within the vine-clad walls. It was not until silver whirlpools were beginning to show themselves in the eastern blue that Toller abruptly ceased his pacing, stilled by an accession of self-knowledge, by an understanding of why he was taking so long to choose the future course of his life.

There was no decision point before him! There was no dilemma!

The issue had been decided for him, even as Gesalla was putting it into words. He could never make her content, because he was a hollow man who could never again make himself content—and the subsequent delay had been caused by his craven inability to face the truth.

The truth is that I am halfway to being dead, he told himself, and all that remains for me is to find a suitable way to finish what I have begun.

He gave a quavering sigh, went to the bluehorn and led it to the precinct gate. He took the animal outside, and while closing the gate looked for the last time at the drowsing house. Gesalla was not at any of the darkening windows. Toller got into the saddle and put the bluehorn into a slow-swaying walk on the gravel road to the east. The workers had departed the fields and the world seemed empty.

“What comes next?” he said to the universe at large, his words swiftly fading into the sadness of the surrounding twilight. “Please, what do I do next?”

There was a tiny focus of movement on the road far ahead of him, almost at the limits of vision. In a normal frame of mind Toller might have used his telescope to gain advance information about the approaching traveller, but on this occasion the effort seemed too great. He allowed the natural progression of events to do the work for him at its own measured pace.

In a short time he was able to discern a wagon driven by a solitary figure, and within another few minutes he could see that both the wagon and its occupant were in a sorry state. The vehicle had lost much of its siding and its wheels were wobbling visibly on worn axles. Its driver was a bearded young man, so caked with dust that he resembled a clay statue.

Toller guided his bluehorn to the side of the road to give the stranger room to pass, and was surprised when the wagon drew to a halt beside him. Its driver peered at him through red-rimmed eyes, and even before he spoke it was apparent that he was very drunk.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said in slurred tones, “do I have the honour of addressing Lord Toller Maraquine?”

“Yes,” Toller replied. “Why do you ask?”

The bearded man swayed for a moment, then unexpectedly produced a smile which in spite of his filthy and dishevelled condition had a boyish charm. “My name is Bartan Drumme, my lord, and I come to you with a unique proposition—one I am certain you will find of great interest.”

“I very much doubt that,” Toller said coldly, preparing to move on.

“But, my lord! It was my understanding that as Chief of Aerial Defence you concerned yourself with all matters pertaining to the upper reaches of the sky.”

Toller shook his head. “All that is over and done with.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, my lord.” Drumme picked up a bottle and drew the cork, then paused and gave Toller a sombre stare. “This means I shall have to seek an audience with the King.”

In spite of all that was pressing on his mind, Toller had to chuckle. “Doubtless he will be fascinated by what you have to say.”

“No doubt at all,” Drumme agreed, comfortable in his intoxication. “Any ruler in history would have been intrigued by the idea of planting his flag on the world we call Farland.”

Chapter 13

The Bluebird Inn in Prad was named after a prominent hostelry in old Ro-Atabri, and it was the ambition of its landlord to win a comparable reputation for decorum. As a consequence, he had been visibly disturbed when Toller had walked into his premises with the disreputable figure of Bartan Drumme in tow. It had been obvious that in his mind the honour of accommodating the heroic aristocrat scarcely compensated for the presence of his smelly and bedraggled companion. He had, however, been persuaded to provide two bedchambers and to set up in one of them a large bath filled with hot water. Bartan was now soaking in the bath, and except for his head the only part of him visible above the soap-greyed water was the hand which was clutching a beaker of brandy.

Toller took a sip from the drink Bartan had given him and grimaced as the crude spirit burned his throat. “Do you think you should be drinking this concoction all the time?”

“Of course not,” Bartan said. “I should be drinking good brandy all the time, but this is all I can afford. It has cost me my last penny to get here, my lord.”

“I told you not to address me as lord.” Toller raised his drink to his lips, smelled it and emptied the ceramic beaker into the bath.

“There was no need to waste it,” Bartan complained. “Besides, how would you like that sort of stuff swilling around your private parts?”

“It may do them good—I think it was intended for external application,” Toller said. “I’ll have our host serve us with something less poisonous in a little while, but in the meantime I have to go back to the part of your story which sticks in my craw.”

“Yes?”

“You claim that your wife is alive on Farland, not as a spirit or a reincarnation—but in the flesh as you knew her. How can you believe that?”

“I can’t explain. Her words conveyed more than words—and that was what I got from them.”

Toller tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. “I’m not conceited enough to think I know all there is to know about this strange existence of ours. I concede that there are many mysteries, most of which we may never penetrate, but this does not sit easy with me. It still binds.”

Bartan stirred in the bath, slopping water over the side. “I have been a convinced materialist all my life. I still scorn those simpletons who cling to a belief in the supernatural, in spite of all I went through in the Basket—but although I am at a loss to explain it, this is something I know. There were strange lights that night. Sondeweere did something beyond my understanding, and now she lives on Farland-”

“You say she appeared to you in a vision, spoke to you from Farland. I find it difficult to imagine anything more supernatural than that.”

“Perhaps we use the word in different ways. My wife did speak to me—therefore it was a natural occurrence. It only appears to smack of the supernatural because of elements beyond our comprehension.”

Toller noted that Bartan spoke with impressive fluency in spite of his intoxication. He stood up and walked around the lamplit room, then returned to his chair. Bartan was contentedly sipping his brandy, not looking at all insane.

“liven Zavotle is going to be here soon, provided the messenger has found him all right,” Toller said.’’ And I warn you that he is going to laugh at your story.”

“There is no need for him to believe it,” Bartan replied. “The part about my wife is of concern to me alone, and I related it only to show that I have personal reasons for wanting to voyage to Farland. I could not expect others to undertake such a journey on my account, whatever my reasons. But it is my hope that the King will wish to succeed where Rassamarden failed—by extending his domain to another world—and that, as originator of the scheme, I will be granted a place on the expedition if it becomes a reality. All I ask of your friend Zavotle is that he devise a means of making the journey possible.”

“You don’t ask much.”

“I ask more than you will ever know,” Bartan said, a brooding expression appearing on his young-old face. “I am responsible for what happened to my wife, you see. Losing her was bad enough, but carrying the burden of guilt…”

“I’m sorry,” Toller said. “Is that why you drink?”

Bartan tilted his head as he considered the question. “It’s probably the reason I started drinking, but after a while I found that I simply prefer being drunk to being sober. It makes the world a pleasanter place to live in.”

“And on the night you had the vision? Were you…?”

“Drunk? Of course I was drunk!” Bartan gulped some more brandy as if to reinforce his statement. “But that has no bearing on what happened that night. Please, my lord…”

“Toller.”

Bartan nodded. “Please, Toller, feel free to regard me as insane or deluded on that particular point—it is irrelevant, after all—but I beg you to take me seriously on the question of the expedition to Farland. I must go. I am an experienced airship pilot, and if necessary I will even stop drinking.”

“That would be necessary, but—much though I am intrigued by the idea of flying to Farland—I can’t speak seriously about it, to the King or anybody else, until I hear what Zavotle has to say. I will meet him downstairs and take a private parlour where we can have some refreshment and discuss the matter in comfort.” Toller stood up and set his empty beaker aside. “Join us when you have completed your toilet.”

Bartan signalled his assent by raising his drink in a salute and taking a generous swallow. Shaking his head, Toller let himself out of the room and went along a shadowy corridor to the stair. Bartan Drumme was a highly disturbed young man, not to say a madman, but when he had first spoken of a mission to Farland something deep within Toller had responded immediately and with a passion akin to that of a traveller who had just glimpsed his destination after an arduous journey lasting many years. A yearning had been born in him, accompanied by a powerful surge of excitement which he had repressed for fear of disappointment.

Wild, extravagant and preposterous though the idea of flying to Farland was, Chakkell could be in favour of it for the reasons Bartan had suggested—but only if liven Zavotle considered the mission feasible. Zavotle had won the King’s confidence in anything to do with the technicalities of interplanetary flight, so if the little man with the clenched ears considered Farland to be unreachable then Toller Maraquine would indeed have to accept the prospect of becoming a commonplace mortal awaiting a commonplace death. And that could not be allowed to happen.

I’m behaving exactly as Gesalla says I behave, he thought, pausing on the stair. But, at this stage of our lives, what would be the point in my trying to do anything else?

He completed the descent to the inn’s crowded entrance hall and saw Zavotle, clad in civilian clothes, making enquiries of a porter. He called out a greeting and within a few minutes he and Zavotle were installed in a small room with a flagon of good wine on the table between them. Lamps were burning steadily in the wall niches, adding a bluish haze to the air, and by their light Toller noticed that Zavotle was looking tired and introspective. Instead of being obviously premature, the whiteness of his hair was now making him look old, although he was some years younger than Toller.

“What ails you, old friend?” Toller said. “Is your stomach still misbehaving?”

“I get indigestion even when I haven’t eaten.” Zavotle gave him a wan smile. “It hardly seems fair.”

“Here’s something to take your mind off it,” Toller said, pouring out two glasses of green wine. “You recall the talk we had with the King this morning? Our disagreement about what should be done with the defence stations?”

“Yes.”

“Well, only this aftday I met a young man called Bartan Drumme who put forward an intriguing thought. He is permanently soused and quite mad—you’ll see that for yourself in a short time—but his idea has a certain appeal to it. He suggests taking one or more of the stations to Farland.”

Toller had kept his tones light and almost casual, but he was watching Zavotle’s reactions closely and felt a pang of alarm as he saw his lips twitch with amusement.

“Did you say your new friend is quite mad? I’d say he’s a raving lunatic!” Zavotle smirked into his wine.

“But don’t you think it just might ,.’.?” Toller hesitated, realising he would have to deliver himself into his friend’s hands, come what may. “liven, I need Farland. It is the only thing left for me.”

Zavotle eyed him speculatively for a moment.

“Gesalla and I have parted for ever,” Toller replied to the unspoken question. “It is all finished between us.”

“I see.” Zavotle closed his eyes and delicately massaged the lids with the tips of a finger and thumb. “A lot would depend on Farland’s position,” he said slowly.

“Thank you, thank you,” Toller said, overwhelmed with gratitude. “If there is anything I can do to repay you, you have but to name it.”

“There is something I expect in repayment—and I do not have to name it. Not to you, anyway.”

It was Toller’s turn to try reading his friend’s face. “The flight is bound to be dangerous, liven—why do you want to risk your life?”

“For a time I thought my digestion was too weak, then I discovered it is too strong.” Zavotle patted his stomach. “I am being digested, and the incestuous banquet cannot be prolonged indefinitely. So you see, Toller, I need Farland as much as you do, perhaps even more. For myself, it would suffice to plan a one-way journey, but I suspect that the other members of the crew would not take kindly to such an arrangement, and therefore I will have to tax my brain and make provision for their safe return. The problem will provide an excellent distraction for an hour or two, and I thank you for that.”

“I…” Toller glanced around the room, blinking as his tears surrounded the wall lights with spiky haloes. “I’m so sorry, liven. I was too wrapped up in my own worries even to consider that you might be…”

Zavotle smiled and impulsively caught his hand. “Toller, do you remember how it was on the skyship proving flight all those years ago? We flew into the unknown together, and were glad to do so. Let us now put our personal sorrows aside and be thankful that ahead Of us—just when we need them—are an even greater proving flight and an even greater unknown to explore.”

Toller nodded, gazing at Zavotle in affection. “So you think the flight is possible?”

“I’d say it might be done. Farland is many millions of miles away, and it is moving—we mustn’t forget that it moves—but with plenty of the green and purple at our disposal we could overtake it.”

“How many millions of miles are we talking about?”

Zavotle sighed. “I wish that somebody had brought science texts from Land, Toller—we have lost most of our store of knowledge, and nobody has had time to start rebuilding it. I have to go by memory, but I believe that Farland is twelve million miles from us at the nearest approach, and forty-two million when it’s at the opposite side of the sun. Naturally, we would have to wait for it to come near.”

“Twelve million,” Toller breathed. “How can we think of flying a distance like that?”

“We can’t! Remember that Farland moves. The ship would have to travel at an angle to meet it, so we have to think about flying perhaps eighteen million miles, perhaps twenty million, perhaps more.”

“But the speeds! Is it possible?”

“This is no time to be faint-hearted.” Zavotle took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pouch and began to scribble figures. “Let us say that, because of our human frailties, the outward journey must be completed in not more than… urn… a hundred days. That obliges us to cover perhaps 180,000 miles each day, which gives us a speed of… a mere 7,500 miles an hour.”

“Now I know you are toying with me,” Toller said. “If you considered the journey impossible you should have said so at the outset.”

Zavotle raised both hands, palms outward, in a placatory gesture. “Calm yourself, old friend—I am not being frivolous.

You have to remember that it is the retarding of the air, which increases according to the square of the speed, which holds our airships to a snail’s pace and even limits the performance of your beloved jet fighters. But on the voyage to Farland the ship would be travelling in almost a vacuum, and would also be away from Overland’s gravity, so it would be possible for it to build up quite an astonishing speed.

“Interestingly, though, air resistance could also aid the interplanetary traveller. If it weren’t for the necessity of returning we could plunge the ship into Farland’s atmosphere, jump clear of it when the speed had been reduced to an acceptable level, and descend to the surface by parachute.

“Yes, it’s the necessity of coming back which forms the main stumbling block. That is the nub of the problem.”

“What can be done?”

Zavotle sipped his wine. “It seems to me that we need… that we need a ship which can divide itself into two separate parts.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely! I visualise a command station as the basic vessel. Let’s call it a voidship… no, a spaceship… to distinguish the type from an ordinary skyship. Something the size of a command station is necessary to accommodate the large stores of power crystals and all other supplies needed for the voyage. That ship, the spaceship, would fly from the weightless zone to Farland —but it could never make a landing. It would have to be halted just outside the radius of Farland’s gravity, and it would have to hang there, stationary, until it was time for the return journey to Overland.”

“This is like having wedges driven into one’s brain,” Toller complained, struggling to assimilate the shockingly new ideas. “Do you see the spaceship dispatching something like a lifeboat to the planetary surface?”

“Lifeboat? That’s the general idea, but it would have to be a fully fledged skyship, complete with a balloon and its own power unit.”

“But how could it be carried?”

“That’s what I was getting at when I said the spaceship would have to be able to divide itself into two parts. Say the spaceship is made up of four or five cylindrical sections, just as a command station is now—the entire front section would have to be detached and converted back into a skyship for the descent. There would have to be an extra partition, and a sealable door, and…” Zavotle shuddered with pleasurable excitement and half-rose from his seat. “I need proper drawing materials, Toller—my mind is on fire.”

“I’ll have them brought for you,” Toller said, motioning for Zavotle to sit down again, “but first tell me more about this dividing of the spaceship. Could it be done in the void? Would there not be a great risk of losing all the ship’s air?”

“It would certainly be safer to do it within Farland’s atmosphere, and easier as well—that’s something I need to ponder over. It may be, if we are lucky, that the atmosphere is so deep that it extends beyond the radius of Farland’s gravity, in which case the operation would be relatively straightforward. The spaceship would simply be hanging there in the high air. We could detach the skyship, inflate the balloon and connect the acceleration struts—all in a fairly routine manner. It is something which should be practised in our own weightless zone before the expedition starts.

“On the other hand, if the spaceship has to wait outside the atmosphere, the best course might be for it to descend briefly to a level where the air is breathable, and only then cast the skyship section adrift. The skyship would of course be falling while its balloon was being inflated, but—as we know from experience —the fall would be so gradual that there would be ample time to do all that was necessary. There is much to think about…”

“Including air,” Toller said. “I presume the plan would be to use firesalt?”

