"Draw the neck rope!" shouted Murphy. A team of men pulled on the rope which tightened the neck of the tube hanging down from the balloon. Now the balloon looked like a gigantic mushroom, with a large misshapen head and a very short stem. Warner checked his gear and walked toward the platform. Murphy could finish the job on his own now, except for the last order to "Let go."
"Cover the fire!" The men who'd tightened the tube pulled a brass plate over the hole in the platform. Warner climbed up onto the platform as the men wrestled the observation basket on to the brass plate. When the balloon rose, it had to lift the observation basket and crew straight up. Dragging was a real danger at launch and landing times, which was why the balloon needed such a large ground crew.
But the benefits! "Your turn next, Ben," Warner called.
"Right. Sure you don't want me this time?"
"No, I'd better check things out." Not that Murphy couldn't do it, but that would be bad for Warner's image. And there was the new telegraph system, a thin wire stretching from the balloon along the tether; the only Morse operators in the University were Larry Warner and two of his crewmen, and they didn't speak English…
Warner checked the observation basket and its gear even more carefully than he'd checked his own. Today was supposed to be an endurance test, to see how long the balloon could stay up with extra ballast and fuel in place of a second man. There were extra bricks of the resin-coated straw they used for fuel when aloft tied to the netting above the basket. If sparks from the brass firepot in the floor of the basket reached them, they could be cut loose before they set the reed basket itself afire. Around the rim of the basket were hung sandbags for ballast and two skins of drinking water.
All improvised, all Warner's inventions. Well, with a little help from the others, but not much. And he'd got it all done before Gwen came back from Benevenutum.
Everything seemed to be all right. Some of the men in the Squadron believed that Warner was a wizard and the balloon was his familiar spirit, which would tell him of any negligence on their part in preparing it for the flight. He was supposed to discourage superstitions, and he would-eventually. Just now it was handy for them to think that. It was a long way down if anything went wrong.
Warner climbed into the basket and braced himself, legs spread wide and the fingers of one hand twined in the netting. The men on the ropes slacked off a little and the balloon lifted a few inches clear of the platform. Warner grinned. He had a lot of excuses for taking this flight, but one he didn't admit was simple enough. He liked it. The nearest thing to flying…
Except for the length, this flight should be almost routine. It looked like there might to too much wind up high, ~but here in the lee of Ben Hakon he should be safe enough. Idly he wondered who the hill had been named for.
The men who'd moved the basket and handled the overhead ropes now took their places on the handles of the winch. If Campbell had been allowed to make gears for the winch, it wouldn't have needed twelve or fifteen men. However, that was another of Captain Rick's orders-"I don't want it perfect, I want it Thursday!" So the winch needed a dozen men on the handles when the balloon was full, and the balloon itself had no rip cord or top vent. It rose or fell with the air inside it and the sheer strength of the men on the winch.
That, though, was the Mark I, and his crews were already at work on Mark II. They might have it finished by the time Murphy took it to battle.
He made one last check. "Looking good," he called. "Let it play out some." Murphy nodded. The balloon rose about three feet above the platform, before the winch crew caught it. It was crude, but as long as it was the only balloon on the planet, who cared?
Warner took a deep breath and began to sing as the winch crew let the balloon rise. He'd sung on the first ascent, to keep his teeth from chattering from sheer blue funk. Some of his crew thought it was a hymn to Yatar Skyfather, and now they expected him to sing every time the balloon went up. He wondered what Murphy would do. Oh, well.
Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,
Flying high, into the sun.
As the platform dropped away below him, he saw Gwen standing by one of the poles, trying not to laugh. Was it the song, or his singing?
Therrit had planned to do his work while the balloon was still rising. Lord Corgarff had said this would do the most damage. However, Lord Corgarff didn't know how many men were around the winch while the balloon was going up. Therrit did not trust Lord Corgarff to pay the promised gold to his family if he was caught before he could even do the work.
So Therrit stood well back, until the balloon looked no larger than his fist held out in front of his nose. Then the men on the winch pushed a long wooden rod in under the drum, to stop its turning. The rod could be put in place and then pulled out again quickly, without anyone having to reach in under the drum and risk getting their hands broken.
More than half the drum was still covered with rope when the balloon stopped rising. Therrit realized that if he could pull out the rod, the balloon would probably start rising again, just as Lord Corgarff wanted. It would be harder to make pulling the rod out look like an accident, but if there was enough smoke no one would see him, and they would never know. The crewmen thought the balloon could talk, but Therrit knew better. Warner had told him many times.
It was too bad that Professor Warner had to die. He was a gentle master, considerate of his servants.
But Warner had no gold to keep Therrit's sisters from starving. They could enter Warner's service, but the Star Lords had no understanding of what was fit for the daughters of yeoman and what work was fit only for slaves or freedwomen. He might-he might loan Therrit's sister to the Lord Elliot, as he did with his own Sara!
No. The only safety for his family was the protection of his clan. Lord Corgarff would not order this without the consent of Chief Dughuilas, and Dughuilas could protect anyone!
Therrit waited a little longer, until he saw the Lady Gwen walking back to her tent. Corgarff did not seem to care if the lady was hurt or not, but Therrit did not want to make war on women, particularly this one. She treated the sons and daughters of yeomen as if they were the children of knights.
Therrit waited so long that he became aware that Corgarff was looking at him, rather than up at the balloon like everyone else. The lord's patience must be running out. Therritwalked cautiously toward the platform, pulling a brick of sky fire out of his pouch. It looked like any other brick from the outside, but it was only a thin layer of straw and resin pasted over a leather lining. The leather was filled with firepowder and other things to make smoke. Therrit walked until he was within easy range of the banked-up fire under the platform. Then he tossed the brick underhanded on to the coals.
The firepowder made all the smoke he'd expected, also a noise like the time when lightning struck his father's barn and a smell like the hot spring behind the University. Everybody except Therrit was caught by surprise. All those near the platform scrambled up, and a few ran. Therrit threw in a second brick, there was more noise and smoke, and it looked like everyone was running.
He couldn't wait to see better. He ran up to the platform, drawing his knife as he did so. Having gone this far, he had to be ready to cut the rope if everything else failed.
The locking rod came out at the second pull. He saw the winch handles begin to move and jumped aside. The winch rattled, the handles whirled fast enough to break a careless man's bones, and the rope on the drum shrank. Therrit pulled away the bronze lid over the firehole, cursing as it scorched his fingers, and tossed in the last two bricks. The noises made the platform shake and the winch creak, and the smoke came up so thickly that Therrit could barely see or breathe. Choking and holding the rod out in front of him like a blind man's stick, he groped his way to the edge of the platform and jumped down to the ground.