Land and Overland - Omnibus (57 page)

Another reliable indicator of progress was the increasing coldness. On Toller's first ascent the crew had been surprised by the phenomenon and had been considerably distressed as a result, but now thickly quilted suits were available and the low temperatures were made tolerable. It was even possible, while seated close to the burner, to achieve a cosy, cocooned warmth—a condition which abetted Toller's persistent drowsiness, and in which he could spend hours staring into the darkening blue of the sky, at fierce stars scattered on overlapping whirlpools of light, at the splayed luminance of comets, and at Farland hanging in the distance like a green lantern.

One of the most important problems facing the mission was that of recognising the exact centre of the weightless zone. Toller knew that in theory there was no actual zone of weightlessness, that it was a plane of zero thickness, and that a fortress positioned as little as ten yards to one side or the other would inevitably begin the long plunge to a planetary surface. It had been assumed, however, that reality would be more forgiving than absolute equations and would allow some leeway, no matter how slight.

Toller's first job was to show that the assumption had been justified.

The six ships had switched over to jet propulsion days earlier, when the lift generated by hot air had become negligible, but now their engines were silent as they hung in a gravitational no-man's-land. Toller found it eerie that the crews could communicate well with each other simply by shouting—although their voices seemed to be absorbed quickly in the surrounding immensities, they could in fact carry for hundreds of yards. For many minutes he had been busy with the device, invented by Zavotle, which was intended to show up any significant vertical motion of his ship. It consisted of a small pan containing a mixture of chemicals and tallow which gave off thick smoke when ignited, and a bellows-like attachment with a long nozzle. The machine made it possible to shoot out from the side of the ship tiny balls of smoke which retained their form and density for a surprisingly long time in the still air. Zavotle's idea was that the smoke, being no heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, would create stationary markers by which the ship's motion could be gauged. Basic though the system was, it seemed to be effective. Toller had forbidden Essedell and Gotlon to move in case they tilted the circular deck, and he had been sighting the smoke puffs along the line of the handrail for long enough to convince him there was no relative displacement.

"I'd say we're holding," he shouted to Daas, pilot of the second midsection, who had been carrying out similar observations. "What say you?"

"I agree, sir." Daas, barely visible as a swaddled figure at the rail of his ship, waved to supplement his message.

Foreday had just begun and the sun was positioned "below" the six craft, close to the eastern rim of Overland. The upflung brilliance was illuminating the underside of the fortress sections, casting their shadows on the lower halves of the balloons, adding an unnatural and theatrical aspect to the scene. Toller suddenly became aware of a sense of elation as he surveyed the unearthly spectacle. He felt well-rested and strong after the brief hibernation of the ascent, ready to do battle in a new kind of arena, and within him was a peculiar sensation of such intensity that he was obliged to pause and analyse it.

There seemed to be a core of lightness which had nothing to do with the zero gravity conditions, and from that core came varicoloured rays—the metaphor was too simple, but the only one available to him—characterised by feelings of joy, optimism, luck and potency, which infused every part of his mental and physical being. The overall effect was strange and at the same time oddly familiar, and it took him several seconds to identify it and realise that he felt young. No more than that, and no less—he felt
young!

An emotional reaction followed almost immediately.

I suppose many would think it strange for happiness to come to a man at a time like this.
He relaxed his grip on the handrail slightly, allowing his feet to drift upwards from the deck, and the dreaming disk of Overland, cupped in its slim crescent of brightness, came into view beneath the ship.
This is why Gesalla compared me to Leddravohr. She senses the fulfilment I get when called upon to defend our people, but she is unable to share in it and therefore she becomes jealous. No doubt she is anxious about my safety, and that too prompts her to say things she later regrets in the privacy of the bedchamber…

"I'm ready to go, sir." Gotlon's voice came from close behind Toller, calling him back into the practical universe. Toller brought his feet down on to the deck and turned to see that the young rigger, without awaiting the order, had donned his full personal flight kit. His lanky form was all but unrecognisable in the thick quilting of a skysuit, which included fur-lined gauntlets and boots. The lower half of his face was hidden by a woollen muffler, through which his breath emerged in white vapourings, and his form was further bulked out by a parachute pack and by the air jet unit strapped to his midriff.