“Yes. We know it puts life back into dead air, but we don’t know how much would be needed to keep a man alive during a long voyage. Experiments will have to be done—because the quantity of salt we’ll have to transport could be the principal factor in deciding the size of the crew.”

Zavotle paused and gave Toller a wistful look. “It’s a pity Lain isn’t with us—we have need of him.”

“I’ll fetch the drawing materials.” As Toller was leaving the room his memory conjured up a vivid image of his brother, the gifted mathematician who had been killed by a ptertha on the eve of the Migration. Lain had possessed an impressive ability to unveil nature’s hidden machinations and predict their outcome, and yet even he had been seriously in error concerning some of the scientific discoveries made on the first flight from Land to the weightless zone. The mental image of him was a reminder of just how presumptuous and reckless was the plan to fly through millions of miles of space to a totally unknown world.

A man could very easily die attempting a journey like that, Toller told himself, and almost smiled as he took the thought one step further. But nobody would ever be able to say it had been a commonplace death…

“I’m trying to decide what irks me most about this Farland business,” King Chakkell said, gazing unhappily at Toller and Zavotle. “I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m being manipulated… or if it’s the sheer lack of subtlety with which the manipulation is being conducted.”

Toller put on an expression of concern. “Majesty, it dismays me to hear that I’m suspected of having an ulterior motive. My sole ambition is to plant the flag of…”

“Enough, Maraquine! I’m not a simpleton.” Chakkell smoothed a strand of hair across his gleaming brown scalp. “You prate about planting flags as though they were capable of taking root unaided and producing some manner of desirable crop. What yield would I get from Farland? A meagre one, I’d say.”

“The harvest of history,” Toller said, already beginning to plan the Farland project in detail. Chakkell’s display of peevishness was a sure indication that he was about to give his consent for the construction and provisioning of the spaceship. In spite of his show of doubt and indifference, the King had been seduced by the idea of laying claim to the outer planet.

Chakkell snorted. “The harvest of history will not be gathered in unless the ship successfully completes both legs of the voyage. I am by no means convinced that it will be able to do so.”

“The ship will be designed to cope with any exigency, Majesty,” Toller said. “I have no desire to commit suicide.”

“Haven’t you? There are times when I wonder about you, Maraquine.” Chakkell stood up and paced around the small room. It was the same apartment in which he had consulted Toller about the aerial defence of Overland immediately after his reprieve. The circular table and six chairs took up most of the floor space, leaving the King a narrow margin through which to guide his paunchy figure. On reaching the chair in which he had been seated, Chakkell leaned on the back of it and frowned at Toller.

“And what about the money?” he said. “You never trouble yourself with such mundane concerns, do you?”

“One ship, Majesty—and a crew of not more than six.”

“The size of the actual crew is a flea-bite, and well you know it. This scheme of yours is bound to cost me a fortune in development and in keeping support stations operational in the weightless zone.”

“But if it opens the way to a new world…”

“Don’t start playing the same tune all over again, Maraquine,” Chakkell interrupted. “I’m going to let you proceed with your wild enterprise—I suppose you are entitled to some indulgence on account of your services during the war—but I make one provision, and that is that Zavotle does not accompany you. I cannot afford to lose his services.”

“I regret to say this, Majesty,” Zavotle put in before Toller could speak, “but you will shortly be deprived of my services come what may, expedition or no expedition.”

Chakkell narrowed his eyes at Zavotle and scrutinised him as though suspecting deviousness. “Zavotle,” he finally said, “are you going to die?”

“Yes, Majesty.”

Chakkell looked embarrassed rather than concerned. “I would have had it otherwise.”

“Thank you, Majesty.”

“I must attend to other matters now,” Chakkell said brusquely, moving towards the door, “but, under the circumstances, I will not object to your going to Farland.”

“I’m most grateful, Majesty.”

Chakkell paused in the doorway and gave Toller a look of peculiar intensity. “The game has almost run its course, eh, Maraquine?” He moved away into the corridor before Toller could frame a reply, and a quietness descended on the room.

“I’ll tell you something, liven,” Toller said in a low voice. “We have made the King afraid. Did you notice how he twisted everything around so that it appears he is granting us a favour by permitting the expedition to go ahead? But the real reason is that he wants his standard to fly on Farland. A guaranteed place in history is a poor kind of immortality, but all kings seem to crave it—and we remind Chakkell of just how futile such ambitions are.”

“You speak strangely, Toller,” Zavotle said, his gaze hunting over Toller’s face. “I won’t return from Farland—but surely you will.”

“Put your mind at ease, old friend,” Toller replied, smiling. “I’ll return from Farland, or die in the attempt.”

Toller had not been certain that his son would agree to meet him, and it was with a profound sense of gladness that he saw a lone rider appear on the skyline on the road that led south to Heevern. He had chosen the meeting place partly because the nearness of a gold-veined spire of rock and a pool made it easy to specify, but also because it was on the northern side of the final ridge on the way to his house. Had he ridden an extra mile to the crest. Toller would have been able to view his former home in the distance. The knowledge that Gesalla was within the familiar walls would have caused him fresh pain, but that was not the reason he had held back. It was simply that he had taken a vow to separate the courses of their lives for ever, and in a way which was important to him, although he could not rationally justify it, going within sight of the house would have been a breach of his word.

He dismounted from his bluehorn and left the beast to graze while he watched the other rider approach. As before, he was able to identify Cassyll from afar by the distinctive creamy colour of his mount’s forelegs. Cassyll rode towards him at moderate speed and reined his bluehorn to a halt at a distance of about ten paces. He remained in the saddle, studying Toller with pensive grey eyes.

“It would be better if you got down,” Toller said mildly. “It would make it easier for us to talk.”

“Have we anything to talk about?”

“If we haven’t there was little point in your riding out here to meet me.” Toller gave his son a wry smile. “Come on—neither your honour nor your principles will be compromised if we talk face-to-face.”

Cassyll shrugged and swung himself down from his bluehorn, a movement he accomplished with athletic grace. With his oval face and pronounced widow’s peak of glossy black, he owed much of his appearance to his mother, but Toller observed a sinewy strength in his spare figure.

“You look well,” Toller said.

Cassyll glanced down at himself and his clothing—rough-spun shirt and trews which would not have looked out of place on a common labourer. “I do my share of work at the foundry and factories, and some of it is heavy.”

“I know.” Toller was heartened by the civility of Cassyll’s response and decided to go straight to the points he had to make. “Cassyll, the Farland expedition leaves in a few days from now. I have faith in liven Zavotle’s designs and calculations, but only a fool would refuse to acknowledge that many unknown dangers lie ahead of us. I may not return from the voyage, and it would ease my mind greatly if we settled some matters concerning the future for you and your mother.”

Cassyll showed no emotion. “You will return, as always.”

“I intend to, but nevertheless I want you to give me your word on certain matters before we part this day. One of them is to do with the fact that the King has confirmed my title as being hereditary—and I want you to accept it if I am declared dead.”

“I don’t want the title,” Cassyll said. “I have no interest in such vanities.”

Toller nodded. “I know that, and I respect you for it, but the title represents power as well as privilege—power you can use to safeguard your mother’s position in the world, power you can put to good use in worthwhile endeavours. I don’t need to remind you how important it is for metals to replace brakka wood in our society—so vow to me you will not reject the title.”

Cassyll looked impatient. “All this is premature. You will live to be a hundred, if not more.”

“Your vow, Cassyll!”

“I swear that I will accept the title on that far-off day when it eventually falls my due.”

“Thank you,” Toller said earnestly. “Now, the management of the estate. If at all possible I want you to perpetuate the system of peppercorn rents for our tenants. I take it that the revenues from the mines, foundries and metal works are still increasing and will be ample for the family requirements.”

“Family?” Cassyll gave a half-smile to show that he considered the word inappropriate. “My mother and I are financially secure.”

Toller allowed the tacit challenge to pass and spent more time on practicalities connected with the estate and its industrial associations, but all the while he was aware that he was delaying the moment when he would have to admit his most important motive in arranging the meeting with his son. At last, after a tense silence had developed and looked like continuing indefinitely, he accepted that it was necessary for him to speak out.

“Cassyll,” he said, “I met my father for the first time only a few minutes before he died by his own hand. There was so much… waste in both our lives, but we were united before the end. I… I don’t want to leave you without putting things right between us. Can you forgive me for the wrongs I have done you and your mother?”

“Wrongs?” Cassyll spoke lightly, affecting puzzlement. He stooped and picked up a pebble which was heavily banded with gold, examined it briefly and hurled it into the nearby pool. The image of Land mirrored on the water broke up into jostling curved fragments.

“What wrongs do you speak of, father?”

Toller could not be put off. “I have neglected you both because I can never be content with what I have. It’s as simple as that. My indictment takes but a few words—none of them fancy or abstruse.”

“I never felt neglected, because I believed you would love us both for ever,” Cassyll said slowly. “Now my mother is alone.”

“She has you.”

“She is alone.”

“No more than I am,” Toller said, “but there is no remedy. Your mother understands that better than I. If you could learn to understand you might also learn to forgive.”

Cassyll suddenly looked younger than his twenty-two years. “You’re asking me to understand that love dies?”

“It can die, or it can refuse to die; or a man or a woman can change, or a man or a woman can remain changeless; and when a person does not change with time the effect—from the viewpoint of a person who is changing—is as if the unchanging person is actually the one who is undergoing the greatest change…” Toller broke off and stared helplessly at his son. “How can I know what I’m asking you to understand when I don’t understand it myself?”

“Father…” Cassyll moved a step closer to Toller. “I see so much pain inside you. I hadn’t realised…”

Toller tried to check the tears which had begun to blur his vision. “I welcome the pain. There is not enough of it for my needs.”

“Father, don’t…”

Toller opened his arms to his son and they embraced, and for the fleeting period of the embrace he could almost remember what it had been like to be a whole man.

“Put the ship on its side,” Toller ordered, his breath rolling whitely in the chill air.

Bartan Drumme, who was at the controls because he took every possible opportunity to practise skyship handling techniques, nodded and began firing short bursts on a lateral jet. As the thrust gradually overcame the inertia of the gondola, Overland slid up the sky and the great disk of Land emerged from behind the brown curvature of the balloon. Bartan halted the ship’s rotation by means of the opposing jet, stabilising it in the new attitude, with an entire world on view on either side of the gondola. The sun was close to Land’s eastern rim, illuminating a slim crescent of the planet and leaving the rest of it in comparative darkness.

Against the dim background of Land, the waiting spaceship, now less than a mile away, was visible as a tiny bar of light. It was attended by several lesser motes, representing the few habitats and stores which King Chakkell had permitted to remain in the weightless zone to service the newly completed vessel. The group was an undistinguished feature of the crowded heavens, almost unnoticeable, but the sight of it caused a stealthy quickening of Toller’s pulse.

Sixty days had passed since he had received the royal assent for the expedition to Farland, and now he was finding it hard to accept that the hour of departure was at hand. Trying to dispel a slight sense of unreality, he raised his binoculars and studied the spaceship.

There had been one major amendment to the design which Zavotle had sketched out during their meeting in the Bluebird Inn. The foremost of the ship’s five sections had originally been designated as the detachable module, but the arrangement had posed too many problems in connection with obtaining a view ahead of the vessel. After some unsatisfactory experiments with mirrors it had been decided to use the aft section as the landing module. Its engine would power the flight to Farland, and when the section was separated from the mother craft a second engine would be exposed, ready for the return to Overland.

Toller lowered the binoculars and glanced around the other members of the crew, all of them swaddled in their quilted suits, all of them deep in their own thoughts. Apart from Zavotle and Bartan, there was Berise Narrinder, Tipp Gotlon and another ex-fighter pilot, a soft-spoken young man called Dakan Wraker. Toller had been surprised by the large number of volunteers for the expedition, and he had selected Wraker because of his imperturbable nature and wide range of mechanical skills.

The conversation among the crew members had been lively in the preceding hour, but now, suddenly, the magnitude of what lay ahead seemed to have impressed itself on them, stilling their tongues.

“Spare me the long faces,” Toller said, grimly jovial. “Why, we might find Farland so much to our liking that none of us will ever want to return!”

Chapter 14

As commander of the spaceship, Toller would have liked to have been at the controls when the Kolcorron burned its way out of the weightless zone at the beginning of the voyage to Farland.

During training sessions, however, it had become apparent that he was the least talented of the crew when it came to the new style of flying. The ship’s length was five times its diameter, and keeping it in a stable attitude while under way required precise and delicate use of the lateral jets, an ability to detect and correct yawing movements almost before they had begun. Gotlon, Wraker and Berise seemed to do it without effort, using infrequent split-second blasts on the jets to keep the crosshairs of the steering telescope centred on a target star. Zavotle and Bartan Drumme were competent, though more heavy handed; but Toller—much to his annoyance—was prone to make overcorrections which involved him in series of minor adjustments, bringing grins to the faces of the other fliers.

He had therefore given Tipp Gotlon, the youngest of the crew, the responsibility for taking the ship out of the twin planets’ atmosphere.

Gotlon was strapped into a seat near the centre of the circular topmost deck. He was looking into the prismatic eyepiece of the low-powered telescope which was aimed vertically through a port in the ship’s nose. His hands were on the control levers, from which rods ran down through the various decks to the main engine and the lateral thrusters. The fierceness of his gap-toothed grin showed that he was keyed up, anxiously waiting for the order to begin the flight.

Toller glanced around the nose section, which in addition to accommodating the pilot’s station was also intended as living and sleeping quarters. Zavotle, Berise and Bartan were floating near the perimeter in various attitudes, keeping themselves in place by gripping handrails. It was quite dim in the compartment, the only illumination coming from a porthole on the sunward side, but Toller could see the others’ faces well enough to know that they shared his mood.

The flight would possibly last two hundred days—a dauntingly long period of boredom, deprivation and discomfort—and, regardless of how dedicated a person might be, it was only natural to experience qualms at such a moment. Things would be easier after the main engine had begun to fire, finally committing everybody to the venture, but until that psychological first step had been taken he and the crew were bound to be racked by doubt and apprehension.

Growing impatient, Toller drew himself to the ladder well and looked down into the ship. The cylindrical space was punctuated by narrow rays of sunlight from portholes which created confusing patterns of brightness and shadow in the internal bracing and among the bins which housed the supplies of food and water, firesalt and power crystals. There was a movement far down in the strange netherworld and Wraker, who had been checking the fuel hoppers and pneumatic feed system, appeared at the bottom of the ladder. He came up it at speed, agile in spite of his bulky suit, and nodded as he saw Toller waiting for him.

“The power unit is in readiness,” he said quietly.

“And we are likewise,” Toller replied, turning to meet Gotlon’s attentive eyes. “Take us away from here.”

Gotlon advanced the throttle without hesitation. The engine sounded at the rear of the ship, its roar muted by distance and the intervening partitions, and the crew members gradually floated downwards to take up standing positions on the deck. Toller looked out of the nearest porthole just in time to see the cluster of store sections and habitats slide away behind the ship. Some heavily muffled auxiliary workers were hanging in the air near the structures, all of them vigorously waving their farewells.

“This is quite touching,” Toller said. “We’re being given a rousing send-off.”

Zavotle sniffed to show his scepticism. “They are merely expressing heartfelt relief at our departure. Now, at last, they can quit the weightless zone and return to their families—which is what we would be doing if we had any sense.”

