The deck seemed deserted. Then I spotted Desperandum standing beside the hatch that led to his cabin, notebook in hand. He was staring at the storm front with a critical eye. His mask was cream colored and haphazardly marked With mathematical symbols in blue.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he offered. His gravelly bass came tinnily through the mask’s speaker.
I flapped my arms. Desperandum stared at me nonplussed. Then comprehension dawned. “The lookout. Isn’t she down in the storeroom with the others?”
I shook my head. “Well, she’s not with me,” Desperandum said. “She must still be out on her morning scouting trip. That’s a shame. She was quite a help to us.” He shook his head regretfully. “Bad luck. These things don’t happen often. Freak wind conditions, or perhaps seismic disturbance. They say there’s a heat vent in the far edge of that bay, the one the storm came from. We’ll just have to weather this out, I suppose. Let’s go down to the cabin. Come along now; we don’t want to lose you, too.” Desperandum took my wrist casually. His grip was as secure as steel manacles.
We went down to his cabin together. Desperandum pulled off his mask and ran one hand over his short-cropped reddish blond hair. He glanced at the thick glass windows in the back of the cabin and clicked his tongue regretfully. “Those windows,” he said. “And after all the trouble I went through getting them installed. When the dust blast gets through with them they’ll be opaque. Useless.”
I was in an agony to get back on deck. So psychotically strong was my urge to aid Dalusa that I was unable even to stop and rationally consider my motives. I pulled off my mask with an elaborate charade of casualness, but Desperandum, his insights into human behavior sharpened by hundreds of years of experience, saw through me. “You’re agitated,” he said. ”Try to calm yourself. There were a few things about Dalusa that I think you ought to know—"
“Look!” I shouted. “Isn’t that she, outside the window?”
The response to a cry like that is automatic. As Desperandum turned, I pulled on my mask and leapt up the stairs and through the hatch. Desperandum’s shout was cut off short as I slammed It behind me. I hoped he would have more sense than to come up on deck after me.
But I reckoned without a captain’s devotion to his men. The hatch slammed open and I barely had time to flatten myself behind a try-pot before Desperandum leapt up onto the deck. He glanced around quickly for a few seconds, saw the approaching storm, and leapt back down into his cabin. The hatch was slammed and locked.
There was no lightning, no thunder. The wind was dead calm. I stared in fascination at the approaching wall. It was not as solid as it appeared at a distance; horizontal flattened strata of wind-driven dust sleeted out before the storm’s main front, and long curls and involutions reached out like gaseous tentacles before expanding into nothingness. The light dimmed, and the morning sun was already obscured by an encroaching gust. Adrenalin poured into my bloodstream. Already my overly vivid imagination was hard at work; I had a sudden vision of the ruthless sandblast stripping away my skin, blasting my mask’s plastic lenses into a frosted blur, abrading my tough rubbery mask into useless shreds, scouring my face away with a million crystalline impacts. In seconds I would be lacerated into a gooey skeletal framework, my bones stripped clean, cut thinner and thinner by the merciless gusts and finally annihilated. A total panic rush stung me; I leapt up from behind the try-pots and ran across the deck.
Then I saw a winged blur silhouetted against the approaching wall. Wind puffed past me, sharpened particles stung my exposed hands and throat. The light was going out. Dalusa was out of control, blowing like a leaf, almost pinwheeling. She was going to cross the Lunglance’s bow. Now I could hear a dim roar as I ran across the plastic-clad deck. A strong gust struck the stern and the Lunglance’s wire braces sang like violin strings. Another gust stung me and almost knocked me off my feet, but I scrambled to the bow. I was in time. But Dalusa was too high, flying out of my reach—no, she swooped downward. But was it far enough?
Then, as she passed, I jumped overboard. And, to my own surprise, I caught her legs in a panic grip. We hit the dost and went under, but only for a second. Its specific gravity was higher than that of water and we floated like corks. I grabbed Dalusa’s dust-caked hair and struck out for the space between the Lunglance’s middle and port hulls.
I tried to draw a breath and started to strangle. Dust had completely plugged my mask filters. With an immense effort of will, I stopped my frantic inhalation and breathed outward sharply. My ears popped, but the filters cleared.
Dalusa was choking, clawing at her mask with sharp red fingernails. Whacking the back of my head against the center hull, I loomed out of the dust and struck her sharply with the side of my clenched fist, into the solar plexus. Dust spurted out of the end of her mask filter and she drew in a shuddery breath.
She threw her arms convulsively around my neck and dust gritted against my skin. I was completely coated with the floury stuff; it adhered tenaciously to the thin layer of human oils and greases on my skin. No chance of contamination now.
Then the wind rose to a howl and the sky was completely obscured. It was as black as pitch underneath the Lunglance. Dalusa’s long arms had a startling panic strength; it was obvious that she had no idea of how to swim. I tried to give her a reassuring pat on the back, but her wings were in the way. At last I reached clumsily over her arms—a difficult task, since her velvety but tough wings almost completely enshrouded me—and patted her between the shoulder blades. Her grip loosened a fraction.
The wind was beginning to push the Lunglance slowly through the dust. That was bad. If the ship ever turned her stern or her bow to face the wind, the gale would sweep along between the hulls and kill us.
I stopped treading dust and trudgeon kicked twice in order to float on my back. I braced both feet against the center hull, holding Dalusa almost completely out of the dust. She let go of my neck, lying quietly at full length on top of me. The buoyancy of the dust “was enough to hold the round breathing filter of my mask out into the air, but the rest of my head was submerged. Most of Dalusa’s weight was concentrated in her massive flying muscles.
Then she slid grittily downward along my torso and rested her masked cheek against my chest. My face floated up out of the dust. Some of Dalusa’s body heat was beginning to conduct itself through the layers of dust that separ rated us. If I started to sweat at the areas of contact she would contract a severe rash. I exhaled sharply and sank a little under her so that fresh dust could adhere to me.
Feeling me sink, Dalusa linked her arms loosely around my waist. It was still pitch black. I knew her position only by touch. There was no sound but the hollow roar of the wind and the gritty sandpaper sound that the dust made as it rasped at the Lunglance above us.
But we Were safe, at least for the moment. My heartbeat had slowed now and I became aware of the definite eroticism of the situation. I lifted my dustcaked arms and put my hands over Dalusa’s shoulder blades. The muscles under my fingers grew stiff, then relaxed and moved. Her cheek still rested on my chest, but, suddenly, I became aware that she had reached down and was caressing the backs of my calves. Her arms were longer than I had realized; I felt a sudden chill, not unmixed with lust, at the realization of Dalusa’s essential alienness.
She continued to stroke the backs of my legs. It was not a particularly sensual feeling in itself; the dust was gritty on my skin, and my loose sailor’s bellbottoms were bunched uncomfortably around my knees. But the idea of it was startlingly provocative. So abstracted was the relationship between us that any physical contact, however minor, assumed fantastic, grotesque importance. I stroked Dalusa’s back with my dry, gritty hands. I hesitated about embracing her. The sensation of having ha wings pinioned might make her panic.