"Shall I go out now, sir?" Gotlon fingered the karabiner on the tether which was keeping him close to the ship's rail. "I'm ready."

"I can see you are, but curb your impatience," Toller said. "There must be a full audience for your exploits."

As well as being ambitious, Gotlon was one of those rare individuals who were totally without fear of heights, and Toller felt lucky to have found him in the short time available. The crews of the six fortress sections had been in the weightless zone long enough to start getting used to floating in the air like ptertha, but a huge psychological barrier had yet to be surmounted.

Final assembly of the fortresses could not begin until it had been demonstrated that a man could untie himself, jump free of his ship and successfully return to it by means of his air jet. Although he had intellectual confidence in the hastily devised system, Toller was unashamedly relieved that he was not required to put it to the initial test. Once in reality, and many times since in nightmare, he had seen a man begin the 2,500-mile fall from the fringes of the central blue, at first moving so slowly that he seemed to be at rest, and then, as the gravitational yearning of the planet grew more insistent, dwindling and dwindling into the plunge which would last more than a day and end in death.

Toller's lungs were labouring in the rarefied air, and he felt a stinging coldness inside his chest as he shouted the necessary orders to the other five pilots. While all crewmen were lining up at the rails of their ships their eyes were fixed on Gotlon. He waved to them like a child attracting his friend's attention before a daring playground stunt. Toller allowed him the breach of discipline in the interests of general morale.

He scanned the five men in the nearest fortress end-section and with some difficulty, because of the all-enveloping skysuits, picked out Gnapperl, the sergeant who had been so vindictive in the matter of Oaslit Spennel's execution. Now ranked as an ordinary skyman, Gnapperl had not even tried to protest when Toller had selected him for the first mission, and had gone through his few days of training with a gloomy acceptance of his fate. It was not in Toller's nature to engineer another's death in cold blood, but Gnapperl had no way of knowing that and had become a very apprehensive and unhappy man—a state in which Toller was prepared to leave him indefinitely.

"All right," he said to Gotlon when he judged the moment to be right. "You may now part company with us—but be sure to return."

"Thank you, sir," Gotlon replied, with what Toller would have sworn was genuine pleasure and gratitude. He unclipped his line, raised himself by using his wrists until he was floating horizontally, then rolled over the rail and kicked himself clear of the side, using more force than Toller would have done. A bright blue void opened between him and the ship, and from one of the other vessels came the sound of a man quietly retching.

Gotlon slid away towards the stars, cradled in sunlight, gradually slowing as air resistance overcame his momentum, and by chance came to a halt in an upright position relative to those watching. Without pause, he twisted with an eel-like motion until he was facing away from the line of ships, and rapid movements of his right arm showed that he was pumping air into the propulsion unit. A few seconds later the hissing of the jet was faintly heard. At first it seemed to be having no effect, then it became apparent that he was indeed returning to his point of departure. His course was not perfectly true, and several times he had to glance back over his shoulder and adjust the direction of his air jet, but in a short time he was close enough to the ship to grasp the cane which Essedell was extending to him. Bracing his feet against the side, Essedell pulled on the cane and Gotlon came zooming in over the side like a man-shaped balloon.

"Well done, Gotlon!" Toller reached out casually with his right hand to arrest the weightless figure, and was surprised to find his arm painfully driven back beyond its normal traverse. The impact spun him round, still clutching Gotlon, and it was several seconds before the two men were able to stabilise themselves by gripping partitions. Toller was puzzled over what had happened, but the mystery was displaced from his thoughts by an outbreak of cheering and shouting from the crews of the other ships.