“You forget one thing,” Bartan Drumme said, smiling. “Which is…?”

“I am returning to my family.” Bartan’s boyish smile widened. “I get the best of both worlds, so to speak—because my wife is waiting for me on Farland.”

“Son, it is my considered opinion that you should be the captain of this ship,” Zavotle said solemnly. “A man needs to be crazy to set out on a journey such as this—and you are the craziest of us all.”

The Kolcorron had been under way for a little more than an hour when Toller began to feel uneasy.

He visited every compartment of the ship, checking that all was as it should be, but in spite of his being unable to find anything wrong, his sense of disquiet remained. Unable to attribute it to any definite cause, he chose not to confide in Zavotle or any of the others—as commander he had to provide resolute leadership, not undermine the crew’s morale with vague apprehensions. In contrast to his own mood, the others seemed to be relaxing and growing more confident, as was evidenced by the sprightliness of the conversation on the top deck.

Finding the talk distracting, Toller went back down the ladder and, feeling oddly furtive, positioned himself at a midships porthole, in a narrow space between two storage lockers. It was the sort of thing he had sometimes done in childhood when he needed to shut off the outside world, and in the contrived solitude he tried to pinpoint the source of his forebodings.

Could it be the fact that the sky had unaccountably turned black? Or could it be a deep-seated worry, an instinctive emotional protest, over the idea of building up to a speed of thousands of miles an hour? The main engine had been firing almost continuously since the start of the voyage, and therefore —according to Zavotle—the ship’s speed already had to be far in excess of anything in man’s previous experience. At first there had been a clearly audible rush of air against the hull, but as the sky darkened that sound had gradually faded away. Sunlight slanting in through the porthole made it difficult for Toller to perceive the outside universe clearly, but the eternal calm seemed to reign as always, yielding no evidence that the ship was hurtling through space at many hundreds of miles an hour.

Could that fact be related to his unease? Was some part of his mind troubled by the discrepancy between what he observed to be happening and what he knew to be happening?

Toller considered the notion briefly and pushed it aside—he had never been unduly sensitive, and travelling in space was not going to alter his basic nature. If he was going to be nervous it was more likely to be over some practical matter, such as having positioned himself so close to a porthole. The planking of the Kolcorron’s hull was reinforced with extra steel hoops on the outside and layers of tar and canvas on the inside, imparting great strength to the ship’s structure as a whole, but there were areas of vulnerability around the portholes and hatches. On one early test flight a porthole had blown out and a mechanic’s eardrums had been ruptured, even though the accident had not occurred in true vacuum.

A brief hissing sound from the upper deck indicated that somebody had mixed a measure of firesalt and water to renew the air’s life-giving properties. Perhaps a minute later its distinctive odour—reminiscent of seaweed—reached Toller’s nostrils, mingling with the smell of tar which seemed to have been growing stronger.

He sniffed the air, realising that the tarry smell was indeed more noticeable, and his sense of alarm suddenly intensified itself. On impulse he removed one of his gauntlets and touched the black surface of the hull beside him. It felt warm. The degree of heat was far short of what would have been needed to soften the tar, less than his skin temperature, but it was strikingly in contrast with the chill he had expected. The discovery burst open a gateway in his mind, and all at once he knew exactly what had occasioned all his vague forebodings…

His entire body felt uncomfortably warm!

The quilted skysuit had been designed to keep the fierce cold of the weightless zone at bay, and had been barely adequate for its purpose, but now it was proving so efficient that he was on the verge of breaking into a sweat.

This can’t be right! We can’t be falling into the sun!

Toller was striving to bring his thoughts under control when the sound of the engine died away and in the same moment he heard Zavotle calling his name from the upper part of the ship. Finding that he was again completely without weight, Toller dived through the air to the ladder and went up it hand over hand. He drew himself on to the top deck by means of a rail and faced the rest of the crew, all of whom, with the exception^ Gotlon, were clinging to their sleeping nets.

“Something strange is happening,” Zavotle said. “The ship grows warm.”

“I have noticed.” Toller looked at Gotlon, who was regarding him from the pilot’s seat. “Are we on course?”

Gotlon nodded vigorously. “Sir, we are exactly on course and have been since the outset. I swear to you that Gola has not departed the crosshairs for as much as one second.” Gola was a figure in Kolcorronian myth who appeared before lost mariners and led them to safe havens, and the name had been given to the guide star selected for the first part of the outward journey.

Toller addressed himself to Zavotle. “Couldn’t we nevertheless be moving sideways? Falling towards the sun, but with the prow of the ship pointed at Gola?”

“Why should we fall? And even if we were falling it’s too soon for extra warmth to manifest itself on that account.”

“If you look aft you’ll see that we are still in the same relationship with Overland and Land,” Berise added. “We are on course.”

“This is something for my flight log,” Zavotle said, almost to himself. “We have to take it that space is warm. It isn’t surprising, really, because in space there is eternal sunshine. But the sun also shines in the weightless zone—and there a terrible coldness reigns. It’s yet another mystery, Toller.”

“Mystery or no mystery,” Toller replied, deciding to act in a positive manner to offset the uncertainty which had been engendered by the first brush with the unexpected, “it means we can divest ourselves of these cursed suits, and that’s something for which to be thankful. We can at least enjoy a little comfort.”

By the third day of the flight a shipboard routine had become well established, much to Toller’s satisfaction. He was aware of the dangers of monotony and-boredom which could lie ahead, but those were predictable human problems and he felt capable of dealing with them. It was when nature itself became capricious, giving the lie to man’s most cherished beliefs, that he began to feel like a babe wandering in a dangerous forest.

Since the initial, and now welcome, discovery that space was comfortably warm, the nearest thing to a revelation to come along had been the observation—first reported by Wraker —that there were no meteors in the interplanetary void. To Toller’s surprise, liven Zavotle had seized on the observation, apparently in the belief that it possessed some significance, and had made it the subject of another long entry in his log.

The little man’s illness seemed to be progressing according to his expectations. Although he uttered no complaints he was visibly thinner, and spent much of his time with both fists pressed into his stomach. He had also, which was quite out of character with the old Zavotle, become short-tempered and acidulous with the younger crew members, particularly Bartan Drumme. The others, while convinced that Bartan was subject to spells of insanity, were tolerant in the matter whereas Zavotle frequently made him a target for ridicule. Bartan accepted the abuse with equanimity, secure in his fortress of delusion, but on several occasions Berise had been stung into taking his part and her relationship with Zavotle had become strained.

Toller was loath to interfere, knowing that his old friend was being driven by a demon worse than his own, and he was trusting that Berise would not let the situation get out of hand. His own relationship with her—ever since their five days in the exclusive universe of the sinking skyship—was warm, comforting and totally dispassionate. They had found each other at a special time, a unique time during which their needs had been perfectly complementary, a time which would never come again, and now they were shaping their own separate courses into the future, without obligations or regrets. It had not even occurred to him to object when she had claimed a place with the expedition. He knew that she understood the dangers, that her reasons had to be at least as valid as his own.

Human interactions apart, Toller foresaw that food and drink—whether being ingested or eliminated—were likely to make the greatest demands on the crew’s powers of endurance. There could be no fire for cooking, so the diet consisted of strictly apportioned cold servings of dried, and salted meat and fish, desiccated fruit, nuts and biscuits, washed down with water and one tot of brandy per day.

The fact that the main engine was being fired almost continuously, thus imparting some weight to everything, made the toilet procedures less onerous than in zero gravity conditions, but the experience remained one which called for reserves of stoicism. In the midships lavatory there was a complicated tubular exhaust with one-way valves—the only point at which the hull could be breached in space. Unavoidably, a small quantity of air was lost each time the device was operated, but the volume of gas generated by the firesalt was enough to compensate.

It had originally been envisaged that all six of the crew would take equal turns in the pilot’s seat, but the plan was soon modified by practical considerations. Berise, Gotlon and Wraker were able to hold Gola on the crosshairs with ease, and Bartan was rapidly acquiring the same facility—but for Toller and Zavotle the task became even more irksome and tiring. Bowing to expediency, Toller rearranged the duty schedules to let the four young people keep the ship on its interception course with Farland, while he and Zavotle had more time to dispose of as they saw fit. Zavotle was able to occupy himself with astronomical studies and prolonged entries in his leather-bound log, but for Toller the extra hours were burdensome.

At times he thought about his wife and son, wondering what they were doing, and at others he gazed moodily through portholes at a frozen, unchanging panoply of stars, silver whirlpools and comets. In those periods the ship seemed to be permanently locked in place, and try as he might Toller was unable to accept that it was achieving the kind of speed necessary for the interplanetary crossing.

“Are you ready?” Bartan said to Berise. When she nodded he shut down the engine, floated himself out of the pilot’s seat and held the straps for Berise while she took his place.

“Thank you,” she said, giving him a cordial smile. He nodded politely, impersonally, made his way to the ladder and went down it, leaving Berise to share the top deck with Toller and Zavotle. Gotlon and Wraker were busy loading the fuel hoppers in the tail section.

“I think someone is developing a soft spot for young Bartan,” Toller commented, addressing himself to nobody in particular.

Zavotle sniffed loudly. “If that is the case, then that someone is only wasting her time. Our Mister Drumme reserves all his affections for spirits of one kind or another—bottled or disembodied.”

“I don’t care what you say.” Berise paused, hands resting lightly on the controls. “He must have loved his wife very much. If I died or disappeared soon after being married I’d like my husband to fly to another world in search of me. I think it’s very romantic.”

“You’re nearly as mad as he is,” Zavotle told her. “I hope we’re not all going to be afflicted by some mental contagion, a pterthacosis of the mind. What do you say, Toller?”

“Bartan does his job—perhaps we should leave it at that?”

“Yes.” Zavotle gazed through the porthole beside him for a few seconds, his expression becoming enigmatic. “Perhaps he does his job much better than I do mine.”

Toller’s interest was aroused not only by what the other man had said, but by something in his inflexion. “Is there something wrong?”

Zavotle nodded. “I selected a guide star which was supposed to put us on an interception course with Farland. Had I done the calculations properly, and chosen the guide star well, we should see it and Farland gradually drawing closer together ahead of us.”

“Well?”

“We are only five days into the flight, but already it is apparent that Farland and Gola are moving apart. I have put off telling you because I was hoping—foolishly, I suppose—that the situation would change, or that I would be able to devise an explanation. Neither of those things has come to pass, so I must consider myself to have failed to discharge my duties.”

“But it isn’t all that serious, is it?” Toller said. “Surely, all we have to do is aim closer to Farland. We are not under any threat.”

“Only the threat posed by incompetence.” Zavotle produced a rueful smile. “You see, Toller, nothing is working out as I expected. Farland seems too bright, and also its image in the telescope is too large. I would swear it is twice as big as when we started out. Perhaps optical instruments work differently in the void. I don’t know—I can’t explain it.”

“It could mean that we have completed half the journey,” Berise said.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Zavotle replied tartly. “You speak of matters far beyond your understanding.”

Berise’s eyebrows drew together. “I understand that when something appears to double in size the distance to it has been halved. It seems quite simple to my mind.”

“To the simple mind everything appears simple.”

“Let’s have no bickering,” Toller said. “What we need…”

“But the idiotic woman is suggesting that we have travelled nine or ten million miles in only five days,” Zavotle protested, kneading his stomach. “Two million miles in a day! That is a speed of more than eighty thousand miles an hour—which is impossible. The true speed…”

The true speed of your ship is now in excess of one hundred thousand miles an hour, said the golden-haired woman who had shimmered into existence near the side of the compartment.

Chapter 15

Toller stared at the woman, knowing without being told that she was Bartan Drumme’s wife, and his inner model of the universe and all its ways flowed and was changed for ever. He felt cold and weak, but somehow unafraid. Berise and Zavotle had not moved, and although they were looking in different directions he knew they were seeing exactly what he was seeing. The woman was beautiful, and she was wearing a simple white dress, and she glowed like a candle in the dimness of the ship’s interior. She spoke in anger shaded with concern.

At first I could not believe it when I sensed Bartan drawing nearer, and then I searched and found that it was true! You set out across space without even understanding the effects of continuous acceleration! How could you fail to realise that you were heading for certain death?

“Sondy!” Bartan had returned to the upper deck and was clinging to a handhold near the head of the ladder. “I am coming to bring you home.”

You are a fool, Bartan. All of you are reckless fools. You, liven Zavotle, you who drew up the plans for the voyage—how did you expect to land on this world?

Zavotle spoke like a man in a trance. “We planned to slow our ship down by plunging it into Farland’s atmosphere.”

And that would have been the end of you! At the speed you would have attained on reaching Farland the friction with the atmosphere would have produced so much heat that your ship would have become a meteor. And even if by some miracle you had landed safely—had you simply assumed that the air would be breathable?

“Air? Air is air.”

How little you know! And you, Toller Maraquine, you who style yourself leader of this ill-conceived expedition—do you accept full responsibility for the lives of those you command?

“I do,” Toller said steadily. A part of his mind was telling him that he and the others ought to be cringing with fear or reeling with astonishment, anything but calmly answering questions put to them by an apparition, but it was in the nature of the mental communion that all normal human reactions were prorogued. He now understood Bartan’s previous assertion that, by definition, anything which happens cannot be supernatural.

In that case, Sondeweere continued, if you retain any vestiges of a conscience, you will immediately abandon this wildest of ventures. I will give you the instructions and guidance necessary to effect a safe return to Overland.

“I cannot agree to that proposal,” Toller said. “While it is true that I boast the title of commander of this extraordinary mission, its members have their individual and separate reasons for wanting to set foot on Farland. My authority is rooted in the common will to proceed, and were I to propose turning back my voice would become only one among many.”

A slippery answer, Toller Maraquine. The vision regarded him with blue-seething eyes. Does it mean that you are prepared to lead your crew to their deaths?

“I see no need for that? If it is within your power to guide us safely to Overland you must be able to do the same with regard to Farland.”

How little you understand! How little you know of the dangers that await you here! The silent words were now tinged with impatience. Many years ago you found Overland to be uninhabited, and now—blindly—you presume that Farland is the same. Has it not occurred to you that this world is peopled, that it has its own civilisation? Did you think I had an entire planet to myself?

“I had given the matter no thought,” Toller said. “Until this minute I believed that Bartan was mad, and that you did not exist anywhere.”

I see now that I should never have reached out to you, Bartan. It was a mistake I would not have made had my development been complete, but I must bear the responsibility for the jeopardy in which you and your companions have been placed. I beg you, Bartan—do not add to my remorse. You must persuade your friends to return to Overland.

“I love you, Sondy—and nothing will keep me from your side.”

But what you contemplate is sheer folly! You cannot hope to rescue me with a force of only six.

“Rescue!” Bartan’s voice became sharper. “Are you being held captive?”

There is nothing that anyone can do. I am content here. Turn back, Bartan!

In spite of the curious mood that had been induced in him, the casual and dreamy acceptance of the miraculous, Toller was aware of a growing clamour deep within himself as he listened to the exchange between Sondeweere and Bartan. Revelation was piling on revelation, and with each there came a host of questions which cried out for answers. What were the people of Farland like? Had they landed on Overland by stealth and physically abducted Bartan’s wife? If so, what had been their motive? And, above all, how had an unremarkable woman living on a remote farm acquired the awesome ability to project her image and thoughts across millions of miles of space?

