The Island Stallion Races (12 page)

“Come, Flame,” he said.

The red stallion raised his forefeet to the planks, took another step and then stood still, his legs rigid.

Steve waited, talking to him all the while. He held the lines taut but did not pull, and neither did Flame. The daylight coming through the low sea hole was fading, but Steve did not want to open the wide doors above the hole until Flame was aboard the launch, his head turned away from the outer world. He must not become frightened by what he saw.

Steve’s voice became edgy in his anxiety over the growing darkness. He was late now, for Jay had said that it was most important to be at the ship by sunset. He began to turn Flame’s head one way and then the other, trying to get him to shift his balance, to move his forelegs.

“Come, Flame,” he repeated urgently.

The long, straight legs moved a little, the small head bent down, sniffing the boards. The chamber grew darker. Desperately Steve pulled on the lines. What if
they didn’t leave after all! He realized then how much he really wanted to go with Jay and Flick.

Flame raised his head at Steve’s urgent pull on the lines. His large eyes met the boy’s curiously, wanting to know just how much was expected of him.

“You’ve done this before, Flame,” Steve pleaded.

The stallion bent his head once more, sniffing the boards, his nostrils blown wide.

Steve turned Flame’s head from one side to the other. Suddenly the horse’s forelegs shifted, and there was a great lurching of his body. The sound of his hoofs on the boards thudded hollowly as he followed Steve onto the launch.

The first step had been taken! Steve stood still for a moment, stroking his horse, quieting him. Then he tied the lines to the gunwale, although he knew that nothing would hold Flame if he really wanted to get away. He continued talking while he went behind Flame to the stern; there he slid open the wooden doors to the sea.

A fresh evening breeze swept into the chamber with the increased light. But Steve felt utter dismay when he saw how low the sun had descended. Another moment and it would be gone!

Suddenly Flame shifted his weight, and the launch rocked as he sought to turn his head, to see what lay behind him.

Steve hurried to Flame, but he could not stay there long. He had no time. For him, a dangerous game of chance had begun, and there was no turning back, now or ever. He switched on the ignition, and the engine caught with a sudden roar made louder by the close
confines of the chamber. The sound startled Flame and Steve touched him lightly, trying to comfort him. At the same time he had the launch moving, backing slowly out of the chamber.

As the boat slid along the canal, Flame tore the lines loose from the gunwale. Steve grabbed them, keeping his horse from rearing as the launch swept through the exit.

They rose with the swells of the sea, and Flame screamed shrilly. But there was not much else he could do, with open water on either side of him.

Steve continued talking to his horse, trying to reassure him that everything was all right. He would have liked to close the doors of the sea chamber, but without Pitch’s help it was impossible. That someone might discover the entrance to Azul Island during his absence was another hazard in the dangerous game he was playing.

Flame looked all around, constantly screaming while the launch backed farther away from the sheer wall of stone. Suddenly Steve turned the wheel and the boat slid between two pieces of rock whose tips just broke the surface. Then the launch went forward, its prow pointed toward the open sea.

The sun had set, and only the brilliant afterglow remained. Carefully and slowly, Steve guided the launch through the coral reef.

Behind him he heard the dull thud of Flame’s pawing. He continued talking to the stallion, soothing him with words while his eyes and thoughts were momentarily elsewhere. Then the pawing stopped, and he heard the quick shifting of hoofs. He felt Flame’s hot
breath on his neck, but he couldn’t turn to him, couldn’t take his eyes off the narrow channel ahead. Nor could he reach back and touch Flame, for both hands were needed on the wheel. So he stood there quietly and terribly concerned, becoming alarmed for himself and his horse, and all that lay beyond.

The white patch he sought lay a few hundred yards past the last of the coral reefs. It rose gracefully with the giant swells but remained always in the same spot, as if it were anchored to the depths of the Caribbean.