Toller had to acknowledge his own feelings of relief and reassurance. It was one thing to sit in a comfortable room in the palace and accept the pronouncements of clever men on the subject of celestial mechanics; but it was a different order of experience entirely to cast free of a ship and tread the thin air of the weightless zone, precariously balanced between two worlds, trusting one's life to little more than a set of blacksmith's bellows. But now he had seen it done! Having been performed once, the miracle was no longer a miracle. It had become part of the skyman's armoury of routine skills—and, importantly, had helped ease Toller's mind with regard to the ordeal which awaited him at the end of the mission.

He gave the order for all personnel to begin practising free flight. The period he could allow for the crews to adapt to the supremely unnatural activity was ridiculously short—but King Chakkell, with Zavotle's concurrence, had decided that time was the most vital factor in the preparations for the battle against Land. The small emergency cabinet had chosen to gear the war effort to meet the most unfavourable case: ten days for the reconnaissance ship to return to Land; two days for Rassamarden to react to the news it was carrying; and, on the assumption that part of his invasion fleet was already operational, a further five days for the vanguard of the enemy to reach the weightless zone.

Seventeen days.

By the end of that time, ran Chakkell's decree, there must be a minimum of six fortresses positioned at the midpoint and ready for combat.

Toller had been stunned by the announcement. The whole concept of fortresses had been presumptuous enough, but the notion of designing, building and deploying six of them in a mere seventeen days had struck him as being absurd in the extreme. He had, however, forgotten about Chakkell's unique combination of abilities—the ambition which had raised him to the throne, the gift for organisation with which he had once assembled a thousand-strong fleet of skyships, the ruthless determination which hurled aside or burst through every obstacle. Chakkell was an able ruler in years of peace, but he only came into his own during darker hours, and his fortresses were being built on time. It now remained to be seen whether the flesh-and-blood elements of his plan could withstand the same punishing degree of stress as those fashioned from inert matter.

Toller was highly conscious of others watching when it became his turn to push himself out from the side of the ship. He did his utmost to maintain an upright attitude with regard to the balloon and its cylindrical load, and was beginning to think he had succeeded when he realised that the great blue-and-white whorled disk of Land—which had been hidden by the balloon since the start of the ascent—appeared to be on the move above him. It drifted downwards and disappeared under his feet, to be followed by a remarkably similar apparition of Overland partaking in the same stately motion. There was no sensation of tumbling—he seemed to be the only stable object in a rolling universe in which the sun, the sister planets and the line of skyships followed each other in wavering succession—and he was grateful when the movement eventually slowed and ceased. He was also glad to discover that the experience of hanging in the blue emptiness was not as bad as he had feared. Apart from the inexplicable sensation of falling, which troubled all who entered the weightless zone, he felt reasonably secure and capable of functioning.

"Anybody who feels like grinning at my acrobatics should get it over with now," he shouted to the silently watching men. "The serious work begins in a few minutes, and there will be little cause for mirth, I can assure you."

There was appreciative laughter from the crews and renewed activity among the bulkily suited figures as they made their sorties with varying degrees of aptitude. Toller quickly realised that his own initial efforts were not as good as those of young Gotlon, but he persevered with the air jet and picked up the knack of propelling himself with fair accuracy to any point he wished to reach. The skill would have been easier to acquire had the exhaust been on his back, thus enabling him to face forward when in motion, but lack of time had forced the Air Service workshop to produce the simplest possible type of unit.

As soon as Toller was satisfied with his own competence he called the five other pilots to him for a final review of the forthcoming assembly procedure.

The conference was the strangest in which he had ever taken part, with six middle-aged men—all veterans of the Migration—hanging in a circle against a panoply of astronomical features, among which meteors continually darted like burning arrows. Three of the pilots—Daas, Hishkell and Umol—had been known to Toller since his days in the old Skyship Experimental Squadron, and he had relied upon their recommendations to a large extent when recruiting the remaining pair, Phamarge and Brinche.