Seeking enlightenment, Toller tried to study Sondeweere’s face and discovered that it was impossible to focus on any single aspect of her. The vision he had seemed to exist behind his eyes, and it was a composite of many images which continually shifted and merged, making it impossible to scrutinise any one in particular. She was standing a few paces away from him, and at the same time she was so close that he could distinguish the individual down hairs on her skin, and at the same time she was so far away that she had the semblance of a bright star which pulsed in harmony with the silent rhythms of her speech…

By refusing to turn back you place me in an impossible situation. The only way I can save you from certain death in space is by leading you to an equally certain death here on Farland.

“We are responsible for our own lives,” Toller said, knowing that he had the full support of his crew. “And we are not easy to kill.”

Sondeweere came to the ship many times in the days that followed her first visitation, and for the most part her concern was with discarding its stupendous velocity and altering the course.

After he had recovered from the shock of learning the vessel’s true speed, Zavotle became absorbed by the mechanics of the operation. It had not simply been a matter of turning the ship over to reverse the direction of its thrust—numerous course corrections had to be carried out by tilting the ship and firing the engine at an angle to the line of flight. There was no means of looking directly aft, therefore Farland could not be seen and the crew had to take it on trust that they were steadily drawing nearer to their destination.

Zavotle found much to write about in his log, and was particularly intrigued when his spectral tutor explained to him what had been wrong with the plan to halt the ship outside the reach of Farland’s gravity. The radius of a planet’s gravity can be regarded as infinite, Sondeweere told him, and therefore the ship had to be placed in orbit, a condition in which it falls forever around the planet, in exactly the same manner as the planets circle their parent sun.

Toller tried to take an interest in the difficult concept, but found that his normal thought processes were inhibited by the essential strangeness of the situation. There had been too many revelations, and too many mysteries had been uncovered—all of them turning on the central enigma of Sondeweere herself.

He would have expected Bartan Drumme to be more taxed by that enigma than any other member of the company, but the youngster seemed too bemused by the prospect of being reunited with his wife to think much about what had so drastically interfered with the course of her existence. Allowances had to be made, Toller decided, for the fact that Bartan had spent a long time in an alcoholic twilight of the mind, living with the knowledge that his wife had somehow been transported to Farland and had communicated with him from that distant world.

Also, Bartan was drinking heavily again. With the realisation that the ship was vastly overstocked with all supplies, including brandy, Toller had given permission for the crew to drink freely—seemingly a small enough concession in the circumstances. It had soon become evident to him that Bartan was abusing the privilege, but he had lacked the will to issue a corrective. Matters of shipboard discipline, in which he would normally have been very strict, now seemed irrelevant and trivial in a universe where the impossible had become probable, and the bizarre had become commonplace.

Three days into the deceleration phase he found himself gazing through the forward porthole—which now faced aft—at the twin points of light which were Land and Overland, the worlds which had encompassed his entire life and which he had left far behind. They seemed more distant than the stars, and yet—from what he had learned—there was a human connection between Overland and Farland. What could it be? What could it be?

Toller’s frustration was increased by the fact that, no matter how insistent were the questions hammering in his mind, each time Sondeweere established communication he was overcome by the same mood of passivity and acceptance, and she was gone before the questions could be put to her. It was as if, for reasons of her own, she had used her strange powers to smother his spirit of enquiry. If that were the case, a new mystery had been added to a surfeit of mysteries, and it all seemed so… unfair.

He glanced around the upper deck, wondering if the rest of the crew shared his frustration. Wraker was in the pilot’s seat, holding the crosshairs on the current guide star, and the others were drowsing in their sleeping nets, seemingly unperturbed by their vulnerability, their total ignorance of what lay ahead.

“This is not the way things should be,” Toller whispered to himself. “We are entitled to more consideration than this.”

I have to agree with you, Sondeweere said, hovering before him, warping space around her to create strange geometries which defied perspective.

I confess that I have done my utmost to erect a barrier around your minds, but my concern was with your collective safety. You see, telepathy—direct mind-to-mind communication—is largely an interactive process. You have enemies here on Farland, powerful enemies, and I had to be certain that I could prevent the symbonites from becoming aware of your approach to the planet. That much I have been able to achieve, but it would still be best if you would agree to turn back et cannot turn back,” Bartan Drumme said, forestalling Toller’s response.

“Bartan speaks for all of us,” Toller added. “We are prepared to face any foe, to die if need be, but by the same token we are entitled to be apprised of the terms of the conflict. What are symbonites, and why are they hostile to us?”

There was a brief pause during which Sondeweere’s multidimensional image underwent several shifts and changes in luminosity, then she began to unfold a tale…

The symbons had been drifting in space for untold thousands of years before blind chance brought them into an unremarkable planetary system. It consisted of a small sun which had a retinue of only three worlds, two of them forming a closely matched binary. Under the influence of the sun’s gravity the tenuous cloud of spores—many of them linked by gossamer-like threads—sank inwards over a period of centuries.

Almost all of them continued the slow descent to the heart of the system, where they were destroyed in the sun’s nuclear furnace, but a few were lucky in that they were captured by the outermost planet.

There they settled in the soil, were nourished by the rain, and entered the receptive phase of their existence. They were doubly lucky in that all of them eventually came into physical contact with members of the planet’s dominant species—a race of intelligent bipeds who had recently discovered the use of metals. They entered their hosts’ bodies and multiplied and spread through them, showing a special affinity for the nervous system, and produced composite beings in which some of the characteristics of both species were enhanced to a great degree.

The symbonites were stronger and vastly more intelligent than the unmodified bipeds. They also had telepathic powers with which they sought each other out and formed a group of super-beings who easily dominated the indigenous species. The relationship was an amicable and peaceful one, bringing to an end the natives’ tribal squabbling.

It could even have been thought of as beneficial to the host race, except that the bipeds were cheated of the right to follow their own evolutionary course.

There followed two centuries during which the symbonites flourished. The offspring of a coupling between a symbonite and an ordinary native was always another symbonite, and with that overwhelming genetic advantage the superbeings inexorably increased their numbers. They developed their own culture, secure in the knowledge that in time they would entirely supersede the native population.

But millions of miles away, on one of the pair of inner worlds, a new development was taking place.

As the original cloud of symbon spores was drifting towards the sun, two of its members had been intercepted by one of the twin worlds. After they had floated down to the lowest levels of the atmosphere their link had been broken by wind forces, but they had entered the soil close to each other in a fertile region of the planet.

A symbon has no powers of selection. It has to merge into the first living creature with which it comes into contact, and one of the spores was quickly absorbed by one of the planet’s lowest life forms—a myriapod which combined some characteristics of scorpion and mantis.

The crawling creature reproduced itself, giving rise to a breed of super-myriapods. They had no brains as such, being controlled by groups of ganglia, so they could not become telepathic in the full sense of the word, but they had the ability to broadcast dim proto-feelings and images from their nervous systems.

They also perpetuated themselves on a downward evolutionary curve, gradually losing their special chracteristics, because as organisms they were far too primitive to form a viable symbiotic partnership.

In the case of that symbon spore, nature’s blind gamble had not paid off. The breed of super-myriapods was destined to revert to type within a few centuries, and their existence would pass unnoticed by the world at large—except for one relatively unimportant instance. The sub-telepathic emanations of their descendants caused disturbing mental effects among humans who chanced to settle in their locality.

In the case of the second symbon spore, however, the outcome was vastly different…

“Sondy!” It was Bartan Drumme who broke the spell cast by the cool overview of the reaches of time and space, and his anguish was apparent. “Please don’t say it! That can’t be what happened to you.”

That is what happened to me, Bartan. I came in contact with the second spore—and now I too am a symbonite.

There was an awed silence on the upper deck of the ship, then Bartan spoke again, his voice quiet and strained. “Does it mean I’ve lost you, Sondy? Are you dead to me? Are you now one of… them?”

No! My appearance has not changed, and in my heart I am as much a human being as ever, but… how can I explain it?… raised to a power. I tried to persuade you to turn back, but having failed I can reveal that I long to escape from this cold, rainy world and live among my own kind again.

“You’re still my wife?”

Yes, Bartan, but it is futile to dream of such things. I am a prisoner here, and it would be suicidal for you and your companions to try to alter that fact.

Bartan gave a tremulous laugh. “Your words have given me the strength of a thousand, Sondy—and I’m coming to take you home.”

The odds against you are too great.

“There are things we must know,” Toller put in, driven to speak in spite of the awareness that he was intruding. “If you are not allied to these… symbonites—why have you joined them in Farland? And how was it done?”

Once the spore had entered my system I was destined to become a symbonite, but the more advanced the host is in evolutionary terms the longer the process takes. I spent more than a year in a semi-comatose condition while the inner metamorphosis was taking place, and during that time my telepathic ability was not under control. At a certain stage the symbonites of Farland became aware of me, and they understood at once what was happening.

They are not a belligerent or acquisitive race—violent conquest is not their way—but they divined enough about human nature to fear the rise of human-based symbonites on Overland. They built a spaceship—one which operates on principles I could never explain to you—and flew to Overland.

They spirited me away from the midst of my people, anxious to do so before I could bear children. The action was necessary in their eyes because my children’s children would also have been symbonites, and in time there would have been an entire planet populated with them. Springing from a higher evolutionary base, they would have been much superior to the symbonites of Farland. Although transmogrified, it is almost certain that they would have retained the human taste for exploration and expansion—and inevitably they would have set foot on Farland. So, here I am, and here they are determined I will stay.

“It would have been less trouble to kill you,” Zavotle said, expressing a thought which had occurred to more than one of the Kolcorron’s crew.

Yes, and that is precisely the kind of thinking which prompted the symbonites to abduct me. They are not a murderous race, so they were content to isolate me from my kind and wait for me to die of natural causes. However, they made the mistake of underestimating my telepathic potency. They did not allow for my being able to contact Bartan in an effort to assuage his grief.

And I in turn did not expect this terrible outcome—otherwise I would have remained silent. Sondeweere’s indefinable face, simultaneously close and remote, expressed regret. I must bear the responsibility for whatever befalls you.

“But why should we come to any harm?” Berise Narrinder said, speaking to Sondeweere for the first time. “If your captors are as timorous as you say, they will be unable to stand in our way.”

Readiness to kill is no yardstick of courage. Although the symbonites abhor the taking of life, they will do so if they adjudge it necessary—but they are not the ones with whom you will have to contend. The native Farlanders are the instruments of the symbonites… and they are numerous… and they are untroubled by any scruples over the shedding of blood.

“Nor are we when the cause is just,” Toller said. “Will the symbonites become aware of us before we land?”

Probably not. No mind—telepathic or otherwise—can continue to function unless it protects itself from the spherical bombardment of information. I became aware of you mainly because of the special relationship with Bartan.

“Are you permitted freedom of movement?”

Yes —I roam the planet at will.

“In that case,” Toller said, still dully astonished at his ability to commune with a mental apparition, “surely it is within your power to guide our skyship to some remote and lonely spot—at night, if need be—where we could meet you and take you on board our craft. A few seconds should suffice—it is not even necessary for the ship to touch down—and then we could be on our way back to Overland.”

The extent of your presumption amazes me, Toller Maraquine. Do you dare to imagine that your analysis of the possibilities, carried out on the spur of the moment, is superior to mine?

“All I’m…”

Do not trouble yourself to answer. Instead, let me put another question to you—for the last time, is it totally inconceivable that you can be persuaded to turn back?

“We go on.”

If that is the way of it, Sondeweere’s image was retreating as she spoke, we will meet under your terms. But I guarantee that all of you will come to rue the day you left Overland.

Chapter 16

The Kolcorron completed two orbits of the planet at a height of more than three thousand miles, hurtling through the tenuous outer fringes of the atmosphere. And then, after Sondeweere was satisfied that she had taken all variables into account, she gave instructions for a series of firings of the main engine, the effect of which was to kill the ship’s orbital speed.

The Kolcorron began to drop vertically towards the surface of Farland.

At first the rate of fall was negligible, but as the hours went by the speed built up and those on board began to hear a burbling rush of air against the planking of the hull. Tipp Gotlon was at the controls. Under Sondeweere’s seemingly omniscient guidance, he brought the ship into a vertical attitude, tail down, and fired a long blast on the engine which not only checked the descent but produced a small upward velocity. At that stage the ship was surrounded by air which, although still rarefied, was capable of supporting human life for a reasonable period. The ship’s upward movement would soon be halted and reversed by Farland’s gravity, but for the time being the exterior working conditions resembled those of Overland’s weightless zone—and the task of deploying the skyship began.

Before going outside, Toller went to the top deck for a final word with Gotlon, ascending the ladder with some difficulty because of his skysuit and the added encumbrances of the parachute and personal propulsion unit. A single ray of sunlight from a porthole was slanting across the compartment, casting a lemon-coloured glow over the pilot’s face, upon which was an expression of moody discontent.

“Sir,” he said on seeing Toller, “how is Zavotle coping with the outside work?”

“Zavotle is coping very well,” Toller replied, aware of what was in Gotlon’s mind. He had been disappointed on being told that he was to remain with the ship, and had argued that only the able-bodied members of the crew should take part in what promised to be an arduous and dangerous rescue mission. Toller had countered by saying that the role of the Kolcorron was of paramount importance to the whole project, therefore logic demanded that the best pilot should be left in control of the vessel. The tribute to his flying skills had mollified Gotlon only a little.

“The work I am given could as easily be done by a sick man,” he said, returning to his original argument.

Toller shook his head. “Son, liven Zavotle is not merely a sick man. He would not thank me for telling you this, but there is little time remaining to him, and I think it is in his heart to be buried on Farland.”

Gotlon looked uncomfortable. “I hadn’t realised. So that’s why he has been so crabbed of late.”

“Yes. And if he were to be left here alone on the ship, and chanced to die, what would become of the rest of us?”

“I didn’t say goodbye to him. I was resentful.”

“He won’t be concerned about that. The best thing you can do for Zavotle is to make sure that his logbook is returned safely to Overland. There is much in there that will be invaluable to future space travellers, including all that he has learned from Sondeweere, and I am charging you with the personal responsibility for · ensuring that it is delivered into King Chakkell’s hands.”

“I’ll do my utmost to…” Gotlon paused and looked at Toller with eyes which had become strangely aware. “Sir, the mission… Are you in any doubt about the outcome?”

“No doubt at all,” Toller said, smiling. He gripped Gotlon’s shoulder for a second, then drew himself back to the ladder and went down it, controlling his bulk with difficulty in the confined space because of the weightless conditions.

When he got outside the ship, into the boundless sky, movement became effortless. The others were already at work, separating the skyship section from the main body of the Kolcorron, and Farland was an enormous, mind-stunning convex backdrop to their activities.

A white polar cap was visible on the planet, which had more cloud than Land or Overland, giving it a reflective power which enveloped the floating figures in a storm of brilliance. The sky in the lower half of the sphere of visibility had returned to the dark blue coloration with which Toller was familiar, but above him it shaded into a near-blackness in which the stars and spirals shone with unusual clarity.

He took a deep breath as he relished every aspect of the unearthly scene, feeling privileged, savouring the fact that he had been born into unique circumstances which had directed his life to this unparalleled moment.

Ahead of him was a new experience, a new world to ravish his senses, a new enemy to conquer; within him was the kind of fevered joy he had first known when riding down on Red One to engage a Lander fleet.

But there was something else there—an undertow of panic and despair. The worm at the core of his life had chosen that very instant to resume its coiling and uncoiling, reminding him that after Farland there was nowhere else to go. Perhaps, the now familiar thought came stealing, my grave is down there on that alien globe. And perhaps that is where I want it to be…

“We need those muscles of yours, Toller,” Zavotle called out.