By this time the brilliance of the heavens had faded and the sky was a pale, murky red. As Steve neared the patch it too changed color, becoming phosphorescent in the twilight of early evening. He knew that he had arrived much too late, but there was no turning back. He could not come again another day … he would not have had the courage to return. For now, with the patch directly before him, he felt all the fears he had successfully imprisoned seeking release. He tried to quell his mounting dread. He repeated everything he had told himself so many times. He must accept Jay and Flick and their world. He must be confident and trusting. He must believe in them.

“I have nothing to fear except what I’ve learned to fear in this world,”
he said aloud.

But his spoken words rang with insincerity. Now, nothing he could say could crush the doubts, the suspicions and fears which rose within him. His hands turned the wheel, seeking to take the launch away from the patch. He would return to Blue Valley and all that he knew to be standard and normal and sane.

The wheel turned easily but the boat did not
respond to the change in course. Its prow cut the waters directly ahead, drawing closer and closer to the luminous patch. Even when Steve reversed the propeller there was no slackening of their forward speed!

He knew then that the launch was no longer under
his
control. He turned to Flame for comfort, but the stallion held his head high, his bright eyes staring beyond. No sound came from him, and Steve turned to look with him at the area above the patch, which was now bathed in a golden light that grew in size and brilliance. The waters below it turned from a deep, dark blue to a bubbling silver gray. The swells disappeared, leaving the sea flat.

The prow of the boat pierced the veiled, golden shroud and then came to an abrupt stop, throwing Steve and Flame forward. Before their eyes the bow rose and they stumbled backward, their simultaneous cries shattering the silent evening. Then they too were enveloped by the light.

Steve felt the wooden deck rise beneath his feet, yet he could not see the launch or Flame or anything else. His keenest sense was that of great empty spaces all around him, and he stared into the vastness seeing nothing at all, not even light or darkness. And yet, strangely enough, all dread and fear had left him.

From close beside him Jay said, “Get out, Steve. You’re here at last.”

“I am?” he asked into the nothing, his voice echoing and re-echoing in the vast, empty void.

“Of course,” Jay said, impatient now. “I’m having such a time with Flick because you’re late. He’s afraid we’ll be seen and now he doesn’t want to go at all.”

Steve felt Jay’s hands on his arm but he could not see him. He knew he was being guided hurriedly off the launch because he went up what he knew were the planks leading from the deck. Behind him came Flame. But he could not hear the stallion’s hoofs any more than he could his own footsteps.

“Careful, Steve,” Jay cautioned. “Watch your step. We’re getting off now.”

Steve thought it ridiculous to be told to watch his step when he could see nothing but those murky, endless spaces of … Of what? He couldn’t decide. But they were there all the same.

He stepped from that void into a great room. Jay, whom he could now see, went over to the stallion and straightened the brow band of the hackamore.

“I do wish you had started earlier, Steve,” he said gravely without taking his eyes off Flame. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen now. Flick’s in a very nervous state.”

Steve glanced around the room in which they stood.

“You won’t find him here,” Jay said. “He went to the chart room to check the screen.”

It wasn’t important to Steve where Flick was. He took hold of the lines of the hackamore, grasping them tightly for support, while he took another look around the room.

The walls were hung with great tapestries which changed color constantly before his eyes, becoming shades he recognized and still others that no one in this world had ever seen before. It was their movement that caused him to tremble suddenly. They seemed to be
alive and breathing! They all billowed together and glowed in a new and fiery brilliance. He stared at them, feeling their resentment at his very presence.

Jay noted the alarm in Steve’s eyes and said kindly, “Don’t let them bother you. They’re disturbed easily but soon get over it.” Then, smiling, “Of course you’re very new to them,” he added.

“Then they are real,” Steve said.
“They’re alive.”

“In a way, Steve. In the same way everything is alive in one form or another. Nothing is ever really dead, you know.”

There was neither depth nor height to the room, neither length nor width. Steve felt that he could walk forever without ever reaching those living walls, that the harder he tried the farther back they would move. Suddenly their colors changed again. They were no longer an angry red but were billowing in soft, somber tones. Yet they continued to move, breathing lightly as if at rest in their final acceptance of him.

“See, Steve,” Jay said. “They’ve settled down again, just as I said they would.” He placed an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s have a seat now and decide on the best way to handle Flick.”

