She stared at him incredulously.
"Yes! This `friend,' as you are pleased to call him, coldly and callously offered to sell you to the Chac Yuul―if they could meet his price!"
Her eyes flew to me as Lukor enunciated this last item of information. It was exactly what I had told her below in the royal box, when I was attempting to persuade her to mount the rope ladder and enter the flying machine. Now I nodded and added my affirmation to Lukor's avowal.
"He is right, Princess. It's true―I know it, for, while I was lost and wandering through the maze of secret passages that lies within the walls of the royal citadel, I overheard Thuton discussing the matter of the price he had set on you with none other than Arkola himself."
"But that is absurd," she protested weakly. "What would Arkola be doing in Zanadar? Surely he is in my city of Shondakor, almost three hundred korads to the southeast!"
I explained, as best I could within the technological limits of my Thanatorian vocabulary, about the television crystal atop the tripod. Lukor had heard of such instruments―he called them palungordra, which means "far-seeing eyes"―but they were not known to Darloona, and she was somewhat skeptical. However, she did not argue the point and made no further attempts to persuade Lukor to turn back; instead, she fell into a meditative silence, obviously mulling over our words. My own beliefs she could doubtless discount as the result of prejudice and ignorance, for, although I do not believe she any longer regarded me with contempt as a vile and treacherous amatar, devoid of honesty or honor, I had still not fully redeemed myself in her eyes. But Lukor, as I have noted before, was the sort of decent and honorable gentleman you instinctively trusted on first meeting, and his stout, unwavering, firm, and sincere statements on Thuton's villainy she could not so easily disregard.
By this time it must have been late afternoon. The canopy of golden vapor that is the sky of Callisto was still bright with day; two moons were aloft, the frosted azure globe of Ramavad and tiny golden Amalthea, or Juruvad, as the Thanatorians call it. The mighty bulk of Gordrimator, that banded colossus of the skies, hove into view ere long.'
We flew for hours.
I was becoming rather weary of the enforced inactivity, and, to tell the truth, the seat in my cockpit was rather hard and by now it had become most uncomfortable. I could not recall just when I had last had anything to eat and or drink, but my belly was clamoring for attention.
We were traveling along at a frightful clip, fairly zipping along. The wind was terrific over the foothills. At this rate we would be out of them in no time, and could perhaps land and seek game and make camp for the night.
Ahead to the south stretched the vast black and crimson carpet of the Grand Kumala, which extended from horizon to horizon. It occurred to me after a time that Lukor should begin veering away to the east, for in that direction lay the city of Ganatol, his homeland, and thence we were bound. I leaned forward, tapped the Swordmaster on the shoulder, and shouted into his ear something to that effect. He turned a rather grim and worried face to me.
"I quite agree with you, my young friend," he said brusquely. "And, believe me, I would turn east if I could."
"What do you mean? What's gone wrong?"
He forced a laugh.
"I have been complimenting myself on my luck in finding an air current to ride," he confessed wryly, "but now that luck has turned, alas! The current has grown steadily more powerful. So long as it carried us in the direction in which we wished to travel, I made no objection and did not bother my mind with the increasing force of the wind. But some little time ago I decided it was about time to start curving away to the east―and found I could nod"
I stared at him blankly.
"You mean the wind is too strong?"
He nodded. "It is very strong. It is almost a hurricane. But that is not the trouble! The vans of the ornithopter are equipped with ailerons for just such a condition: by varying the pitch and angle of our movable surfaces, we should be able to veer even in a gale. But we cannot―look―can you see?"
I followed his pointing arm and studied our port wing. The ailerons, or whatever the movable rear surfaces on the aft side of the wing are properly called, were manipulated by foot pedals in the pilot's cockpit which Lukor occupied. These pedals communicate with the movable surfaces by means of wires and pulleys, the wires exiting from the hull through a row of small ports just above wing level.
I looked.
We had not made our escape from the City in the Clouds unscathed!
A steel dart from a guard's crossbow had lodged in our port aileron, fouling the guy-wire.
I tightened my jaw grimly, as the import of this discovery sank in slowly. Without the use of that aileron, we could not turn. We had lost our control of the flying machine, and the rapidly growing gale in whose grip we were now helpless would sweep us many leagues off our course . . . on and on over the trackless jungles of the Grand Kumala.
And night was coming.
15. THE HAND OF FATE
Helpless in the grip of gale-force winds, we were driven farther and farther off course, flying ever further south over the trackless maze of jungles known as the Grand Kumala.
Night was upon us now, the magically swift, sudden nightfall of Thanator. I do not believe I have yet in this narrative described the strange and almost supernatural nature of daybreak and nightfall on the jungle moon.
Day and night would seem to have no connection with the presence or even the number of Thanator's moons in her skies. Those strange skies of drifting golden vapor, like curdled flame of amber and yellow, remain constantly brilliant and evenly luminous for a period of something that seems like twelve hours. Then they dim and darken, without any apparent cause, to darkness which lasts for an equal period.
At this colossal distance, of course, the sun is far too small to have any important effect as far as illuminating the surface of Callisto is concerned."
I have noticed, time and again, that the daylight sky of Thanator remains uniformly brilliant when no moons are aloft, as it does when all four of the inner moons and even the titanic sphere of Jupiter are in the heavens. From this I can only suppose that, at periodic intervals, Thanator is bathed in some unknown radiation which sparks a luminiferous effect in the golden vapor of her upper atmosphere, which is probably a layer of some inert gas like neon which becomes incandescent when subjected to electrical current. Perhaps at regular intervals Jupiter gives off a storm of electrical particles which interact with the inert gas of Callisto's stratosphere. Or perhaps the luminous periods are due to the actions of some completely unknown force or phenomenon. I cannot say with any degree of certainty; I can but report the phenomenon as I have personally observed it.
At daybreak, then, the entire dome of the sky flushes with soft brilliant radiance which takes about seven or eight minutes to go the full cycle from a velvety brown gloom to full noontide luminance. The experience is most startling when you are first exposed to it―it is almost as if the entire heavens are illuminated by some colossal explosion. The luminosity remains constant, unvarying, a sourceless glow, until the hour of nightfall, when the phenomenon is reversed. Again, it takes about seven to eight minutes, as nearly as I can calculate the time without a watch, for full daylight to be replaced by brown velvet darkness.
The only effect this cycle has on the appearance of the moons is that, of course, they seem more brilliant at night, when they are not in competition with the radiance cast by that dome of glowing golden vapors.
Hence night was suddenly upon us. It was as if some cosmic magician cast his spell over an entire world, darkening its sun. I groaned a bitter curse