Toller jetted down to the aft section of the ship. The criss-cross ropes which bound the section to the main hull had already been slackened off the lashing pins, but the mastic was exerting an obstinate cohesive force which preserved the unity of the structure. Toller helped drive in wedges, work which was irksomely difficult because of the need to cling to the ship with one hand and contain the reaction of the hammer within his own frame. Levers were quite useless for the same reason, and in the end separation was only achieved by the group working their toes and fingers into the partial gap at one side and using their combined muscle power to rip the skyship clear of the mother craft.

It tilted away, wallowing gently, exposing the exhaust cone of the engine which would take the main ship back to Overland. Dakan Wraker had disconnected the control extensions in advance, and his task now was to rejoin the various rods to both engines and to check that they were functioning properly.

“We should have had jacks,” Zavotle commented, his face pale and gleaming with sweat. “And have you noticed that it isn’t cold here? We’re farther from the sun and yet the air is warmer than in our own weightless zone. Nature delights in confounding us. Toller.”

“There’s no time to fret about it now.” Toller flew to the skyship and took part in pushing it sideways, clear of the Kolcorron, with the combined thrust of five personal jets. The crew then began drawing the folded balloon out of the gondola, straightening it out and connecting the load lines. The acceleration struts, which had been sectionised to fit into the ship, were tricky to assemble, but the routine had been practised before the start of the voyage and was completed in good time. Wraker finished his work on the mother ship and within a few minutes of returning to the gondola had fettled its engine in readiness for inflation of the balloon. The operation was facilitated by the fact that the whole assemblage was slowly falling, creating a drift of unheated air into the balloon and helping prepare it for the influx of hot gas.

Toller, as the most experienced skyship pilot, took the responsibility for starting the engine in the burner mode and inflating the balloon with no heat damage to the lower panels. As soon as the insubstantial giant, with all its geometrical traceries, had been conjured into being above the gondola he turned the pilot’s seat over to Berise and went to the side.

The Kolcorron was now falling slightly faster than the skyship, its varnished timbers gradually slipping downwards past those who watched from the gondola’s rail. Gotlon appeared at the open midsection door and waved briefly before closing it and sealing the ship.

A minute later the main engine began to roar. The spaceship stopped sinking, hovered for a fleeting moment and started to climb. Its engine seemed to grow louder as it moved above the skyship and Toller felt the hot miglign gas blasting out of the exhaust, disturbing the equilibrium of the balloon and gondola. He watched the larger ship until it passed out of sight behind the curving horizon of the balloon, and suddenly he felt in awe of Gotlon, an ordinary young man who nevertheless had the courage to fly off into the void alone, trusting a woman he had never met to guide him into orbit with ethereal commands.

Not for the first time, it came to Toller just how foolhardy he had been in setting out to cross interplanetary space with scarcely an inkling of the dangers ahead. Such hubris surely merited disaster. For himself and Zavotle the ordained penalty was perhaps acceptable, but he had to do all that was in his power to ensure that his youthful companions were not drawn into the maelstrom of his own destiny.

The same thought was to recur to him many times during the six days that it took to descend to the surface of Farland.

Associating with the young fighter pilots, especially Berise, had shown him how much they resented any attempt at what they saw as wet nursing. He had to respect their feelings, but was in a dilemma because he knew their outlook was tinged with overconfidence, the unconsciously arrogant belief that they could triumph over any adversary, survive any danger. The exhilaration of riding jet fighters through the central blue had persuaded them that recklessness was a viable philosophy of life.

His own career hardly gave him the right to take a different standpoint, but he was haunted by the knowledge that from the start he had been woefully unfit to lead an expedition to Farland. Even Zavotle had not understood that in space a moving ship can continue at the same speed for ever with its engine shut down, and that the effects of any extra thrusts were cumulative. They would all have died on entering Farland’s atmosphere had it not been for Sondeweere’s intervention—and she had been right to condemn him for another crass oversight. He had not even considered the idea that Farland might be populated with ordinary beings, let alone talented super-creatures with powers far beyond his understanding. Sondeweere had assured him that landing on the planet would mean death for the astronauts, and as the descent continued he found it harder and harder to erect barriers of disbelief against her prediction.

Another contributor to his disquiet was Sondeweere herself. Her telepathic visitations had been no surprise to Bartan; Berise and Wraker seemed to have accommodated her in their systems of belief without much difficulty—but Toller had spent too many years as a materialist and sceptic not to feel his inner universe quake every time he thought of her.

The story about the symbon spores had been truly astonishing, but at least he could comprehend every part of it, and with comprehension came acceptance. The notion of direct mind-to-mind contact was in a different category, however.

Even though he had seen the curiously elusive image of her and had listened to her silent voice, something within him rebelled each time he recalled the experience.

It smacked too much of mysticism. If there really were other levels of reality, not accessible to his five ordinary senses, who was to say—to choose but one example—that religious beliefs about the transmigration of souls were unfounded? Where was one to draw the line? Sondeweere’s private message for him was that his conviction that he understood the nature of reality, give or take a few minor areas of uncertainty, was and always had been a ludicrous conceit—and that was hard to swallow at his time of life.

Unsettling through Sondeweere’s manifestations were, he had little respite from them. She appeared to the crew many times during the descent, especially in the final stages, giving instructions to slow their downward speed, to hover, and once even to ascend for an hour. Her objective was to guide them down through wind layers and weather systems, which were more evident than on Overland, to a landing site she had chosen.

At one stage she correctly warned them of a region of intense cold, many miles in depth, in which the temperature was even lower than that of the weightless zone although the air above and below was relatively warm. In reply to Zavotle’s question she spoke of the atmosphere reflecting away some of the sun’s heat and of convection currents carrying more of it down to sea level, resulting in a cold layer.

The very fact that Sondeweere knew of such things, she who until recently had been an unlettered agricultural worker, added to Toller’s general misgivings. It substantiated her claim to have been sublimated into a superwoman, a genius beyond the ken of genius, and made him feel apprehensive about meeting her face to face. What would a goddess think of ordinary human beings? Would she look on them in much the same manner as they had regarded the gibbons which abounded in the Sorka province of old Kolcorron?

He would have expected Bartan Drumme to show some degree of concern over the same issue, but the youngster gave no sign of it. When not sleeping or taking his turn at the controls, he spent his time talking to Berise and Wraker, quite often swigging from one of the skins of brandy he had included in his kit. Berise had brought drawing materials and she devoted hours to sketching the others and making maps of the approaching planet, the latter mainly for the benefit of Zavotle. For his part, the little man appeared to be deteriorating at an increasing rate. He lay on his palliasse, forearms pressed against his stomach, and rarely became animated except when in communion with Sondeweere. Given the opportunity he would have questioned her for hours, but her visitations were always brief and her instructions terse, as though many other matters competed for her attention.

Unexpectedly, Toller got the most companionship from the crew member he knew least—Dakan Wraker. Although he had been born after the Migration, the soft-spoken man with the crinkly hair and humorous grey eyes had an intense interest in the history of the Old World. While helping Toller to grease and clean the muskets and five steel swords which had been brought on the mission, he encouraged him to talk for long periods about daily life in Ro-Atabri, Kolcorron’s former capital city, and the practical arrangements by which it had spread its influence through an entire hemisphere. It transpired that he had ambitions to write a book which would help preserve the nation’s identity.

“So we have an artist and a writer on one ship,” Toller said. “You and Berise should form a partnership.”

“I’d love to form any kind of partnership with Berise,” Wraker replied in a low voice, “but I think she has her sights set on another.”

Toller frowned. “You mean Bartan? But he’s soon to be reunited with his wife.”

“An ill-matched couple, don’t you think? Perhaps Berise sees no future in the union.”

In Wraker’s comments Toller recognised an echo of his own thoughts, so it seemed that the only one who was not in doubt about the prospects for Bartan’s strange marriage was Bartan himself. Mildly drunk for most of the time, Bartan appeared to live in a state of euphoria, supported by his monomania, buoyed up by the belief that when he met Sondeweere again all would be as it was before. Toller was at a loss to explain how the young man continued to nourish such naive expectations—but could any of the company claim to be displaying greater foresight?

Toller had noticed that even when Sondeweere used a word he had never heard before he nevertheless understood its meaning. It was as though the words themselves were merely convenient carriers, each one freighted with multitudinous layers of meaning and complementary concepts. When mind spoke to mind there were no misunderstandings or areas of vagueness.

No man who listened to Sondeweere’s silent voice could doubt anything she said—and she had predicted that the rescue mission would end in tragedy.

It was dark when the skyship drifted down towards the plain —the kind of darkness Toller had previously known only during the hours of deepnight. While the ship still had some altitude there had been soft glimmerings of light visible here and there in the mysterious black landscape, indicative of scattered towns or villages. But this close to touchdown the only luminance came from the sky, and even the Great Spiral could do little more than add fugitive hints of silver to the mist which patchily shrouded the ground.

The air was seeded with moisture, and to Toller—equatorial dweller from a sun-scoured world—it seemed dauntingly cold, with a strange ability to draw the heat out of his body. He and the others had shed the cumbersome skysuits hours earlier, and now they were shivering and rubbing their goose-pimpled arms in an effort to keep warm. The air was also laden with the smell of vegetation, a dank essence of greenness more powerful and pervasive than anything Toller had ever known, and which told him more forcibly than his other senses that he was close to the surface of an alien planet.

As he stood at the gondola’s rail he felt keyed-up, exhilarated, entranced—and also regretful that there was to be no opportunity to roam across Farland on foot in daytime and sample its wonders with his own eyes. If Sondeweere met the ship according to plan—and he had little doubt that she would—they would be able to take her on board within seconds. It would not even be necessary for the gondola’s legs to make contact with Farland’s soil before they headed skywards again under cover of night. By morning they would be out of sight of anybody on the ground, well on their way to a rendezvous with the Kolcorron.

Not for the first time, the thought caused Toller to frown in puzzlement. There seemed to be a wide divergence between the actual course of events and Sondeweere’s confident forecast of a disastrous end to the venture. Everything seemed to be going too well. Had she simply been doing her best to keep the would-be rescuers out of possible dangers, or were there other factors in the situation which Toller had not considered and which she had chosen not to divulge? The extra element of mystery, the hint of lurking perils, worked on him like some potent drug, stepping up his heart rate and increasing his brooding sense of anticipation. He scanned the darkness below, wondering if the enigmatic symbonites could have intercepted and silenced Sondeweere, if the projected landing site could be thronged with waiting soldiers.

Wraker was now firing frequent short bursts into the balloon, reducing the speed of descent to a crawl, and as the ground came nearer Toller’s eyes began to play malicious tricks on him. The darkness was no longer homogenous, but was composed of thousands of crawling, squirming shapes, all of them with the potential to be what he least wanted them to be. They ran beneath the drifting ship, silently and effortlessly keeping pace with it, their upraised arms imploring him to come within range and be cut and clubbed and hewn and hacked into anonymous fragments of flesh and bone.

It seemed a long, long time before the encompassing gloom relented and yielded up something unambiguous—a tremulous mote of pale grey which gradually lightened in tone and resolved itself into the figure of a woman dressed in white…

Chapter 17

“Sondy!” Bartan Drumme called, leaning far over the rail beside Toller. “Sondy, I’m here!”

“Bartan!” The woman was walking quickly to keep abreast of the ship. “I see you, Bartan!”

There was no awesome, mind-numbing telepathic contact —just a woman’s voice charged with understandable human excitement—and the sound of it overwhelmed Toller with wonder. For the moment all cognisance of symbonite super-beings was gone, and he could think of nothing but the strangeness of this meeting. Here was a woman who had been” born on his home world and had lived an ordinary life there before being transported to another planet in bizarre circumstances. Every dictate of reason said that she should then have vanished forever from human ken, but her grief-crazed, drink-sodden husband had inspired a voyage across millions of miles of space, and—against all the odds—they had reached her. That woman, whose voice trembled with natural emotion, was only a few yards away from him in the alien darkness—and Toller spellbound by the reality of her.

The sound of the gondola’s exhaust cone and legs swishing through vegetation snapped him back into a universe of practicalities. Bartan had climbed over the gondola’s side and was perched on the outer ledge, reaching towards his wife with one hand. She caught hold of it and within a second was standing beside him. Toller helped her roll herself over the rail, marvelling as he did so at the simple bodily contact. Bartan came inboard again with a single lithe movement and clutched Sondeweere to him. Toller, Berise and Zavotle were spontaneously drawn to them, and arms were lapped upon arms in a gratifying multiple embrace. It ended when the gondola’s legs glanced against the ground, sending a shudder up through the deck.

“Take us aloft,” Toller said to Wraker, who at once began firing a long burst which was to revitalise the gigantic entity of the balloon waiting patiently above them.

“Yes, yes!” Sondeweere divorced herself from the cluster of bodies and stepped towards Wraker, her right hand extended in a gesture of greeting. He responded by raising his free hand, but the expected clasp did not take place.

Sondeweere reached past him and—before anybody watching could react—caught the red line connected to the balloon’s rip panel and jerked it downwards with irresistible force.

There was no immediate reaction in the cramped microcosm of the gondola, but Toller knew that the balloon had been killed. Far above him a large trapezium of linen had been torn out of the balloon’s crown, and the envelope would already be starting to wrinkle and sag as the hot gas which sustained it was vented into the atmosphere. The ship was now committed to setting down on Farland—possibly for ever.

“Sondy! What have you done?” Bartan’s anguished cry was heard clearly through the general clamour of shocked protest. He lurched towards Sondeweere with both arms outstretched, as though belatedly trying to prevent her making an injudicious move. She fended him off and went quickly to an empty section of the gondola. Sondeweere has gone. Toller thought. The symbonite superwoman is now among us.

“There was good reason for what I did,” she said in a firm, clear voice. “If you will listen to me for…”

Her words were lost as the gondola struck the ground and tilted to a steep angle, hurling bodies and loose equipment against one wall, before dropping back to the horizontal.

“Get the struts off,” Toller shouted, jolted out of his reverie. “The balloon is coming down around us.”

He tugged the quick-release knots which were securing a strut to the corner nearest him and pushed the slim support away from the rail, hoping to prevent it taking the weight of the subsiding envelope. The gondola was being inundated with choking hot miglign gas which was belching down out of the balloon’s mouth. A sound of splintering told Toller that at least one of the other struts had already been overloaded.

He climbed over the side, peripherally aware of others doing the same, and leaped down to the ground. He ran a short distance through what felt like ordinary grass and turned to view the collapse of the balloon. The vast shape was still tall enough to blot out part of the sky, but it had lost all symmetry. Distorted, writhing like a leviathan in its death throes, it sank downwards at increasing speed. The slight breeze deposited most of it downwind of the gondola where it lay flapping in the grass, raised into shifting humps here and there by gas that was trapped within.

A brief period of silence followed, then the crew members turned and closed in on Sondeweere. There was no hint of threat in their demeanour, nor even of resentment, but the courses of their lives had been profoundly altered by a single unexpected action on her part and they sought some kind of reassurance. Toller could see them well enough in spite of the darkness to note that he was the only one wearing his sword. Obeying old instincts, he dropped his hand to the hilt of the weapon and looked all about him, trying to penetrate the folds of alien night.

“There are no Farlanders within many miles,” Sondeweere said, addressing herself directly to him. “I have not betrayed you.”

“May I be so bold as to enquire what you have done?” he replied, falling back on sarcasm. “You will appreciate that we have a certain interest in the matter.”

“We need to know,” Bartan added in a quavering voice which indicated that he, perhaps more than anybody else, had been devastated by the turn of events.