Steve let Jay guide him forward. There seemed to be a floor of soft metal beneath his feet, so pliable that it yielded with every step he took.

He stopped in his tracks once, turning his head to see where Flame was. The stallion was still standing where Jay had left him, his red coat shining brighter than ever against the background of colorless, empty space from which they had emerged. But it was not
empty space, Steve reminded himself. The launch had to be there, somewhere.

Flame’s head was held high, his neck arched in a manner that he seldom maintained for very long. Steve noticed that the lines of the hackamore hung tautly to the floor, as though held by the molten metal itself.

“Let him be, Steve,” Jay said. “It’s the easiest way of handling him now. We don’t want him upset, and it’s only for a little while. He’s resting comfortably. Sit down, please.”

There were no chairs, no furniture in this endless room. Yet Jay gently pushed him down and Steve felt a support of some sort beneath him. Whatever it was, it hugged him close, molding itself to his figure even when he moved his arms and legs. Never before had he sat so comfortably or been so relaxed, so completely at ease.

“That’s it, Steve,” Jay said approvingly, “just take it nice and easy. Let me figure out the best way of handling Flick. Of course he’s absolutely right about the possibility of our being seen when we don’t have the setting sun as a backdrop for our landing.”

He paused, turning his disturbed eyes upon Steve. “In a night sky this ship is about as concealable as a fireball. We haven’t been able to do much about that, Steve, not yet. No more than we can get rid of those gases that lie upon the water after we do arrive. They’re apt to betray our location to anyone who knows the score, as you found out for yourself.

“But getting back to our traveling at night. I say we ought to take a chance on it, don’t you, Steve? What can your people think we are but a falling star or, at most, a
meteor, as you did.
Whisk
, we’re down and away in the launch.
Whisk
, Flick and the ship are back here. Nothing to it, really, if I can just get old Flick to think along those lines.”

Jay recrossed his legs and thoughtfully rubbed his smooth chin. Steve watched him, trying hard to concentrate on what Jay was saying. But to have this man sitting so comfortably beside him with no visible support was at that moment more astounding than anything else. He looked down at his own legs, one on the floor, the other outstretched. What was supporting him?

Suddenly Flick appeared in front of the nearest wall, and Jay called out to him, “Well, Flick, I guess you’re satisfied that we can go now, aren’t you?”

“Not in the least,” the other answered, nodding to Steve and then sitting down beside him. “The screen shows plenty of lights there. We haven’t a chance of landing without being seen.”

“So what?” Jay asked defiantly. “You’ll be back here before they know what it’s all about.”

Flick shook his head. “It’ll cause talk, though, and that we must avoid. You know the rules, Jay, as well as I do, and we’d be taking a very unnecessary risk going at this hour.”

Jay glared at him. “Unnecessary to you but not to us,” he bellowed. “After all, Flick, you
promised
.”

“I promised a good many things that I never should have,” Flick returned gravely. “However, that can’t be helped now, and I mean to go through with it but not at the expense of the ship’s being seen. You and Steve will just have to put off going until tomorrow.”

“I don’t know if Steve would come back,” Jay said
sullenly. “After all, this is a pretty unusual thing for him to be doing.”

Steve said nothing. He remembered how he had tried to steer the launch off course just before reaching the patch, how at the last moment he had sought the normalcy of his own world. Yet now he was in this ship, startled and astounded by all he saw but seated quietly, waiting for Jay and Flick to decide what to do because he had arrived late. But would he have the courage to return tomorrow?

Jay rose to his feet and began pacing the great room. Finally he stopped in front of Flick and said, “We’d better have Steve spend the night with us.”

Flick jumped to his feet.
“Jay!”
he said sharply. “Remaining on the ship is out of the question. Why …”

He stopped abruptly and wheeled around, facing the far wall. Steve’s gaze shifted with Flick’s, and he saw the tapestries billowing as if a great wind had swept the room. Somehow he knew that they were upset by the noise in the room and by the very suggestion that he should spend the night there. Without saying a word he got to his feet.