Sondeweere was wearing a belted white tunic and she drew it closer around her throat before she spoke. “I invite you to consider two facts which are of paramount importance. The first is that the symbonites of this world are aware of my exact whereabouts at all times. They know precisely where I am at this moment, but their suspicions are not aroused and they will take no action because—fortunately for all of us—I am of a restless disposition and it is my habit to travel far and wide at irregular hours.

“The second fact,” Sondeweere went on, speaking with a calm fluency, “is that the symbonites brought me here in a ship which can make the interplanetary crossing in only a few minutes.”

“Minutes!” Zavotle said. “Only a few minutes?”

“The journey could have been completed in a few seconds, or even fractions of a second, but for short distances it is more convenient to proceed at a moderate speed. My point is that if I had gone aloft in the skyship the symbonites would very quickly have realised what was happening and would have intercepted us with their own ship. As I have already told you, they are not homicidal by instinct, but they will never permit me to return to my home world. They would have forced the skyship down, and in doing so would have killed everyone on board.”

“Is their weaponry so much superior to ours?” Toller said, trying to visualise the aerial encounter.

“The symbonite ship carries no weapons as such, but in flight it is surrounded by a field—call it an aura—which is inimical to life. The underlying concept cannot be explained to you, but be assured that a meeting with the symbonite ship would have resulted in all our deaths. Whether the symbonites wanted it that way or not—we would have died.”

A silence descended on the group of fliers while each assimilated Sondeweere’s message. The breeze suddenly freshened, spanging the mute figures with chilling drops of rain which easily penetrated their light shirts and breeches, and clouds slid across the stars like prison doors closing. Farland exults, Toller thought, trying to repress a shiver.

Berise was the first to speak, and when she did so her voice carried an unmistakable note of anger. “It seems to me that you were somewhat high-handed in tampering with our ship,” she said to Sondeweere. “Had you told us the full story when you came on board, we could have dropped you off again and returned to Overland unmolested.”

“But would you have done so?” Sondeweere gave them a wan smile. “Would any of you have chosen to be so… logical?”

“I can’t speak for the others, but I certainly would,” Berise said, and all at once Toller intuited that the challenge to Sondeweere had less to do with the ship and the outcome of the expedition than with rivalry for Bartan’s affections. He found time, in spite of the extremeness of their plight, to be once again awed by the female mind and to become slightly afraid of Berise. She was another Gesalla. Now that he thought of it, all women seemed to be Gesallas to one extent or another, and a man was no match for them in their chosen arena.

“The skyship has not been harmed beyond repair,” Sondeweere pointed out. “I purposely brought you to a remote area where you are unlikely to be discovered by Farlanders, so there is ample time for the work to be carried out.”

Then what was the point of collapsing the balloon? Toller thought. The woman has more to tell us…

Bartan took a step towards Sondeweere. “The others may leave if they wish—I will stay here with you.”

“No, Bartan! Have you forgotten why I was brought here in the first place? The symbonites would slay me rather than permit me to associate with a functional male of my own race.”

Toller, with his soldier’s interest in tactics, was locked into the problem he had set himself. The reason Sondeweere collapsed the balloon had to be that she intended the ship never to fly again. In which case…

“There is an alternative course open to all of you,” Sondeweere said. “I will describe it for you, but you must make the decision for yourselves. If you decide against it, I will help repair your ship and will undertake to guide you back to Overland, while I remain here. If you decide in favour of it, you must be apprised of all the dangers and…”

“We decide in favour,” Toller cut in. “How far is the symbonite spaceship from here? And how well is it guarded?”

Sondeweere turned to face him. “I am surprised by you, Toller Maraquine.”

“There is no need,” Toller said. “I am not a clever man, but I have learned that there are some issues which—no matter how wise and learned the disputants—can be settled in only one way. It is a way I understand.”

“The killing way.”

“The way of justifiable force, of blocking an enemy sword with a sword of my own.”

“Say no more, Toller—I am in no position to make moral judgments. It was my idea to take the ship, because it offers my only hope of escape from this drear and unfulfilled existence, but there are many dangers.”

“We are prepared to face danger,” Toller said. He glanced around his companions, associating them with the statement.

“But why should any of you be prepared to risk death on my behalf?”

“We all had our own good reasons for taking part in this expedition.”

Sondeweere moved closer to Toller, all the while gazing into his face, and for the first time since their meeting he sensed she was employing her extraordinary powers of mind.

“Yours was not a good reason,” she said sadly.

“How long must we stand around in this freezing quagmire?” he demanded, stamping his feet on the squelching ground. “We are likely to die of the ague unless we stir our bones. How far from here is the ship?”

“A good ninety miles.” Sondeweere spoke with a new briskness, apparently having accepted that an irrevocable decision had been reached. “But I have a transporter which can take us there.”

“A wagon?”

“A kind of wagon.”

“Good—this is no country for a forced march.” Relieved at having been spared any further deliberation, Toller ran with the others to the gondola for the unloading of weapons and food supplies. He took one of the five muskets for his own use, but without much enthusiasm. The net of pressure spheres which accompanied it was likely to be an encumbrance in close combat, and the time it took to lock on a new sphere before each shot detracted seriously from the weapon’s efficacy.

“Look what I have found.” Zavotle, who was shivering violently, extended an unsteady hand in which he was holding a brakka shaft around which was rolled the blue-and-grey flag of Kolcorron.

Toller took it and hurled it into the ground like a spear. “That’s our obligation to Chakkell taken care of—from now on we go about our own business.”

He descended from the gondola and was placing his supplies with the others when it occurred to him that Sondeweere was no longer with the company. He scanned the darkness and in that instant heard a strange sound, one which was made up of other sounds—the hissing of a giant snake, the snorting of a bluehorn, the creaking and rattling of a wagon. A moment later he discerned the squarish outline of a vehicle which was slowly approaching the ship. Curious as to what kind of draught animal was responsible for such a cacophony, he went forward to meet Sondeweere, and halted—confounded—as it became apparent that the lurching vehicle was moving under its own power.

The rear of it resembled a traditional wagon covered with canvas supported on stretchers, but in front was a fat cylinder from which ascended a tube belching white vapours into the murky air. Sondeweere was visible as a pale blur behind the glass screen of a cabin-like structure which formed the forepart of the vehicle’s main body. It drew to a halt on wide, black-rimmed wheels, the noise from it decreased to a ruminative snuffling and Sondeweere leapt down from the cabin.

“The wagon propels itself by harnessing the power of steam,” she said, forestalling a barrage of questions. “I sometimes use it as a caravan when I’m travelling long distances, and it is well suited for our purposes.”

The journey across that region of Farland was one of the most singular Toller had ever undertaken.

Part of the strangeness sprang from the unique governing circumstances and the ambience. In spite of the protection offered by the transporter’s canvas top, the five astronauts were oppressed by a clammy coldness unlike anything in their previous experience. Dawn came, not as a fountaining of golden light and heat as on Overland, but as a stealthy change in the colour of the environment, from black to a leaden grey. Even the air within the vehicle became tinged with grey, a mix of exhaled breath and dank mist seeping in from outside which seemed to curdle around the passengers and chill their blood. Only Sondeweere, clad in substantial tunic and trews, was unaffected by the penetrating cold.

Toller and the others parted the canvas frequently, hungry for the sight of an alien world and its inhabitants, but found little to inspire wonder in the glimpses of blue-green grasslands swept by curtains of rain and fog. Toller noted that the road on which they were travelling was paved and well maintained, much superior to anything on Overland. As it gradually widened they got their first glimpse of Farlander dwellings.

The buildings drew some comment, not because they were exotic in any way but because of their sheer ordinariness. Had it not been for the steeply pitched roofs the unadorned single-storey cottages could have blended in with the local architecture almost anywhere on the twin worlds. There was no sign of their inhabitants so early in the morning, and Toller thought it entirely reasonable that they should choose to remain abed for as long as possible, rather than venture out in such an inhospitable clime.

“It isn’t always as cold and gloomy as this,” Sondeweere explained at one stage, speaking from her isolated position at the vehicle’s tiller. “We are in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, and you happen to have arrived in the middle of winter.”

Toller was familiar with the concept of seasons, thanks to his upbringing in one of the philosophy families of old Kolcorron, but it was new to the younger members of the group, mentally conditioned by living on a world whose equator was exactly in the plane of its orbit around the sun. At first the idea that Farland was tilted was quite difficult for them to grasp, and then as it began to take hold they questioned Sondeweere extensively, intrigued by the thought of days and nights which constantly varied in length, and the consequences thereof. For her part, Sondeweere seemed pleased to be able to put aside the symbon component of her identity for a while, and to react naturally as a human among humans.

Listening to the intercourse, Toller was occasionally overcome by a sense of unreality. He had to keep reminding himself that Sondeweere had undergone an incredible metamorphosis, that the group was on its way to do battle with alien beings for the possession of a ship which had been wrought out of miracles and magic. And, above all, that every member of the group could easily die in the hours that lay ahead. The young warriors appeared to have dismissed that thought, supremely confident—as he had once been—that death could not touch them.

Stay that way as long as you can, he advised them mentally, aware that the nerve-thrumming exhilaration which had always sustained him on the eve of battle was totally absent. Was it the reaction of a sun-dweller to this bleak and mist-shrouded world whose clammy coldness penetrated him to the marrow? Or were premonitions at work? Was the capacity for any kind of pleasure being withdrawn from him in preparation for the final disillusionment?

During one of his periodic inspections of the dreary landscape his attention was caught by the sight of a distant building which, as at last befitted an alien world, was unlike any he had seen before. Nested in a narrow valley, it was little more than a silhouette of near-black among dark greys, but it was huge in comparison to the Farlander houses and had numerous chimneys which plumed smoke into the sullen sky.

“An iron foundry which supplies factories throughout this region,” Sondeweere explained in response to his query. “On Overland the various operations would be carried out in the open air, but here—because of the climate—it is necessary to have an enclosure. The native Farlanders would doubtless have produced similar structures in due time, but the symbonites have artificially accelerated the process of industrialisation. It is one of their crimes against nature in general and against the people of this world in particular.”

But you too are a symbonite, Toller thought. How can you criticise the activities of your own kind?

The question, far-reaching though he sensed it to be, was at once displaced by others, less philosophical in nature, which had begun to swarm in his mind. Previously, far out of his intellectual depth, he had conjured a simplistic vision of superbeings effortlessly taking control of a primitive world—but now it was dawning on him that the symbonites had been in a situation similar to that of a platoon of well-armed Kolcorronian soldiers facing a thousand Gethan tribesmen. In a straight and simple conflict, no matter how superior their weaponry, they were bound to be overwhelmed—therefore other strategies had been called for.

“Tell me,” he said to Sondeweere, “have the Farlanders never offered any resistance to the invaders?”

“They are unaware of any intrusion,” she replied, eyes fixed on the dull-gleaming road ahead, “and who could possibly make them aware? You were quite unable to accept anything that Bartan told you about me—so just imagine how you would have reacted had he told you that King Chakkell and Queen Daseene and their children, plus all the aristocrats in the land and their children, were alien conquerors in human guise! Would you have believed him and tried to lead a rebellion? Or would you have dismissed him as a raving lunatic?”

“But you speak of the ruling classes. You told us that the symbon spores descended on this world at random, and that they had no choice as regards their hosts.”

“Yes, but can’t you see that symbonites in any society would quickly infiltrate and dominate the power structure?” Sondeweere went on to outline her view of the developments on Farland over the previous three centuries. In the beginning was the gulf of incomprehension which exists between the masses and the rulers in any primitive society. As far as the indigenous Farlanders were concerned, their lords and masters—already mysterious and god-like—gradually became more innovative, more inventive. They introduced new ideas, such as steam engines for heavy work, and with each step forward their position became more unassailable.

They were forcing the pace of industrial development, but with a sure hand and with patience. Having started with perhaps as few as six symbonite individuals, they well understood the need to proceed with caution, but as decade followed decade they laid down the foundations for a symbonite culture which was destined to dominate an entire world. They mingled freely with the native population, but also had retreats in which no Farlander ever set foot, secret places where they carried out research work and experimented with scientific ideas which might have excited alarm had they been made public. It was in one of those protected enclaves that the symbonite spaceship had been designed and built.

As Sondeweere was speaking Toller began to piece together from stray references a picture of her own lonely existence on the unprepossessing planet. The native Farlanders saw her as a grotesque caricature of a normal being, a freak which for some inscrutable reason was under the protection and patronage of their masters. They tolerated her presence among them, but made no attempts to communicate.

To the self-interested symbonites she was a mild encumbrance, a threat which had been neutralised. At first they had tried to establish a rapport with Sondeweere, but in return she had displayed all the traits which had led them to forestall the emergence of human-based symbonites—resentment, contempt, hatred and implacable hostility among them—and since then they had been content to keep her under continual telepathic surveillance. They learned what they could from her, stole what they could from her mind, and waited for her to die. Time was on their side. They were a new race and as such potentially immortal; she was an individual—vulnerable and impermanent…

“There’s one! More than one!” The exclamations came from Wraker, who had raised the canvas cover to look outside, triggering a general rush to do the same.

“Remember, they must not see us,” Toller said as he created a narrow gap between the material and the transporter’s wooden siding. He peered out and saw they were passing through a village which to his eyes was remarkable in that it was so unremarkable. It seemed that craftsmen everywhere—masons, carpenters, smiths—came up with universal practical solutions to universal practical problems. The village, like the isolated houses seen earlier, might have been anywhere in the temperate zones of Land, but its inhabitants were a different matter.

They resembled humans, but were considerably shorter, and with quite different bodily proportions. Their hooded and layered garments, obviously designed to turn away rain, did not disguise the fact that their spines arched forward almost as semi-circles, predisposing them to waddle with out-thrust bellies and faces tilted upwards. Their legs were short and stubby, but not as truncated as their arms, which angled outwards from the shoulder and ended where the human elbow might have been placed. Massive hands, which seemed to have only five fingers, clenched and unclenched as they walked. It was difficult to see much of their faces, but they seemed pale and hairless, the features all but lost in folds of fat.

“Elegant little fellows,” Bartan commented. “Is that the enemy?”

“Do not be complacent,” Sondeweere said over her shoulder. “They are strong, and they seem to have little fear of pain or injury. They are also fanatical in their obedience to authority.”

Toller saw that the Farlanders, possibly on their way to jobs, were regarding the passing transporter with interest, buried eyes emitting flickers of amber and white. “Have they noticed you?”

“Possibly, but such curiosity as their dull minds can muster is probably directed towards the vehicle—motorised transporters are still quite rare. I am privileged in a way.”

“How well organised and equipped is their army?”

“The Farlanders do not have an army in your sense of the word, Toller"Maraquine. A world state has been in existence for over a hundred years and internecine conflict has been outmoded, thanks to the symbonites, but there is an immense body of citizenry with a title I can best translate as the Public Force. They single-mindedly execute any task assigned to them—flood control, forest clearance, the building of new roads…”

“So they are not trained fighters?”

“What they lack in individual skills they make up for in numbers,” Sondeweere said. “And I repeat—they are very strong in spite of their lack of stature.”

Zavotle aroused himself from a contemplation of inner pain. “They are not like us, and yet… How can I put it? They have more points of similarity than of difference.”

“Our sun is close to the centre of a galaxy, where the stars are very close together. It is possible that all the habitable worlds in this region of space were seeded with life aeons ago, perhaps more than once. An interstellar traveller might find humans or their cousins on many planets.”

“What is a galaxy?” Zavotle said, initiating a long question-and-answer session in which Toller, Wraker and Berise participated, eager for the gifts of knowledge which Sondeweere had acquired both from the symbonites and her own powers of deduction, enhanced beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women. For Toller, the realisation that each of the hundreds of misty whirlpools visible in the night sky was a conglomeration of perhaps a hundred thousand million suns came as a blend of mind-stretching delight and poignant regrets. He was simultaneously uplifted by the scope of the new vision, and depressed by two other factors—his personal inadequacy when confronted by the scale of the cosmos, and sorrow over the fact that his long-dead brother, Lain, had been denied his rightful place at the intellectual banquet.

As the transporter continued its hissing and puffing way through a thickening chain of villages, it gradually came to Toller’s notice that Bartan Drumme was the only member of the company to have excluded himself from the precious communion with Sondeweere. He looked uncharacteristically morose and apathetic, not even bothering to change his position to evade a persistent dripping of rain from a leak overhead, and—while drinking very little—was protectively nursing a skin of brandy he had brought from the skyship. Toller wondered if he was downcast at the prospect of going into battle, or if it was beginning to sink into him that the woman he had married and the omniscient, awesomely gifted being they had met on Farland were two quite different people, and that any future relationship between them could not resemble that of the past.

“… not like the burning of fuel, as in a furnace,” Sondeweere was saying. “Atoms of the lightest gas present within a sun combine to form a heavier gas. The process yields great amounts of energy and that is what makes a sun shine. I’m sorry I cannot give you a clearer explanation at this time—it would take too long to expound the underlying principles and concepts.”

“Could you explain it in your silent voices?” Toller said. “As you did when we were still in the void.” Sondeweere glanced back at him. “That would help, undoubtedly, but I dare not enter into any telepathic communication. I told you that the symbonites are aware of me at all times, and the closer I get to their ship the more I will become a focus of their attention, because it is the one place in all the land which is forbidden to me. Were they to pick up the slightest wisp of telepathic activity their interest in my movements would at once be translated into direct action—and that is something which will happen soon enough.”

“They should have destroyed the ship,” Berise commented, traces of sourness still in her voice.

“Perhaps—but they have no way of knowing how many symbon spores may remain on Overland waiting to create more human symbonites.” Sondeweere cast Berise a smile which perhaps hinted that her preoccupations were far removed from personal rivalries. “Also, the ship was not built without considerable sacrifice on their part.”

“The sacrifices may not all be on one side.”

“I know,” Sondeweere said simply. “I told you that at the outset.”

Chapter 18

The transporter made an abrupt turn to the left and within minutes its comparatively smooth movement had given way to a bumpy and lurching progress which drew creaks from the chassis. Toller raised himself and looked out in front, past Sondeweere’s white-clad figure, and saw they had left the road and were now heading across open grassland. The horizon seen through rain-spattered glass was almost flat and the terrain was quite featureless except for a scattering of squatly conical trees. “How far now?” he said.

“Not far—about twelve miles,” Sondeweere replied. “This will be uncomfortable for you, but we must proceed with all possible speed from here on. Until now the symbonites had no real cause for alarm, because the highway leads to many destinations, but on this course there is only…” She broke off with a sharp intake of breath and her grip on the tiller failed momentarily, allowing the vehicle to pull to one side. Those beside Toller sat up straighter, hands straying towards weapons.

“Is anything wrong?” he said, half-knowing what had happened.

“We are discovered. The alarm has gone out—and sooner than I had expected.” Her voice betrayed no anxiety, but she advanced a lever and the sound from the engine increased. The protests from the chassis grew louder as the vehicle gained speed.

Toller felt a stirring of the old squalid excitement. “Can you tell us anything about what lies ahead? Fortifications? Weapons?”

“Very little, I’m afraid—intelligence of that nature is hard to gather.” Sondeweere went on to say that, to the best of her knowledge, the symbonite ship was kept in an ancient meteorite crater which served as a natural revetment. She believed it was further protected by a high fence along the crater’s rim. There would be armed guards, whose numbers she could not predict, and their weapons were likely to be swords, and perhaps pikes. “No bows? No spears?”

“The native physique does not readily lend itself to the use of the bow or any kind of throwing weapon.”

“How about firearms?”

“There are no brakka trees on this world, and the Farlanders’ knowledge of chemistry is not yet sufficiently advanced for them to have invented artificial explosives.”

“This sounds quite encouraging,” Wraker put in, nudging Toller. “The defences seem to be disproportionately light.”

“In the normal scheme of things there would have been no need to defend the ship against anything but troublesome wild animals,” Sondeweere said. “There would have been no point in my trying to get near it alone—and no logical person could have anticipated the arrival of a ship from Overland before another four or five centuries had elapsed.” She smiled and a note of warmth crept into her voice. “In the symbonites’ eminently reasonable view of the universe people like you five simply do not exist.”

Wraker grinned in return. “They’ll learn about us soon enough—to their cost.”

Toller frowned. “We must not allow ourselves to become too confident. How long will it take the symbonites to call up reinforcements?”

“I don’t know,” Sondeweere said. “There are large-scale road works to the north of the site, but I cannot say how close they are.”

“But you knew our exact position when we were many thousands of miles away in the void.”

“There is a natural and very powerful empathy between us because we come from the same human stock. The Farlanders’ minds are all but closed to me.”

“I see,” Toller said. “Obviously we cannot decide our tactics in advance, but I have one final question… about the ship itself.”

“Will I be able to fly it? The answer is yes.”

“In spite of never having seen it?”

“Again, this cannot be explained to you, not even by telepathic means—and I am deeply sorry about that—but the ship is not governed by mechanical controls. For a person who comprehends all the operating principles it will do exactly as it is bidden; without that necessary understanding it will not move a single inch.”

Toller fell silent, chastened by the reminder that Sondeweere, in spite of her perfectly normal appearance and demeanour, was in actuality an enigmatic superbeing. The fact that he and the others could communicate with her on what felt like equal terms had to be almost entirely due to skilled indulgence on her part—as a venerable philosopher contrives to amuse a two-year-old child.

He glanced at Bartan, freshly made aware of the young man’s unprecedented situation, and saw that he was staring fixedly at the back of Sondeweere’s head, his expression broody and almost sullen. Becoming conscious of Toller’s scrutiny, Bartan mustered a wry smile and raised the skin of brandy to his lips. Toller reached out to prevent him drinking, saw the beginnings of defiance on the young man’s face and reflexively turned his hand palm upwards. I’m growing soft, he thought as he accepted the skin and took a sizeable drink from it, but perhaps not before my time.

“How about you, Sondy?” Bartan said as though issuing a challenge. “Would you like a warming drop of brandy?”

“No. The warmth is spurious, and I find the taste unpleasant.”

“I thought you might,” Bartan said, and now an aggrieved and surly note was plain in his voice. “What do you subsist on these days? Nectar and dew? When we return to the farm you will be able to have your fill of those, but I trust you won’t object if I go on preferring stronger potions.”

Sondeweere gave him a single pleading glance. “Bartan, you have the right to force the issue—even though some of what I have to say to you would be best said in private—but we…”

“I have nothing to hide from my friends, Sondy. Proceed! Explain to all of us that it would be unseemly for a princess to bed down with a peasant.”

“Bartan, please do not cause yourself needless pain.”

Sondeweere was speaking loudly to overcome the sounds of the transporter at speed, but there was a concerned tenderness in her voice. “Even though I have changed a great deal, I would still have been a wife to you, but it can never be… because…”

“Because of what?”

“Because I have a higher duty to the entire human population of Overland. I refuse to deprive my own people of their evolutionary heritage by founding a dynasty of symbonites which would dominate the ordinary humans and eventually drive them into extinction.”

Bartan looked stunned, obviously having heard something totally outside his expectations, but he was still nimble enough of mind to respond quickly. “But there is no need for us to have children. There are ways… maidenfriend is only one of them… I never wanted to be burdened with noisy offspring anyway.”

Sondeweere managed to laugh. “You cannot lie to me, Bartan. I know how much you want children, true descendants— not alien hybrids. If you have the great good fortune to return to Overland alive, your only chance of happiness will lie in settling down with a normal young woman who will bear you normal children. That, believe me, is a future worth looking forward to and fighting for.”

“It is also a future I reject,” Bartan said.

“The decision is not in your hands, Bartan.” Sondeweere paused as the transporter hit a rough patch of ground and the thunder of it made conversation impossible. “Have you forgotten about the symbonites of this world? If we do succeed in stealing their ship and getting back to Overland with it, they will build another and go after me. They will take no chances on my surviving, possibly with child. It is my belief that the second ship will have weapons, terrible weapons, and the symbonites will be prepared to use them.”

“But…” Bartan drew his fingers across his wrinkled brow. “This is terrible, Sondy. What will you do?”

“Assuming I survive the next hour, there is only one course open to me,” Sondeweere said. “I will take the ship and fly off into the galaxy, perhaps into many galaxies, beyond the reach of this world’s symbonites. It will be a solitary existence, but it will have its compensations. There is much to see before I die.”

“I’ll go with…” Bartan began the sentence impulsively, then halted, and a tormented look appeared in his eyes. “I could never do that, Sondy. I would die of fear. You have already left me behind.”

Toller knew that he had been listening to Sondeweere’s normal voice, but her words rang through him—with multiple resonances of meaning—almost as if she had been speaking telepathically. There were echoes of dreams he had never dared to dream, of a vision he had once glimpsed—while riding a jet down through needle-sprays of sunlight—of being able to go on and on until he died, gorging his eyes and mind and soul with images of things he had never seen before, of new worlds, new suns, new galaxies, always something new, new, new. It was a prospect the architect of the universe might have designed especially for him; it flooded the dark void at the core of his being with hard light, joyous light; and he had to make the claim, no matter how slight the chances of winning…

“I would go with you,” he murmured. “Please take me with you.”

Sondeweere half-turned towards him, her mind-force swinging through him like the beam of a lighthouse, and he waited numbly for her answer.

“Toller Maraquine, I told you that your reason for coming to Farland was not a good one,” she said, “but your reason for wanting to leave it has its own kind of merit. I make no promises—for all of us may die within minutes—but if you succeed in taking the symbonite ship the universe is yours.”

“Thank you.” Toller’s voice was a painful croak, and he had to blink back his tears. “Thank you!”

The wall of the crater was low, not much differentiated from the surrounding terrain, never lifting itself above the horizon. A general paucity of illumination coupled with the blurring effect of the rain meant that the transporter was less than a mile from the site before Toller was able to pick out any evidence that it was defended.

As Sondeweere had predicted, there was a tall fence around the rim—barely visible as a hazy grey ellipse—and in it was a darkish knot suggestive of an entrance. His telescope was virtually useless because of the jouncing of the transporter, but its slewing images told him that at least two other mechanised vehicles had been parked across the gateway. Farlanders appeared as moving specks of blackness milling in the general vicinity.

“We must avoid the gate and break through the fence,” he said to Sondeweere, putting the telescope away. “Can you make the wagon go faster?”

“Yes, but there is the risk of breaking an axle on this kind of ground.”

“Use your best judgment—but remember that if we don’t go through the fence we don’t go anywhere.”

Toller turned to the others and knew at once that they had experienced a loss of confidence, something he had seen happen many times in the irreducible few minutes before a battle. Bartan’s face was almost luminous in its pallor, and even Berise and Wraker—proficient in the abstract art of long-range killing—had a look of glum uncertainty about them. Only Zavotle, busy checking his musket, seemed to be unperturbed.

“Don’t try to plan anything ahead,” Toller told them. “Believe me, you can trust your sword arm to do all the thinking that will be necessary. Now, get those covers out of the way.” Within seconds the coarse material screening the truck bed from the outside world had been pulled down and cast off behind the dangerously swaying vehicle. Cold rain swirled in around the lightly clad figures.

“There’s something else to bear in mind.” Toller glanced at the teeming heavens and gave an exaggerated grimace of distaste. “Anything is better than living in this accursed place and slowly turning into a fish.”

The laughter his remark drew was louder than it deserved, but Toller had long since learned that subtlety was out of place in battlefield humour, and he was satisfied that vital psychological bridges between him and the crew were being maintained. He drew his sword and positioned himself behind Sondeweere, looking forward over the top of the driving cabin.

The transporter was starting up the incline towards the rim of the crater, and now he could see that the fence was made of spear-like metal uprights railed to stout posts. He considered urging Sondeweere to strive for more speed and momentum, then remembered that her understanding of the mechanics of the operation far surpassed his own. The smokestack ahead of him spouted orange sparks as the heavy vehicle clanked its way to the top of the slope. Far to his left Toller saw Farlanders running, and beyond them he glimpsed a complex greyish lesion in the landscape which indicated road works barely a mile away.

“Hold on!” he shouted and gripped the cabin roof as the transporter sledged into the fence.

The entire section was torn from its supports and fell inwards, the sound of the impact merging into an appalling mechanical clamour from the engine and a hissing explosion. Hot vapours fanned out around the boiler, momentarily whiting out the entire scene, then the vehicle was rolling down into a circular depression at the centre of which was the symbonite ship. It was sitting on an area of masonry ringed by what was meant to be a moat or a wide drainage ditch.

Toller had tried to visualise the ship’s appearance in advance, but he was unprepared for the sight of a nearly featureless metal sphere supported by three flaring legs which ended in circular pads. The sphere was a good ten yards in diameter and had a ring of what seemed to be portholes on the upper half, but there was no sign of an entrance.

In the instant of eyeing the strange ship which embodied his future Toller became aware of brown-clad Farlanders, who had chanced to be near the breach in the fence, running towards the transporter from the right. Although the vehicle was now on a downward slope it was rapidly losing speed, amid a continued metallic thrashing, and the Farlanders were easily intersecting its course. They looked like circus grotesques as they bounded along on stocky legs, cowls thrown back to reveal hairless skulls.

Toller’s stomach gave an icy spasm as he saw they were not carrying weapons.

“Stay back!” he cried involuntarily as the two reached the side of the transporter, but one of them sprang and gripped its siding while the other leaped on to the running board of the cabin, reaching for Sondeweere with a powerful hand. Toller split his unprotected skull with a downward sword-stroke which went deep into the head, and he fell away without a sound, radially spurting blood.

The other, trying to raise himself over the siding, took Wraker’s sword through the throat. He sank down again, but his fingers remained in view, obstinately clinging to the wooden edge. Wraker and Berise both hacked at his fingers, severing most of them, before he dropped to the ground. He lay where he fell, but to Toller’s amazement the one with the cloven skull was on his feet. The alien took several steps in the grassy wake of the transporter, arms outspread, before sinking to his knees and pitching forward.

So hard to kill, Toller thought. These little people could bring down giants…

The transporter clanked and shuddered to a halt, wreathed in smoke and mist. Toller glanced towards the gateway on the crater’s rim and saw that other Farlanders were coming through it and beginning to head down the long slope in groups of two or three. Occasional dull flashes told him they were armed. He took a musket, straddled his way over the side of the transporter, and jumped down to the ground as part of a general abandonment of the vehicle.

Sondeweere flitted ahead of the others, unencumbered by weapons, and sped across a simple wooden bridge. Toller and the others followed her, feeling the boards quiver beneath their feet. As Sondeweere neared the ship a rectangular section opened in its side, gliding outwards on elbowed hinges. Toller slid to a halt, raising his musket.

“Don’t shoot!” Sondeweere called out to him. “I opened the door. A ladder will now descend, or… or…” An uncharacteristic note of indecision had crept into her voice.

Toller, following the upwards direction of her gaze, noticed empty metal brackets below the doorway, and for the moment his soldier’s mind was abreast of hers in comprehending that the ship was normally entered by means of a fixed ladder. Someone had taken the simple and pragmatic precaution of removing it, and as a result entry was denied to genius and fool alike. The lower edge of the doorway was at least twelve feet above ground level, on the out-curving lower half of the sphere, and to an individual of typical Farlander stature its elevation would have created a formidable barrier indeed. But for humans…

“Bring the wagon across the bridge,” Zavotle shouted. “We can climb on it.”

“It cannot be moved,” Sondeweere replied. “And the bridge is too light, anyway.”

“We can reach the door,” Toller said, laying his weapons on the paving. “Sondeweere, it is logical that you should go first. You will stand on my shoulders. Come!”

He looked briefly towards the advancing Farlanders, then made a gesture which took in Zavotle, Wraker and Berise. “Go forward and defend the bridge! Use the muskets as much as possible. Take mine as well and persuade the wretched pygmies that they would be better to keep their distance. And see if the timbers of the bridge can be torn up.”

They ran to the bridge, unhitching their nets of pressure spheres, inside which minute measures of pikon and halvell had already been combined. Toller positioned himself beneath the ship’s doorway and extended his hands to Sondeweere, who came to him immediately. He put his hands around her waist and lifted her to his shoulders, a process which she aided with a kind of scrambling movement of her feet. She straightened up, standing on him, and became steady as she got her hands on to the sill of the doorway.

Concurrently, the first groups of Farlanders racing down the slope were coming within musket range and the defenders were opening fire. The first volley of shots appeared to bring down only one of the attackers, but the musket reports—magnified by the natural amphitheatre—threw them into disarray. They slid and skidded into each other in their efforts to check the downward rush.

Toller turned away from the scene to get his hands under Sondeweere’s feet and as he was straightening his arms to propel her into the ship’s doorway he was acutely aware of a nerve-thrumming pause before the muskets could be fired again. The delay, caused by the need to unscrew each expended sphere and replace it, was the main reason he had scant regard for firearms.

By the time Sondeweere was safely into the ship it was beginning to dawn on the Farlanders that, no matter how terrifying the psychological impact of the unfamiliar weapons, the actual casualties inflicted by them had been light. They were surging forward again, short swords in hand. A fresh volley of shots, this time at shorter range, knocked over at least three more of the aliens, but failed to check their general advance.

“Find a rope,” Toller shouted up to Sondeweere.

“Rope? The ship has no need of ropes.”

“Then find something*.” Toller turned towards the bridge in time to see a knot of Farlanders press across it.

liven Zavotle, fighting his own war against a private enemy, ran to meet them with a musket in his left hand and sword in his right. He fired the musket at point blank range through a Farlander’s out-thrust belly and almost at once was lost in a flailing confusion of arms and swords. Toller sobbed aloud as he saw that his oldest friend, the patient eroder of problems, was being hacked to death.

Within seconds there came a fresh round of musket fire and this time, on the narrow front of the bridge, the effect on the Farlanders was considerable. They fell back, leaving their dead and convulsing wounded, but retreated no farther than the opposite bank, where one who seemed to be a commander began to harangue them in the staccato alien tongue. Facing them across the bloodied bridge, the three remaining Over-landers were feverishly recharging their guns.

Toller ran towards his companions, at the same time glancing back at the ship. Sondeweere was visible in the dark rectangle of the doorway, helplessly watching the fighting.

I’ll be with you soon, he vowed inwardly, repulsing a new enemy, an enemy of the mind which could wreak even greater havoc than an external foe by implanting the idea that defeat was inevitable. Nearing the bridge from the side, he confirmed his first impression that it was simply an arrangement of thick timbers resting on a masonry shelf on each side of the moat.

“Berise,” he shouted, “take the muskets and try to use all of them. Bartan and Dakan, help me with these boards!”

He knelt beside the bridge, got his hands under the nearest timber and used all the power of his back and thighs to stand up with it. Bartan and Wraker lent a hand, and together they turned the massive waterlogged timber and hurled it down into the moat. There was a shout from the Farlanders and a fresh surge on to the remaining five boards. Berise fired four muskets in rapid succession, during which time Toller and his helpers, working with panic-boosted strength, lifted and disposed of four more timbers, sending bodies—living and dead—down into the brown water. Toller did not look at the curious white-and-crimson thing which had been Zavotle.

He picked up his sword as desperate Farlanders streamed on to the last timber. Wraker, already facing them, caught the leading alien with a lateral blow to the neck which cart-wheeled him into the moat. Berise shot the next Farlander in the throat, propelling him back against the one behind. They both swayed and began to fall sideways, but in the instant of parting company with the bridge the uninjured one hurled his sword. The short heavy weapon flew with freakish accuracy and buried itself almost to the hilt in Wraker’s stomach. He emitted a terrible bubbling belch, but stood his ground.

Toller pounced past him, dropping to his knees, and grasped the last timber. It was slimed with algae and the extra weight of the Farlanders moving on to it defeated even his vein-corded muscles. He was vaguely aware of another musket shot and of Bartan taking up a protective stance over him. He pushed the timber to one side, this time aided by its slippery surface, and got it almost off the shelf. Two Farlanders reached him as he was making the final effort which sent the timber tilting down and away, and he heard the impact of blows just above him as Bartan engaged the aliens. The tip of a sword sliced through Toller’s right ear as he threw himself back and scrambled to his feet.

One of the Farlanders had disappeared with the timber, but the other had leapt on to the paving and his arms were circling as he strove to regain his balance. Wraker, still on his feet in spite of being transfixed, disposed of him by driving the point of his sword into the alien’s face, sending him backwards over the edge.

Bartan, looking pale and introspective, was standing close by, clutching a wound in his left shoulder. Blood was flowing copiously through his fingers. Berise was on her knees, her diminutive figure bowed over the muskets, fingers flying as she changed pressure spheres.

Toller looked beyond the milling group of Farlanders on the far side of the moat and saw a much greater force of them pouring through the gateway on the crater’s rim. The action at the bridge had bought the defenders some time, but a miserly amount, a period which could conveniently be measured in seconds—and they were going to be at their most vulnerable while trying to enter the ship.

Toller turned his attention to Wraker, wondering if the soft-spoken young pilot understood that he was dying, that his history book would never be written. Bloodstains were spreading swiftly in his rain-soaked clothing, from around the protruding handle of the Farlander sword, and he was becoming unsteady on his feet, but he managed to speak clearly.

“Toller, why are you wasting valuable time?” he said. “Go while the going is good. I’m sorry I am unable to join you—but I have some unfinished business with our unprepossessing little friends.”

He turned at once and sank to his knees at the edge of the moat, placing his sword in readiness on the masonry beside him. Berise stood up, carried three loaded and charged muskets to Wraker and laid them with his sword. He looked around as if to say something to her, his eyes seeking hers, but she had already retrieved the fourth musket and had run to Bartan. She pushed Bartan, rousing him from his bemused state, and they both ran towards the waiting ship.

Toller hesitated. He saw two Farlanders leap out from the other side of the moat, their short legs pedalling the air as they strove for maximum distance. Even if the aliens were inept swimmers they would soon be able to make use of the strewn timbers of the bridge to cross the water barrier—all the more reason to abandon Wraker, who was already doomed, and get on board the spacecraft. Still unable to shake off the feeling that he was betraying a comrade, Toller turned and ran to where Berise and Bartan were waiting for him below the huge, enigmatic sphere.

“There aren’t any ropes,” Sondeweere cried from the darkness of the doorway overhead. “What can you do?”

“As before,” Toller replied. “I can lift Berise and Bartan.”

“But what about you? How will you get in?”

Battle fever inflamed Toller’s mind as he heard Wraker fire a musket. “Lower a sword belt—I’ll be able to reach.” He sheathed his sword and extended his hands to Berise. “Come!”

She shook her head. “Bartan is hurt and he needs help even to reach your shoulders. He must go first.”

“Very well,” Toller said, reaching for Bartan, who was swaying drunkenly. Bartan made as if to evade him, but there came the sound of another musket shot and Toller’s forbearance deserted him. Growling with rage and frustration, he encircled Bartan’s thighs with his arms and hoisted him upwards. Berise joined in, steadying Bartan and getting a shoulder beneath one of his feet, and from above Sondeweere lent her own strength to pull the protesting man over the rim of the doorway.

The entire operation had been completed in a few seconds, but in that sliver of time Toller had heard two more musket shots. He glanced towards the moat and saw that Wraker had his sword in hand and was chopping downwards at Farlanders who must have been threatening him from the angled timbers of the bridge. Toller’s heartbeat became a series of dull internal explosions as he realised that his precious store of hard-won seconds was spilling away at a prodigious rate.

Berise had slung her musket on her back and was reaching out to him. He caught her by the waist and raised her to his shoulders in one movement. Even then she was not tall enough to reach the sill of the doorway, and she swayed precariously for a moment before Sondeweere and Bartan reached down, found her hands and drew her up into the ship.

During that moment Wraker was snatched out of sight, down to join Zavotle in the pit of death, and the white-gleaming heads of four Farlanders appeared above the moat’s nearer edge. They threw weapons in front of them and began to squirm up on to the pavement. The slope beyond them was now massed with Farlander reinforcements, swarming like a field of brown insects.

Toller looked up into the mysterious interior of the ship, which now seemed as remote as the stars to which it was to carry him, and after a subjective lifetime saw Bartan’s leather belt being reached to him. It had been re-buckled to form a loop, and the three inside the doorway each had a hand on it.

Two Farlanders, more agile than their fellows, were on their feet and running, swords at the ready.

Toller estimated the time left to him and knew he could expect only one chance to reach safety. Sondeweere’s voice rang in his head: Hurry, Toller, hurry! He tensed himself—aware of the snorting approach of the Farlanders, hearing the slap of their feet—then sprang upwards and caught the belt with his right hand. The sudden manifestation of his weight on the belt was too much for those above, dragging them downwards and away from whatever purchase they had on the inside of the hull. Berise, lightest of the three, was pulled halfway through the opening and would have fallen had she not released the belt and grabbed the rim of the doorway.

Toller let go in the same instant.

He had his sword half-drawn when he hit the ground between the two Farlanders, but there was little he could do to compensate for the terrible disadvantage of his position. He turned the withdrawal of the weapon from its sheath into a cross-stroke which deflected a thrust from the alien in front, and at the same time leaped sideways to evade danger from behind—but he was slowed by his recovery from the drop.

The delay was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like an age in the fevered entropy of close combat. Toller grunted as the Farlander blade stabbed upwards into his lower back. He spun around, his sword singing in a horizontal sweep which caught his attacker on the side of the neck and all but decapitated him. The alien went down in pulsing gouts of crimson.

Toller continued his spin to face the other one, but the truncated warrior was backing away, knowing that time was on his side—at least ten of his fellows were racing across the paving stones and would be around Toller in the space of a few heartbeats. A smile of triumph appeared on the alien’s fat-enfolded face, but almost at once it was transformed into an expression of blank astonishment as Berise—who was directly above him—fired a shot into the top of his head. He sat down abruptly in a vertical fountain of blood.

“Grab the musket, Toller!” Bartan shouted from the ship’s entrance. “We can still bring you in!”

But Toller knew it was too late.

The bounding Farlanders were almost upon him, and even if he could be supported by the down-reaching musket his undefended body would be run through a dozen or more times while he tried to pull himself upwards. Experiencing a peculiar reticence, a desire to prevent his friends witnessing what had to come next, he retreated out of their sight towards the centre of the spherical hull.

But, although there was little pain from the wound in his back, his legs were weak and strangely difficult to control. He halted with the lowest point of the metal curvature almost brushing his head, and tried to make a final stand which would cost the enemy dearly, but his legs failed him and he went down under a concerted onslaught.

Sondeweere, he called as the grey light was blocked out by dripping brown forms and alien blades began to find their marks, don’t allow the pygmies to have the satisfaction. Please fly the ship… for me…

We love you, Toller, she said inside his head. Goodbye.

Unexpectedly, in the seconds remaining to him—before his body was sheared into atoms by a conflict of natural and artificial geometries—Toller achieved a final triumph.

He found he was genuinely sorry to die.

And there was gladness in the discovery.

The full measure of his humanity was restored to him by the realisation that it was far worse for a man to live when he would rather die, than to die when he would rather live.

And there’s another consolation, he thought as the ultimate deepnight closed around him. Nobody could ever say mine had been a commonplace dea—

Chapter 19

Bartan and Berise kept looking back over their shoulders as they walked, and they were almost two furlongs from the ship when it abruptly disappeared.

In one second it was there—a dull grey sphere perched on the crest of a low hill; and in the next second there was a complex of globes of radiance, expanding and contracting through each other. There was no sound, but even the foreday sun was dimmed in comparison to the fierce light which washed out of the spectacle. It rose vertically into the sky, gaining speed, changing shape. For a moment Bartan saw a four-pointed star with in-curved sides, each point emitting a spray of prismatic colour. There was a core which seethed with multi-hued specks of brilliance, but even as he was trying to focus his eyes on it the beautiful star was dwindling out of sight, swinging clear of the great disk of Land before finally vanishing into the blue.

The emotional turmoil within Bartan intensified into an ache which swamped the pain from his wounded shoulder. Less than an hour earlier he had been on rain-swept Farland, watching his friends die one by one—Zavotle, Wraker, and finally Toller Maraquine. Somehow, even in those last terrible seconds, Bartan had not expected the big man to die. He had seemed unkillable, an imperturbable giant destined to go on fighting his wars for ever. It was not until he had asked Sondeweere to take him with her into the bleakness of infinity—an unthinkable prospect which withered Bartan’s soul—that he had realised Toller was more than just a gladiator. Now it was too late to get to know him, too late even to offer his thanks for the gift of life.

In addition to his grief over Toller, Bartan had been forced to accept that his wife could no longer be his wife, that she had become another kind of a giant, an intellectual colossus with whom he was unfit to share the man-woman relationship. He knew that Sondeweere had not yet flown off into the galaxy —she would spend some days guiding Tipp Gotlon safely home —but in a way she was already more remote from him than the faintest stars. His personal Gola had winked out of existence, leaving him with no direction to his life.

“I don’t think we need to walk any farther,” Berise said. “It looks as though we will have transport into the city.”

Bartan shaded his eyes and looked towards Prad, the outskirts of which were about two miles away. He was peering through a shifting screen of after-images, but was able to discern dust clouds being thrown up by wagons and riders on a winding road. Some agricultural workers, no doubt drawn by the spectacle of the symbonite ship, were approaching at a run through nearby fields.

“I’m glad we have plenty of witnesses,” Berise went on, “otherwise the King would have difficulty in swallowing all we have to report to him.”

“Witnesses,” Bartan said humbly. “Yes, witnesses.”

Berise looked closely into his face. “I don’t think you could go much farther, anyway. You’d better sit down and let me check that bandage.”

“I’ll be all right—I still have some of my excellent cure-all.” Bartan untied the skin of brandy from his belt and was pulling out the stopper when he felt Berise’s restraining hand on his own.

“You don’t really need that kind of medicine, do you?” she said.

“What’s it got to do with…?” He paused, blinking down into Berise’s face, noting that her expression was one of concern more than anger. “No, I don’t actually need the drink.”

“Then throw it away.”

“What?”

“Throw it away, Bartan.”

It came to him that it had been a long time since anybody had shown concern about what he did, but it was with some reluctance that he let the leather container fall to the ground.

“Anyway, it was nearly empty,” he muttered. “Why are you smiling?”

“For no reason.” Berise’s smile grew wider. “For no reason at all.”